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Misinformation making a disease outbreak worse: outcomes compared for influenza, monkeypox, and norovirus

Julii Brainard1, Paul R Hunter1

  • 1Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, UK.

Simulation
|July 21, 2021
PubMed

Insights

Reducing health misinformation, or making people immune to fake news, can mitigate infectious disease outbreaks. Strategies include limiting harmful advice and preventing belief or sharing of bad health information.

Area of Science:

  • Epidemiology
  • Computational modeling
  • Public health communication

Background:

  • Health misinformation, particularly "fake news," can worsen infectious disease outbreaks by influencing public behavior.
  • Individuals in social networks tend to share harmful health advice more readily than accurate information.
  • The spread of inaccurate health information poses a significant risk to public health during epidemics.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To model the impact of health misinformation on infectious disease dynamics.
  • To evaluate the effectiveness of proposed strategies for countering health misinformation.
  • To understand how interventions affect disease transmission and outbreak outcomes.

Main Methods:

  • Developed an agent-based model simulating both disease spread and health advice dissemination.
  • Classified circulating health advice as either useful or harmful.
  • Simulated interventions aimed at reducing the proportion of harmful advice or limiting its spread/belief.

Main Results:

  • Reducing the proportion of harmful advice from 50% to 40% mitigated outbreak influence.
  • Making 20% of the population unable to share or believe harmful advice also lessened its impact.
  • The spread of bad health advice significantly influences disease outbreak outcomes.

Conclusions:

  • Interventions targeting the reduction or neutralization of health misinformation can be effective in controlling infectious disease outbreaks.
  • Strategies such as limiting the circulation of fake news or increasing population "immunity" to it show promise.
  • Further research is needed to assess the feasibility of implementing these misinformation control strategies in real-world scenarios.
Keywords:
Agent-based modelsfake newsinfluenzamonkeypoxnorovirussocial networks

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