This is the age of information overload; equally it is the age of misinformation and even disinformation. So much so that we had to go and invent a term like post-truth to identify the way that propagandists, marketers, manufacturers and others with an agenda, highjack the truth and present to us falsifications, half-truths and selective, out of context reporting. We are bombarded by so much information each day; so much is quite simply untrue. Among the hoaxes that we get taken in by, are medical hoaxes. Did you for instance hear about the Paracetamol Machupo Virus Hoax?
Some of us probably received this image or one like it via WhatsApp along with an alarmist message about a 500 mg Paracetamol tablet that supposedly contained a virus.
This is the message that likely accompanied the image; which urged us to steer clear of paracetamol IP 500. While there is something like the Machupo virus (which is said to cause Bolivian Hemorrhagic Fever or Black Typhus) there is nothing to show that such a virus can be transmitted by a formulation such as this. This virus is transmitted via infected rodents, not pills!
You probably sent this one on, thinking what is the harm; this may help someone. So you did this in good faith. However, you need to consider its possible impact: someone may take this unverified info at face value and needlessly suffer pain or some other medical symptom, thinking that the pain reliever they are about to take is actually harmful for them! This is hardly the first time an alarmist, completely false message has come around.
Some weeks back, this one was doing the rounds: some probably unpeeled a banana that looked like this and permitted their own highly fertile imagination to take flight! It’s a nice, sensational story: some evil villain decided to inject infected blood into a banana to spread a deadly disease! They may not even have known that their scaremongering would go viral!
This rumor said that some person in a cold drink bottling plant was purposefully contaminating the product with the Ebola virus. This one gained momentum because apparently the police in Philippines were sending Indians a warning about this! Also NDTV was reporting it! All FALSE! Firstly ebola is not something you can pluck out of the air and just add to stuff! In fact Ebola is not spread through food and drink!
Rather than blindly forwarding alarming messages such as these, find out whether they are true. A simple Google search will tell you. If true, the story will be reported on a reputable news source or reliable websites such as Web MD, Mayo Clinic, Medicine Net and so on. Websites such as Snopes and Hoax Slayer routinely debunk such hoaxes. Reference these to be sure.
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