evidence: The claim that COVID-19 causes hypoxia because the causative virus binds to hemoglobin inside red blood cells is unsupported. For starters, no scientific evidence demonstrates that SARS-CoV-2 can enter red blood cells. The claim that the virus binds to hemoglobin is based on the conclusions of a single pre-print study, which solely involved computational analysis and did not undergo experimental verification or peer-review. The proposed mechanism is also inconsistent with clinical evidence from COVID-19 patients.