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In this pandemic, misinformation can be lethal. Please choose reliable sources.

Intelligencer Journal - 7/26/2021

THE ISSUE

Earlier this month, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a 22-page advisory warning of the dangers of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a July 15White House briefing, Murthy noted that surgeon general advisories “are reserved for urgent public health threats. And while those threats have often been related to what we eat, drink and smoke, today we live in a world where misinformation poses an imminent and insidious threat to our nation’s health.” The threat, he said, demands a national response.

We were warning of the dangers of misinformation long before the COVID-19 pandemic upended our lives.

But the consequences of misinformation during a global public health crisis have proven to be particularly dire.

As Murthy writes in his advisory, misinformation has “led people to decline COVID-19 vaccines, reject public health measures such as masking and physical distancing, and use unproven treatments.”

He noted that “a recent study showed that even brief exposure to COVID-19 vaccine misinformation made people less likely to want a COVID-19 vaccine.”

Misinformation also has led to the harassment of, and violence against, public health workers, health professionals and other front-line workers “tasked with communicating evolving public health measures.”

That is appalling. And misinformation-fueled reluctance to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is tragic.

As Dr. Joseph M. Kontra, chief of infectious diseases at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Hospital, wrote in last Sunday’s Perspective section, “Getting vaccinated all but eliminates the possibility that you will die of COVID-19. In fact, according to the CDC, 99.5% of all deaths from COVID-19 in the past few months have occurred in people who were not vaccinated.”

He also noted: “Despite widespread misinformation, the currently available COVID-19 vaccines are among the safest and most effective vaccines ever created.”

Kontra is a thoroughly reliable source. According to the Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health website, he went to medical school at the University of Pittsburgh; did his residency at Virginia Commonwealth University; and did a fellowship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

He’s devoted his career to the fight against infectious diseases. He’s been on the COVID-19 front lines for the past 16 months. His only agenda is wanting people to be healthy.

The LNP | LancasterOnline Opinion staff checked his credentials so we can say with confidence that when Dr. Kontra urges people to get inoculated against COVID-19 — especially as the highly contagious delta variant threatens the unvaccinated — people ought to heed his advice.

Combating viral spread

The LNP | LancasterOnline Editorial Board relies, as much as possible, on primary sources. When writing editorials, we don’t just depend on other newspapers’ reporting of medical research, for instance — we try to read the actual research. When we’re writing about COVID-19, we rely on websites we can trust, like those of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center and the National Institutes of Health.

As consumers, we all need to check the credibility of sources, especially before sharing information on social media.

As the surgeon general’s advisory puts it, “If you’re not sure, don’t share.”

Because, as The Washington Post reported Thursday, social media companies’ content-recommendation algorithms “are still generally designed to boost content that engages the most people, regardless of what it is — even conspiracy theories.”

While social media companies Facebook, Twitter and YouTube insist they have worked to reduce misinformation and to encourage users to read trustworthy information, their fundamental business model is premised on generating volumes of activity from which they derive data that they use to sell access to discrete audiences. Until they change that lucrative business model, misinformation will continue to proliferate.

Check your sources

Once misinformation spreads online like the virus it is, it can stubbornly persist.

“The fundamental problem with misinformation is that once people have heard it, they tend to believe and act on it, even after it’s been corrected,” Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychology professor at the University of Bristol in Britain, said in the March edition of the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology.

In an editorial that same month, we offered the following list of questions — gleaned from NewsGuard, a nonpartisan media rating organization — that readers can use to determine whether a website is a reliable source.

— Is it easy to figure out who’s behind the site?

— Is it clear who owns and finances it, and who is in charge of content?

— Is it easy to contact the site creators and content creators?

— Does it disclose conflicts of interest?

— Is advertising clearly identified?

— Are the headlines deceptive?

— Does the site have an agenda?

— What is the reputation of its owners and creators?

— Do they say how they ensure their reporting is fair and accurate?

— Do they correct any mistakes they make quickly and publicly?

This list of questions may seem time-consuming. The good thing is, if you get your information from a newspaper like LNP | LancasterOnline, professionally trained journalists have done the checking for you. As Executive Editor Tom Murse wrote in a letter to subscribers in March, this newspaper’s team of journalists has “worked tirelessly to debunk disinformation and misinformation that spread virally across social media to keep you and your families informed about COVID-19.”

Locally owned — and so therefore locally accountable — community newspapers such as LNP | LancasterOnline are a sadly diminishing breed. This newspaper gathers information not just from official sources but from community members with direct experience of what’s happening. It doesn’t serve up the generic content that often fills newspapers owned by hedge funds and large, distant corporations.

There’s a real accountability that comes when a journalist is likely to encounter his sources in the supermarket or at the local farm stand. We have to be able to look people squarely in the eye.

Admitting mistakes

In his advisory, the surgeon general doesn’t shy from the fact that some of the information about COVID-19, especially early on in the pandemic, was confusing.

Murthy points out that “scientific knowledge about COVID-19 has evolved rapidly over the past year, sometimes leading to changes in public health recommendations. Updating assessments and recommendations based on new evidence is an essential part of the scientific process.”

Unfortunately, some people have exploited the changing health recommendations to undermine the credibility of health officials.

Again, here’s one sign that a source is presenting information honestly and in good faith: It admits and corrects its mistakes.

This may seem counterintuitive, we know. But sources that claim to be all-knowing and refuse to correct errors should be avoided like, well, the plague (though, as YouTube video creator Jenny Nicholson tweeted last year, that expression probably ought to be retired “because it turns out humans do not do that”).

LNP | LancasterOnline prints corrections on Page A2 of the newspaper, and corrections are noted online. We don’t hide our mistakes, hoping no one notices. That would be the easy, the irresponsible, way out. It is mortifying to make a mistake in print, but we take our medicine.

It also can be mortifying to point out to friends and family members when they’ve shared an unverified item online that we know to be untrue. This takes some sensitivity, because no one enjoys feeling like they’ve been misled or have been naive.

In his advisory, the surgeon general offers this advice: “Engage with your friends and family on the problem of health misinformation. If someone you care about has a misperception, you might be able to make inroads with them by first seeking to understand instead of passing judgment. Try new ways of engaging: Listen with empathy, establish common ground, ask questions, provide alternative explanations and sources of information, stay calm, and don’t expect success from one conversation.”

This is sound advice.

As the surgeon general said in his July 15 briefing with journalists, “We must confront misinformation as a nation. Every one of us has the power and the responsibility to make a difference in this fight. Lives are depending on it.”

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Crédito: THE LNP | LANCASTERONLINE EDITORIAL BOARD