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      A call to arms: helping family, friends and communities navigate the COVID-19 infodemic

      brief-report
      1 , 2 ,
      Nature Reviews. Immunology
      Nature Publishing Group UK
      Immunology, SARS-CoV-2

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          Abstract

          With information on COVID-19 evolving daily, the public is confronted with a mix of partial information, conflicting information and sometimes outright misinformation. Who should they turn to for the truth? In the context of acute uncertainty, I discuss what scientists can do to help mitigate the misinformation about what we do know and give some context to help decision-making in the unfolding story of COVID-19.

          Abstract

          In this Comment, Heidi Larson discusses the COVID-19 ‘infodemic’ and suggests the ways in which scientists can help to mitigate the spread of misinformation.

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          Most cited references2

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          Is Open Access

          Boosting the Immune System, From Science to Myth: Analysis the Infosphere With Google

          Background: The concept that one can “boost” immunity is a popular one. Although the only evidence-based approach to this is vaccination, the lay public is exposed to a wide range of information on how to boost immunity. The aim of this study was to analyze such information available on the Internet. Methods and findings: We visited 185 webpages returned from a Google search on “boost immunity” and classified them by typology (blogs, commercial, government, no-profit, news, professional, scientific journals) and by using standard indicators of health information quality (JAMA score, HONCode). We then analyzed their content in terms of disease and “boosters” mentioned. Commercial and news websites represented one third of the results each. Of the 37 approaches to boost immunity recorded, the top ones were diet (77% of webpages), fruit (69%), vitamins (67%), antioxidants (52%), probiotics (51%), minerals (50%), and vitamin C (49%). Interestingly, vaccines ranked 27th, with only 12% of webpages mentioning them. Conclusions: Commercial websites are an important component of the information available to the public on the topic, and thus contribute providing biased information.
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            Bad Advice : Or Why Celebrities, Politicians, and Activists Aren't Your Best Source of Health Information

            Paul Offit (2018)
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              Author and article information

              Contributors
              heidi.larson@LSHTM.ac.uk
              Journal
              Nat Rev Immunol
              Nat. Rev. Immunol
              Nature Reviews. Immunology
              Nature Publishing Group UK (London )
              1474-1733
              1474-1741
              2 July 2020
              : 1-2
              Affiliations
              [1 ]ISNI 0000 0004 0425 469X, GRID grid.8991.9, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, , London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, ; London, UK
              [2 ]ISNI 0000000122986657, GRID grid.34477.33, Department of Health Metrics Sciences, , University of Washington, ; Seattle, USA
              Article
              380
              10.1038/s41577-020-0380-8
              7331910
              32616908
              8dc9133d-6dd5-46cf-bae7-079855aa98b3
              © Springer Nature Limited 2020

              This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.

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              immunology,sars-cov-2
              immunology, sars-cov-2

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