Back in 2003, when SARS struck, we had only one source of information: from the TV or newspaper.
So fake news was never an issue since Mark Zuckerberg was only 19 years old.
But it’s 2020 now: sensationalized topics, whether real or fake, would go up in your Facebook newsfeed. And it’s not just based on common-sense observation: last year, leaked information from Facebook showed that despite them wanting to focus on “meaningful interaction between friends”, engineers kind of tweak the algorithm to favour news stories that are “politics, crime, or tragedy”.
Now you know why you’re seeing so many news stories about these topics.
And if they’re fake?
People still anyhowly share.
Which is why the Government has stepped in to debunk some misinformation about the Wuhan virus situation, and here are the three mentioned in a gov.sg article:
True News: No One in Singapore Has Died from Wuhan Virus
The rumours most probably stemmed from the Eastpoint Mall case, whereby a video footage of a suspected Wuhan virus patient was transported away from the mall, surrounded by people in surgical masks and suits.
For some reason, people thought a death had occurred.
That’s fake.
There is indeed a suspected patient, and he or she had merely being transported to a hospital for isolation. Nothing more than that. Stop being a kanchiong spider.
True News: Incident of 100 Travellers from Wuhan Being Turned Away Didn’t Occur
Rumours of 100 travellers being turned away by ICA are fake as well.
ICA has come out to clarify that the incident did not take place.
For this, we’d have to use a bit of common sense lah: the whole of Wuhan is on lockdown. How can there be 100 Wuhan residents coming down to Singapore? They eat bats liao can fly here ah? Can fly still need to chop passport?
True News: Still Can Visit Hospital
A message has being circulated on WhatsApp by old people, advising people not to visit certain public hospital.
Please do your civil duty and don’t anyhowly share it. And if you receive the message, tell the sender to send another message to inform others that it’s fake news.
I can’t even imagine the repercussions of this fake news: imagine you’re sick and you dare not visit a hospital because of this message. You’d risk infecting others and prolong the war against the Wuhan virus.
Moral of the story?
Before you click on “share”, remember to think twice. Or thrice. Or don’t even share at all lah.
If you want to read up on the latest updates about the Wuhan virus case, bookmark MOH’s page here.
Here’s a simplified summary of the South Korea martial law that even a 5-year-old would understand:
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