Diary of a (secondline) clinicianOne of the benefits of having Indian and Malaysian parents and parents-in-law is vicarious exposure to the joys of Boomer WhatsApp. WhatsApp seems to be treated by many in our parents' age group as an alternative to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and basically all other social media. So much so that amongst Indians in particular it's literally filling up the internet. End-to-end encryption increases the attractiveness of the platform but had also lead to one of the current problems.
It seems to be a familiar theme of our connected information age that those seeking attention are able to quickly and easily spread misinformation about issues of public concern. Occasionally for monetary gain to be sure but just as often for notoriety. The particular hoaxes and myths that appear to have sprung up regarding COVID-19 often follow a familiar theme. Hoaxes seem to focus on drinking water, eating certain foods, doing certain exercises, and taking particular over-the-counter medications. They also tend to invoke a friend or friend of a friend who is working in Wuhan, Italy, or wherever the case hotspot of the time is. Written in soothing but matter-of-fact, lay language, who can help but be convinced and do what the hoaxes say; the simpler the 'cure' or preventative, the better. My wife and I have been deluged by forwarded WhatsApp messages from said parents, usually with a comment "Is this real?" to which it is usually the work of a moment to find the BBC or Buzzfeed article that has definitively debunked the myth days before. Apparently the wider problem is the end-to-end encryption, which makes policing of such misinformation very difficult if not impossible for Zuckerberg et. al. And so unlike Facebook and Twitter where misinformation gets removed extremely rapidly, unless you're Elon Musk, WhatsApp flies under the radar, remaining a bastion of fake virality as long as the pandemic is with us.
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