Let’s help fight disinformation

By Alex P. Vidal

 

“Disinformation is more than just lying: it’s the denial and twisting of reality in order to present some desired image to the rest of the world.”—Will Hurd

 

BEFORE we empty our energy by helping or tolerating the spread of disinformation about the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines and sowing intrigues that would result in large-scale distrust to “the only remedy” (at least that’s how I personally believe it) to the lingering pandemic, let’s help ourselves first; let’s help fight disinformation in our own little way.

And God will do the rest, as the saying goes.

We can’t trust everything to the Divine Province while fomenting falsehood and rejecting right away something that the medical scientists and experts have worked so hard to rescue mankind from the mysterious virus that threatens to decimate a large portion of the world population if the situation is not remedied soon.

We are glad that Facebook has started removing false claims about COVID-19 vaccines, its latest move to counter a tide of coronavirus-related online misinformation.

As it promised on December 3 and as the first COVID-19 vaccines were set to be rolled out, the social network has taken down any Facebook or Instagram posts with false information about the vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts.

The policy was reportedly applied to remove virus misinformation that could lead to “imminent physical harm.”

“Since it’s early and facts about COVID-19 vaccines will continue to evolve, we will regularly update the claims we remove based on guidance from public health authorities as they learn more,” wrote the giant tech company.

 

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Marisa Lati of the Washington Post has succinctly put it, “Living through a pandemic in the Internet age means misinformation can sometimes spread more rapidly than facts. Faced with a deluge of claims about the coronavirus and the illness it causes, covid-19, you may be wondering whether gargling with salt water is a cure or if the pathogen was man-made in a Chinese laboratory.”

Below are some of the common misinformation about the coronavirus emphasized by Lati:

—Masks help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Several studies support the theory that face coverings reduce the risk of infection. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified before the Senate in September that masks are “the most important, powerful public health tool we have” for combating the pandemic.

Part of the confusion about face coverings seems to have come from President Trump’s false claim in October that 85 percent of people diagnosed with COVID-19 wore masks—a mischaracterization of a CDC study.

—There are no known cures for COVID-19. While a cure for COVID-19 would be more than welcome, no drug or other treatment has been found to eliminate the illness.

Since the coronavirus emerged in China late last year, myriad false rumors have circulated about potential cures, ranging from drinking bleach to snorting cocaine.

The Food and Drug Administration has issued nearly 150 warning letters to companies fraudulently promising a cure, treatment, prevention method or diagnostic tool.

In reality, “the pharmaceutical toolbox for physicians to treat covid-19 is seriously restricted,” as The Washington Post’s Christopher Rowland put it in September. The FDA so far has authorized only two drugs for the illness: remdesivir, for in-hospital use, and bamlanivimab, for people with mild or moderate symptoms.

—The coronavirus is more deadly than influenza. Unfortunately, the coronavirus is much more lethal than seasonal flu.

About 2 percent of diagnosed coronavirus cases are lethal, compared with 0.1 percent of diagnosed flu cases.

For both illnesses, experts believe that far more people are infected than receive official diagnoses—meaning the true death rates are probably much lower.

The CDC estimates that, including people who have been infected with the coronavirus but didn’t know it, the U.S. death rate is around 0.65 percent.

The flu’s infection fatality rate may be about 0.05 or 0.025 percent, epidemiologists estimate.

There’s also no truth to the idea that doctors are inflating the coronavirus death toll by indiscriminately attributing deaths to COVID-19.

To determine a cause of death, physicians consider the patient’s infection, response to treatment and medical history. They also look at whether underlying conditions, which exist in most people who die of COVID-19, contributed to the death.

—Staying home, using hand sanitizer and washing our hands more often are healthy. None of those behaviors, which are recommended for preventing the spread of the coronavirus, pose a risk to our immune systems, despite claims that they do.

The incorrect notion that limiting time with people outside our households could damage our ability to fight diseases may stem from the “hygiene hypothesis,” or the idea that young children who are exposed to germs are less likely to develop allergies and autoimmune conditions.

But this concept does not apply to adults, whose immune systems have already been strengthened by exposure to bacteria, according to MIT Medical, a clinic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

While the hygiene hypothesis is probably also the cause of the false assumption that hand sanitizer and hand-washing weaken our immune systems, scientists at the Cleveland Clinic say there is no evidence that temporarily increasing these hygiene routines is damaging.

—Urging high-risk people to stay home and letting everyone else live normal lives would not “solve” the crisis.

Putting aside the moral and ethical questions at play, isolating the vulnerable and allowing other people to go about their usual business has significant pitfalls.

Washington Post’s Megan McArdle outlined some of the issues, including that hospitals would probably still be overwhelmed by lower-risk people and that it is nearly impossible to keep high-risk people from interacting with others.

While many younger people may have asymptomatic or mild cases of COVID-19, the illness can be serious for others.

Patients 49 and younger made up 23.1 percent of U.S. COVID-19 hospitalizations in the week ending Nov. 21, CDC data shows. And while people with underlying conditions are much more likely to be hospitalized or die, CDC figures from June show that 7.6 percent of patients without underlying conditions were hospitalized.

 

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Francesco Rocca, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said recently in a virtual briefing to the UN Correspondents Association that governments and institutions needed to implement measures to combat growing mistrust and misinformation.

“To beat COVID-19, we also need to defeat the parallel pandemic of mistrust that has consistently hindered our collective response to this disease, and that could undermine our shared ability to vaccinate against it,” he said.

The leader of the world’s largest humanitarian aid network said his organization shares “the sense of relief and optimism” that developments in Covid-19 vaccines bring.

But governments and institutions “have to build trust in the communities” where misinformation has taken root, he added.

There is growing hesitancy about vaccines around the world, particularly the Covid-19 vaccine, said Rocca. He cited a study by Johns Hopkins University in 67 countries, which found that vaccine acceptance had declined significantly between July and October of this year.

“This high level of mistrust has been evident since the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and have clearly facilitated transmission of the virus at all levels,” he said.

“We believe that the massive, coordinated effort that will be needed to roll out the Covid vaccine in an equitable manner, needs to be paralleled by equally massive efforts to proactively build and protect trust.”

Rocca’s comments echoed the words of scientists across the world.

Last month, British scientists warned that the United Kingdom may not meet the threshold of vaccine uptake to protect the community because of misinformation, mistrust and public hesitancy to take a coronavirus vaccine.

 

(The author, who is now based in New York City, is a former editor of two dailies in Iloilo, Philippines)