2,109 Matching Annotations
  1. Jun 2021
    1. Harrison, J., Berry, S., Mor, V., & Gifford, D. (2021). “Somebody Like Me”: Understanding COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy among Staff in Skilled Nursing Facilities. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 22(6), 1133–1137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jamda.2021.03.012

    2. ObjectiveThe vaccination of skilled nursing facility (SNF) staff is a critical component in the battle against COVID-19. Together, residents and staff constitute the single most vulnerable population in the pandemic. The health of these workers is completely entangled with the health of those they care for. Vaccination of SNF staff is key to increasing uptake of the vaccine, reducing health disparities, and reopening SNFs to visitors. Yet, as the vaccine rollout begins, some SNF staff are declining to be vaccinated. The purpose of this article is to describe reasons for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy reported by staff of skilled nursing facilities and understand factors that could potentially reduce hesitancy.DesignFive virtual focus groups were conducted with staff of SNFs as part of a larger project to improve vaccine uptake.Setting and ParticipantsFocus groups with 58 staff members were conducted virtually using Zoom.MeasuresFocus groups sought to elicit concerns, perspectives, and experiences related to COVID-19 testing and vaccination.ResultsOur findings indicate that some SNF staff are hesitant to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Reasons for this hesitancy include beliefs that the vaccine has been developed too fast and without sufficient testing; personal fears about pre-existing medical conditions, and more general distrust of the government.Conclusions and ImplicationsSNF staff indicate that seeing people like themselves receive the vaccination is more important than seeing public figures. We discuss the vaccination effort as a social enterprise and the need to develop long-term care provider-academic-community partnerships in response to COVID-19 and in expectation of future pandemics.
    3. 2021-03-20

    4. 10.1016/j.jamda.2021.03.012
    5. “Somebody Like Me”: Understanding COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy among Staff in Skilled Nursing Facilities
    1. Berry, S. D., Johnson, K. S., Myles, L., Herndon, L., Montoya, A., Fashaw, S., & Gifford, D. (2021). Lessons learned from frontline skilled nursing facility staff regarding COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 69(5), 1140–1146. https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.17136

    2. 2021-03-26

    3. Background: Presently a median of 37.5% of the U.S. skilled nursing facility (SNF) workforce has been vaccinated for COVID-19. It is essential to understand vaccine hesitancy among SNF workers to inform vaccine campaigns going forward. Objective: To describe the concerns raised among healthcare workers and staff from SNFs during town hall meetings. Design: Sixty-three SNFs from four corporations were invited to send Opinion Leaders, outspoken staff from nursing, nurse aid, dietary, housekeeping or recreational therapy, to attend a 1-h virtual town hall meeting. Meetings used a similar format where the moderator solicited concerns that the attendees themselves had or had heard from others in the facility about the COVID-19 vaccine. Physicians and moderators used personal stories to address concerns and reaffirmed positive emotions. Setting: Twenty-six video town hall meetings with SNF staff. Participants: Healthcare workers and staff, with physicians serving as content experts. Measurement: Questions and comments about the COVID-19 vaccines noted by physicians. Results: One hundred and ninety three staff from 50 facilities participated in 26 meetings between December 30, 2020 and January 15, 2021. Most staff reported getting information about the vaccine from friends or social media. Concerns about how rapidly the vaccines were developed and side effects, including infertility or pregnancy related concerns, were frequently raised. There were no differences in concerns raised by discipline. Questions about returning to prior activities after being vaccinated were common and offered the opportunity to build on positive emotions to reduce vaccine hesitancy. Conclusions: Misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine was widespread among SNF staff. Sharing positive emotions and stories may be more effective than sharing data when attempting to reduce vaccine hesitancy in SNF staff.
    4. 10.1111/jgs.17136
    5. Lessons learned from frontline skilled nursing facility staff regarding COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy
    1. Ryan Struyk. (2021, June 2). WHO Director General: ‘Of the 1.8 billion vaccines administered globally, just 0.4% have been administered in low-income countries. This is ethically, epidemiologically and economically unacceptable.’ [Tweet]. @ryanstruyk. https://twitter.com/ryanstruyk/status/1400114783882461190

    2. 2021-06-02

    3. WHO Director General: "Of the 1.8 billion vaccines administered globally, just 0.4% have been administered in low-income countries. This is ethically, epidemiologically and economically unacceptable."
    1. Congressman Matt Gaetz Unveils Legislation to Ban Federal Support for Vaccine Passports. (2021, June 2). Congressman Matt Gaetz. https://gaetz.house.gov/media/press-releases/congressman-matt-gaetz-unveils-legislation-ban-federal-support-vaccine

    2. 2021-06-02

    3. Washington, D.C. — Yesterday evening, U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz (FL-01), along with Reps. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) and Lance Gooden (TX-05), introduced H.R. 3660, the “Digital Health Pass Prevention Act (DHPPA)” of 2021. This bill, if passed, will prevent the federal government from funding and enforcing any program that uses digital health passes, which are used to verify an individual’s COVID-19 vaccination status unrelated to official health care records.
    4. Congressman Matt Gaetz Unveils Legislation to Ban Federal Support for Vaccine Passports
    1. Bateman, J., Cox, N., Rajagopala, L., Ford, M., Jasim, M., Mulherin, D., Venkatachalam, S., Douglas, B., Hirsch, G., & Sheeran, T. (2021). COVID-19 vaccination advice via SMS-based video to improve vaccination uncertainty in at-risk groups. The Lancet Rheumatology, 3(6), e399–e401. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2665-9913(21)00148-X

    2. COVID-19 continues to present challenges worldwide. In an attempt to tackle the disease, SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have been rapidly developed and vaccination programmes are being rolled out. Guidance from both the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology and the British Society for Rheumatology recommend that patients on immunosuppressive treatment should receive a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.1European Alliance of Associations for RheumatologyEULAR viewpoints on SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in patients with RMDs.https://www.eular.org/eular_sars_cov_2_vaccination_rmd_patients.cfmDate: December, 2020Date accessed: March 20, 2021Google Scholar Emerging data highlight the need for specialist advice to improve the uptake of COVID-19 vaccines in patients with autoimmune rheumatic diseases; evidence suggests that vaccine uptake in these patients can be improved by more than 20% with physician recommendation, and it is increasingly recognised that timely specialist input is required.2Priori R Pellegrino G Colafrancesco S et al.SARS-CoV-2 vaccine hesitancy among patients with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases: a message for rheumatologists.Ann Rheum Dis. 2021; (published online Feb 23.)https://doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2021-220059Crossref Google Scholar,  3Boekel L Hooijberg F van Kempen ZLE et al.Perspective of patients with autoimmune diseases on COVID-19 vaccination.Lancet Rheumatol. 2021; 3: e241-e243Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (4) Google Scholar,  4Felten R Dubois M Ugarte-Gil MF et al.Vaccination against COVID-19: expectations and concerns of patients with autoimmune and rheumatic diseases.Lancet Rheumatol. 2021; 3: e243-e245Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (6) Google Scholar Low confidence in vaccine safety has been the main factor that has hindered vaccine uptake in patients with rheumatic disease.5Campochiaro C Trignani G Tomelleri A Cascinu S Dagna L Potential acceptance of COVID-19 vaccine in rheumatological patients: a monocentric comparative survey.Ann Rheum Dis. 2021; (published online Jan 28.)http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2020-219811Crossref PubMed Scopus (3) Google Scholar Previous work has shown the utility of mobile SMS for the rapid distribution of urgent health-care communications.6Bateman J Mulherin D Hirsch G Venkatachalam S Sheeran T Rapid distribution of information by SMS-embedded video link to patients during a pandemic.Lancet Rheumatol. 2020; 2: e315-e316Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (8) Google Scholar As such, we developed a multimedia video message focused on vaccine education that was distributed by mobile SMS messaging, a successful and well established method of communication in our rheumatology follow-up cohort of more than 10 000 patients.
    3. 2021-06-01

    4. COVID-19 vaccination advice via SMS-based video to improve vaccination uncertainty in at-risk groups
    5. 10.1016/S2665-9913(21)00148-X
    1. Local officials have worked to overcome Black fears rooted in the notorious Tuskegee study but Trump-supporting rural areas are another matter
    2. 2021-06-03

    3. Black community tackles vaccine hesitancy in Alabama but Trump supporters resist
    1. Crisis, L. F. T. (n.d.). Why was it so easy to fool the media on herd immunity? Retrieved 3 June 2021, from https://lessonsfromthecrisis.substack.com/p/why-was-it-so-easy-to-fool-the-media

    2. UK planning at the start of the pandemic involved allowing the majority of the population to become infected with covid between April and September 2020, causing five thousand deaths a day and ending with enough cumulative infections for herd immunity, as shown on both the whiteboard photos from 10 Downing St, contemporary tweets from MPs, and the subsequently released SAGE papers:
    3. 2021-06-02

    4. Why was it so easy to fool the media on herd immunity?
  2. May 2021
    1. Stevenson, C., Wakefield, J. R. H., Felsner, I., Drury, J., & Costa, S. (n.d.). Collectively coping with coronavirus: Local community identification predicts giving support and lockdown adherence during the COVID-19 pandemic. British Journal of Social Psychology, n/a(n/a). https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12457

    2. The role of shared identity in predicting both ingroup helping behaviour and adherence to protective norms during COVID-19 has been extensively theorized, but remains largely under-investigated. We build upon previous Social Identity research into community resilience by testing the role of pre-existing local community (or ‘neighbourhood’) identity as a predictor of these outcomes, via the mediator of perceived social support. Community residents in the UK completed a longitudinal online survey four months before lockdown (T1; N = 253), one month before lockdown (T2; N = 217), and two months into lockdown (T3; N = 149). The cross-lagged panel analysis shows that T1 community identification predicts T3 giving and receiving of pandemic-related support, and that these effects occur via the perception of community support at the second time point (while the alternative pathway from T1 support via T2 identification is non-significant). Moreover, we show that T1 community identification also directly predicts lockdown adherence at T3. Our findings point to the pivotal role played by community identity in effective behavioural responses to the pandemic, and the need to support and foster community development to facilitate local community resilience as the crisis continues to unfold.
    3. 2021-05-10

    4. Collectively coping with coronavirus: Local community identification predicts giving support and lockdown adherence during the COVID-19 pandemic
    5. 10.1111/bjso.12457
    1. Agarwal, A. (2021). Ripple Effect of a Pandemic: Analysis of the Psychological Stress Landscape during COVID19. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dm5x2

    2. 2021-05-28

    3. The recent outbreak of an infectious novel coronavirus disease 2019 (nCoV-19) is significantly influencing the lifestyle of everyone all over the world. A pandemic that has not only claimed countless lives of people across the globe but also has struck the plain and tranquil psychological landscape of the world citizens. COVID-19’s hit on the landscape has resulted in a ripple effect witnessed across the minds of people across the globe. In this paper, we aim to study this ripple effect in terms of the variations caused by the psychological stress of individuals. Stress is the basic gateway to most of the other psychological disorders, as a result, a comprehensive psycholinguist and psychoacoustic study are conducted. This analysis is conducted for students and migrant workers for their distinctive online and offline behavioral activity. Finally, neurobiological insights regarding the implication and necessity of such studies are provided in the field of psychology and neuroscience.
    4. 10.31234/osf.io/dm5x2
    5. Ripple Effect of a Pandemic: Analysis of the Psychological Stress Landscape during COVID19
    1. Agarwal, A. (2021). Adjusting the Drafter for COVID19: Re-designing our society’s understanding of misinformation. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ugk5v

    2. 2021-05-28

    3. The pandemic of COVID19 illuminated the presence of our society’s cognition in a low-ceiling, inhabitable room, with almost little to no illumination of truth. Such a low-ceiling doesn’t only restrict the freedom of our cognition but also inhibits its healthy growth. Subsequently, our society feels a pushing sense, which is often exaggerated by the dark periods of misinformation, disinformation, and fake news. Hence, it becomes essential to rethink the interior designs of our cognition – How can we look at these periods of misinformation from a different lens? Can we use them to our advantage to make our room looks spacious enough for the growth of our cognition? Despite the limitations imposed to the ceiling length by our existing cognitive biases, there exist multiple, unconventional interdisciplinary approaches from the fields of epistemology, phenomenology, evolutionary psychology, and finally, the mathematics that we, as researchers, can leverage to broaden our understanding of the existing “misinfodemic” that presents as a ripple effect of COVID19 on our society’s cognition. The aim of this paper shall be the same – to present a noble discourse regarding the “dark period of misinformation” – why misinformation is NOT a pandemic but a widely-used misnomer, how the source of truthful information acts as a source of misinformation, why misinformation is needed for the development of a better cognitive heuristic framework for our society, and finally, why such unconventional approaches fail to see the light of research. While the existing approaches to deal with misinformation spiral around machine-learning models competing with each other for better detection accuracy, this paper will take the reader right to the epicenter of “misinfodemic” using a variety of routes. Towards the end, the author provides how the mentioned approaches not only widen our understanding regarding the universal phenomenon of misinformation but also can be leveraged and scaled for irrational human behaviors like suicide, partisanship, and even student gun violence in the USA.
    4. 10.31234/osf.io/ugk5v
    5. Adjusting the Drafter for COVID19: Re-designing our society’s understanding of misinformation
    1. Agarwal, A. (2021). The Accidental Checkmate: Understanding the Intent behind sharing Misinformation on Social Media. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/kwu58

    2. 2021-05-28

    3. The bloom of COVID19 has resulted in the explosion of ripple pollens which have severely affected the world community in the terms of their multi-axial impact. These pollens, despite being indistinguishable, have a varied set of characteristics in terms of their origin and contribution towards the overall declining homeostasis of human beings. The most prominent of these pollens are misinformation. Various studies have been conducted, performed, and stochastically replicated to build ML-based models to accurately detect misinformation and its variates on the common modalities of spread. However, the recent independent analysis conducted on the prior studies reveals how the current fact-checking systems fail and fall flat in fulfilling any practical demands that the misinfodemic of COVID19 brought for us. While the scientific community broadly accepts the pandemic-like resemblance of the rampant misinformation spread, we must also make sure that our response to the same is multi-faceted, interdisciplinary, and doesn't stand restricted. As crucial it is to chart the features of misinformation spread, it is also important to understand why it spreads in the first place? Our paper deals with the latter question through a game-theory-based approach. We implement a game with two social media users or players who aim at increasing their outreach on their social media handles whilst spreading misinformation knowingly. We take five independent parameters from 100 Twitter handles that have shared misinformation during the period of COVID19. Twitter was chosen as it is a prominent social media platform accredited to the major modality for misinformation spread. The outreach increment on the user’s Twitter handles was measured using various features provided by Twitter- number of comments, number of retweets, and number of likes. Later, using a computational neuroscientific approach, we map each of these features with the type of neural system they trigger in a person’s brain. This helps in understanding how misinformation whilst being used as an intentional decoy to increase outreach on social media, also, affects the human social cognition system eliciting pseudo-responses that weren’t intended otherwise leading to realizing possible neuroscientific correlation as to how spreading misinformation on social media intentionally/unintentionally becomes a strategic maneuver to increased reach and possibly a false sense of accomplishment.
    4. 10.31234/osf.io/kwu58
    5. The Accidental Checkmate: Understanding the Intent behind sharing Misinformation on Social Media
    1. Razai, M. S., Chaudhry, U. A. R., Doerholt, K., Bauld, L., & Majeed, A. (2021). Covid-19 vaccination hesitancy. BMJ, 373, n1138. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n1138

    2. What you need to knowLack of confidence in vaccines for covid-19 poses direct and indirect threats to health, and could derail efforts to end the current pandemicConcerns about unknown future effects, side effects, and a lack of trust are common reasons given by people who say they are unlikely to have a covid-19 vaccineNo single intervention is likely to be able to address vaccine hesitancyConsider barriers to uptake of vaccination at a population level and in groups who have lower rates of vaccine uptakeDevelop local approaches by engaging members of the community and co-producing communications and materials that meet population needs
    3. Covid-19 vaccination hesitancy
    4. 2021-05-20

    5. 10.1136/bmj.n1138
    1. 2021-05-20

    2. Prof. Azeem Majeed. (2021, May 20). 1/ Our new article in @bmj_latest discusses vaccine hesitancy and how health professionals can collaborate with patients to improve confidence in vaccines. WHO has identified vaccine hesitancy as one of the top threats to global health. Https://t.co/V9nwAKbm8Z @MohammadRazai [Tweet]. @Azeem_Majeed. https://twitter.com/Azeem_Majeed/status/1395356264390135820

    3. 9/ Thanks to @bmj_latest for publishing the vaccine hesitancy article, lead author @MohammadRazai and co-authors @Dr_UmarChaudhry @kaetchi @LindaBauld
    4. 8/ In conclusion, vaccines are the best method for controlling the global Covid-19 pandemic but will only only work if people are prepared to receive them. Addressing vaccine hesitancy requires both individual and population-based approaches.
    5. 7/ Health system interventions also essential: - Call-Recall Systems (computer, not paper-based) - Reminders. Text message, letter, email, telephone - Financial reimbursement and incentives for providers - Feedback of data on provider performance -Mass media campaigns
    6. 6/ Discussion and engagement with patients who are vaccine hesitant should be conducted in an open, honest, and non-judgmental manner. Health professionals are well placed to have these conversations given their expertise and status.
    7. 5/ Recognising barriers to uptake helps to inform appropriate interventions to address them. The key is to build confidence, particularly listening to people’s concerns, and respecting cultural and religious beliefs.
    8. 4/ Reasons for vaccine hesitancy include concerns about long term effects, as well as immediate side effects; and side effects to other routine vaccines. Concerns about the the speed of development of vaccines is another important factor.
    9. 3/ Some of the key messages for health professionals around vaccine hesitancy require addressing questions about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, building trust with patients and working with local communities.
    10. 2/ Vaccine hesitancy is defined by WHO as “a delay in acceptance or refusal of safe vaccines despite availability of vaccine services.” Vaccine hesitancy is a spectrum with some people accepting all vaccines and a small minority refusing all vaccines.
    11. 1/ Our new article in @bmj_latest discusses vaccine hesitancy and how health professionals can collaborate with patients to improve confidence in vaccines. WHO has identified vaccine hesitancy as one of the top threats to global health.
    1. Ramanathan, M., Ferguson, I. D., Miao, W., & Khavari, P. A. (2021). SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 spike variants bind human ACE2 with increased affinity. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(21)00262-0

    2. 2021-05-19

    3. Genomic surveillance efforts have uncovered SARS-CoV-2 variants with mutations in the viral spike glycoprotein, which binds the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor to facilitate viral entry.1Walensky RP Walke HT Fauci AS SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern in the United States—challenges and opportunities.JAMA. 2021; 325: 1037-1038Crossref PubMed Scopus (0) Google Scholar Such variants represent a public health challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic because they increase viral transmission and disease severity.2Plante JA Liu Y Liu J et al.Spike mutation D614G alters SARS-CoV-2 fitness.Nature. 2021; 592: 116-121Crossref PubMed Scopus (109) Google Scholar The B.1.351 variant, first identified in South Africa, has three notable mutations in the spike receptor-binding domain (RBD)—namely, K417N, E484K, and N501Y3Tegally H Wilkinson E Giovanetti M et al.Emergence and rapid spread of a new severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) lineage with multiple spike mutations in South Africa.medRxiv. 2020; (published online Dec 22.) (preprint).https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.21.20248640Google Scholar—whereas the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in the UK, carries the N501Y mutation (appendix pp 2–4). B.1.351 is of particular concern for its potential resistance to antibodies elicited by previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination.4
    4. 10.1016/S1473-3099(21)00262-0
    5. SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 spike variants bind human ACE2 with increased affinity
    1. 2021-05-21

    2. Risk calculator. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 May 2021, from https://www.mpic.de/4851094/risk-calculator

    3. Aerosol transmission of COVID-19 and infection risk in indoor environments The calculations for estimating infection risks are based on assumptions and formulas from the article "Aerosol transmission of COVID-19 and infection risk in indoor environments" by Lelieveld et al. 2020.
    4. 10.3390/ijerph17218114
    5. COVID 19 Aerosol Transmission Risk Calculator
    1. 2021-04-14

    2. Kadiwar, S., Smith, J. J., Ledot, S., Johnson, M., Bianchi, P., Singh, N., Montanaro, C., Gatzoulis, M., Shah, N., & Ukor, E.-F. (2021). Were pregnant women more affected by COVID-19 in the second wave of the pandemic? The Lancet, 397(10284), 1539–1540. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00716-9

    3. At the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there was justified concern that this disease might have similar effects on pregnant women as influenza or other coronavirus infections. During the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, influenza mortality in pregnant women in the USA was 4·3%.1Siston AM Rasmussen SA Honein MA et al.Pandemic 2009 influenza A(H1N1) virus illness among pregnant women in the United States.JAMA. 2010; 303: 1517-1525Crossref PubMed Scopus (625) Google Scholar In global analyses,2Favre G Pomar L Musso D Baud D 2019-nCoV epidemic: what about pregnancies?.Lancet. 2020; 395: e40Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (81) Google Scholar,  3Diriba K Awulachew E Getu E The effect of coronavirus infection (SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV) during pregnancy and the possibility of vertical maternal-fetal transmission: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Eur J Med Res. 2020; 25: 39Crossref PubMed Scopus (21) Google Scholar maternal deaths from severe acute respiratory syndrome or Middle East respiratory syndrome have been reported in 13% (n=24) and 40% (n=10) of published case reports, respectively. Reassuringly, US data4Ellington S Strid P Tong VT et al.Characteristics of women of reproductive age with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection by pregnancy status—United States, January 22–June 7, 2020.MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2020; 69: 769-775Crossref PubMed Scopus (34) Google Scholar from the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (from January to June, 2020) show that death from COVID-19 during pregnancy was low (0·19%) and consistent with that of non-pregnant women of childbearing age (0·25%). However, by September, 2020, findings from a systematic review and meta-analysis of global data5Allotey J Stallings E Bonet M et al.Clinical manifestations, risk factors, and maternal and perinatal outcomes of coronavirus disease 2019 in pregnancy: living systematic review and meta-analysis.BMJ. 2020; 370m3320Crossref PubMed Scopus (90) Google Scholar suggested that pregnancy is a significant risk factor for hospitalisation and more severe illness, with a critical care admission odds ratio for pregnant women with COVID-19 compared with infected women of childbearing age of 2·13 (95% CI 1·53–2·95) and an invasive ventilation odds ratio of 2·59 (2·28–2·94).
    4. 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00716-9
    5. Were pregnant women more affected by COVID-19 in the second wave of the pandemic?
    1. Pierri, F., Perry, B., DeVerna, M. R., Yang, K.-C., Flammini, A., Menczer, F., & Bryden, J. (2021). The impact of online misinformation on U.S. COVID-19 vaccinations. ArXiv:2104.10635 [Physics]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2104.10635

    2. 2021-04-21

    3. Widespread uptake of COVID-19 vaccines is necessary to achieve herd immunity. However, surveys have found concerning numbers of U.S. adults hesitant or unwilling to be vaccinated. Online misinformation may play an important role in vaccine hesitancy, but we lack a clear picture of the extent to which it will impact vaccination uptake. Here, we study how vaccination rates and vaccine hesitancy are associated with levels of online misinformation about vaccines shared by 1.6 million Twitter users geolocated at the U.S. state and county levels. We find a negative relationship between misinformation and vaccination uptake rates. Online misinformation is also correlated with vaccine hesitancy rates taken from survey data. Associations between vaccine outcomes and misinformation remain significant when accounting for political as well as demographic and socioeconomic factors. While vaccine hesitancy is strongly associated with Republican vote share, we observe that the effect of online misinformation on hesitancy is strongest across Democratic rather than Republican counties. These results suggest that addressing online misinformation must be a key component of interventions aimed to maximize the effectiveness of vaccination campaigns.
    4. The impact of online misinformation on U.S. COVID-19 vaccinations
  3. Apr 2021
    1. Dr Kamna Kakkar. (2021, April 20). If things come down to this, doctors are going to be at the recieving end of all patient wrath. As much as I pray for Delhi patients’ lives, I pray for the safety of my colleagues. #DelhiLockdown https://t.co/Q7RaIj68RB [Tweet]. @drkamnakakkar. https://twitter.com/drkamnakakkar/status/1384535301243109380

    2. 2021-04-20

    3. If things come down to this, doctors are going to be at the recieving end of all patient wrath. As much as I pray for Delhi patients' lives, I pray for the safety of my colleagues. #DelhiLockdown