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About Top 5 Fake News About COVID-19 In Social Media

Fake news or rumors has emerged as a greater threat to human society. This is threatening society more than the COVID-19 outbreak, even the educated community is prone to forward these unsubstantiated messages on social media.

Hence, to dissipate the fake news and to emphasize truth, I have listed down the major rumors that are deliberately fake affecting the society by circulating in social media.

1. Medicine found for Covid-19 in China

Once a new type of virus type is known to this world the hunt for a vaccine is on. For the discovery of the vaccine, the properties of the virus must be studied, lots of trials have to be done and only then it can be prescribed as a vaccine for the particular virus. The origin of the spread of the virus was tracked down to a wet market in Wuhan, China. The market was sealed as soon as this was found out and the government thought they have done enough to stop the spread of the virus. Well, they were wrong, the disease was on to a stage of community spread affecting thousands of people. The Chinese government had to come with a way to find to test people who are affected by the virus. They prepared a medical kit for this purpose and it was mistaken for a vaccine. This is not actually curing medicine for the COVID-19 virus, it is a testing kit, so please are spreading these kinds of fake news without validating it.

2. The novel coronavirus is more deadly than any other pathogen.

Well, that isn’t exactly true. Although there are a lot of lives that this virus has claimed, it isn’t deadlier than the breakout of Ebola. According to the world health organization, the average fatality rate is around 50% which is way greater than of the COVID-19 is under 4%. Though a vaccine isn’t discovered yet the disease is not deadlier when compared to the havoc created by Ebola. SO, the fact that Novel coronavirus is more deadly than any other pathogen is a myth.

3. Asians are more vulnerable to COVID-19.

This claim is surfacing all over the media is for the fact explained in point number 1, about the wet markets in Wuhan. This has also fueled racism and prejudice against Asian ethnicity in the world. However, although most cases of the novel coronavirus have indeed been found in China, there haven’t been any findings of which groups are more vulnerable to the novel coronavirus.

4. The virus was manufactured and leaked from a research lab in china.

The University of Virology in Wuhan, China is regarded as the top virus research agency in China. It has been targeted by rumors and controversies since the outbreak. The rumors say that the virus was artificially engineered in a level-4 laboratory, which studies deadliest pathogens, such as Ebola and Marburg viruses. One article published by The Washington Times on Jan 26 claimed the virus was part of a Chinese biological weapons program based at the institute. Amidst all these theories that were put forward, an open letter was published in Lancet on Feb 18 where scientists from various countries had analyzed the genomes of the virus and they concluded that this virus originated from the wildlife.

5. Eating garlic or Vitamin C helps keep the virus away?

Garlic is found to have some antimicrobial activity and is a popular flu remedy according to Chinese medicine. Although there is no evidence that it helps you fend off the virus. The same is true with Vitamin C. As for drinking hot water to kill the virus, it is only another misunderstanding. The novel coronavirus can be killed in the water at 56^oC or higher after 30 minutes, but it is impossible for the human body to lift its temperature to 56^oC.

What’s more, the virus infects the respiratory tract of the human body rather than the digestive tract. Drinking more hot water is not only useless but also hurts your esophagus.

There is still much news that is still spreading around effectively without any authenticity. Even though many social media concerns have taken steps to minimize the effect of spreading this fake news, it still our responsibility to check once before we forward it to the community. These are about Top 5 Fake News About COVID-19 on Social Media.

Stay home, stay safe.

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