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Bored Panda wanted to get Dr. Carroll's take on the last few months and whether we can say that we're starting to win the fight against Covid-19. The doctor said that some people are getting a moment of respite, at least in the US, but pointed out that the situation has gone from bad to worse in India. Which might be a ticking time bomb for the rest of the world because of the potential coronavirus mutations there as the situation worsens.
"Here in the US, with the number of people who have contracted the disease, along with a high number of immunizations, the caseload has dropped significantly. We can breathe for now, but the absolute tragedy in India has me very concerned about an escape mutation that may make its way back to the US which infects us once again," he said.
"I believe it’ll infect the unvaccinated first, but may spread and could evade the vaccine immunity. We will need to watch carefully for any new mutations and make sure everyone around the world is vaccinated and boosted adequately to finally quell this once and for all. The death rate from this disease is much higher than the flu, and if it continues to perpetuate year over year, we will decimate our most needy, poor, and marginalized world citizens."
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The development of multiple shots to help people fight off Covid-19 hasn’t put a stop to the pandemic, even though it’s dented its advance in some areas. While some Western countries are slowly breathing a very wary (and weary) sigh of relief after mass vaccination programs have gone underway, other nations are struggling with the massive spread of the virus. Countries like India.
The BBC reports that, at the time of writing, India has seen more Covid cases in the last week than any other country on Earth. “A ferocious second wave has seen the official death toll surpass 200,000,” the BBC writes. However, experts believe that the actual number of fatalities could, in fact, be much higher.
India is in the midst of a medical catastrophe: hospitals have run out of beds in many areas, oxygen supplies are dwindling, and healthcare staff are overworked. Some nations are reaching out to help India deal with this crisis, including the United States.
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President Joe Biden plans to send vaccines to India where, currently, only just under 9 percent of the population has had at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. In comparison, in the US, over 42 percent of all citizens have had at least one dose of the vaccine; the number stands at around 50 percent in the United Kingdom and a whopping 62 percent in Israel, according to Our World in Data.
Despite all the overwhelming evidence, we still have deniers who trust fishy online sources more than official ones. Earlier on, I interviewed Joseph M. Pierre, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA. We spoke about conspiracy theories and why they’re so popular nowadays.
According to Professor Pierre, conspiracy theories in the current era are political in nature and are rooted in people losing trust in authority figures. “It’s stereotypically liberals that trust science and support mask-wearing, social distancing, and vaccination (although historically there have been many liberal ‘anti-vaxxers’),” he told Bored Panda earlier.
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“Wearing masks, unfortunately, has become a kind of political debate, at least here in the US. That is, it’s stereotypically conservatives or Trump supporters that refute the science on masks and Covid-19 more generally, continuing an undermining of science as an institution of authority that’s been ongoing for some years now and was played out before Covid-19 with climate change,” Pierre explained that parts of the debate related to Covid-19 (and avoiding it) have become completely political.
What’s more, Professor Pierre from UCLA suggests not debating conspiracy theorists because they’ll keep “moving the goalposts” in order to protect their beliefs. “Often with conspiracy theories that involve scientific facts, there’s a tendency to focus on some obscure example of experimental minutia (e.g. the temperature of combusted jet fuel and the melting point of the WTC columns), and then moving onto another if that’s refuted, rather than addressing the big picture questions that make the conspiracy theory so ridiculous.”
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Meanwhile, at the start of the pandemic, I also had a chat with Dr. Claudia Pastides, from Babylon Health, about why people believe conspiracy theories about the coronavirus. She said that, at the time, there was a lack of substantial and verified information to explain why the virus behaves as it does. “As a result, it is easy to fill this void with untruths about the virus’s effects and the prevention of its symptoms,” she said. Since then, there’s been more and more information about the coronavirus.
“As people are desperate for more knowledge and information about the virus, they are more prone to believe these misconceptions. It is instinctive in humans to seek solutions to problems, and when there is a crisis, such as this pandemic, they might be willing to believe anything they hear without verifying it first,” Dr. Pastides explained why some people turned to conspiracies at the start of the pandemic last year.
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One thing that hasn’t changed is that we should do our best to verify if a source is trustworthy or not. Try to get your news from reliable sources, not niche websites, conspiracy theory groups, and your Facebook feed.
“The World Health Organization has a dedicated coronavirus myth-busting page on their website, where they sum up the majority of the misconceptions flourishing on the internet at the minute. This is a great place to start to verify whether what you’ve heard is correct,” Dr. Pastides said. “[Another option] is to contact a medical professional, who will be able to tell you quickly if the theories you’ve heard are false or not.” And from what we’ve read about the enduring patience of doctors, we’re sure that they’ll be more than happy to help you out with your query, exhausted as they are.
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