Facebook announced that a majority of the pages were associated with the opposition Indian National Congress party, but it merely named the technology company associated with the governing B.J.P. pages. Many news reports later pointed out that the pages related to the B.J.P. that were removed were far more consequential and reached millions.

Asking the social media platforms to fix the crisis is a deeply flawed approach because most of the disinformation is shared in a decentralized manner through messaging. Seeking to monitor those messages is a step toward accepting mass surveillance. The Indian government loves the idea and has proposed laws that, among other things, would break end-to-end encryption and obtain user data without a court order.

The idea of more effective fact-checking has come up often in the debates around India’s disinformation contagion. But it comes with many conceptual difficulties: A large proportion of messages shared on social networks in India have little to do with verifiable facts and peddle prejudiced opinions. Facebook India has a small 11- to 22-member fact-checking team for content related to Indian elections.

Fake news is not a technological or scientific problem with a quick fix. It should be treated as a new kind of public health crisis in all its social and human complexity. The answer might lie in looking back at how we responded to the epidemics, the infectious diseases in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which have similar characteristics.

In response to infectious diseases, over a period of more than a century, nations created the public health infrastructure — a combination of public and private institutions that track outbreaks, fund research, develop medicines and provide health services. We need a similar response to tackle disinformation and fake news.

Epidemics taught us that citizen education is the first and most critical step for a solution. Without the widespread knowledge that washing hands with soap can prevent infections, all other interventions would have sunk under the sheer volume of patients. No number of tweaks to the Facebook algorithm, no size of fact-checking teams, no amount of government regulations can have the same impact as a citizen who critically examines the information being circulated.

Public education might seem a soft measure compared with regulation, but informing the people is the best investment to tackle the problem. In the long term, it will be effective because content distribution will be cheaper and the political and commercial incentives to spread lies will only grow.