I am sure you’ve been hearing, reading or watching plenty about it already. The fear and doubt seems to be what the news stories have been emphasizing. The disease is highly contagious and very sneaky. Each carrier seems to infect 2-3 additional people, which means exponential growth. And with an observed death rate of about 4% so far, it may be about 80 times more deadly than the common flu.
As I'm writing it now, there are almost 100,000 of confirmed cases worldwide with almost 3500 deaths. Scary? Panic and fear is what media is selling but there is more to it...
How good are you at spotting fake news? Most people would scoff at the thought of being gullible enough to fall for it yet many do! We all know the importance of finding credible information nowadays but quite a few people will literally believe anything they read online and share it with their friends and relatives!
Here are a few examples of the recent stories I've seen on Facebook. If you click the links, you'll see the explanation and origin of these stories
CDC recommended shaving facial hair to protect against coronavirus
Can garlic help protect against 2019 coronavirus?
The book “Eyes of Darkness” by Dean Koontz predicted the 2019 coronavirus outbreak
And so on. You get the idea. Everyone is concerned about the potential ramifications and with the social media being so accessible in our lives, it's so easy to spread the rumours and misinformation. Also, people attention span is no longer what it used to be! Some of these stories are shared without actually reading them and verifying if the information is true and comes from a credible source.
Pop stars, movie actors, fake news outlets are not credible sources. I really like the response of the football coach here who was asked about the coronavirus epidemic. He simply stated that his opinion doesn't matter. Nor does the opinions of other famous people. If you want to watch the video, it's here and only one minute long.
There is another type of stories that are becoming more and more common on the Internet and it's called clickbait. Have you ever noticed links with headlines like "You won’t believe..." and "What happened next will shock you...". These attempt to spark your curiosity into a click, and that's how many of those websites make money. The more people visit these pages, the more advertising revenue the company will make.
What you usually get after clicking these "stories" is pages that load very slowly, bombard you with even more ads and can potentially infect your computer with malware and viruses.
What you should do
If you find an outrageous claim, you can easily verify its source on the website called Snopes. They are a go-to source for discerning what is true and what is total nonsense.
Please don't share any false news, hoaxes and clickbait stories on social media. If you aren't on Facebook, you might be tempted to forward hoax emails to your friends - but please don't.
If you want to see less of this crap online, I recommend installing an Ad Blocker extension. My favourite one is uBlock and it's available for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge. It will block most ads, popups and banners automatically, making your Internet browsing more pleasant and less distracting.
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