Spreading news without fact check is equal to spitting in public during the pandemic!
I am not writing this to support anyone or to spite anyone. All I feel is amidst this already bad situation, all of us should be responsible enough to fact check any news we read, any opinion someone states before sharing it with anybody else.
Lately, I have been reading a lot. In one of the books I read this: our brains have the habit of storing emotions for long. When we get angry a part of our brain called amygdala creates ripples. These ripples have the power to stay for hours and affect our mood hormones. Don’t you think reading about Corona is already sad enough and adding opinions and news which is not fact-checked would cause these ripples in your brain and affect everything else you do during the day?
I wouldn’t say we are doing it intentionally. Sit back and think about it for a minute. When Covid was new, everybody wanted to understand it — Including WHO, medical institutions and media. Every small bit of information was like gold. All we wanted was everyone to have access to information to be safe. And that’s how it all began.
We shared everything to our near & dear, we forwarded whatever we read, we wrote our opinions on it and shared them. They shared it to their acquaintances and the chain continued. Slowly, we lost track of the reason why we are forwarding/sharing these messages. The other day, someone sent a 5 minute long video that corona is not a virus but a bacteria. And, I also saw this video which states snorting ginger powder cures corona virus. Cut some slack guys! Please!
Please fact check what you see, correct the person who makes this claim, and not because you want to prove him wrong. It is because content affects all of us, and fake content can cause more damage than you think possible. We are lucky enough to be sitting here with internet connection being able to read articles and messages. While it is important to embrace it, it is even more important to protect its authenticity.
Bad news is contagious
In this context, I want to mention media. Let’s look at it this way — there are about 45 media channels and the way to stay on top of the curve is to have more viewers, more TRP. How would they reach viewers if every activity around the world is stalled because of the pandemic and there is no news? well…by building activity around the pandemic itself!
That is what they are doing. There is a news floating around and debates going on everything surrounding COVID-19. One of the most recent and interesting subject I came across is that WHO changes opinions — one of them is on the masks controversy.
On 6th April 2020, WHO released an interim guidance on “advice on the use of masks in the context of COVID -19”. In that they stated that masks should be reserved for healthcare workers. Let me state the exact words:
“Medical masks should be reserved for health care workers. The use of medical masks in the community may create a false sense of security, with neglect of other essential measures, such as hand hygiene practices and physical distancing, and may lead to touching the face under the masks and under the eyes, result in unnecessary costs, and take masks away from those in health care who need them most, especially when masks are in short supply.”
On 5th June 2020, WHO released another interim guidance with the same heading. It said that — “This document is an update of the guidance published on 6 April 2020 and includes updated scientific evidence relevant to the use of masks for preventing transmission of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as well as practical considerations.” They advised on which type of masks should be used in which setting, the kind of fabric to be used and other best practices. They also stated some medical experiment references which show there might, again there might be a possibility that wearing masks can prevent spread from source to healthy person — but there are continuous experiments going on the same.
These two releases by WHO sparked a controversy among the media that WHO changes opinions. Before I state the next controversy slashed on WHO let’s think facts for a minute.
April 2020 — nobody had a damn clue what was happening, and let us cut some slack, this is including the WHO. But, what everyone knew was that we didn’t have enough medical equipment (I wouldn’t say confidently that we have enough now). We didn’t have enough masks, most of us didn’t know what a N95 is. Medial institutions were clueless. At this point, the WHO and most of us who have common sense did/would have made sure that those who NEED IT THE MOST have access to masks and so the rest of us would have to stay home. We bought some time to understand it.
June 2020 — We still don’t understand the pandemic completely but at least we know that it mostly spreads through respiratory droplets and hence wearing masks could to an extent protect us from COVID-19. And, this is what WHO mentioned in the latest guidelines. And in June, we have enough units which have the capacity to produce 2–6 lakh masks a day on average.
Both of them were interim guides. Medical institutions and WHO need time and experiments to understand what works and what does not, including whether masks will work. Well, they cannot be forwarding fake news like us. Can they?
What would happen if WHO had mentioned that everyone should wear masks in April 2020? Were we prepared in April with enough supply? Wouldn’t the frontline workers run out of masks? Wouldn’t it cause a war like the toilet paper had? I think it would have caused a great damage to the medical frontline staff.
The same happened with Maria Van Kherkhove being slashed by the media on her comment that “asymptomatic transmission is rare”. I spent a lot of time to understand what she was saying and I don’t understand why did it even create a controversy. She was answering a press question based on the data WHO has been receiving.
I am not writing this to support WHO. There might be political influence, there might not be like Trump and media are accusing WHO of. None of us have any clue. I am just saying, let’s check facts when possible or give a healthy criticism and a healthy opinion (whether it is for or against) or give a solution or keep quiet and stay home. But, let’s not keep going around telling people “WHO is bad, US pulled out of WHO, WHO is supported by China. WHO changes opinions”. If you say so strongly, pull out the facts. It is for a goddamn reason responsible for the global public health.
We need to remember and accept that things are changing and so may results, cure & prevention strategies — because all this is new to all of us! One day, when we land on the solution, it will all be clear there will not be interim guides anymore. We will know how to handle it.
Importance of Healthy Criticism
I do not deny criticism. It is healthy for a positive push in the world. For example, debating why affected people in Delhi do not have access to hospital beds when the claim is that 70% of the beds are empty is healthy talk when it leads to solutions, talking about access to affordable medical care during pandemic is good, questioning why private hospitals are charging 10 -15 lakh for covid treatment is good. But, forwarding content about any incident without checking facts is what I am saying is not acceptable.
Also, I do not deny that some people and communities are trying politically taking advantage of this devastating situation. We all have been seeing people slashing each other blaming the steps being taken. We have seen communities supporting these trends irrespective of whether the facts are true.
Effect on brain’s threshold to feel emotions
All this has reflected on incidents happening other than COVID. Last week, everybody including the celebrities slashed the people responsible for killing the elephant by feeding a pineapple filled with fire crackers. (this includes me.) Our threshold to feeling emotional and sad in our brain has lowered so much because of this pandemic that even the smallest incident can disturb us to quite an extent. Once our brain has reached this state we forget to fact-check and we just want to react. What happened to the elephant is really, really sad, I cannot imagine the amount of pain she must have gone through. Elephants are the most humble giants and hurting them is bad but fact-check — was it done intentionally? Why was the pineapple loaded with firecrackers kept in the first place? Should we go ahead and blame humanity and say, “we humans deserve to die?” (I also told this. But, when reality hit it made me sad. The gap of time between an incident and knowing the reason behind it can cause so many reactions within us and on social media)
Can you now imagine the kind of effect fake news and unnecessary opinions might have?
While, we battle this, it is important to remember where we started and what are we doing to help each other. Let’s keep in mind to fact check everything we read about this horrible pandemic and correct the source if it is wrong.
We know what happened was bad. None of us know what exactly happened and people out there are trying to find it out, they are also trying to find out the solution. Meanwhile, it is important to be safe mentally as much as physically.
Share funny videos, share healthy memes, laugh to distract from the sad situation that we are all in but let’s not mix rumours and jokes.