Thai Johns Hopkins student creates viral COVID-19 video

 

A Thai student studying at Johns Hopkins University in the United States has created one of the most informative and popular online videos explaining to Thais all they need to know about the COVID-19 pandemic with clarity.

Jessie Kanacharoen, a Junior studying Molecular and Cellular Biology, Maryland, created the YouTube slideshow to explain to her parents and sister back home the importance of social distancing and how it works. She hoped it would convince them to stay at home and remain safe.

“It’s difficult to visualize how one person can make a massive difference by staying at home,” Jessie told the Johns Hopkins University website. “So I wanted to help give people context they could understand.”

The website wrote that “In just seven minutes, ‘The Real Deal on Covid-19’ explains, in simple language, many of the most pressing questions people have about the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, including what the pandemic designation means, how the disease is transmitted, what its symptoms are, how it affects the elderly and immunocompromised, what it means to be an asymptomatic carrier and the effectiveness of social distancing techniques at slowing the spread.”

Jessie said she forgot about the video after sending it. But her family shared the video with friends, and it took off from there. Members of the Thai Medical Society saw the video and began using it to educate their response teams, and also started sharing it on social media. Television stations such as Workpoint TV are now airing the Thai-language video.

“I’m very grateful that a lot of people found the information useful, but the media attention isn’t that important to me,” Jessie said. “What’s important is that now I know that someone must have watched this video and thought ‘Maybe I should stay at home,’ and in that way, I have made some sort of difference.”

The video can be viewed in English at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=6zY6GpapaEM&feature=emb_title

Photo courtesy of https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/04/06/real-deal-on-covid-19/