WP Perspectives – Jan. 24, 2022

An Epidemic of False Information about COVID-19

• 31% of adults got information about COVID-19 vaccines from social media, almost as many as got information from broadcast TV news.
• Nearly 8 in 10 Americans either believe or aren't sure about at least one of eight false statements about the COVID-19 pandemic or vaccines, according to the November survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
• False information has very real consequences. In just the first few months of 2020, thousands of people across the globe were harmed or killed due to misinformation and rumors about COVID-19.
  • 6,000 people were hospitalized
  • 800 people died
  • 60 people developed complete blindness
    Many of these deaths were caused by people drinking methanol or alcohol-based cleaning products due to misinformation which led them to believe the products would cure the virus.
• False information about vaccines has spread widely online, and some research has found the false information can spread more widely online than true information.

  ^{This material is from a COVID Vaccine Ambassador training program offered by Johns Hopkins University through Coursera.org}

Misinformation - when someone shares false information but doesn't realize it is misleading or untrue.

Disinformation - when someone intentionally shares false information, often for some sort of political or monetary gain.

Fake news - when false information is disguised or packaged to look as though it was published as a credible news story.

Debunking false information means fact-checking each false claim as it is made. Prebunking provides awareness of entire tropes by anticipating prevalent and recurrent themes and providing facts to counter false claims.

* Can you qualify as an information manipulator? Try your hand by playing this online game and you'll have a better understanding how people are influenced into believing something that may not be factual. Click the Go Viral image to play.

* Cranky Uncle - a game building resilience against false information. Download on Apple App Store, Google Play, or play on a browser: crankyuncle.org

Epidemiology is the science at center of public health.

The Five Phases of a Pandemic
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top medical adviser to President Biden, explained recently that we are still in the first of five stages of the pandemic, and cautioned against thinking we are further along than we actually are.

The first phase of the pandemic—or the “the truly pandemic,” according to Fauci—is “where the whole world is really very negatively impacted as we are right now,” he said. 

The following four steps are deceleration, control, elimination, and finally eradication.

Deceleration
After the first phase comes deceleration—a slowdown in the number of newly confirmed cases.

Omicron cases have risen steeply and then dropped off in many countries where the variant took hold. Scientists from the U.K. have built models that show there may be a fresh wave of Omicron cases in early summer as people resume social activities and immunity wanes, but they argue cases are unlikely to rise as they did with Omicron.

Some people are optimistic that natural immunity will cause the number of new cases to subside, but Fauci notes it is too soon to tell, and there could always be a new variant just around the corner.

Control
The next phase is the control phase of the pandemic—or what some are referring to as endemicity. That means that COVID-19 would become integrated into the broad range of infectious diseases we commonly experience, like the flu or the common cold.

“Control means you have it present, but it is present at a level that does not disrupt society,” Fauci says.  But for COVID to become endemic, there can’t be any more surprises on the transmissibility and its virulence of the virus or any of its future variants.

Elimination
The elimination of a pandemic occurs when the virus still exists in the world but it has been eradicated from certain regions or countries. Fauci gives the example of polio, which has been eradicated from many countries in the Global North. The world is still far from achieving that with COVID, scientists say.

Eradication
The last stage, eradication, is nearly impossible to reach. Fauci notes smallpox was the only infectious human disease that has ever been eradicated, and he said outright that regarding COVID, “That’s not going to happen with this virus.”

^{Adapted from an article published in Fortune magazine. https://fortune.com/2022/01/18/fauci-covid-pandemic-five-stages/
Image from https://www.lumahealth.io/blog/healthcares-long-term-outlook-five-stages-of-managing-the-covid-19-pandemic-infographic/}

49.5  &  22.3
50.2  &  21.5
59.7  &  21.6
41.8  &  19.1

^{cumulative total as of 01/22/22}  

• The American Public Health Association (APHA) has an excellent video series called "That's Public Health" which explains public health and addresses how various social issues impact it. Check it out at https://apha.org/What-is-Public-Health. You can subscribe to get updates when new episodes are available.

Dr. Colin M. Greene has been appointed to lead the Virginia Department of Health as Acting State Health Commissioner. As acting commissioner, Greene will be an advisor to Governor Glenn Youngkin on health-related issues and will oversee the state’s 35 local health departments.

Before becoming acting commissioner, Greene served as the Lord Fairfax Health District Director beginning in 2017. Since last March he has also served in temporary capacity as director of the Rappahannock-Rapidan Health District. Before joining VDH, he had a long career as an Army physician and was most recently director of Joint Trauma Analysis and Prevention of Injury in Combat at Fort Detrick in Maryland.

In a message to all VDH employees, he shared some tenets of his leadership philosophy. They include an emphasis on and a commitment to people; time; common sense; ideas; honesty; trust; accountability; and communication.

“During my four and a half years as a district health director, I have been, and continue to be, impressed with the quality and dedication of VDH personnel, and the importance of our mission, especially during the last two highly challenging years. I look forward to many future successes together,” he wrote.