The World Health Organisation is wising up to what those trendy kids are doing, creating a TikTok account to share helpful videos on the coronavirus. One can only imagine that in-between the guides on how to stay safe from COVID-19, the WHO will also be sharing some fire memes.
As the world becomes more and more paranoid about the spread of the coronavirus, it’s important that we start figuring who we ought to be listening to. While the Internet is great for spreading information quickly, it can also spread too much information. Such is the case with COVID-19, there’s just so many people talking about it that it can be difficult to parse the truth from overzealous fear. The World Health Organisation is painfully aware of this and have thus decided to do their part in spreading awareness…via TikTok.
It’s a super popular app that’s predominately used by people fairly connected to the online world, arguably the most affected by the spread of hyperbolic news. “Particularly with this COVID-19 outbreak there has a massive ‘infodemic’ – an over-abundance of information – some accurate and some not – that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it,” Tarik Jasarevic, spokesperson for the WHO, told Business Insider.
The World Health Organisation has currently only shared eight videos and while they’re very informative they’re certainly not the fire memes one would expect from the WHO. Still, informative is probably more important at this point in time. The first video shows technical lead of infection prevention and control Benedetta Allegranzi discussing methods for halting the spread of the virus. The second video posted by the WHO is more instructional, showing off when and how to effectively use face masks.
“The infodemic on COVID-19 is affecting a lot of people out there with various different age groups. We need to be able to make our information available out there to cover these various groups,” said Jasarevic. Amidst the videos discussing the coronavirus, the WHO has also dedicated some time to World Hearing Day, so at least they’re branching from a single topic. Good for a social media presence, or so we’re told.
The WHO’s TikTok channel already accumulated hundreds of thousands of followers while their first two videos have earned 250,000 and 600,000 likes respectively. So clearly they’re reaching some kind of audience. Wouldn’t it be strange if the world was saved because of some app that encourages people to mouth along to popular songs? We’ll take any kind of salvation we can get at this point.