A term erupted during the covid 19 pandemic, it sounds made up but it was my first time hearing of it. It was called infodemic. Experts believed there was something that caused a lot of harm to people compared to what the virus caused. Infodemic is the merging together of two terms which are; information and pandemic. Which simply transformed to a pandemic caused by information. How does this occur?
At every point when mankind struggles with a specific challenge, there will always be people who would ignorantly or intentionally disseminate false information for their own benefits. This inappropriate information are what makes up conspiracy theories because it wasn't a fact tested by any expert, it is just an opinion of an individual and when such a person decides to share his/her opinion on social media claiming it to be true, people who are already terrified by the on going challenge will ignorantly feel inclined to disseminate the information to their loved ones and gradually, such information spreads like wild fire.
It occurred during the covid 19 pandemic, there were lot of misinformation about the virus, people believing there were some kind of cure to it or something that could make people immune to the effect of the virus. It started with bathing with salt, that got to our household through my mum elder sister and she woke us up with a call around 4am, asking my mum to inform everyone of us to bathe with salt. Seeing the kind of fear in my mum's face, no one could dare say no. Even after I found out that the information was false, I still couldn't tell her it was fake because who am I to tell my mum that her elder sister was fooled by social media.
We thought we had seen the highest peak of misinformation and conspiracy theories till the vaccine was introduced. When people heard a vaccine has been found, everyone felt relieved, finally something to battle the unhinged virus. Though I still find it difficult to believe anyone in my country was Infected because the numbers did not make any sense but then that is a discussion for another day, I'm not trying to create another conspiracy theory.
In the same spate the news about the virus travelled, so did all kind of informations travelled with it. It first started as a rumour but gradually it started gaining the attention of people and seeing the numbers of people who are being harmed by taking vaccine, infodemic came into play again. It is said that the vaccine was created to eradicate or reduce humans population. The thing about conspiracy theories is that, it is always timely. It comes when people are desperately searching for some meaning or something to cling unto.
Never underestimate the effect of fear on people, just like that, people who are already pilling up at the vaccination centres started reducing. Even I was affected by it and frankly I still can't call it a conspiracy theory because I still have my doubts about a lot of things involving the vaccination and the covid 19 virus. For most people in my area, the reason they had to go for vaccination was because the vaccination card suddenly became a passport to gain access to lot of corporate entities and traveling related agencies. So when it started feeling like we couldn't get access to anywhere without the card people started going for it again.
Do I take vaccinations seriously? I do to an extent. I'm a very complex person. The fact is, naturally i hate anything that have to do with clinics and hospitals and most importantly injections. The numbers of injections I'm aware I had taken is just two. The first one was when I was in primary school, which was immunisation. I skipped school lot of times because of the injection till eventually I was detected by my school principal before I took the injection. The second one was covid 19 vaccination, it was only after I heard I will be needing it to get access to NYSC camp, that was when I decided to opt in for it. So honestly, I really can't tell if I take vaccinations seriously or not. Probably if there is a way to get vaccinated without injections, I might be more inclined to take it.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled Vaccination in hive learners community.
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