It is no news now that fake news has begin to be the order of the day especially now that a mobile phone with internet connection is easily accessible to almost anyone, so anyone with a crazy idea or propaganda can wake up one morning, type anything he or she feels and begin misleading people.
The event that stood out for me was during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, people had to depend on the tv, mobile phones or any device with internet for information. Since it was a new virus, and a lot of people had no idea about it before, some people took advantage of that to spread fake news all over the world,
Source
for their own selfish interest or just a conspiracy theory, in my country Nigeria, some unverified fake news that were spread included;
*Covid -19 affects only older people or obese people
*5G caused covid-19
*If you have no symptom of covid, you can't transmit it
*Covid does not exist
*Face mask is demonic and doesn't prevent covid
*The government was just using covid-19 to manipulate and brainwash the public
*Covid is manmade
*Covid-19 vaccine is a 666 mark
You can see that I had a handful of false information and a lot more I can't even remember now, which made people live carelessly by not abiding by the government rules.
How I was able to filter the false from the real news is by always checking the official websites where the real Source of information always come from, follow trusted heaith bodies and authorities, also abiding by the government guildlines. I mostly ignore forwaded whatsapp messages because most of them tend to contain false news that instilled fear in people, i advise people not to share news they haven't confirmed from reliable sources, that way, they help in decreasing the spread of false information.
In my locality, i try to calmly make people understand why they shouldn't believe everything online, also for instance, a woman in my neighbourhood had a daughter that was very ill for weeks by the time I met with her, but she refused to take her daughter to the hospital, she was scared they will both be injected with Covid-19 virus in the hospital, she was told that anybody sick in the country now who went to the hospital for treat ent always ended up dying of Covid-19, hmm, so tragic and unreasonable, but she chooses to believe because she has heard that countlessly from numerous people, you see the danger of fake news spread, on red alert,
I calmly explained to her that it is not true, even if her child had Covid -19, it is not a death sentence, she should first take her to the hospital, let the doctors run some test to determine why she was sick, she should also stick by the rules we were given by the government by always by wearing a face mask, washing the hands regularly , i made her see reasons logically, not blinded by religion, fear, conspiracy theory and the likes. Thank God i was able to convince her, so we took her daughter immediately to the hospital, and it was later discovered that the daughter had severe sepsis and needed to be tranfused with blood because she had a low PCV, due to the sepsis, the doctors began treatment immediately and also scolded the woman on her delay to bring her daughter for treatment when she noticed three weeks ago that she was ill, to cut the long story short, her daughter was treated, she became fine and was discharged, she didn't end up with Covid-19 neither the mother, as she has been falsely told by peddlers of fake covid-19 news.
In Conclusion
Fake news can be life threatening, try not to be a part of it, It might not be Covid -19, also in other aspect of life,
*Always get information from right reliable sources before sharing.
- Don't just share any information you receive without verifying if its real
*Be able to logically filter real from fake news. Also,
when trying to advise someone against a false information be calm and always make them see reasons, if possible, show them proof of the real news. And lead by example.
Thanks for reading, i hope to see you in my next post!