How the dissemination of COVID-19 misinformation is undermining public health confidence

Over the Easter weekend, images of British Columbia's regional health officer unmasked at an airport started to circulate on Facebook.

Dr. Bonnie Henry appeared to be boarding a helicopter in another picture. Commenters believed the health official was going to Victoria for the long weekend to see relatives, in violation of her own non-essential travel guidelines.

After delivering a COVID-19 briefing in Vancouver earlier that day, Henry flew back to Victoria, where she lives, according to B.C.'s Health Ministry.

Though Henry was unmasked in a picture, she appeared to be sitting alone with a cup of coffee in an airport waiting for a lounge with no one around her. In a third picture, she was veiled as she waited to board the plane.

The false rumor about Henry's weekend trip has persisted online in the weeks since, illustrating an "infodemic," a phrase coined by the World Health Organization to describe the flood of knowledge, much of it false, that occurs during a disease outbreak.

In the last year, social media accounts have circulated a bogus list of COVID-19 wisdom attributed to Henry; rumors of stay-at-home orders in B.C. (debunked earlier this month by B.C.'s health minister); and, in mid-April, speculation of a code orange caused at Surrey Memorial Hospital signaling a mass casualty incident (debunked earlier this month by B.C.'s health minister) (quickly debunked by the Fraser Health Authority).

The rumor has spread amid long-held beliefs that vaccines are dangerous and the pandemic is a hoax, according to experts, weakening public institutions and putting people's health at risk.