The ones in red are domestic classmates. They couldn't sleep at night and went to the group chat with classmates to verify the rumors.
The rumor is about the XBB.1.5 variant of the Omnicoronavirus strain that is accelerating its spread in the United States.
Someone in China posted news on the Internet that it can cause diarrhea. Because the country is about to open up, some people are worried that this strain will spread into the country. Because it was difficult to buy fever medicine some time ago, now I have learned my lesson and rushed to buy diarrhea medicine to avoid realizing it later. The three foreign students from the United States, Canada, and Australia who were online in the
group were a little confused. They then checked and found that there was no report of "diarrhea" in the foreign mainstream media , nor did the latest tweet from the US CDC say so.
In addition, students were deeply panicked by domestic self-media about the overall harmfulness of this virus strain; foreign students therefore checked some recent daily death toll charts in the United States and found that the trend of new deaths has not changed.
It seems that this news is unreliable, so there is no need to panic.
Regarding daily household over-the-counter medicines, foreign students will reserve some at home, and even reserve some other emergency supplies. They have a strong awareness of "strategic reserves". In China, perhaps because shopping is too convenient, the government will take action when major events occur, and it seems that there is basically no idea of "emergency reserves".
Here is a trend chart of the daily increase in COVID-19 deaths in the United States, which has been running at a low level since the end of March:
There is obviously no reason to start panicking at the moment.
Some thoughts:
There is also a lot of false information about the epidemic in foreign self-media, and some false information has political purposes.
One way for the government to deal with false information is to promptly release information through authoritative government agencies, such as the CDC in the United States, and provide detailed information and related knowledge about the epidemic on their websites, including answers and clarifications to various questions.
feels that there seems to be a lack of such an information platform for the public in China.
