No one disagrees that the dialogue on the pandemic is enormous. The challenges of misinformation and disinformation have been around long before the internet. Infodemic was coined in 2003. A tsunami of information hit us all. The current pandemic has generated so so much conversation and reveals. What is ‘IN’ today may be “OUT’ next week.
Does infodemic contribute to the mismatch of money spent on health care and life expectancy?
In the American public health has been a reality of the haves and have nots. health is a paramount concern in almost all civilizations. And in a country that spends 17.7% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care. Along with Japan and several European countries, Canada, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand also boast high life expectancy rates.
If born in the US in 2019 life expectancy of 78.9 – while Canada has 82.4 with 11.5 % of GDP going to health care.
Do we overdue risk in the US? Is it ‘out of an abundance of caution’ that motivates our litigious society?
Our government has multiple ‘authoritative’ entities all working to ensure a certain level of health for citizens. One of the cabinet seats is for the Department of Health & Human Services. An entity Center for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) is dedicated to just with a budget of 6 billion. The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has a budget is equivalent to $9.95 per American per year.
“We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic”, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the Munich Security Conference on Feb 15, 2021.
Yes, it became the wild west with everyone rushing research and sharing while publishing online with the caveat ‘without peer review’. This means a critical inspection by authoritative professionals in the field has not occurred. Almost all with the expressed intention of as rapid as a possible solution to tackle the newest viral threat – SARS CoV-2. But such papers can result in misuse of drugs, therapies, and prevention steps. Even the use of masks is a hot topic on the internet.
Social and conventional media have allowed information and perhaps more misinformation without updates or corrections to be propagated.
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