For the Love of God, Please Start Fact Checking

Since the Corona Virus broke out, I have seen too many conspiracy theories all over social media. People have been saying hospitals are being paid to diagnose patients with Covid-19, doctors are being silenced, our rights are being taken away, etc. I'm exhausted. I'm not someone who is naive and believes everything I'm told, especially by this administration, but you can't trust every headline that fits your favorite narrative either.

Scrolling through Facebook has basically become a nightmare. There's recently been a YouTube documentary that went viral, saying the virus is a hoax. At first, I just ignored it because I thought it was a wild claim, to begin with, but I started to do some research and found numerous articles debunking this video. Unfortunately, millions of Americans are still sharing this documentary as truth.

I am an avid fan of documentaries, but I think one skill the general population lacks is research skills. It doesn't matter how much information from a documentary or publication fits a narrative or makes sense; you still have to fact check! I would love to find an article that says it's perfectly healthy to sleep around all day because I wouldn't have to change my lifestyle but fact-checking would quickly debunk that claim. The same is happening with the Coronavirus.

I think people are willing to take any article and any video debasing the virus because they are in denial. I can understand if people are afraid of the future if they don't know when it's going to be over or their worried about when the economy will become stable. Still, it's dangerous to spread false information—many of the videos and articles I've seen stating conspiracies have had little to no sources. They were also mostly opinion based rather than fact-based.

An example is people saying wearing masks will cause more infections. There is some truth to people's fears about wearing masks because they trap air in, but the problem with assuming this is bad is it forgets that everyone is supposed to wear masks. If everyone adheres to the mask rule, then sick people will not be spreading the virus through air particles. If you aren't ill, you will also be at a smaller risk of catching the virus because it acts as a barrier. Thinking masks won't help is wrong and dangerous to those who are the most susceptible to the virus.

The false information being spread also makes sense because people are minimizing the impact of Covid-19. The reason these deaths seem overinflated is that we are not actively witnessing these people die. This virus is not like the plague, where people were actively rotting and dying people quickly. It's a slow and quiet virus. People don't realize that a quiet virus is much more deadly than a violent one like the plague. It can spread much quicker undetected and is much harder to track.

With states reopening and no safety precautions, infection rates will skyrocket. We probably won't see the effects of these decisions for weeks, but all I can say is I'm going to continue to stay inside as much as possible. I'm also going to start blocking people because I'm tired of the false information. It's honestly exhausting seeing the same conspiracies regurgitated every day with no sources or evidence. Most of them make no sense and shouldn't be taken seriously, but I should not be surprised when I'm living in a country where people are protesting to go back to work.