How harmful are rumours during an outbreak?

For example, I experienced it myself.

At the beginning of the New Year, COVID-19 epidemic swept the country.

Before that, Zhong Nanshan and other authoritative experts made it clear that there is no specific drug for COVID - 19.

However, just there was a media report that the Chinese patent medicine shuanghuanglian oral liquid can inhibit novel coronavirus.

As a result,TaoBao, JingDong and the major online sales channels shuanghuanglian oral liquid has been basically out of stock.

With the emergence of COVID-19, all kinds of rumors on the Internet are also rampant in front of the public. One after another, the public has been exposed to rumors such as the closure of a city, the disinfecting of airplanes with alcohol, the dropping of sesame oil into the nostrils of a small mill to stop the infection of a new type of pneumonia.

In fact, the covid-19 incident was scary, but what was even more frightening was that the rumors had nothing to do with fighting the epidemic and had only added to the climate of panic.

For this reason, Baidu, Alipay, WeChat and other mainstream network platforms are timely online network refuting rumors.

In addition, WeChat also opened the rumor recognition [WeChat refute rumors assistant], to help you see through the rumors around.

Indeed, when people started buying up ShuangHuangLian oral liquid in a frenzy, the official weibo account of the People's Daily was quick to point out that inhibition does not equal prevention and treatment. Moreover, the discovery that ShuangHuangLian oral solution can inhibit novel coronavirus is only a preliminary study, whether it is effective in patients still needs to be done a lot of experiments.

The rumor is stronger than the tiger.

What we can do is to consciously do not rumors, do not believe rumors, do not spread rumors, let the rumors end in the wise.