Dr. Rose Marie Leslie, a family physician at the University of Minnesota, is fighting misleading and false information around a virus outbreak with the very tool used to spread much of it: social media. Leslie turned to TikTok, a platform popular with teens, to share her videos offering facts about
Dr. Rose Marie Leslie, a family physician at the University of Minnesota, is fighting misleading and false information around a virus outbreak with the very tool used to spread much of it: social media.
From fringe groups pushing false — and dangerous — claims about how to prevent the virus to videos said to show people fleeing the outbreak or experiencing horrendous side effects, misinformation online is fueling fears and sowing confusion. On Wednesday, a video posted on TikTok — an app best known for lip-synching and amateur dance routines — showed a man in a lab coat who said he was testing two blood samples. One contained a bright red substance he identified as fresh blood and another, labeled “patient zero,” contained a purplish liquid.
But health experts expressed concern that some of the false information around the virus may have already done damage. “Sometimes in emerging infectious disease outbreaks misinformation may be more dangerous than the actual threat of the virus because it prompts people to take action that may have secondary cascading effects,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar who specializes in infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Anti-vaccine accounts shared similar false conspiracy claims during the height of the Zika virus in 2016.
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