Mis-Information is causing more Panic and Fear of the Virus - We have a real Story

THIS ACCOUNT IS FROM - John Gregory is NewsGuard’s deputy editor on health.

Much of the misinformation centers on the unfounded claim that the virus
was created in a laboratory. In one version of this false story, the
source of the outbreak can be traced to Chinese spies who stole the
virus from a lab in Canada, then mutated it into a biological weapon
before it leaked out from a state-owned virology lab in Wuhan, China —
where the first case of Covid-19 was identified. GET THE WHOLE STORY HERE: https://www.statnews.com/20... --- Trump had nothing to do with this Virus !

The coronavirus has spawned an infodemic.
That’s the World Health Organization’s term for the conspiracies, unsubstantiated claims, and phony cures surrounding the outbreak of Covid-19 that emerged in China at the tail end of 2019.
The challenges to accurate information on the disease outbreak took center stage at this week’s White House press briefing when President Trump said that “the risk to the American people remains very low” despite the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention’s warning that the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is bound to spread more widely in the U.S.
I’m an editor at NewsGuard, which rates the credibility of news and information websites. Our ongoing analyses show that misinformation about the outbreak is clearly beating reliable information when it comes to engagement on social media worldwide.

So far, our Coronavirus Misinformation Tracking Center has identified 93 sites publishing false and potentially harmful information about the outbreak across the U.S., United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and France. Many of their posts are being exponentially more widely shared than those from the health authorities trying to deliver real and reliable information.

What is perhaps the most prolific peddler of health misinformation — the NaturalNews.com network — has joined the party by launching Pandemic.news. Readers on this strategically-named site see headlines, all redirecting back to NaturalNews.com, spreading the latest in coronavirus conspiracies.
Silicon Valley’s opaque, algorithmic solutions are failing to stop the coronavirus infodemic. It would be a public service if the social media and search companies that make it so easy to spread these falsehoods also armed their users with tools to know which sites are trustworthy and which should be read with extreme caution.