Welcome to CoronaPod. In this show, we're going to bring you nature's take on the latest COVID-19 developments.

And we'll be speaking to experts around the world about research during the pandemic.

I really don't know how this plays out. We also don't know a ton about this, you know, virus. So there's so many open

questions. I just have a really hard time making predictions because I don't know how the outbreak's

going to change. Welcome to episode nine of CoronaPod. I'm Benjamin Thompson, once more,

in the South London basement. And I'm joined, as always, by

Noah Baker and Amy Maxman. Noah, how are you doing today? Yeah, not bad at all. How about you,

Amy? Pretty good. Doing pretty good. I had a bit of time off this week, which has been a welcome

bit of rest until CoronaPod comes around and duty calls, And so now I'm here to chat to you both.

But it's always a pleasure. Oh, good. Well, I'm going to start today's podcast with a quote,

if I may. It's from Dr. Tedrosse Cabracius, Director General of the WHO. And the quote is,

we're not just fighting an epidemic. We're also fighting an infodemic. And that's very much the thrust

of what we're going to talk about today, right? Yeah. Yeah. I like that term infodemic, because I have to

say, kind of the metaphors of an epidemic work really well when describing misinformation.

You know, we've heard about posts and memes going viral. They often kind of start sort of small. But once they

get bigger and bigger and amplified, that's when it's quite hard to control, you know, just like an

epidemic, an outbreak, to an epidemic, to a pandemic. I think when I first started thinking about

misinformation, you know, I'm seeing misinformation come up on my social media feeds. I'm hearing

people talk about it. But when we started, you know, really reporting it and looking into what research has to say about how misinformation spreads

and what difference that might have to the success or failure of public health responses,

I was quite blown away by just how complicated this can get. Yeah, that's definitely true. And I was

thinking, you know, one thing I've thought a lot about is during Ebola outbreaks, there also has been a lot of misinformation.

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