As Covid-19 continues to spread, so does misinformation about it

Doctors are infuriated by the persistence of false and misleading claims about the virus.

Almost three years into the pandemic, Covid-19 remains stubbornly persistent. The same goes for misinformation about the virus.

As Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths increase in some parts of the country, myths and misleading narratives continue to evolve and spread, infuriating overworked doctors and leaky content moderators.

What started in 2020 as rumors throwing a Doubt about the existence or severity of Covid quickly turned into often outlandish claims about dangerous technology lurking in masks and so-called miracle cures of unproven drugs, like ivermectin. The rollout of the vaccine last year fueled another wave of unfounded alarm. Now, on top of all the claims still floating around, there are conspiracy theories about the long-term effects of treatments, researchers say.

Ideas still thrive on social media platforms, and the constant barrage, which has now been building for years, has made it increasingly difficult to deliver accurate advice, disinformation researchers say. This leaves people already suffering from pandemic fatigue to become even more numb to the lingering dangers of Covid and susceptible to other harmful medical content.

"It's easy to forget that health misinformation, including Covid, can still contribute to people not being vaccinated or creating stigma,” said Megan Marrelli, editorial director of Meedan, a nonprofit focused on digital literacy and access to information "We know full well that health misinformation contributes to the spread of real diseases."

Twitter is of particular concern The company recently gutted the teams tasked with policing dangerous or inaccurate content on the platform, stopped enforcing its Covid misinformation policy, and began basing some content moderation decisions on public polls released by its new owner and CEO, billionaire Elon Musk. /p>

From November 1 to December 5, Australian researchers collected more than half a million conspiratorial and misleading tweets in English about Covid, using terms such as " deep state", "hoax" and "biological weapon". The tweets attracted more than 1.6 million likes and 580,000 retweets.

Researchers said the volume of toxic material increased late last month with the release of a film that included baseless claims that Covid vaccines triggered "the greatest orchestrated death in the history of the world".

Naomi Smith, a sociologist at Federation University Australia who helped conduct the research with Timothy Graham, a digital media expert at Queensland University of Technology, said Twitter misinformation...