COVID-19 vs. our Networks

Tue Mar 17 09:31:20 UTC 2020

On 16/Mar/20 21:08, Owen DeLong wrote:

>
> This simply isn’t true…
>
> Listen to qualified medical professionals, especially those who
> specialize in infectious diseases and epidemiology.
>
> The information on the CDC and WHO websites remains the primary source
> of trustworthy information. It may be
> incomplete, but if someone is contradicting something there, they’re
> very likely to be wrong.
>
> OTOH, anyone selling “survive COVID” or “cure COVID” etc. is
> completely untrustworthy and guaranteed to be lying to
> you in order to sell a product. Despicable, but common place.
>
> There’s no authoritative way to get false information off the
> internet, so we have to combat it as best we can with good
> information and education. Even in my own household, this is a
> constant battle as my GF continues to bring home
> odd superstitious rumors and embellishments from a variety of
> inaccurate sources and I constantly have to correct her
> perspective.
>
> For up to date local information, check with the local public health
> authority in your jurisdiction. In the US, that will usually
> be your county public health agency. In some cases, individual
> municipalities also have public health departments.

It's the price we pay for hyper-connectedness (not trying to coin a
phrase, hehe).

Everybody (especially the kids) lives on their device 99% of the time.
If you're not on their device, you are not relevant to them.

When was the last time you bought a newspaper? How many times do your
kids watch the news, either on TV or their device? But they are all over
WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat, WeChat, et al. And even if they
have the "News" app on their phone, they probably have never opened it.
If they opened it, they didn't find value in it.

On average, the we (and the kids) will give your app two tries; if we
don't like it, you're out - which explains why we all have 3,000 apps on
our phones, but only use 2 or 3 of them most consistently.

Whoever wants to get professional and verified information out (to the
kids who live on their devices) needs to find a way to do so in a manner
we find relevant, otherwise we'll simply keep trading mis-information
for whatever reason we feel gives us value.

Mark.