Maggie Angst

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Zika virus is not spreading from vaccines or chemicals. It's not a part of some big scheme by the U.S. Congress or pharmaceutical companies. Yet, rumors and conspiracy theories like these fill the screens of Facebook users.

Medical researchers are raising concerns that this public health misinformation could impede efforts to limit the spread of the virus.

Megha Sharma, a senior pediatrics fellow in neonatal-perinatal medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, led a team analyzing Facebook as a social media health information platform, specifically for the Zika disease pandemic.

Sharma, an expecting mother, spends most of her days treating infants with diseases and counseling expecting mothers.

"In my practice, I’ve seen many mothers misinformed about a lot of things— especially the Zika virus," Sharma said. “A lot of false beliefs are finding their ways into the minds of patients."

In the last several years, Facebook has become a news powerhouse, and it has the potential to play a decisive role in times of public health crises.

Roughly two-thirds of U.S. adults use Facebook, and 30% of the general population obtains news from the website, according to Pew Research Center.

Misleading posts

Sharma's study consisted of searching Facebook using the keywords "Zika virus" for posts and videos in the past month containing public health information about the disease.

The top 200 posts were selected for analysis by two independent physician reviewers and then classified as relevant or misleading. The classification was based on the quality of scientific information, emphasis on prevention and citations of credible sources.

One of the most popular misleading posts Sharma found was a video called "10 reasons whyZika virus fear is another fraudulent medical hoax and vaccine industry funding scam." The video has more than 690,000 views, 35,000 shares and 700 supportive comments on Facebook.

It claims that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "fabricated the science linking Zika to microcephaly,” that Congress used Zika to “remove bans on other toxic pesticide chemicals” and that microcephaly cases in Brazil “were caused by larvicide chemicals, not by Zika.”

Microcephaly means that an infant is born with a small head, which is the biggest symptom of Zika. This condition causes brain malformations that can lead to long-term cognitive issues.

Sharma said Facebook posts claim larvicidal chemicals created by multinational conglomerates are causing birth defects like microcephaly rather than the virus itself. This claim was also shared on social media in an article from The Wall Street Journal, which emphasized that mosquito larvicide might be responsible for the birth defect rather than Zika. This claim is an unfounded rumor, according to Sharma.

Yet, the Brazilian government shut down a larvicidal factory in February because of this conspiracy, Sharma said.

“This is undermining the efforts to control disease," Sharma said.

During her time as a pediatrician, Sharma frequently saw a tendency for patients to blame major public health issues on vaccines.

“As someone who has taken care of babies for a while, I know that vaccines have no role in the risk of autism, the risk of behavior problems, and the risk of the Zika virus," Sharma said.

On the other hand, the World Health Organization, one of the most prominent organizations for health information dissemination, received only about 43,000 views for its video briefing on the facts about Zika.

Sharma concluded that posts with credible information about Zika are not as popular or widely viewed as misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Sharma hopes her research will encourage public health authorities to monitor the information on Facebook.

Two physicians at Tulane University School of Medicine, Kapil Yadav and Keith Ferdinand, were co-authors on the study with Sharma. The team's research study has been accepted for publication in the American Journal of Infection Control and should be available online in about a month.

"It's most important during a time of public health crisis or epidemics that the right information gets through, so patients and people are aware of the effects and the preventative measures that need to be taken," Yadav said.

The misleading information leads expecting moms to disregard the true measures for limiting Zika, such as avoiding travel to certain areas and watching for certain symptoms, Sharma said. That contributes to the spread of ZIka, according to Sharma.

“Every single day that I go to the hospital, I have a fear that this (Zika) is something we will see in a patient in Wisconsin,” Sharma said. “But this misinformation spreads farther and is more contagious than the disease itself.”