Drosten and over 100 doctors warn of lie pandemic

Fake News about the Coronavirus

Drinking disinfectants, whitewashing symptoms - Corona fake news spreads rapidly. In an open letter, doctors demand corrections from Facebook and Co.

by  SONJA ÁLVAREZ

Duncan Maru experiences almost daily the consequences that fake news can have. The epidemiologist has a lot to do at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Queens, New York, anyway.

But now patients who drink disinfectants "to 'cure' themselves" or who believe the crisis is "a fake" and therefore "do not respect the rules of distance or refuse to take the help they actually need", he reports. 

Doctors like Maru are therefore currently fighting not only against the corona pandemic, but also against a worldwide "infodemia" that is spreading rapidly via social networks, with deadly consequences - which is why the medical profession is now sounding the alarm.

In an open letter, which is to appear today in the US newspaper "New York Times" as a full-page advertisement and was preceded by Tagesspiegel Background, they call on tech giants like Facebook, Twitter and Google not to "further fuel the lies, distortions and fantasies that threaten us all".

More than 100 doctors, nurses and health care experts from all over the world are among the first signatories. Among them are the four German doctors Christian Drosten (chief virologist at the Charité Berlin), Melanie Brinkmann (Institute of Genetics at the TU Braunschweig), Jörg Ellinger (senior physician at the University Hospital Bonn) and Christopher Rommel (Director of the Clinic for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Johanniter Hospital Treuenbrietzen).

"Wrong or scientifically not yet classified information often spreads like wildfire", they could "spread unnecessary fear and cause damage", warns Melanie Brinkmann. Examples include reports of the occurrence of more aggressive virus mutations or allegedly effective remedies.

Her colleague Rajeev Fernando, a specialist in infectious diseases at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, criticises that misinformation has led to "many people not being hospitalised for a long time", deaths could have been avoided. "In a crisis such as this, the fight against medical misinformation on the Internet is just as important as exit restrictions and keeping your distance," emphasizes Fernando, who, like Maru and Brinkmann, expresses his views in a letter that will be published accompanying the letter.

But the signatories of the letter stress that the "tidal wave of false and misleading content" about the coronavirus is "not an isolated outbreak of disinformation" - but part of "a global problem". On Facebook, for example, they share reports that chlorine dioxide helps people suffering from autism and cancer, or that millions of Americans have been given a "cancer virus" by the polio shot, or that ADHD was invented by the big pharmaceutical companies.

Diseases are "revived thanks to anti-vaccination propaganda"

By working in hospitals and health departments around the world, they are "only too well aware of the real impact of this infodemic," the signatories write: "We are the ones who treat infants with measles in hospitals - a completely preventable disease that was already considered eradicated in countries like the United States, but is now resurgent thanks mainly to anti-vaccination propaganda.

Misinformation would worsen the morale of "a profession that is already under great pressure", while the financial costs of treatment would "put an even greater strain on an already overstretched budget".

Although the tech companies tried to react by deleting certain content - if it was reported - and by allowing the World Health Organization to run free ads, "these efforts are far from enough," write the signatories. The platforms would "both facilitate the dissemination of ideas and benefit from it".

They are therefore "in an incomparable position of power" and responsible for "counteracting the deadly spread of misinformation in order to prevent social media from making our society sicker". Now, they say, it is a matter of "saving lives and restoring confidence in scientifically based health care."

Two concrete demands are mentioned in the letter to the tech companies:

• Publish corrections to the health misinformation: Any person who has come into contact with health misinformation on a platform should be warned and notified to "display a well-designed and independently verified correction".
• "Detoxify algorithms." Dangerous lies and the sites and groups that spread them should be downgraded, not up-graded, in user feeds. Harmful misinformation and pages and channels that belonged to "repeat offenders" should be removed from the content recommending algorithms.

Although the signatories praise the fact that platforms such as Facebook have already begun to label misinformation that has been checked for facts, they also praise the fact that the information provided by Facebook is not accurate. Google subsidiary Youtube has also announced that it will extend the use of fact-checking panels to the USA. Twitter declared at the end of April that the removal of content has priority if it calls for actions that could potentially cause harm.

However, this procedure apparently did not go far enough for the signatories of the letter. For millions of people could see a contribution before it was checked and marked. Users should therefore also be informed of retroactive corrections.

In response to the letter, Facebook said it was "aggressively pursuing misinformation about Covid-19", "millions of pieces of misinformation" had been flagged with warnings, and "thousands of pieces of content had been removed" that "could cause immediate harm. The company is "fully committed to supporting healthcare workers during this time".

The Open Letter was organized by the campaign organization Avaaz after doctors like Duncan Maru approached the organization concerned about the consequences of the misinformation. The ad is funded by various donations, but Avaaz did not name a price upon request.

The "Correct the record" process developed by Avaaz to curb misinformation is also used by Facebook in relation to Corona, and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg had also stated in a posting that "accurate and reliable information" was one of his "top priorities" in the Corona crisis.

But the signatories are not only calling for more support from Zuckerberg, but also from the CEOs of the other platforms, as New York physician Duncan Maru emphasizes: "My colleagues and I cannot fight lies and save lives at the same time. We urgently need help". 

Translated and reblogged Version - Original here