That ignores the fact that the vast majority of people will not read publications or pay for journals. Instead, there has to be a worthwhile discussion with many viewpoints in social media.

I've seen enough WHO sponsored ads like "Stay calm. Trust your government. Don't go to social media.". Very suspicious.

Your first paragraph is a red herring - you don't have to read journal articles to be well-informed. If people choose to be uninformed, then that is what they will be, and not even the article here is going so far as to say that corrupt science is coercing people to be well-informed.

Your second paragraph displays the sort of unfalsifiable 'logic' that we find in conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, there are plenty of people beyond the WHO who are saying don't rely on social media for information, and for good reason.

Whether people realise it or not, what they read repeatedly sticks. So even glancing over false news, they will keep them in mind. There has to be a way to point them out in the moment of posting.

It is not clear what point you are trying to make here. Some people will come to wrong conclusions, so... don't publish anything? Don't publish anything except that which you, personally, judge to be correct? That if one sees a news article and an immediate rebuttal on some social medium, one must conclude that the former is false and the latter is true?

I'm saying that there has to be space for discussion in a discussion-oriented medium. It's in the best interest of the average user.

Well, there is, in general - and it works, so long as a preponderance of the participants are well-intentioned, and at least some of them are reasonably well-informed. The author of TFA is being alarmist.