Misinformation Is The Most Pernicious Toxin During A Pandemic.

Nothing has caused panic and fear during this COVID-19 pandemic like misinformation.

Ignorance, they say, is a holding pattern the axiomatic calm that acts as a precursor to a storm a kind of delay that is preserved when the much necessary strategic information is inaccessible. To whatever extent knowledge enables, ignorance reliably disempowers.

But pernicious as ignorance is, misinformation is far much virulent of every human s social diseases. For every malevolent toxin to which we are all vulnerable during a crisis of global magnitude, misinformation is the most dangerous.

The world is currently populated by vessels full of misinformation a disease that is vigorously impervious to the unsettling timeliness of medical and scientific truth .

Social media has stimulated this micro-cosmos, whose ramifications are ubiquitous. It enthused the Arab Spring, which was closely ensured by the tyrannies of winter, supported by the democratization of half-truths, especially directed to divide and radicalize.

Even the surprise of Brexit was borne in just such currents as the restive floodwaters that are now flagrantly dividing American politics.

All these instances are thematic of one fact: internet, aided by the social media, has provided the much-needed space for every opinion, amplified by the like-minded in cyberspace, to masquerade as expert opinion, and impersonate truth.

It has not only demolished our mental faculties capability to triangulate (or verify information) but also exterminated the expertise, especially in clinical care, outcomes, and the doctor-patient relationship.

For instance, for years, a large portion of social media users have regarded immunization not as public health breakthrough, but rather the cause of autism. This is a misleading theory, which despite being largely demystified, has refused to fade even in academia.

In 2015, for example, the University of Wollongong, one of the most revered, awarded a Ph.D. for a thesis, A critical analysis of the Australian government s rationale for its vaccination policy which sought to inform public health policy in contradiction of WHO vaccination guidelines. However, in a review, different authors reprimanded it as outrightly falsifying facts.

Furthermore, we have seen the rise of extreme protestations against the polio vaccine, for example, by the top echelons of religious leaders and the emergence of a highly connected group of anti-vax crusaders globally.

The situation was worse at the height of the emergence of the HIV epidemic, which the internet conspiracy theorists sensionally claimed was started purposefully by the American government, and that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was complicit in slaughter-fomenting anti-government passions.

Regrettably, the underlying effect of all these is that the consumers of such misinformation tend to embrace alternative therapies proven not to work.

In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, the greatest source of anxiety has been the convoluted process of watching the news unfold on social media, which has echoed and amplified the fears of not only infected and affected but also those that are yet to get the infection.

The World Health Organization has described the novel pneumonia (COVID -19) as a massive infodemic , referring to a profusion of both accurate and inaccurate information that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it .

While Severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), Ebola and Zika viruses all caused global panic and fear, it was not to the gravitas of the Sars-CoV-2 (the virus causing COVID-19).

The high level of fears around the novel coronavirus is hugely augmented by social media, which has allowed disinformation and rumors to engender an environment of heightened uncertainty that has fueled social indecencies like anxiety and racism.

At these particular times, Governments need to work closely with the World Health Organization to immobilize the ramping misinformation the sheer volume of which is likely to result in a breeding ground for xenophobic warfare.

Meanwhile, studies have plausibly concluded that the COVID-19 virus is not a purposefully manipulated virus and that the suspected sources remain pangolin and bats. We, therefore, run the risk of weakening the resolve of already decrepit public health, if we insist on putting inexplicable conspiracy theories in our current knowledge gaps about the virus