Yesterday in your circle of friends, did these two comparison charts appear?
Chang Dad brushed in the circle of friends, and more than once:
When a friend forwarded it, he also said with a sarcastic tone:
"I didn't know today what decryption and decline mean!"
Most of the people who forwarded this picture were Kochi, and this sentence must have meant something else.
So I immediately looked at the two pictures carefully and word by word, and sure enough, I found that something was wrong. In particular, the content specially circled in the two pictures is not only inconsistent, but also has completely opposite meanings.
CCTV news on the left, the content can be simply summarized as:
The report on the new crown epidemic released by WHO on the 12th showed that "although the severity of the disease caused by Omilon has decreased, it has led to a significant increase in the number of confirmed cases of new crown pneumonia, and a large number of cases requiring hospitalization have brought greater pressure to the health system." In some countries, the death toll from the Omikejon strain is similar to or even higher than previous peaks. ”
On the right is the original text published by WHO, which reads:
Compared to the previous week, the number of COVID-19 infections fell by 24%. Weekly deaths also continued to decline, with the death rate falling by 18% compared to the previous week.
What's going on here? Does anyone really dare to blatantly fabricate a report and not be afraid of cross-verification by other people who know English?
So I immediately decided to start with "first-hand information" and look for the original text from the WHO official website.
It turned out...
First, the translation of CCTV news is not wrong.
The source of this passage from CCTV is on page 6 of the report. But this passage summarizes the overall situation from the beginning of 2022 to the present.
(Translation: Unlike previous waves, the most recent wave caused by Omi kerong is characterized by a disconnect between the number of cases, hospitalizations (especially in intensive care) and the number of deaths in many countries. However, the data continue to show that unvaccinated people still face a higher risk of severe illness after contracting Opmicron compared to those who have been vaccinated. Despite some reductions in severity, the massive increase in Theomecroon cases has led to a large number of hospitalizations, putting further strain on the healthcare system, with deaths similar or higher in some countries compared to previous peaks. ）
Second, the WHO report is also true and supported by data.
However, "the number of COVID-19 infections fell by 24% compared to the previous week." The weekly death toll also continues to decline, with an 18% drop in mortality compared to last week", which appears in the report's "roundup" and describes the trend of the outbreak in the week of April 4-10.
Therefore, neither CCTV News nor WHO is wrong.
They all described a piece of white paper with black dots. It's just that CCTV News selectively said that "there are black spots on the paper", and WHO selectively summarized in the review that "the upper left corner of the paper is white".
(As for why this sentence was taken separately from such a long report, we will not discuss it here...) ）
But the reason why such a picture can cause an uproar, in addition to CCTV and WHO, there is actually a third important role, that is, the person who has put the map together and intentionally spread it.
Whether he deliberately provoked social contradictions by creating information gaps, or whether he was inadvertently looking at the review of the WHO report but not the full text... But it is clear that he has succeeded in stirring up popular sentiment. Even some of the Kochi people in my circle of friends, who I think, fell into the information trap and became a member of the forwarding army, and at the same time, they were filled with all kinds of righteous indignation when forwarding.
Sad?
In this era of information explosion, you and I among all sentient beings are so easily fooled, deceived, and coerced.
Not only do we fall into the information cocoon, but the information can be wrong, whitewashed, and unknown.
The sad thing is not that we are misled by information, but that we are misled and do not know it.
Jeremy Knowles, the late former dean of the Harvard College of Arts and Sciences, once said that the most important goal of higher education is to ensure that graduates can discern "someone is talking nonsense."
Since the information is like a flood, there is nowhere to escape. Then only by receiving education can we improve our thinking and cognition level, so that we are not confined to those "nonsense", stripping away the cocoon in the complicated information, and peeking into the truth.
Especially in today's information explosion, if we want to see the truth and see the facts clearly, we need strong critical thinking skills - if we can't do this ourselves, how can we educate our children?
How to distinguish the authenticity of information?
01
Every retweet on the network has a subjective tendency, so it is necessary to establish the habit of consulting first-hand information;
02
Establish multiple information channels to cross-verify authenticity;
03
Stop using the term "fake news" and replace it with "misinformation" or "rumor" to guide thinking about where the information came from.
Strong research ability and critical thinking ability have increasingly become the foundation of our standing in the Internet age.
I hope that each of us can keep a clear mind and valuable curiosity, and when we hear all kinds of information, don't be busy taking sides.
Don't panic, let the bullets fly for a while.