COVID slips: Are they doing any good or being a part of an infodemic?
Since the health infrastructure is not able to support the increasing population suffering from COVID , there are some hand-written and some created COVID slips being circulated over social media. These slips consist of a list of medicines to be taken up by COVID positive patients. To add the element of authenticity, the information is conflated with a reliable source like associating it with some doctor's prescription, hospital's guidelines or any other government authority, some of them being nibbed as doctor-forwards. . To people, when the message seems to be coming from a dignitary such as a doctor or an official with a great salutation, the information seems plausible. And not just the capacity of these posts, but also the choice of words like, “official’ in the forwarded content has a similar capacity. This psychological connection with a position hinders any person to verify the fact behind the message. If not through officials, there are many fake messages like that of...