Looking down the rabbit hole
# 8463
Three days ago in MERS, The Twitterverse & MOH Damage Control, I wrote about the outpouring of concern, the proliferation of rumors, and growing criticisms of the Saudi government over the recent surge in MERS coronavirus cases reported in Saudi Arabia on the popular social media platform twitter.
While twitter traffic containing the word كورونا (`SK’ or `Corona’) over the past 72 hours has been fascinating to monitor, it is also more than a little confusing.
Twitter message lengths of 140 characters are cryptic enough in any language, but when you add the additional `filter’ of machine translation (Arabic to English), the end result can be pretty obtuse. Of course it helps if you know that `Beauty’ is the word for `Camel’, or that MERS is often referred to as `HIV’, but even then messages can be difficult to decipher.
With the caveat that unsubstantiated twitter posts are often a lousy way to find real news, it is nonetheless an excellent platform from which to gauge public sentiment.
Rumors, often spurred on by local newspapers stories, proliferate quickly across the twitterverse, I suspect primarily in an attempt to fill the vacuum of silence from official sources. Yesterday it was widely reported (and denied vehemently by the government) that 10 schools in Jeddah had been shut down due to the spread of the virus. Another rumor stated that there were 50 cases in a local hospital, again quickly denied by officials.
At times, it appears as if there are orchestrated `shout downs’ of rumors, with hundreds of tweets (originating from many different accounts – not just re-tweets) flooding the system simultaneously, all containing the same message or denial.
There is, as you might imagine, a good deal of skepticism voiced over these constant reassurances by the government, and even some calls for the replacement of officials. As fears over the virus grows, so does public impatience with the government response.
A number of tweets have praised Egyptian Doctor Ali Mohamed Zaki – who first alerted the Saudi MOH of the existence of a new viral disease back in 2012, but was ignored, and subsequently fired for sending samples to a lab outside of Saudi Arabia (see Sometimes They Come Back) – with links to his 2013 interview on youtube.
With constant reminders of no vaccine, no specific treatment, and a high mortality rate, it isn’t surprising that `alternative’ cures and preventatives are getting a lot of play on twitter.
One `remedy’ for MERS (or sometimes billed as a `preventative’), is based on a brew of honey, mint, and garlic (and sometimes milk), while another heavily promoted natural `cure’ uses ginger, mint, and dates (as featured in Arabic papers a couple of days ago Doctor of Alternative Medicine reveals mixture tray may protect against "Corona").
Dubious as these claims may be – based on the number of re-tweets - I suspect sales of honey, ginger, garlic, and mint are through the roof right now.
There are, fortunately, links to more reliable advice on MERS being tweeted as well, which will be the focus of another blog later today.
For those interested in monitoring twitter for Coronavirus information in Arabic, the easiest solution is to use Google Chrome - with automatic translation ON – and use the url:
https://twitter.com/search?q=%D9%83%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%86%D8%A7&f=realtime
While fascinating, be forewarned. This is the territory for which the phase `Caveat Lector’ must have been invented.
