We are undoubtedly in unprecedented times, and there is no escaping that our lives have been wholly consumed with news and regulations concerning COVID19. I’m at awe at how this outbreak has touched so many portions of our lives. I try to look at the bright side of everything; even in tragedy, there is always a positive glimmer of hope that helps me remain optimistic.
The coronavirus outbreak originated as an epidemic in China. There are tons of speculations and accusations about its origin. Many wonder whether Chinese officials were forthcoming with the information about the virus in the beginning stages. This mystery may go down in history along with other famous unsolved phenomena such as “who built the pyramids” or “who killed Jon Benet Ramsey?” Whatever the origin may be, the facts remain that we are now experiencing a pandemic that most have never experienced before in their lifetime. When I think of the word “outbreak,” the first thing that comes to mind is the outbreak of Ebola in Zaire and Sudan.
But even that was on an epidemic level, not a pandemic level. Now we are facing not only a medical war but an infowar.
The introduction of the internet was thought to bring with it access to education and a means to transmit information to everyone. I’m sure Al Gore had no idea that the world wide web initiative he spearheaded would turn into a conduit of extreme misinformation. There are levels to the brevity of misinformation out there, ranging from the news outlets to online spoof websites that seem credible to online influencers. But most dangerous of them all is the “troll” community. The troll community consists of any individual who purposedly releases false information wrapped around a little bit of truth with the sheer objective to see how many shares and likes they can get. We are living in a world of “viral addiction” where those in the troll community either overlook or simply don’t care about the repercussions of their actions.
The most vulnerable audience for misinformation of medical information is divided into two categories; “the conspiracy theorists” and “the uneducated/ignorant.” The conspiracy theorists are the more dangerous of the two being that many on the uneducated side simply have not been exposed to this knowledge, and in some cases, they are willing to learn. In other cases, they are easily swayed by the teachings of the conspiracy theorist and spoof websites. Unfortunately, COVID19 has provided a myriad of avenues of misinformation. Trolls have conjured up theories about 5G towers causing people to get sick and not the virus. People are dismissing the virus as a “simple flu.” Some people have self-diagnosed themselves as being “healed” or “survived corona” because they were sick with respiratory issues in October of last year. Some have even gone so far to argue that the quarantine is a way to allow Bill Gates to microchip us with a mandatory vaccine. The theories are all over the place.
All of these categorizations are my personal opinions from my own interactions. I see this rhetoric daily as I have a social media platform (and do guest experiences on radio shows and podcasts). I’m in complete and utter awe at the level of misinformation out there, and I genuinely believe the virus would not be at a pandemic level if we didn’t have so much misinformation on the internet. Of course, there is another cause for the high infection numbers in the US, and it can be traced back to how our government handled the information and ignored warnings from scientists in the beginning. However, this is not the platform to get into a political debate. The issue remains that we are fighting two wars simultaneously, and the covid19 war can easily be defeated if we attacked the infodemic war first.
AGSC 5110 Research Methods 