Trump, COVID-19 and Cassandra Syndrome

In early October 2020, the world received news that U.S. President Donald Trump had contracted COVID-19. After months of the pandemic, countless victims around the world, and many controversies about information, one of the most controversial actors – especially for his behavior on social networks – becomes part of the statistics. And it makes us, once again, stop to think about the role of information, science, and the distribution of fake news.

A wave of rumors

A study identified a new wave of disinformation about COVID-19 and its possible treatments after the announcement of Trump’s infection. According to the survey, which includes online content, social media, and traditional media, there was a spike in false information involving the topics “Hydroxychloroquine”, “Trump is pretending”, “Conspiring to kill or infect the president” and “Masks don’t work”. Controversies over possible treatments, including controversial content linked to authorities (not just from the US), or what the correct means of protection against COVID-19 would be, reignite discussions about the problems that false information can pose to public health.

In Brazil, the draft Bill 2630 runs in a tumultuous manner in Congress and even started motivated by combating so-called “fake news” in this context of a pandemic. It is important to recognize that this type of content needs to be tackled and points to real problems related to conspiracies and other attitudes that pose risks to public health. Some approaches in the legislative proposal sacrifice the ends by means: a narrow scope, the attempt to include parallel issues related to the internet, and providers and the lack of consistency with what Brazilian law already provides may offer even more risks to the internet in Brazil. In the first movements of the PL, IRIS launched its considerations. Some points of attention to the project that cause the mobilization of the Rights in the Network Coalition are gathered here (Portuguese).

“Lilies are not born of laws”

A masterpiece of Brazilian literature, the poem “Nosso Tempo” (“Our time”, free translation), by Carlos Drummond de Andrade could not be more pertinent. In various reflections on the issues of our time, related to information and knowledge technologies and their effects on society, the economy, the state, and culture are the verses of the illustrious countryman that echo: “The laws are not enough. The lilies are not born of the law” (Free translation).

Also when we seek – as a society – to tackle false information and the risks it can bring, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, even if the regulatory push exists, a more comprehensive approach needs to be considered. And if it seems strange to you to read from someone whose training is legal that “the laws alone do not account” for social phenomena – even more so those linked to information – my answer is: for this very reason. We are hardly trained to admit that legal approaches need to be linked and consistent with social, psychological, health, education, and citizenship approaches.

The fake news highlights the complexity not only of fighting it but also of spreading the right information. In the case of news related to COVID-19, the communication of science, medicine, pharmaceuticals, infectious diseases, among others, to society, in general, is even more relevant. For the human, applied social and political sciences, we need to learn the same lesson.

We need to talk and we need to listen

Trump’s infection, the disinformation tsunami, and attempts to combat them are nothing mythological. On the other hand, society’s relationship with information, the construction of beliefs, and the sharing of controversial content need to be thought of as Cassandra, the mythological character whose predictions no one believed. For some time, well before the pandemic, the Brazilian Professor Natália Pasternak warned that science suffered from the same evil (English subtitles).

Any path that seeks to tackle false news, especially that affecting public health, requires the right information, critical thinking, and citizen education to reach all people. And this is only achieved by valuing knowledge, accessing information, and overcoming digital barriers. Otherwise, we will only treat the symptoms (and for the record: there is no evidence that hydroxychloroquine works).