News reliability in the internet age has been under the scrutiny with the increasing spread of data access especially through social platforms. User-created content is part of this phenomenon where source integrity has become questionable, distinctively in the wake of the weaponization of information through channels.

Lately the contradicting data over the COVID-19 outbreak has forged many questions over numbers, locations, and precautions. We had news China knew ahead of this threat but didn’t act properly, yet the fear of a global pandemic is quickly spreading through the media.

Wether it’s politics, economy, or the latest health news over the Corona virus, I’m finding difficult understanding the structure of the information. The news scenarios can at this point be in these conditions:

facts are being misrepresented by Chinese authorities;

western media is using information to gain leverage on China;

reality has countries unable to make sense of the situation of the pandemic.

All these scenarios might not just happen singularly and that would be worrisome; however, the product of the information in this age is the depth of confusion we are in that won’t allow us to see through anything. At this point what to believe: the Corona virus is manageable or data is faulty?

I’m getting newsfeed form expat aquaintances living in China how the western media is blowing numbers, and perhaps we know the story that selling newspapers copies and clickbaits is profitable for the media. Now we have little to no clues how warped the situation is because we are supposed ot believe the WHO’s data, but also the information coming from national sources across Europe.

Now I can ask myself if technology can come to the rescue and help us track the spread of the virus over the last two months. So far we know SARS in 2003 had a higher contagion effect and that at a certain point it was contained. Opposite is the scenario we have with the current health crisis from Asia where the issue of censorship in China might have played a key role. The spread of the Corona virus went under the radar until its reach went quasi global, landing as far as Italy and Egypt.

Northern Italy is in now on alert with major public events like the famous carnival of Venice cancelled. Schools, universities, and certain public places are shut down until further notice. Efforts to stop the spread of this virus are underway as Italy managed to isolate the disease and a vaccine is being developed across nations.

Information is so crucial that if China really did censor the news of the spread we might look at our second major alarm bell; the first being how this nation has officially become a playground for technology in developing a Big Brother state. So if information was withheld it’s certain Beijing understood the full value of manifacturing and distribuiting technology for the rest of the world.

I’m a little skeptic over the quantity and quality of data that could have easily gotten filtered through the Internet Of Things, and refined via artificial intelligence to better track the spread of the virus. We have all the available tools in 2020 to put to the test our technology and track better information of useful human behavior, helping us prevent worst scenario for the near future.

This translated in being able to harness what you want to tell and not to tell through the very own decives your country has been manufacturing to the rest of the world. But this tells me that China might actually have all the truth over this disease, feeding fake news to specific targets in order to manipulate the information flow and therefore be in full control of the situation.