The COVID-19 Pandemic has brought with it many challenges worldwide; one of which is the abundance of misinformation and incorrect public opinion about the virus and the vaccines. This flood of inaccurate information and conspiracy theories makes it difficult for the public to know who to trust and has resulted in vaccine hesitancy and resistance to some of the basic infection prevention methods.
Within the local, South African context, much of the scientific and medical information that is available, is only provided in English and often published with a western audience in mind.
The Distributed Platform in Omics (DIPLOMICS) is a network of academic, commercial and industrial omics labs around South Africa, with access to a wealth of scientific experts and knowledge. Using their resources, DIPLOMICS has developed and produced a ten-part series of short, myth-buster videos to help combat this influx of misinformation, and to start a more inclusive, constructive and educated dialogue amongst South Africans about COVID-19, the vaccines and the world-leading work our scientists are doing here at home.
The videos have been produced in four South African languages; English, isiZulu, isiXhosa and Afrikaans and will cover a range of topical myths and subjects for the next ten weeks, including:
The vaccines give you COVID-19
The vaccines are dangerous as the development and testing was rushed
The vaccines contain microchips
The vaccines change your DNA
The vaccines cause infertility
If you’ve had COVID once, you are protected against the virus
Only certain people get very sick with COVID-19
After vaccination, no mask is necessary
The “home remedies” to COVID-19
The fake news around the pandemic
Episode one debunks the myth that the vaccines give you COVID-19 and help to explain how the vaccines actually work in our bodies.
Episode 1 language versions:
English - https://youtu.be/ds9B4owcwBY
isiZulu - https://youtu.be/BY68CnqjfJ8
isiXhosa - https://youtu.be/0BDqSh9U-zg
Afrikaans - https://youtu.be/zYL0N3ymEXw
Or visit the DIPLOMICS website - https://www.diplomics.org.za/post/followthescience-episode-1
New videos will be posted weekly across all social media platforms. DIPLOMICS hopes that these videos will reach a much wider proportion of the South African population and encourage the public to switch off the fake news and share information based on the facts instead. #FollowTheScience
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