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Misinformation on pandemic wreaking havoc

Canada research chair Timothy Caulfield tasked with researching infodemic, root cause of COVID-19 misinformation
Timothy Caulfield Image
Timothy Caulfield. SUPPLIED PHOTO

A second pandemic is running in parallel with the global COVID-19 pandemic: a phenomenon Professor Timothy Caulfield refers to as the infodemic.

“People are getting harmed (and) people are dying as a result of misinformation,” said the Canada research chair in health law and policy and University of Alberta health law professor.

Similar to COVID-19 running rampant in human hosts around the world, a disease of misinformation is infecting webpages across the Internet, promoting harmful theories and bunk cures for COVID-19.

“It even surprised me, to be honest with you. It really is incredible,” he said. “And it's coming from everywhere, you know, and it's about every topic.”

Caulfield is familiar with busting health myths, as best-selling author of Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything and The Vaccination Picture. He is also TV host of A User’s Guide to Cheating Death.

Now, Caulfield will be compiling research on the nature of misinformation surrounding COVID-19, after receiving $381,708 in grant money from Alberta Innovates and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

“This is not the time to have an erosion in trust, and to have a chaotic information environment,” Caulfield said. “We want as much clarity as we can get, and we want to foster trust in those voices that are trying to aggregate the good scientific information.”

From social media to search engines and traditional news media, Caulfield will be examining the root of the misinformation and then compiling empirical research on the impacts it has and how to fight back.

Fear and uncertainty make fertile breeding ground for misinformation, Caulfield said, and he was surprised when the level of misinformation did not abate once the severity of the pandemic became known.

“(It) is disheartening, too, because a lot of it is providers taking advantage of the fear and the uncertainty to sell products,” he said. “There are also those who are using it for ideological and political reasons.”

When COVID-19 first began sweeping the globe, Caulfield said the most frequent myths around COVID-19 were that it was a hoax, and that it should not be taken seriously.

One can point to U.S. President Donald Trump as an early example of this, who, even at the end of February, called COVID-19 the Democrats’ “new hoax” to see him impeached and compared it to the common flu.

It is a frequent claim made around social media, that COVID-19 is nothing worse than the flu, but Caulfield says each pandemic needs to be treated as an isolated event. Yes, the flu is serious and often “inappropriately downplayed,” but the coronavirus is unique and highly infectious.

“We don't have a vaccine. There's so much uncertainty around it. It's not the same as the flu, which is a more known entity,” Caulfield said.

Now as countries are forced to take COVID-19 seriously, rampant myths have shifted toward unfounded cures or preventative measures. Some “ridiculous advice” Caulfield said he has seen around cures have included drinking cow urine, taking cocaine and drinking bleach.

The consequences are real. Last month, hundreds of people died in Iran who falsely believed drinking methanol would cure them of COVID-19.

Even “more plausible” remedies like taking vitamins or taking an alternative medicine approach can be “harmful,” Caulfield said, because it distracts from proven health guidelines to stop the spread.

“There's uncertainty, there's fear, and we know that misinformation will often kind of fill in the gaps,” he said.

Along with bunk theories and cures, existing conspiracy theories can get tied into the chain of misinformation. Caulfield said he has seen a lot of conspiracy theories that are “hard to believe” but rampant, nonetheless, such as 5G technology making coronavirus worse.

“I’ll put it this way: if there is an existing conspiracy theory associated with health or a health trend, someone out there in the social media universe will figure out a way to connect them,” Caulfield said.

For media consumers, the professor has two pieces of advice: go to trusted voices that aggregated the science and pause before clicking the ‘share’ button.

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