It was pointed out that not only the pandemic but also the 'infodemic' killed many people.
The new coronavirus infectious disease (COVID-19), discovered at the end of 2019, caused enormous damage worldwide and caused many deaths. Experts point out that many of these victims were not only directly injured by infectious diseases, but also lost their lives due to inaccurate information and rumored words related to COVID-19. I will.
COVID-19–Related Infodemic and Its Impact on Public Health: A Global Social Media Analysis | The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
' Infodemic ' is a term that refers to the fact that unknown and false information is disseminated via the Internet, etc., and many people who believe in it panic and cause upset in society. Regarding the aspect of damage caused by COVID-19, WHO announced in February 2020 (PDF) report , ``It is reliable because a large-scale'infodemic' is seen due to the outbreak of new coronavirus infection It's hard to find the information.'
As a damage of such infodemic, there is a case where some people who believed in the hoax that ``toilet paper will be gone'' bought up toilet paper and the toilet paper could not reach the people who really needed it. ..
The purchase of toilet paper and disinfectants due to the new coronavirus panic may occur overseas, and the black market may be formed-GIGAZINE
The lack of toilet paper has plagued many people around the world, but the infodemic can even become life-threatening. For example, in Iran, an incident occurred in which many people drank the brewed sake containing methanol, which is harmful to the human body, as a “therapeutic agent for COVID-19”, which killed 27 people due to methanol poisoning.
27 people died of methanol poisoning believing that drinking alcohol works against the new coronavirus-GIGAZINE
It is also reported that in the United States, the number of cases where children accidentally ingested alcohol-containing hand sanitizer and is transported by acute alcoholism is increasing .
In order to confirm the damage caused by such infodemics, a research team of Saiful Islam, a professor of materials chemistry at the University of Bath, England, conducts a fact-finding survey on infodemics on the Internet. Regarding COVID-19-related 'Rigogo-higo, social stigma , conspiracy theory' confirmed on the fact check agency websites, Facebook, Twitter, news sites, etc. between December 31, 2019 and April 5, 2020 We gathered information and tracked their impact on public health.
As a result, a total of 2311 inaccurate pieces of information were identified in regions of 87 countries in 25 different languages. The following is a diagram showing the state of infodemics revealed by the survey by country.In the bar graph of each country, black represents conspiracy theory, green represents rumored word, yellow represents social stigma (click for full size) It will be displayed in). If you look at Japan in the middle of the figure, you can see that although the total number is small, the proportion of social stigma is quite high.
When the research team analyzed the contents of hoax, the breakdown of the claim was 24% regarding 'disease / infection / mortality rate', 21% regarding 'control measures', and 19 regarding 'medical care and treatment methods' %, 'COVID-19 origin' was 15%, 'violence' was 1%, and other 'miscellaneous information' was 20%. In addition, it was confirmed that 1856 cases out of 2,276 cases that could be verified as text information, and indeed 82% of the information was false.
In a paper, the research team said, 'If rumored tongue, social stigma, and conspiracy theory pretend to be reliable information and dominate over evidence-based guidelines, there is a potential risk of serious harm. For example, the myth that “high concentrations of alcohol cleanse the body and kill the virus” has killed about 800 people worldwide, transferred 5,876 to hospitals, and left 60 blind to methanol poisoning. Yes, he pointed out the importance of the infodemic measures.
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in Science, Posted by log1l_ks