The new Coronavirus pandemic has brought with it a pandemic of fake news and misinformation. While medical and health authorities in the country and around the world recommend isolation and warn against the use of medicines without scientific validation, groups spread false news, sometimes disregarding the dimension of the crisis, sometimes urging the population to abandon absolutely necessary measures. There is also no shortage of posts circulating on social media imitating headlines from well-known media outlets, which announce a relaxation of these measures by municipal or state authorities. The population, which needs to be properly guided, is at the mercy of these reckless and irresponsible initiatives, which constitute serious harm to public health.
Public universities are fulfilling their role in combating the global crisis, redoubling their research and development efforts to find treatments, develop and produce inputs and equipment to assist the health areas in their surroundings and region. Another important front that arises, in the context of this second pandemic, that of disinformation, is to provide the public with correct and useful information so that everyone can participate in the fight against this serious crisis, our biggest challenge of this century, and understand what is happening from science, which is finally recognized as the only form of knowledge capable of facing the situation.
On this front of combating misinformation, initiatives for the correct presentation of data on COVID-19, as well as its rigorous analysis, have emerged and been consolidated in several groups of scientists from different areas of knowledge at different universities in the country and around the world. It is a fundamental role to present correct information and analysis so that we can overcome this terrible adversity. Unicamp structured the Hotsite on its portal Coronavirus (COVID-19), news of ongoing activities at the university, access to sources of information with proven references, in addition to communicating the measures being taken at Unicamp. Access to scientific articles on the problem, scientific dissemination articles for a broad audience on the topic, guidelines for donations e volunteer jobs. and answers to the most frequently asked questions are also available.
With regard to data on the evolution of the pandemic in the world, a page from Johns Hopkins University in the United States, has become one of the main and most reliable sources of information with several daily updates on the pandemic around the world. Monitoring the pandemic in Brazil is, among other projects, carried out by the initiatives COVID-19 BRAZIL, COVID-19 BR Observatory and the COVID-19: confirmed cases, deaths and recovered. These pages allow, respectively, among other options, to monitor the evolution of confirmed cases in states and municipalities, check changes in the rates of spread of the disease and the rate of infection or make direct comparisons with data in other countries.
The hotsite about the new Coronavirus also presents sources of articles that clarify the different aspects of COVID-19. Therefore, it is good to check what is being said on social media about the number of cases in Brazil, the severity of the disease, the inappropriate use of supposed medications and the absolutely essential effect of general social isolation.
