The title of this blog post is very bold. However, that is how a lot of my peers, including myself feel. COVID-19 is a virus that originated in china, and eventually made its way over to the US late January. Since then, most college and universities have closed, along with all elementary, middle, and high schools. Restaurants, bars, and all other non-essential businesses have closed. We are being expected to practice social distancing, meaning staying in the house with little to no contact with the outside world. This virus has indeed put everyone lives on pause. With the severity of this virus, you would think that people would take the proper precautions to stay inside to make sure this virus doesn’t spread, right? wrong. A lot of people have not been practicing social distancing, and because the virus doesn’t look like its slowing down anytime soon, social distancing has been officially pushed extended to April 30th.
In the midst of this pandemic, it is unfortunate that there is so much fake news circulating this virus that is being passed on. As mentioned in the reading for this week, and app called “Whats-app” has been the source of many fake news reports that are being passed on like a wildfire. News of the COVID-19, true or false, is going viral. When people share covid-19 news with one another, they are thinking of the social currency of it all. They want to be the first person to send it to all of their friends, because with something this extreme, the social currency of this is “expensive”. They are not checking the source to see if its true or false; they just see it on their timeline and share it with their friends, and so on. This is very dangerous; because of the severity of this virus and the huge impact it has made on everyone lives, we can not afford for citizens to be misinformed about anything related to this virus.
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