Climatological and social fallacies about COVID-19 pandemic

Ambar Farooq; Uttam Kumar; Junaite Bin Gais Uddin; Muhammad Haroon U Rashid; Matoor Mohsin Gilani; Taimoor Hassan Farooq; Awais Shakoor; Matloob Ahmad

doi:10.1007/s42398-021-00175-9

Climatological and social fallacies about COVID-19 pandemic

Environ Sustain (Singap). 2021;4(3):579-584. doi: 10.1007/s42398-021-00175-9. Epub 2021 May 20.

Authors

Ambar Farooq^#¹, Uttam Kumar^#², Junaite Bin Gais Uddin³, Muhammad Haroon U Rashid⁴, Matoor Mohsin Gilani⁴, Taimoor Hassan Farooq⁵, Awais Shakoor⁶, Matloob Ahmad¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Government College University Faisalabad, Faisalabad, 38000 Punjab Pakistan.
² College of Plant Protection, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, 350002 Fujian People's Republic of China.
³ Center for Molecular Cell and Systems Biology, College of Life Science, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fujian 350002 Fuzhou, People's Republic of China.
⁴ College of Forestry, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, 350002 Fujian People's Republic of China.
⁵ College of Life Science and Technology, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, Changsha, 410004 Hunan People's Republic of China.
⁶ Department of Environment and Soil Sciences, University of Lleida, Avinguda Alcalde Rovira Roure 191, 25198 Lleida, Spain.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has emerged as a major global challenge since 2019. With the fast rise in the infected cases and deaths worldwide, many environmental and climate-related myths and fallacies spreaded fast. These fallacies include virus cannot spread in hot and humid conditions, cold weather can inhibit the virus, drinking hot water and sunlight can help cure the COVID-19, ultraviolet (UV) disinfectant lamps and UV rays from sunlight can kill the virus, use of hairdryers and hot showers for virus prevention, etc. Social norms and mindset of the people in the world towards a pandemic are quite similar. The primary purpose of this article is to enlighten the readers regarding these climatological misconceptions and social fallacies, helping spread proper knowledge and manage the outbreak of this deadly pandemic.

Keywords: Community safety; Coronavirus (COVID-19); Environmental‐related myths; Misconceptions; Public health.