My phone lit up like a fire alarm—group chats, reposts, short clips, the same graphic everywhere: “NO CURE. 75% FATALITY.” Under it were claims about tighter border screening in parts of Asia, all in bright red like a warning label. It looked official enough to make your stomach drop, and dramatic enough to make you hit “share” before you even took a breath.

And I did what fear trains you to do. I ran.

I grabbed disinfectant, gloves, masks, canned food, rice—anything that made me feel like I was “doing something.

” My cart got so full it squeaked. I was halfway to the checkout when someone in my family said, calmly but sharp enough to land: “You’re getting scared by the media again.”

I wanted to clap back. Instead, I went home and actually read the screenshot everyone was passing around.

That’s when it started to fall apart. One version made it sound like the situation was spreading across an entire country; another hinted it was limited to one region.

In the comments, someone insisted there was no human-to-human transmission, and right underneath that someone yelled “COVID 2.0.” Even the section about “how it spreads” didn’t match from post to post.

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