COVID-19: Misinformation and Confidence

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As many people believe, confidence is key to almost everything. Especially in terms speaking to other people. Indeed, to some extent, confidence is a sign of knowledge. We tend to trust other people when they speak with confidence.

You have a presentation? You need to be confident. You're going to deliver a speech? You need to look confident. You want to sell your product? You definitely need to be and look confident so they will trust you. And once they trust you, they will buy yours.

Unfortunately, confidence doesn't equal knowledge. And this is pretty much scientific. Most of the times, people with low level of knowledge tend to have more confident than smarter people. To put it bluntly, incompetent people are unable to recognize their own incompetence. And what's worse is that they’re also likely to feel confident that they actually are competent. This theory is called The Dunning-Kruger effect. 

This Dunning-Kruger effect is also applicable into social media. In the wake of corona virus, a lot of tweets, instagram posts including stories, and also facebook statuses, telling us all things about it.

Now let's ask ourselves first: have you ever confidently, posted anything related to COVID-19, with your own caption, which you actually couldn't confirm its validity, or simply you didn't have any background or research on this particular issue? This didn't include reposting something from other reliable source. 

If you ever did that, chances were, anyone who viewed your post, probably believed what you were talking about as legitimate. Even if you were actually not so sure about it in first place.

It Can Not Live Under Tropical Weather

Today, this one sounded stupid after WHO officials and experts repeatedly rejected this claim. But when the first outbreak in Wuhan happened, this was the popular story in Indonesia. A lot of people (even doctors!), claimed that it can't live under tropical sunlight. Since it was stated by people who supposed to be the reliable source, this statement was trusted by many. Including public officials.

Many public officials who didn't have any medical background, echoed this statement on national TV and social media. For some reason, they needed this kind of claim to convince people that the virus couldn't reach Indonesians. And obviously, they announced this sentiment as confident as possible to convince us. Not only that it was told by high rank officials, but the way they told us with confident was also the reason the people were disregarding the virus when it first occured.

Natural Immune

There was also strong claim, that if someone has been infected and recovered, he/she will be immune to further reinfection. This wasn't just the rumour in Indonesia, but some other countries as well. So maybe it's like smallpox: once you're infected and healed, you're going to be immune forever.

Again, I am not an expert on this matter. But I never heard anyone on the news discussing similarity between corona virus with smallpox. But many of experts making claims that it has similarities with common flu and SARS. So I was like, "if the common-flu can reinfect us again and again, why can't corona?"

In minutes, I saw my friend sharing a link about reinfection in China and Japan. Scientifically speaking, corona virus has similarities with common flu and SARS. Just like what I thought in first place. Reinfection of COVID-19 isn't only possible, it's real.

Economic Damage

Since the central and provincial governments issued further notice regarding corona virus, there is a heated argument about should Indonesia do a lockdown or not. Some people, perhaps caused by fear and panic, demand for the lockdown. Some others thinking that we shouldn't do a lockdown just yet, as it's going to cause serious impact to our economy. Another argument is that implementing lockdown is going to be very difficult, in terms of feasibility.

Again, as a non-expert of health issue, I can't tell whether we should do a lockdown or not. And since lockdown will limit my freedom, of course I personally want to oppose it. But as a believer of cost and benefit analysis, I think we should really consider lockdown based on what it will cost and what the benefit will be. 

At time of disaster like this, it might be immoral to talk about cost and benefit in deciding what to do. So was talking about economy during this difficult period in times of national disaster. But let's respond that economic consideration in the same way. We must calculate all the economical aspects. Not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively. 

Since lockdown is going to cause serious potential economic loss, let's talk about potential of life loss as well. At the moment, a lot of people don't want to measure human's life into something calculable. But I believe it can, and we should, but at very high cost. Actually, one's life can be converted into numbers, so people can really define the value of it. At US Office of Management and Budget, one person life valued at somewhere between $7 - $9 million in 2012. Based on google currency converter as of this writing, that's equal to Rp 133.632.001.847,33 and could be more in real life. 

Now let's fairly calculate if we're going to, or not going to lockdown Indonesia, or several city that has been infected. As of this writing, 8 people have died. That means Indonesian government already loss Rp ‭1.069.056.014.778,64‬ and that's not including other facts to calculate. Assuming that COVID-19 still has potential, to rise or to decline, so let's fairly calculate the chance of life loss and  lives will be saved. 

Imaginatively, I'm assuming there will be 100 more people dead in the future if we don't do lockdown. That said, we will loss Rp 1.336.320.018.473,3. On the contrary, if we do a lockdown, we can potentially save 100 people from death. And the benefit is that we can avoid Rp 1.336.320.018.473,3 loss. But such assumption must be conducted fair and smartly. Not based on mere intuition and subjectivity in times of panic like this.

After that calculation, you can compare it with potential economy loss and damage if we do lockdown. There must be numbers that can be compared. Also worth adding that, how can you run your office if the employees are sick let alone dead? It's going to be another cost that needs to be figured. 

Lockdown Is Difficult

I am not a supporter of lockdown, but I'm in favour of saving lives because other people's life, especially the ones you love most, are more valuable. Doesn't matter if you're rich or poor. 

Rejecting the idea of lockdown is understandable in financial standpoint. As everything financial is always been provided with numbers and facts. Fear of loss from economic perspective is also understandably justified to me. Who wants to live with no money anyway? That's human being. But to reject the suggestion because lockdown is difficult to implement, that's another level that I can't understand.

Admittedly, lockdown is something new in Indonesia. But so was corona virus. In terms of risk mitigation, sometimes you have to do new approach to face new risk. If you say lockdown is difficult or impossible, now I ask you: what's Indonesian regulation (Peraturan Perundang-undangan) that has 100% compliance rate? Or obeyed by all of Indonesian people?

It might be 100% true that lockdown is difficult to enforce. But that's the case for most, if not all, regulations in Indonesia. In terms of difficulty, self-quarantine is also difficult; social distancing is difficult; not touching your face is difficult; even wash our hands properly for 20 seconds isn't as easy as we might have liked.

Let's put it this way, if we agree to refuse lockdown, is it because it's difficult to apply, or it's not beneficial if conducted?  If I had to choose, I prefer the later of course. After carefully considering all aspects that matter and important for sure.

The Dawn

Confidence is indeed necessary in many things. But in case of spreading information that is not yet verified as factual, people need to calm down and suggesting it as just rumour. Especially when we talk about this life-killing phenomenon that is new. Even the experts have different opinions about it.

The danger of sharing information which we have no educational background on it, or we never do any kind of research about it, and we can't actually verify it, is real. We should stop ourselves from being the carrier of unverified information with confidence.

Sharing false information with confidence might be categorically spreading fake news, because the effect might be the same. But to me, it's kind of different bread. If a fake news maker (even jokingly)  has negative intention to mislead, sharing misinformation with confidence has positive intention. Perhaps they're trying to calm us down. But the lack of knowledge from the source is what makes it seriously mislead us to serious damage.

At this rate, sharing false information with confidence, can cost us our life. This acting smart trend, has to end.