Doctor Is Fed Up With Conspiracies Plaguing ERs

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Dr. Hadi Halazun has been spending long days taking care of coronavirus patients. But when he gets home? He opens up Facebook and finds people insisting that “no one’s dying” and that the virus is just “fake news.”

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Cardiologist Opens Up About His Frustrations Over Conspiracy Theories

When Halazun explained his first-hand experience online, his social media connections responded with disbelief. Some even said he isn’t a real doctor.

“I told them: ‘I am a real doctor. There are 200 people in my hospital’s ICU,” said Halazun, a cardiologist in New York. “And they said, ‘Give me your credentials.’ I engaged with them, and they kicked me off their wall.”

Halazun said that the conspiracy theorists are getting to him, and that they’re the “second most painful thing [he’s] had to deal with, other than separation of families from their loved one.”

Halazun said that he has stopped engaging with people on Facebook, some of whom claim things like “the hospitals are empty” and that the virus is part of a plot to microchip citizens. Instead of focusing on isolation and hand washing, they’re more worried about 5g networks and password storage conspiracies.

“It scares me more than anything that there are people who are basically controlled—and in the same way they feel they’re fighting against that control,” said Halazun.

“These anti-vaccination people were telling me I’m a sheep. Dr. Fauci this, Bill Gates that. And I don’t really care what you think about Bill Gates. It doesn’t affect me. But, it does affect me when they tell me what we’re doing is not real and that the hospitals are really empty. It hurts.”

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Misinformation Causing Patients to Seek Medical Care Too Late

Like many other health professionals, Halazun is starting to feel the toll of the misinformation running rampant online about COVID-19.

They say that the onslaught of misinformation is starting to cause some patients to seek care too late. Others say the misinformation is causing damage in other ways, too.

For example, a young patient recently entered an emergency room with damage to his intestinal tract. He had ingested bleach, just days after President Trump suggested that an “injection” of disinfectants could be researched as a potential treatment for coronavirus.

“Folks delaying seeking care or, taking the most extreme case, somebody drinking bleach as a result of structural factors, just underlines the fact that we have not protected the public from disinformation,” said Dr. Duncan Maru, an epidemiologist and physician in Queens, New York.

Maru said he believes that tech platforms should do more to deal with misinformation. However, he acknowledges that it would be no easy feat.

“I do think it’s a monumental task to hold these companies to account, but in the COVID case, they truly have blood on their hands,” said Maru.

Related: Trump Takes No Responsibility for Disinfectant Ingestion Spike

Social Media Networks Struggle to Contain Spread of Misinformation

Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have been struggling to contain the spread of misinformation. As a result, they’ve taken steps such as providing dedicated portals for vetting information and banning content that involves conspiracy theories.

“With conspiracy theories, the reason they’re impervious to fact-checking is that they have become a way of being in the world for believers,” said Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor of communications at Syracuse University.

“It isn’t just one narrative that you can debunk. It is a holistic way of being in the world that has been reinforced by all the other bulls— that these platforms have allowed people to consume for years.”