Confusions about New Corona Virus
We have access to abundance of news. As COVID-19 passes 3 million marks, death toll surpasses 200K around the globe in increasingly faster rate, so does the various claims and theories on the origins, transmissible capability, severeness, treatment and other aspects of this virus have grabbed the world's attention. Many nations have taken stringent action by necessary public health measures including ordering their citizens to stay at home unless they are the essential workers. These are good steps. Historically, if we look back to Influenza crisis of 1918, the unpredictable nature of any virus makes it very difficult to make a vaccine or therapeutic available in short period of time, so the best approach at this point is to minimize social interactions to contain the virus.
However, this is causing huge impact on the economic front. Many people's lives are impacted beyond imagination. In developing nations, a majority of people work daily for their livelihood without any savings or other sources of income, nor they have governmental support like the developed nations can provide. Even in the developed world, layoffs are still occurring as businesses of every kind suffer unlike they have ever before. Layoffs after layoffs are increasing and even the lucky ones are still holding their jobs are not certain whether the next day will be the last.
Human beings are good in seeing patterns. It is our innate nature to find resemblances among various things that affect our lives. During this pandemic, as more and more people are getting infected, the news feed of social media are getting flooded of death news of known and unknown people from near and far, we try to find meanings, we try to give or hold on to stories that seem to match those pattern matching resemblances. Hence the start of various theories that are not scientifically proven nor are they credible by any independently verifiable source. What these unverifiable claims do is increase people's distrust, rising the anxiety levels a few folds more. Governments are doing what they can in a dynamic scenario. Some are doing better than others. Some politicians are still catering to their political bases, even claiming unfounded, unproven and sometimes even dangerous antidotes to new Corona Virus.
We have access to abundance of news. But we don't have access to abundance of news that are thoroughly fact checked. Maybe the next generation of news service will be using some technological marvel to correct this error. But for now we need to be alert.
However, this is causing huge impact on the economic front. Many people's lives are impacted beyond imagination. In developing nations, a majority of people work daily for their livelihood without any savings or other sources of income, nor they have governmental support like the developed nations can provide. Even in the developed world, layoffs are still occurring as businesses of every kind suffer unlike they have ever before. Layoffs after layoffs are increasing and even the lucky ones are still holding their jobs are not certain whether the next day will be the last.
Human beings are good in seeing patterns. It is our innate nature to find resemblances among various things that affect our lives. During this pandemic, as more and more people are getting infected, the news feed of social media are getting flooded of death news of known and unknown people from near and far, we try to find meanings, we try to give or hold on to stories that seem to match those pattern matching resemblances. Hence the start of various theories that are not scientifically proven nor are they credible by any independently verifiable source. What these unverifiable claims do is increase people's distrust, rising the anxiety levels a few folds more. Governments are doing what they can in a dynamic scenario. Some are doing better than others. Some politicians are still catering to their political bases, even claiming unfounded, unproven and sometimes even dangerous antidotes to new Corona Virus.
We have access to abundance of news. But we don't have access to abundance of news that are thoroughly fact checked. Maybe the next generation of news service will be using some technological marvel to correct this error. But for now we need to be alert.
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