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What about Flattening the Infodemic Curve?
Leveraging ethical AI and human-centric product design to treat the chronic disease of the digital economy
Intertwined with the rapidly unfolding Coronavirus epidemic is an insidious infodemic which may prove no less deadly. In February 2020, the director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, made first coined the term:
“…we’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic. Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus, and is just as dangerous.”
The comparison is neither sensationalism or hyperbole — the spread of social phenomena is so powerful, 2016 research shows that it can literally follow the same models that trace the contagion of epidemics.
Examples of the interplay of the two -demics include a slew of debunked news articles ranging from miracle cures and prevention methods such as consuming green herbs, boiled ginger or vitamin D, to false claims of vaccines curing hundreds of patients.
Unlike the Coronavirus that has emerged in the short span of a few months to wreak havoc in the world, the infodemic is deeply seeded in the fabric of…
