{"id":46342,"date":"2020-08-13T22:16:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-13T19:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/distrust-of-authority-fuels-virus-misinformation-for-latinos\/"},"modified":"2020-08-13T22:16:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T19:16:00","slug":"distrust-of-authority-fuels-virus-misinformation-for-latinos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/distrust-of-authority-fuels-virus-misinformation-for-latinos\/","title":{"rendered":"#Distrust of authority fuels virus misinformation for Latinos"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Distrust of authority fuels virus misinformation for Latinos<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n MEMPHIS, Tenn. \u2014 When Claudia Guzman suspected she had caught the coronavirus, her friends and family were full of advice: Don\u2019t quarantine. Don\u2019t get tested. A homemade tea will help cure you.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were saying, \u2018Don\u2019t go to the hospital,\u2019 because supposedly, if you are admitted into the hospital, they administer the virus into your body,\u201d said Guzman, who was born in Chicago to parents from Mexico and now lives in Memphis, Tennessee.<\/p>\n

False claims and conspiracy theories, ranging from bogus cures to the idea that the virus is a hoax, have dogged efforts to control the pandemic from the beginning. While bad information about the virus is a problem for everyone, it can pose a particular threat to communities of people of color who alreadyface worse outcomes from the virus.<\/p>\n

Among Latinos in the U.S., misinformation around the coronavirus has found fertile ground because many in their communities have higher levels of distrust in government, less access to medical care and may need to be reached by Spanish-language public health resources. It\u2019s a dangerous mix that could discourage people from taking precautions, participating in contact-tracing efforts, or getting treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere isn\u2019t much evidence-based information in Spanish for them. And this is a new disease, so the science<\/a> is evolving every day,\u201d said William Calo, a Pennsylvania State University researcher who studies Hispanics and public health. \u201cWe are struggling with providing good information in English \u2014 just imagine adding a second language.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a population of 60 million, Hispanic people in the U.S. are now four times more likely than non-Hispanic white people to be hospitalized because of COVID-19, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other studies also show Latinos in some areas are also twice as likely to die from the illness. (Native Americans and Black people face similarly stark disparities.)<\/p>\n

These vulnerabilities have many causes. Among them are the fact that many Latinos are less likely to have health insurance or access to quality health care \u2014 sometimes because they can\u2019t afford it and sometimes because of their immigration status. Many work in industries that are deemed essential and cannot be performed remotely, such as food service, sanitation, meat packing, construction and retail. And many live in larger, multigenerational households where social<\/a> distancing is difficult.<\/p>\n

Added to this already dangerous mix is a higher level of distrust in authority among Latinos \u2014 as is the case for other minority communities \u2014 that is helping fuel the spread of misinformation about the virus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019m hearing something from the government, from people who I, for a variety of reasons, don\u2019t trust, then I\u2019m not going to do anything,\u201d said Monica Feli\u00fa-M\u00f3jer a Puerto Rican native and Harvard-trained neurobiologist who works to encourage Latinos to pursue science careers. \u201cBut if I hear this from my friend who I believe in, and who I trust, then it\u2019s more likely that I\u2019m going to act on that information.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many, the reluctance to get tested or seek treatment stems from fear of deportation in a community with a significant percentage of immigrants. That may be particularly true under President Donald Trump, said New York State Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a Democrat who represents a largely Hispanic district in the Bronx. Trump ran on promises to crack down on both illegal and legal immigration and has repeatedly painted immigrants \u2014 especially nonwhites \u2014 as posing a public health and safety danger.<\/p>\n

That distrust could discourage people from getting treatment or from cooperating with government contact tracers trying to identify who an infected person had come into contact with.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a real concern,\u201d Rivera said of the worries some Latinos have about contact tracing. \u201cWe need to secure that information, and there needs to be a guarantee of its privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Language barriers make the situation even worse. Many areas face a shortage of Spanish-speaking health care workers, and most of the accurate online information about the virus in the U.S. is in English. That forces some Latinos who need information in Spanish to rely on less-trusted sources like social media. And while a growing number of fact-checking organizations are trying to identify and correct false claims spreading online, very few publish their work in Spanish. The Associated Press publishes some of its fact checks in Spanish.<\/p>\n

All of this means Latinos may not receive good information about how to slow the spread of the virus \u2014 and may not act on it if they do. Guzman, for instance, thinks she contracted the virus at a vigil last month for her grandfather, who died of cancer soon after. Many of the people there either weren\u2019t wearing facial masks or didn\u2019t have them on correctly. About 10 family members subsequently were diagnosed with the coronavirus.<\/p>\n

Guzman, who is a medical assistant, knew to push back when friends and relatives passed along false claims and theories. For example, her parents suggested she wouldn\u2019t have to quarantine if she drank a homemade tea of lemon, honey and ginger.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to tell them, \u2018No, that\u2019s not true. In order to stop spreading it, you have to stay home,\u2019\u201d said the 27-year-old, who had mild symptoms that lasted a few days. She spent time in quarantine before returning to work.<\/p>\n

Her boss, Venezuela-born Dr. Pedro Velasquez-Mieyer, is the chief medical officer of two clinics in Memphis that serve mainly Latino and Black patients. He said he\u2019s heard from patients who won\u2019t wear masks, or who liken COVID-19 to the chicken pox and say they want to get infected so they\u2019ll develop immunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are part of their own network of misinformation, and nobody is actually saying, \u2018This is false, this is not reliable,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThey keep sending the message.\u201d<\/p>\n

Feli\u00fa-M\u00f3jer says it\u2019s just as important to control rumors as it is to control the virus.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust like people can stay home and wear masks and wash their hands and keep their physical distance to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, people can also take simple steps to prevent the spread of misinformation,\u201d she said.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

\n

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“#Distrust of authority fuels virus misinformation for Latinos” MEMPHIS, Tenn. \u2014 When Claudia Guzman suspected she had caught the coronavirus, her friends and family were full of advice: Don\u2019t quarantine. Don\u2019t get tested. A homemade tea will help cure you. \u201cThey were saying, \u2018Don\u2019t go to the hospital,\u2019 because supposedly, if you are admitted into…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[53140],"class_list":["post-46342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-distrust-of-authority-fuels-virus-misinformation-for-latinos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}