People peddling fake Covid cures exploit our need to make sense of this crisis

India’s parallel second wave contagion of forwards about alleged Covid “cures” do not surprise US-based physician and author Dr Seema Yasmin. Previously a science journalist, Yasmin is now a “disease detective”— a trained officer at Epidemic Intelligence Service at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — who has investigated the spread of misinformation during epidemics at Stanford University. In an interview to Sharmila Ganesan Ram she talks about her latest book ‘Viral BS’ which shows how myths spread faster than microbes

- Dr Seema Yasmin

Here, in India, we are now dealing with forwarded messages that not only peddle lemon juice in the nostrils as “cures” for Covid but also deem vaccines “harmful for unmarried women”. Why do people fall for such theories?

Information that is inaccurate is often packaged to appear very certain. People peddling false cures exploit our need for certainty and make claims such as “100% effective” or “guaranteed cure.” They take advantage of our need to make sense of the crisis and our need to believe in something. A number of studies have found that false information travels faster and farther than the truth. There are important red flags to watch out for. Is the article you are reading making a claim that no other source is currently making? Another issue is scientific literacy, or a lack of it, so that as scientists update guidance, some interpret this as a lack of truthfulness or they might say “scientists keep changing their minds because they don’t know what they’re talking about.” In fact, science is not a bunch of static facts but a dynamic, evolving process.

How much blame can we place on social media for the current parallel global pandemic of misinformation?