Name: Fighting Misinformation | March 20, 2020
Uploaded: 2020-03-23T03:30:27.000Z
Duration: 10 min 1 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi, I'm Carl Azuz and I want to set the record straight.

Fridays are still awesome—just maybe a little less so.

An update on that and some of the misinformation being spread about it online are our first subjects today on CNN 10.

The virus is still spreading in the United States and abroad.

Global stock markets are still seeing wild swings and losses and as governments consider more restrictions to try to fence in COVID-19, hospitals are feeling the pressure.

Providence St. Joseph Health is a system of more than 50 hospitals.

Together they use about 250,000 protective masks every year.

Because of coronavirus, a single hospital in that system has gone through that same amount of masks in three months.

So some health systems are getting creative.

Sewing masks together or teaching people how to make them at home to deal with the shortfall.

Health facilities that can afford it are also ordering more ventilators to help people with serious cases of the respiratory disease.

More than 200,000 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed worldwide.

More than 10,000 are in the United States.

They've now been confirmed in all 50 states and New York has been the hardest hit with more than 4,100 cases.

While there's still a lot that doctors don't know about this disease, they say they're learning more everyday.

For instance, new studies indicate that people who are infected but have no symptoms may still be able to spread COVID-19.

So they're urging Americans, young people in particular to stop attending large gatherings and to stop getting together in big groups.

Officials are concerned about scenes like this one.

This video was shot on Wednesday on a crowded beach in Florida.

They're also concerned about some of the misinformation the fake news being spread about coronavirus.

Some people on social media have claimed that taking illegal drugs or even drinking bleach could kill the disease.

It cannot—but it could make people deathly ill in addition to any threat coronavirus brings.

It's not just COVID-19, better known as the novel coronavirus, that's spreading fast.

There's a flow of misinformation online about the virus and health officials are mounting a concerted effort to combat it.

Social media is a major driver in the spread of falsehoods.

The ease with which conspiracies are shared and reshared makes stopping something going viral online almost as difficult as stopping a biological viral outbreak in the real world.

A 2018 study by Facebook found information including misinformation can spread like virus.

Each person passes it along to almost two others.

Fake facts in the wake of an epidemic is nothing new.

But after the deluge of misinformation around the measles outbreak that started in 2018, the World Health Organization is taking new approaches to tackle the problem.

Would you call this the first social media epidemic?

I think that's being micro academics—epidemics.

I think that this one could well be the first global one, yes.

Another area of misinformation is fake cures and remedies.

Some are harmless like drinking garlic water or basic herbal tonics, but others are dangerous.

It's absolutely a... a fertile ground for anyone who wants to disrupt an already disruptive situation for natural reasons.

Health officials are taking this infodemic seriously.

The WHO is working directly with tech companies on a daily basis to flag and take down bad information and to ensure that facts from reliable sources get to users first.

Searching for coronavirus on sites like Twitter or Facebook pops up info boxes urging users to get the best information from reputable sources like government health organizations.

We're seeing different approaches from different companies.

Some of them are taking a more aggressive approach to taking down this content.

Are there some that you're more pleased with than others?

I think that it depends on the companies' maturity with regards their social impact and their social care for their users.

Obviously how much they care about the reputation and the history of their reputation, if they've suffered reputational knocks in the past they're much more likely to respond now to help us.

We've contacted all the major platforms and they have told us they're taking measures to combat this fall of misinformation.

But these measures don't catch everything.

It's very different than just delete unless it's very clearly misinformation and the tactics are not necessarily wrong.

They are in fact provoking questioning and doubt and you can't delete doubt.

In today's online world there will always be misinformation.

The challenge now for governments and platforms is how to fight a virus online.

The tenure of what U.S. president led to the passage of the 22nd Amendment?

William H. Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt or Andrew Jackson?

FDR's break with tradition in winning four terms led to the 22nd Amendment.

FDR won his fourth and last term of office in 1944 and though he didn't live to complete it or to see the end of World War II in 1945.

The measures his administration took during that war are well documented and widely studied today.

Seventy-five years later under all the uncertainty brought by coronavirus, the Trump administration says it will help make up for possible shortages of medical supplies, and deploy two hospital ships to increase medical capacity.

President Donald Trump has compared this time to wartime.

For iron will patriotism and unified effort, the Second World War stands alone.

To this day nobody's seen anything like that—what they were able to do during World War II and now it's our time.

In the 1940s under the War Powers Act, the president could effectively order industry to produce military supplies and prioritize delivery of military goods.

He could impose censorship, manipulate the economy, even suspend common rights, such as when Japanese Americans were locked up.

And importantly, Roosevelt commanded a vast expansion of the nation's medical capabilities.

It was during World War II that FDR unleashed our scientists and medical experts to produce penicillin for the first time.

Different types of medicines to fight malaria.

New ways of doing skin grafts to help people that were burned.

The public widely supported the war effort with roughly one out of 10 Americans serving, the demand for labor brought women out in droves to take up tools on factory floors.

Strictly enforced lights-out air-raid drills were conducted.

Rubber, gasoline, sugar and more were rationed.

Many families planted vegetable gardens to deal with shortages and bought war bonds to prop up the soaring cost to the government.

Even Hollywood had a mission in movie after movie raising spirits and tying the home front to the battlefront.

It was not perfect but it all worked well enough that more than a half century later another president and other Americans are echoing the message of those difficult times.

Everybody should learn from World War II.

Okay. I know these are strange times but why would you call police on a family of ducks?

Well the reason was that they were in a dangerous part of town one with people and traffic and not a lot of good places to roost.

So a police officer in Lakeland, Florida appeared on the scene to make sure they were all right and then escorted them to a nearby lake where they could get back to being ducks.

The police say there's always something to smile about.

And to keep you smiling or "groaning" we would never "duck out" on a chance to try to "quack" you up with some "fowl" sounding duck puns.

Because you're "mandrain" to them thinking they're just "ducky" or if you find them "tealy" annoying.

I happen to think that they could help with almost any "mallardy" and I'll send you my "bill."

I'm Carl Azuz. Last stop today is in Saratoga Springs, Utah.

We've got the Lions of Lakeview Academy watching today.

We hope you guys and everyone else watching around the world has a great weekend ahead from all, from us here at CNN.

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Fighting Misinformation | March 20, 2020

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