The truth was slow to reach the citizens

The vaccine against the coronavirus causes sterility... It has a chip... It is impossible for them to make a medicine against a completely new disease so quickly. Everything was planned: first, the virus was released from the laboratory, then large pharmaceutical companies also released vaccines on the market, just for their profit...

These are just some of the misinformation that came with the new virus and the first vaccines against covid-19, and they did not bypass Montenegro either.

They spread much faster than the health authorities reacted preventively and educated the citizens.

That is why it is not surprising that 70 percent of the population in Montenegro has never been vaccinated, as the Montenegrin healthcare leaders promised when the first vaccines arrived in Montenegro in February and March 2021.

This is also the goal set before all countries by the World Health Organization (WHO).

According to available data, about 60 percent of adult citizens received two doses of the vaccine, and about 20 received the third dose. Less than 1 percent of citizens received four doses of the vaccine. These percentages are significantly lower if compared to the total number of inhabitants of Montenegro.

"Most of the conspiracy theories, disinformation and anti-vaxxer messages and programs about covid-19 came from only 12 people, it was determined in the report of the Center for the Suppression of Digital Hate (CCDH). On Facebook alone, a dozen people are responsible for 73 percent of all anti-covid-19 vaccine content. The people who are the creators of this disinformation are followed by more than 59 million people who have received this disinformation," the epidemiologist told "Vijesti" Milena Popović Samardžić.

According to her, data on the number of deceased persons who consumed disinfectants to protect against infection show how dangerous misinformation can be.

"In Iran alone, almost 800 people died from disinfectant poisoning. A five-year-old child went blind. Disinformation about the sterility caused by vaccines with the aim of controlling the world population is just one more of the very dangerous undermining of trust in science and the postulates of public health. This disinformation is almost as old as the vaccines themselves," emphasizes Dr. Popović Samardžić.

He points out that more than 100 false narratives related to the coronavirus have appeared worldwide, with fake drugs and prevention methods being the most popular topic of misinformation.

"Even 95 percent of reported disinformation about the coronavirus on various platforms has not been removed. "Did you know that more than 70 telephone poles have been vandalized across Great Britain due to false rumors that 5G mobile technology is responsible for the spread of the coronavirus and the onset of the pandemic," asked Dr. Popović Samardžić.

That is why, she says, the fight against disinformation must be based on respect for human rights.

"The pandemic cannot be used as an excuse for endangering freedom of expression, reducing the responsibility of public bodies, low transparency in work or unjustifiably restricting access to information. This crisis has indisputably shown how important it is that journalists provide citizens with reliable and verified information and thus contribute to the preservation of public health. Disinformation traveled much more easily because information was released to the public very slowly. The representatives of public health did not act as partners in synergy with the representatives of the media, and what should have been our strength and our advantage turned into a weak point. Sources of disinformation took advantage of that," she emphasized.

According to Popović Samardžić, intimidating people, causing panic, mistrust in institutions is especially dangerous in countries with fragile and unstable institutions where a low level of trust in the government and government institutions prevails. "In countries with low transparency of the work of state institutions, immunization programs suffer direct damage from politics. False information about the corona virus and vaccination against covid-19, which is still current in the world, has had a very harmful effect on public health and effective communication about the crisis. To remind you, public health systems were born from a crisis similar to this one. It was the Spanish flu pandemic that claimed over 50 million lives. "Such a tragedy imposed the need to develop a public health system, which the local 'infodemic', another type of epidemic of serious destructive power thanks to social networks and the rapid flow of information, poses a serious challenge," concluded Popović Samardžić.

Back in 2017, the Council of Europe (CoE) warned about the global infodemic, but also gave recommendations, in the study "Disruption of infomancy: How to achieve interdisciplinary research and policy making".

The authors of that study warn that due to the expansion of technology, information must travel much faster, so that "the public has little faith in the information they find on the networks and rejects every image, video or audio recording as potentially fabricated or manipulated".

The authors of the SE study recommended that governments investigate which areas are most susceptible to disinformation and which online platforms are most likely to contain such content. Governments are invited to create legislative frameworks, based on which they could prevent disinformation advertising on various platforms, but also to support national and local media.

"If we are serious about minimizing the attack of misinformation, then the priority must be to support quality journalistic initiatives at the local and national level," said the SE study.