‘Infodemic’ During COVID‑19 Pandemic: Troubleshooting the Trouble in Troubled Time Through Primary Care Activism

The problem of fake and falsified information available on the Internet and social media has seen torrential rise with its impact becoming more palpable during contemporary crisis. Its magnitude and unprecedented ill‑effect grow with viral speed across geopolitical lines. Heads of world agencies like WHO (World Health Organization) and UN (United Nations) has referred to this phenomenon of an epidemic of misinformation as “infodemic” in the wake of current coronavirus disease‑2019 (COVID‑19) pandemic.[1] Fake news and misleading information, spreading faster than the virus, complicate the situation by supplying false data, false treatment advice, unscientific remedies, conspiracy theories, and xenophobia. Social‑distancing and lockdown in many countries has propelled global access to numerous online sites, platforms, and social media groups and the data consumption, good or bad, has surged.