About three in ten believe coronavirus was made in a lab, says survey
The Hindu
Dated: June 10, 2020
By: Jacob Koshy
About three in 10
believed that coronavirus (COVID-19) was
manufactured in a laboratory but most, or 42%, believed it evolved naturally,
say the early results of a sociological survey to gauge public perception of
the COVID-19 pandemic
in India.
U.S.
President Donald Trump has said he believed that the virus
emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Union
Minister Nitin Gadkari has stated that SARS-CoV-2 was “man-made and not
natural.” However, the expert scientific consensus based on analysing the gene
sequences of the virus is that it has evolved naturally.
About 54%
said the lockdown “helped
overcome” the pandemic and 30% said the lockdown “created problems” including —
a fifth of them saying — that they’d lost jobs and earnings and 3% saying that
they faced “hunger and starvation.” At 2,80,000 cases on Wednesday, India
continues to be on a rising-case trajectory even as the government has announced
significant relaxations — from the opening of religious
places to allowing malls to reopen — even as the true extent of the infection
is still being ascertained by epidemiologists. Seven in 10 said social
distancing would only retard the spread of the virus and 18% saying that it
would “eradicate” the pandemic.
Scientific Information
“Overall, it
appears that scientific information won over superstition and myths regarding
the virus, its origin, manner of spread, those who were most susceptible,”
Gauhar Raza, formerly Chief Scientist, CSIR-National Institute of Science
Communication and Information Resources, and among the authors of the study,
told The
Hindu, “though it was evident there were vigorous efforts by
some media to spread misinformation and pseudo-science.”
In response to a question: ‘Are you afraid of corona infection when you go
out?’, 64% said they were afraid and 18% responded they weren’t. This was in
the first fortnight of May when lockdown 3.0 was in force.
2,223 respondents
The survey report, Pulse of the Pandemic, interviewed 2,223
respondents and was authored by sociologists Surjit Singh and P.V.S. Kumar, and
social activist Leena Dabiru and Raza. The answers were from 1,200 who
responded via an online English questionnaire and 500 online in Hindi and
around 500 respondents were interviewed in person via paper and pen. Some of
these offline results were still being processed.
About 60% of
those who responded were recorded from north India and the next highest
percentage,18, from western India. Only 6% were from the south and the east —
Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand — made up 5%. Six out of 10 who
participated were male and 46% of the respondents were 21-40 years and 60% said
they were graduates or postgraduates and primarily were in government jobs or
worked for a private company. “They represented an urban middle class
population of India and a limitation of our study was that it didn’t represent
a wider demographic of the country in terms of their perceptions and beliefs
regarding COVID-19. This was due to the difficulties in movement due to the
lockdown,” said Raza.
The findings were “preliminary” and part of an ongoing
investigation to evaluate how scientific information regarding the pandemic was
retained over time and whether longer behavioural changes are likely to prevail
in the aftermath of the pandemic. The study was supported by the PM Bhargava
Foundation and ANHAD, an organisation associated with human rights issues.
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