It's not that it's necessarily "spreading panic" but that "believe whoever you want on the internet" is not an effective public health communications strategy.
But that appears to be what we've got.
The shaming approach of "you want to be part of this effort?" (whatever that means) is unlikely to be an effective communications strategy either.
I don't know why I asked, I already had my choice of various opinions on the internet (usually given from a position of moral superiority and judgement).
I seriously don't understand why the U.S. public health infrastructure is failing so horribly here; if you want to maximize compliance, it seems obvious that you should be giving consistent and pervasive instructions, there should be literally a planned "marketting" campaign, with a consistent message. If people are getting different messages from different places of course they will be confused and compliance will be less.
Instead, we have "which chain letter on facebook and/or shaming and blaming comment on HN does my gut tell me seems right?" What the fuck America.
i'll clarify: the effort in question is to stop being a potential carrier of a novel disease for which nobody is immune for and thus has potential to put great many people in a hospital for weeks at a time putting strain onto a system which is hardly idle. you might catch the virus and probably won't be able to tell the difference from common cold or flu. somebody you meet might end up intubated and anesthesiologically paralyzed for a week. or dead.
