On the determinants of anti-COVID restriction and anti-vaccine movements: the case of IoApro in Italy

Following restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19, and subsequent vaccination campaigns, sentiments against such policies were quick to arise. While individual-level determinants that led to such attitudes have drawn much attention, there are also reasons to believe that the macro context in which these movements arose may contribute to their evolution. In this study, exploiting data on business activities which supported a major Italian anti-restriction and anti-vaccine movement, IoApro, using quantitative analysis that employs both a fractional response probit and logit model and a beta regression model, we investigate the relationship between socio-economic characteristics, institutional quality, and the flourishing of this movement. Our results suggest a U-shaped relationship between income and the proliferation of the movement, meaning that support for these movements increases the greater the degree of economic decline. Our results further indicate that the share of the population between 40 and 60 years old is positively related to support for such movements, as is institutional corruption.

The emergence and persistence of the anti-vaccination movement

Vaccine hesitancy is a significant threat to public health and the anti-vaccination movement has played a significant role in communicable disease outbreaks. This commentary discusses the history and tactics of vaccine denialists and anti-vaccination groups. Anti-vaccination rhetoric is robust on social media platforms, and vaccine hesitancy has proven to impede the uptake of both established and new vaccines. Effective counter-messaging is needed to preemptively discredit vaccine denialists and reduce their influence on vaccine uptake. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Social Media and Vaccine Hesitancy: Help Us Move the Needle

With more than 75% of parents and pediatric caregivers getting their health-related information online, reaching families on social media is a powerful way to leverage the trust built in the examination room to address vaccine hesitancy. This article first reviews the ways the antivaccine movement has leveraged social media to expand its considerable influence, and why social media companies have failed to reduce antivaccine misinformation and disinformation. Next, it reviews the barriers to adoption of social media-based communication by pediatric health-care providers and concludes with action-oriented items to increase the adoption of this powerful tool.

On Antiscience and Antisemitism

Recent surges in antivaccine activism and other antiscience trends now converge with rising antisemitism. During the COVID-19 pandemic, authoritarian elements from the far right in North America and Europe often invoked Nazi imagery to describe vaccinations or at times even blame the Jewish people for COVID-19 origins and vaccine profiteering. Such tropes represent throwbacks to the 14th century, when European Jews were persecuted during the time of the bubonic plague. This article provides both historical and recent perspectives on the links between antiscience and antisemitism, together with the author's personal experience as a Jewish vaccine scientist targeted by both dark forces. New approaches to uncoupling antisemitism from antiscience, while combating both, are essential for saving lives and preserving democratic values.

Japan reboots HPV vaccination drive after 9-year gap

Modeling suggests 2013 move that undercut immunization will lead to thousands of preventable deaths.

Unvaxxed: A Cultural Study of the Online Anti-Vaccination Movement

In this study, the constructive communication process of anti-vaccination advocates is explored to provide insight into the challenges of communicating with an engaged, educated public that is distrustful of mainstream medical and governmental organizations. Using the circuit of culture as a theoretical and methodological model, this article examines how anti-vaccination advocates use social media to construct and reinforce a belief system that counters dominate understandings of health. Findings show that, through online communication, anti-vaccination advocates create shared cultural constructs embracing the identity of health information crusader, critic, and expert. This community consumes, produces, and distributes information that reframes mainstream health information and reinforces shared values. The purposes of this study are to better understand the culture of anti-vaccination advocates, identify communication barriers, and offer practical implications for health care professionals.

Active pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine groups: Their group identities and attitudes toward science

Vaccine rejection is a problem severely impacting the global society, especially considering the COVID-19 outbreak. The need to understand the psychological mechanisms underlying the active involvement of the pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine movements is therefore very important both from a theoretical and practical perspective. This paper investigates the group identities of people with positive and negative attitudes towards vaccination, and their attitudes toward general science. A targeted sample study of 192 pro-vaccine and 156 anti-vaccine group members showed that the group identity of pro-vaccine individuals is higher than of anti-vaccine individuals. and that both pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine individuals had a positive attitude toward science. Results are discussed in context of the heterogeneity of motivations causing vaccine rejection and the relation between active involvement in online discussion and group identity.

Uncertain and under Quarantine: Toward a Sociology of Medical Ignorance

At the center of the COVID-19 pandemic lies a ubiquitous feature of medicine. Medicine is permeated with ignorance. Seizing this moment to assess the current state of medical sociology, this article articulates a sociology of medical ignorance. We join insights from earlier medical sociological scholarship on uncertainty with emerging research in the sociology of ignorance to help make sense of the omnipresent but sometimes invisible dynamics related to the unknowns in medicine. Then we examine two streams of inquiry with a focus on uncertainty and ignorance-(1) research on the interconnections between technology, medical authority, and ignorance and (2) research on lay expertise within the context of ever-present uncertainties. For decades, and to good effect, medical sociologists have asked, "What does medicine know, and what are the consequences of such knowing?" Going forward, we encourage medical sociologists to examine the unknown in medicine and the consequences of not knowing.

COVID-19 Vaccine Discourse on Twitter: A Content Analysis of Persuasion Techniques, Sentiment and Mis/Disinformation

This research aims to understand the persuasion techniques used in Twitter posts about COVID-19 vaccines by the different vaccine sentiments (i.e., Pro-Vaccine, Anti-Vaccine, and Neutral) using the Elaboration Likelihood Model, Social judgment Theory, and the Extended Parallel Process Model as theoretical frameworks. A content analysis was conducted on a data set of 1,000 Twitter posts. The corpus of Tweets was examined using the persuasion frameworks; tweets that were identified as emanating from bots were further examined. Results found Anti-Vaccine messages predominantly used Anecdotal stories, Humor/Sarcasm, and Celebrity figures as persuasion techniques, while Pro-Vaccine messages primarily used Information, Celebrity figures, and Participation. Results also showed the Anti-Vaccine messages primarily focused on values related to the categories of Safety, Political/Conspiracy Theories, and Choice. Finally, results revealed Anti-Vaccine messages primarily used Perceived Severity and Perceived Susceptibility, which are fear appeal elements. The findings for messages by bots were comparable to the messages in the larger corpus of tweets. Based on the findings, a response framework-Health Information Persuasion Exploration (HIPE)-is proposed to address mis/disinformation and Anti-Vaccine messaging. The results of this study and the HIPE framework can inform a national COVID-19 vaccine health campaign to increase vaccine adoption.

Faster than warp speed: early attention to COVD-19 by anti-vaccine groups on Facebook

Background

The unprecedented rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines has faced SARS-CoV- (COVID-19) vaccine hesitancy, which is partially fueled by the misinformation and conspiracy theories propagated by anti-vaccine groups on social media. Research is needed to better understand the early COVID-19 anti-vaccine activities on social media.

Methods

This study chronicles the social media posts concerning COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines by leading anti-vaccine groups (Dr Tenpenny on Vaccines, the National Vaccine Information Center [NVIC] the Vaccination Information Network [VINE]) and Vaccine Machine in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic (February–May 2020).

Results

Analysis of 2060 Facebook posts showed that anti-vaccine groups were discussing COVID-19 in the first week of February 2020 and were specifically discussing COVID-19 vaccines by mid-February 2020. COVID-19 posts by NVIC were more widely disseminated and showed greater influence than non-COVID-19 posts. Early COVID-19 posts concerned mistrust of vaccine safety and conspiracy theories.

Conclusion

Major anti-vaccine groups were sowing seeds of doubt on Facebook weeks before the US government launched its vaccine development program ‘Operation Warp Speed’. Early anti-vaccine misinformation campaigns outpaced public health messaging and hampered the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.

Dispelling anti-vaxxer misinformation about COVID-19 vaccination

University of Southampton, discusses strategies to enhance vaccination uptake among certain groups in society who are influenced by anti-vaxxers.

Undermining Credibility: The Limited Influence of Online Comments to Vaccine-related News Stories

State-sponsored disinformation campaigns increasingly use anti-vaccine comments to not only undermine public health but to also reduce confidence and participation in a democratic society. Despite these dangers, research has not fully explored whether anti-vaccine comments can achieve these effects. To address this gap, an online survey experiment was conducted using a national sample of 1010 U.S. adults. Participants read a mainstream news article discussing the flu vaccine that included random variations of user comments adapted from a documented state-sponsored disinformation campaign. While exposure to anti-vaccine comments did not affect participants' views of vaccines or their willingness to discuss vaccines, participants holding pro-vaccine views reported lower confidence in news organizations and viewed the journalist who authored their article as less credible. These results suggest that anti-vaccine comments may produce effects that align with the goals of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns.

#Antivaccination on Instagram: A Computational Analysis of Hashtag Activism through Photos and Public Responses

A dramatic increase has been registered in the number of social media posts in photo form as well as in hashtag activism. Hashtags, which manifest thoughts and feelings clearly and concisely, originated on Twitter, where the length of a post is limited; their use, however, has expanded into other social media services, including Instagram. Hashtags, which make it easy to find and express support for posts of interest, have been widely used for online activism, although they have been criticized for fostering confirmation bias. Moreover, hashtag activism in photo form has been relatively understudied. This research analyzed Instagram photos with antivaccination hashtags as an example of hashtag activism through photos. In addition, we examined how the photo features were related to public response, which was manifested via engagement and comment sentiment. The results suggest that the photos which were categorized into “text” took the largest share. It was also found that the major way of claiming was to imprint key messages that persuade people not to vaccinate with remarks from professionals on photos and provide a source of supporting information in the post text with hashtags of antivaccine intention. Various photo features showed associations with engagement and comment sentiment, but the directions of correlation were usually the opposite: these results suggest that engagement and comment sentiment are separate domains that reveal different public responses.

A Cuban Perspective on the Antivaccination Movement

Vaccination is one of the most cost-effective interventions for control of communicable diseases. This health achievement could flounder if measures are not taken by health systems to prioritize immunization, increase vaccination rates and educate health professionals to address public concerns about vaccine safety and efficacy. Parents' refusal to vaccinate their children directly affects public health, because it puts both individual and group immunity in danger; immunization coverage is effective only when high population coverage is attained. The growing number of antivaccination (antivaxxer) groups around the world is alarming, contributing to falling vaccination rates. Troubling consequences include disease outbreaks in several countries globally and in our hemisphere. This article looks at the history and features of antivaxxer movements around the world and proposes ways the Cuban health system, through its National Immunization Program, can address dangers for the population associated with potentially negative infiuences of social-network antivaxxer campaigns. The paper underscores the role of mass and social media, health professional training and sustained competence, and the importance of a vaccine-related adverse events surveillance system. KEYWORDS Vaccination, immunization, antivaccination move-ment, antivaccine groups, primary health care, society, communi-cations media, social media, Cuba.

How scientific reasoning correlates with health-related beliefs and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic?

We examined whether scientific reasoning is associated with health-related beliefs and behaviors over and above general analytic thinking ability in the general public (N = 783, aged 18-84). Health-related beliefs included: anti-vaccination attitudes, COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, and generic health-related epistemically suspect beliefs. Scientific reasoning correlated with generic pseudoscientific and health-related conspiracy beliefs and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs. Crucially, scientific reasoning was a stronger independent predictor of unfounded beliefs (including anti-vaccination attitudes) than general analytic thinking was; however, it had a more modest role in health-related behaviors.

Political storms: Emergent partisan skepticism of hurricane risks

Mistrust of scientific evidence and government-issued guidelines is increasingly correlated with political affiliation. Survey evidence has documented skepticism in a diverse set of issues including climate change, vaccine hesitancy, and, most recently, COVID-19 risks. Less well understood is whether these beliefs alter high-stakes behavior. Combining GPS data for 2.7 million smartphone users in Florida and Texas with 2016 U.S. presidential election precinct-level results, we examine how conservative-media dismissals of hurricane advisories in 2017 influenced evacuation decisions. Likely Trump-voting Florida residents were 10 to 11 percentage points less likely to evacuate Hurricane Irma than Clinton voters (34% versus 45%), a gap not present in prior hurricanes. Results are robust to fine-grain geographic controls, which compare likely Clinton and Trump voters living within 150 m of each other. The rapid surge in media-led suspicion of hurricane forecasts-and the resulting divide in self-protective measures-illustrates a large behavioral consequence of science denialism.

In Defense of Public Health: Peter Hotez, MD, on the Comeback of Preventable Diseases

Preventable diseases are back on the map, and Peter Hotez, MD, Texas' most outspoken vaccine researcher, says physicians need to think globally to help stop the trend.

[Analysis of communication in social networks of the influenza vaccine campaign in Spain]

OBJECTIVE

After arising of anti-vaccine groups and their dissemination, it is necessary to carry out communication campaigns on the benefits of vaccination aimed at citizens, and social networks are a good way to reach a large population. The objective of this article is to determine the communication on Twitter social network during the influenza vaccine campaign in 2018 in Spain.

METHODS

Big data methods were used to collect all tweets about the influenza vaccine during October 23 to December 15. They were determined by cluster analysis, eigenvector and pagerank calculations to determinate who were the most important influencers during the campaign.

RESULTS

A total of 9,147 tweets were collected, of which 71.94% were retweets (RT). Ten groups generated 69.92% of the message traffic on vaccines. The main emotion expressed in the messages about vaccines is the fear of consequences if people do not get vaccinated.

CONCLUSIONS

It was determined that the information on the campaign is favorable to vaccination but is mainly directed by (supposedly) doctors, nurses or anonymous patients who tweet and are followed by many users. The official and institutional campaigns, some of which are re-disseminated in a possibly organized way, are very neglected in the monitoring of society in the networks.

[Parental refusal to mandatory vaccination in Chile. Ethical and legal challenges]

This article is an ethical and legal reflection about the current trend of parents to refuse vaccination of their children under a legal regime that establishes mandatory use of certain vaccines. We analyze the main arguments used by parents to refuse obligatory vaccination, i.e., the fear of the negative effects that vaccination may have on the child; the violation of the "right to autonomy"; religious or pseudo-philosophical beliefs; and the resistance to the State intervention in personal or family mat ters. Therefore, this statement implies a necessary ethical analysis of childhood vaccination. Finally, it will be discussed the responsibility of parents and the State -the health authority- in the care of mi nors. Vaccination is a benefit for both the inoculated and the community, the best preventive policy. At the same time, it is considered a complex case that demands a profound debate, whose purpose should be the transition from an apparent conflict between parents and the State, to convergence for the care of minors. In other words, it is emphasized the fact that parents, beyond the fulfillment of a heterogeneous normative duty, must act motivated by voluntary adherence to the best interest of the child and the community.

Missed vaccinations and critical care admission: all you may wish to know or rediscover-a narrative review

Most vaccines are so effective that they could lead to the control/elimination of the diseases they target and directly impact on intensive care admissions or complications. This is best illustrated by the use of vaccines against Haemophilus influenzae type b, Streptococcus pneumoniae, zoster, yellow fever, Ebola virus, influenza or measles-but also by third party strategies such as maternal, toddler and care-giver immunization. However, each of these vaccine-induced protection is threatened by insufficient vaccine uptake. Here, we briefly discuss how vaccine hesitancy has led to the resurgence of diseases that were considered as controlled and explore the effect of vaccine-hesitant healthcare workers on nosocomial infections. As intensive care physicians are in charge of polymorbid patients, we briefly summarize the current recommendations for vaccinations in high-risk patients. We finally give some perspective on ongoing research, and discuss how institutional policies and intensive care physicians could play a role in increasing the impact of vaccination, overall and in intensive care units.

Top Israeli immunologist's views on vaccines trigger furor

Yehuda Shoenfeld has espoused ideas popular among vaccine skeptics and spoken at their meetings.

Mobilizing Against Measles: Physicians Face the Worst National Outbreak in Decades

Measles - a deadly disease the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declared eradicated in America in 2000 - has made an unwelcome return in 2019. The anti-vaccine movement is weakening Texas' ability to withstand outbreaks, but there are still many things physicians can do to work with patients and communities to improve vaccination rates.

Effectively Counseling Patients Amid the Anti-Vaccination Movement

Primary care physicians are at the frontline of the annual battle against influenza. Many patients arrive at their clinician's office with erroneous information about the vaccine and have already decided to refuse their flu shot before they walk through the clinic doors. In response, practices and providers across the country have amplified their efforts.

Reverse global vaccine dissent

This year, the World Health Organization named vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 global health threats, alongside threats as grave as climate change, antimicrobial resistance, Ebola virus, and the next influenza pandemic. What happened? How did vaccine reluctance and refusal become such a major risk?

Facts to help you keep pace with the vaccine conversation

In the United States, we have a robust system to monitor vaccine safety and an efficient system to compensate those who experience adverse reactions. Here's how it works.

Correcting misinformation by health organizations during measles outbreaks: A controlled experiment

BACKGROUND

During epidemic crises, some of the information the public receives on social media is misinformation. Health organizations are required to respond and correct the information to gain the public's trust and influence it to follow the recommended instructions.

OBJECTIVES

(1) To examine ways for health organizations to correct misinformation concerning the measles vaccination on social networks for two groups: pro-vaccination and hesitant; (2) To examine the types of reactions of two subgroups (pro-vaccination, hesitant) to misinformation correction; and (3) To examine the effect of misinformation correction on these two subgroups regarding reliability, satisfaction, self-efficacy and intentions.

METHODS

A controlled experiment with participants divided randomly into two conditions. In both experiment conditions a dilemma was presented as to sending a child to kindergarten, followed by an identical Facebook post voicing the children mothers' concerns. In the third stage the correction by the health organization is presented differently in two conditions: Condition 1 -common information correction, and Condition 2 -recommended (theory-based) information correction, mainly communicating information transparently and addressing the public's concerns. The study included (n = 243) graduate students from the Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences at Haifa University.

RESULTS

A statistically significant difference was found in the reliability level attributed to information correction by the Health Ministry between the Control condition and Experimental condition (sig<0.001), with the average reliability level of the subjects in Condition 2 (M = 5.68) being considerably higher than the average reliability level of subjects in Condition 1 (4.64). A significant difference was found between Condition 1 and Condition 2 (sig<0.001), with the average satisfaction from the Health Ministry's response of Condition 2 subjects (M = 5.75) being significantly higher than the average satisfaction level of Condition 1 subjects (4.66). Similarly, when we tested the pro and hesitant groups separately, we found that both preferred the response presented in Condition 2.

CONCLUSION

It is very important for the organizations to correct misinformation transparently, and to address the emotional aspects for both the pro-vaccination and the hesitant groups. The pro-vaccination group is not a captive audience, and it too requires a full response that addresses the public's fears and concerns.