Previously submitted to: JMIR Infodemiology (no longer under consideration since Nov 22, 2023)
Date Submitted: Oct 6, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Covid 19 Infodemic: The Alternate view
ABSTRACT
Background:
The Covid-19 pandemic has not only burdened the healthcare resources of India; it has also instilled fear and panic fanning several myths regarding causation, transmission, and cure.
Objective:
To assess the trends in the prevalence of myths about covid and use of internet resources and CAM for covid prevention and management over a year across India using an online survey form.
Methods:
In this study we analysed the myths about Covid as defined by World Health Organization. Such myths were evaluated using am prospective longitudinal survey (April 2020-April 2021) over one year using a web based survey form and WhatsApp messaging to elicit responses regarding myths about covid as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO). A total of 4002 participants participated in the study. Sixty-five percent were from rural areas. All were literate and had a minimum high school education. Healthcare personnel formed 15.7 percent of the study population. The data was analyzed using Medical Calculator software version 19.2.6 (MedCalc, Belgium).
Results:
Independent samples Mann Whitney test showed a significant increase in mean myth score in the second half of the pandemic year (October 2020-March 2021) compared to the first half (April 2020-September 2020). The percent of the population believing in any single myth was above 93% at all times. We also evaluated the number of new articles appearing every month regarding "cure for covid" on the Google search engine. There was a positive correlation (Spearman’s rank) between the average number of articles/day on myths for covid on Google and the percentage of myths/month in the survey (r = 0.70, p =0.02), indicating the influence of digital media on prevailing myths. The preference for using any Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) modality was 30% and was weakly but not significantly correlated with the myth score. The reason for using CAM was based primarily on the belief that "boosting immunity" would prevent covid 19 infections.
Conclusions:
Myths regarding covid are widely prevalent in the population. The content on the media and internet that propagates misleading cures for covid needs to be regulated
Citation
