As the Corona virus scare grips the globe, a little lessthan the entirety of it has been forced to confront an ‘infodemic’ ofmisinformation. Given that many people are sequestered in their homes as healthofficials bombarded them with the advisories to maintain social distancing byavoiding public areas, employers initiate remote-work rules, and schools tocancel classes, much of the pandemic’s discourse is happening online, givingliars and pandemic profiteers the opportunity to seize on the frantic searchfor some bit of new and uncommon piece of information. But it’s not onlygrifters hawking sham cures and fake news, it is hoarders of essentialprotective equipment and this new herd of disaster entrepreneurs thereofemerging as a challenge across the globe and particularly in India, amidst thepandemic din.
Since initial reports of novel Corona virus (known in publichealth circles by the moniker COVID-19) started emerging earlier this year, theresponse on social media has ranged widely from measured caution to unabatedpanic. There’s been this blood-bath across global stock markets, and althoughcases in China are falling, other countries are reporting more number of cases.Nonetheless, that hasn’t stopped people from circulating rumours andmisinformation about the virus, with a healthy dose of rabid conspiracytheorizing and racism-tinged paranoia to boot. The fact that the virus appearsto have originated in China seems to have lent a fillip to this opportunity ofspreading misinformation, says Jen Grygiel, assistant professor incommunications at Syracuse University and goes to say that when psychologicalstates are peaked and people are anxious, anxiety blurs the better sense ofjudgement and they’re more apt to share inaccurate information. And becausethere’s heightened scepticism on social media about the official narrativesissued by the government, this has contributed to a deep sense of anxiety andfear where misinformation can thrive. This hysteria has moved from the digitalspaces in the US to the rest of the world, asking Africans to shave their beardand the Asians to seek divine interventions through chanting to ward off thetiny organism. Rumour mills are at an all time high.
A viral Face book post-dated January 22nd this year forinstance contains a screenshot of a patent filed by the Center for DiseaseControl and Prevention (CDC) for what is purported to be a Corona virusvaccine, suggesting that the virus was introduced by the US government forpharmaceutical companies to profiteer off the vaccine. While this makes nosense on even the most superficial level, novel Corona virus is, by definition,brand new, so it would be impossible for there to already be a vaccine for it,the screen grabbed patent actually applies to severe acute respiratory syndrome(SARS), another type of Corona virus that also originated in China and killedhundreds of people in 2002 and 2003. Although there have been reports ofcompanies receiving funding to developing a vaccine for n-CoV, currently thereare no vaccines available for any Corona viruses let alone the Wuhan one.
“The virus is no worse than the common cold”. This myth wasespoused by none other than the US Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient RushLimbaugh on his radio show on February 24th. “It looks like the Corona virus isbeing weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. Now, I wantto tell you the truth about the Corona virus. I’m dead right on this. TheCorona virus is the common cold, folks.” He went on to claim that the media wasdrumming up panic about COVID-19 purely to undermine the Trump administration.”They are trying to use this Corona virus to scare the hell out of everybody intheir madcap hopes of finding something that will get rid of Donald Trump. It’sexactly like the panic and fear mongering you heard for two years over Russiameddling in and stealing the election.” When public figures with wide reachdish out half-truths like this the potency to create panic is beyond manageableproportions.
Truth is COVID-19 is not the common cold, for numerousreasons. Apart from manifesting with a completely different set of symptoms(fever, cough, etc.) it also has a mortality rate of about little more than 2percent, which the common cold does not. The reason why Limbaugh may have madethat claim, however, is because COVID-19 is a type of Corona virus, an umbrellaterm used to describe a group of viruses including the common cold. This is avery basic fact about the Corona virus. But we are, after all, talking aboutirresponsible public discourse here. Confirmation-bias seems to have beenreinvigorated with a new lease here. WhatsApp forwards hailing Dettol’sprevious knowledge about the outbreak is the latest entrant to a series oftales by conspiracy theorists. And the magical cures range from good old garlicto the exotic colloidal silver.
When it comes to major world events, it’s not uncommon forenterprising sleuths to dig deep into fictional sources to find a premonition,however tenuous it may be. Few weeks ago a screen grab of a passage from authorDean Koontz’s 1981 novel ‘The Eyes of Darkness’ went viral on Twitter, as thepassage appears to allude to the creation of a deadly virus known as Wuhan-400,named after the city from which it originated. Except for the pointer to Wuhan,there is nothing common between Wuhan-400 and COVID-19. Also the book had nomention of it in the first edition. Unlike COVID-19, which has about a littlemore than 2% fatality rate, Wuhan-400 kills 100% of its victims, mostly by creatinga toxin that literally eats away brain tissue, rendering its victims pulseless. So while it may be tempting for proponents of the COVID-19 as bio weapontheory to point to Koontz’s book as a harbinger of events to come, it appearsthe parallels between the two are tenuous at best. Still, there’s no shortageof other works of fiction for armchair COVID-19 detectives to point to. Publichealth experts have been time and again underscoring the fact that there’snothing much that the scientists know about the virus and it’s heat resistantcharacter. So, disseminating fake information on the subject would amount todriving people in certain direction of preventive line, which we don’t know maybe wrong, unimportant or hazardous in the least.
This one’s a little trickier, and varies from country tocountry. The CDC has said that Americans who are healthy do not need to wearface masks, public health experts have rather warned that masks could actuallyincrease the risk of infection if they aren’t worn properly. Those who shouldideally wear masks are people who already are infected by the new Corona virusand could potentially infect others, those caring for an infected patient inclose settings and health care workers. Authorities across Asia, who have beendealing with the virus for months, have urged that people wear surgical masksparticularly on public transportation or in other crowded places to preventtransmission of the virus. To determine whether you need to wear a mask or not,it’s best to check the latest guidance issued by the country’s healthauthorities. In India Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has been educatingthe public through their ‘help us to help you’ campaign. It is critical todirect the public attention towards accurate advisories. But the Indian digitalplatforms are abuzz with fake and unverified posts on how wearing masks is asingle-shot remedy to fight COVID-19, pushing traders to hoard, spike pricesand spread panic. More often than not, such ‘concerned advice’ is well intentioned,but the harm such misleading posts can cause can be fatal.
Countries like Singapore have initiated stringent measuresto fight false assertions on Corona. Few arrests have already been made byIndian Police authorities. Utter Pradesh Police arrested a fake god man called’Corona wale baba’ and Telangana Police booked three persons under section 54of National Disaster Management Act, 2005 for spreading a false warning. Muchof our focus on containing misinformation is directed to the online medium.Shockingly, even some broadcast journalists have peddled misinformation thatthe virus does not affect children. Do It Yourself (DIY) detection kits havebecome another digital nuisance.
Bad information is bad for democracy. At this juncture,people do not need digitally processed miracle mineral solutions, but carefullycrafted accurate scientific information. We must act responsibly in times likethese to empower public institutions to share reliable source of information ona real time basis. For all we know, fake news may infect more people than theactual virus if we don’t step in and debunk.
(Rema Rajeshwari has co-authored this article with Dr. Suneem Ahmad Khan, who is senior medicalofficer, CRPF, Srinagar)
Courtesy: Times of India