10 th March 2021 Infodemic
An infodemic is extreme of information which includes fabricated news , wrong images and videos and false messages . This information can be in digital media or electronic media which can lead to confusion among general people , mistrust on health systems , risk taking attitude and also undermine the public health reforms responses . Similar to the spread of the contagious Covid-19 is the spread of infodemic .
In this outbreak of Covid-19 , we have seen few people , globally , have been misleaded about consumption of methanol alcohol and sanitisers to prevent themselves from Covid-19 . These false messages got spread in digital media platform- social media and internet use- where messages spread rapidly . Those who believed in this infodemic and consumed alcohol lost their life . Adding to this , when hydroxychloroquine was considered to be one possible remedy for the treatment of Covid-19 , a person from USA died by consuming fish tank cleaning product chloroquine .
Blindly trusting on an infodemic , without validating the truthfulness of the information can intensify and lengthen the outbreak .
General people can stay protected from infodemic by these simple ways-
1 . Validating the social media messages before adopting them 2 . Trusting on government information 3 . Listening to the messages given by healthcare experts and reaching out to them for help 4 . Not propagating the wrong information by forwarding messages to other people and groups
In this drive of inoculation in India , there are a mass of people who are reluctant about the vaccine presently available in Indian markets . It will be hard for the government , public health authorities , health experts , and reliable and valid source of media- to persuade the anti-vaccine group and handle the further spread of Covid-19 . Therefore , the first step towards immunization is to immunize the general public with herd immunity of valid and accurate information . In actual , we are now fighting against an epidemic and against an infodemic .