There have been multiple claims made online which say that the Pfizer vaccine contains 99% graphene oxide, a substance which is derived from graphite. The claims originate from a Spanish study and have been circulating in English (across the UK and the US), in Spanish and in Portugese. They are not true.

JAKARTA -- Indonesia has overtaken India as Asia's new epicenter for the coronavirus pandemic, with daily infections exceeding 40,000 for two straight days and officials warning that the delta variant is spreading outside the most populous island of Java.

The ability to confront new questions, opportunities, and challenges is of fundamental importance to human progress and the resilience of human societies, yet the capacity of science to meet new demands remains poorly understood. Here we deploy a new measurement framework to investigate the scientific response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the adaptability of science as a whole. We find that science rapidly shifted to engage COVID-19 following the advent of the virus, with scientists across all fields making large jumps from their prior research streams. However, this adaptive response reveals a pervasive "pivot penalty", where the impact of the new research steeply declines the further the scientists move from their prior work. The pivot penalty is severe amidst COVID-19 research, but it is not unique to COVID-19. Rather it applies nearly universally across the sciences, and has been growing in magnitude over the past five decades. While further features condition pivoting, including a scientist's career stage, prior expertise and impact, collaborative scale, the use of new coauthors, and funding, we find that the pivot penalty persists and remains substantial regardless of these features, suggesting the pivot penalty acts as a fundamental friction that governs science's ability to adapt. The pivot penalty not only holds key implications for the design of the scientific system and human capacity to confront emergent challenges through scientific advance, but may also be relevant to other social and economic systems, where shifting to meet new demands is central to survival and success.

A few weeks ago, Fox News host Laura Ingraham did what she has done so often over the past year: scoffed at the danger posed by the coronavirus pandemic.On that night, she was interviewing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). She played a snippet of an interview with a doctor warning that we could see the same pattern with infections that we saw last year: that during the heat of summer, new cases would surge in the Sun Belt and Florida.

False claims about vaccines has proliferated on the social network, and on other sites including Twitter and YouTube, says president

The individual-level effectiveness of vaccines against clinical disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 is well-established. However, few studies have directly examined the effect of COVID-19 vaccines on transmission. We quantified the effectiveness of vaccination with BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA-based vaccine) against household transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Israel. We fit two time-to-event models – a mechanistic transmission model and a regression model – to estimate vaccine effectiveness against susceptibility to infection and infectiousness given infection in household settings. Vaccine effectiveness against susceptibility to infection was 80-88%. For breakthrough infections among vaccinated individuals, the vaccine effectiveness against infectiousness was 41-79%. The overall vaccine effectiveness against transmission was 88.5%. Vaccination provides substantial protection against susceptibility to infection and slightly lower protection against infectiousness given infection, thereby reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to household contacts.One-Sentence Summary Vaccination reduced both the rate of infection with SARS-CoV-2 and transmission to household contacts in Israel.

Nafeez Ahmed reports on an open letter published in April, which was coordinated by a Government advisor and signed by those behind the controversial ‘herd immunity’ declaration

Understanding seasonality can help us to work out when the pandemic is likely to be over

CCDH finds ‘disinformation dozen’ have combined following of 59 million people across multiple social media platforms

As vaccines start to protect older generations, might COVID become a disease of the young?

PM Bennett: Vaccine ‘significantly less’ effective against the Delta variant

International experts say ‘unethical experiment’ could allow vaccine-resistant variants to develop

A Louisiana nurse who questioned the safety of vaccines has died of complications from COVID-19.

A high level of antibodies is associated with a higher level of protection against future infections.

The University of California announced Thursday that COVID-19 vaccinations will be required before the fall term begins for all students, faculty and others, becoming the nation’s largest public university system to mandate the vaccines even though they don’t have full federal approval.

Researchers are alarmed at England's plan to lift COVID restrictions on 'freedom day' amidst soaring infections

A close link has been established between self-harm and suicide risk in adolescents, and increasing attention is given to social media as possibly involved in this relationship. It is important to identify indicators of suicidality (i.e., suicide ideation or attempt) including aspects related to contagion in online and offline social networks and explore the role of social media in the relationship between social circumstances and suicidality in young adolescents with self-harm. This study explored characteristics of Korean adolescents with a recent history of self-harm and identified how behavioral and social features explain lifetime suicidality with emphasis on the impact of social media. Data came from a nationwide online survey among sixth- to ninth-graders with self-harm during the past 12 months (n = 906). We used χ2 tests of independence to explore potential concomitants of lifetime suicidality and employed a multivariate logistic regression model to examine the relationship between the explanatory variables and suicidality. Sensitivity analyses were performed with lifetime suicide attempt in place of lifetime suicidality. 33.9% (n = 306) and 71.2% (n = 642) reported to have started self-harm by the time they were fourth- and six-graders, respectively; 44.3% (n = 400) reported that they have friends who self-harm. Having endorsed moderate/severe forms and multiple forms of self-harm (OR 5.36, p < 0.001; OR 3.13, p < 0.001), having engaged in self-harm for two years or more (OR 2.42, p = 0.001), having friends who self-harm (OR 1.92, p = 0.013), and having been bullied at school were associated with an increased odds of lifetime suicidality (OR 2.08, p = 0.004). Notably, having posted content about one’s self-harm on social media during the past 12 months was associated with an increased odds of lifetime suicidality (OR 3.15, p < 0.001), whereas having seen related content in the same period was not. Sensitivity analyses yielded similar results with lifetime suicide attempt, supporting our findings from the logistic regression. The current study suggests that self-harm may be prevalent from early adolescence in South Korea with assortative gathering. The relationship of vulnerable adolescents’ social circumstances to suicide risk may be compounded by the role of social media. As the role of social media can be linked to both risk (i.e., contagion) and benefit (i.e., social connection and support), pre-existing vulnerabilities alongside SH and what online communication centers on should be a focus of clinical attention.

Countries all over the globe have implemented mandatory social distancing measures in an attempt to suppress and control the spread of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This enforced period of isolation, disruption to normal training routines and competition cancellation, could be having an adverse effect on the mental health and wellbeing of athletes. This study sought to explore the perceived impact of the COVID-19 social distancing measures on athlete wellbeing. Fourteen elite athletes who were unable to train or compete due to government imposed lockdown measures were recruited to participate in this qualitative study. Utilising the photo elicitation method, participants were asked to take a series of photographs that represented their experiences as athletes living in lockdown. These photographs were used to guide discussions in follow up unstructured interviews. Reflexive inductive thematic analysis identified three main themes that captured athletes’ experience of social distancing measures and the implications for their wellbeing: (1) threats to wellbeing; (2) adapting routines and maintaining motivation; and (3) reflecting on participation in competitive elite sport. The initial sudden loss of sport in the athlete’s lives posed a threat to their wellbeing, but over the duration of the lockdown period the athletes developed numerous strategies to protect their wellbeing. Furthermore, their time away from sport encouraged them to reflect on their athletic identity and to make life changes that would protect their wellbeing during the rest of the lockdown period and when they returned to sport. A number of immediate practical recommendations are offered for athlete support personnel working with athletes during the crisis, these include developing self-care strategies and social networks, adapting routines, setting new goals and encouraging the pursuit of dual-careers. Future research is encouraged to investigate how practitioners can deliver effective psychological support through tele-consulting, and to consider whether their support is best focused on therapeutic counselling or mental skills training during the pandemic.

Given the negative consequences of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on public health, his study aimed at investigating: (1) the differences between adults with and without chronic illness in buying behavior, vaccination intention, pandemic worry, and the health belief model (HBM) components; (2) the HBM components as mediators of the relationship between pandemic worry and vaccination intention. The sample consisted of 864 adults (66.6% females, Mage = 47.61, SD = 9.23), of which 20.5% reported having a chronic illness. Associations between pandemic worry, vaccination intention, and HBM were ascertained using correlation and mediation analyses. Individuals with chronic illness reported a higher level of pandemic worry, higher levels of perceived threat, greater benefits from vaccination, had lower self-efficacy and bought more medicine and sanitary/hygienic products. No significant differences were observed regarding vaccination intention, barriers against vaccination, and changes in food buying behavior. We found that the relationship between pandemic worry and vaccination intention was partially mediated by the perceived threat of disease and the benefits of vaccination. Pandemic worry predicted vaccination intention directly but also through the contribution of the perceived threat of disease and the benefits of vaccination. These findings suggest that presenting evidence of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and the benefits of having the vaccine (especially for vulnerable groups, such as chronic illness patients) will encourage the population to follow vaccination recommendations.

The spontaneous formation and subsequent growth, dissolution, merger and competitionof social groups bears similarities to physical phase transitions in metastable finite systems.We examine three different scenarios, percolation, spinodal decomposition and nucleation,to describe the formation of social groups of varying size and density. In our agent-basedmodel, we use a feedback between the opinions of agents and their ability to establish links.Groups can restrict further link formation, but agents can also leave if costs exceed the groupbenefits. We identify the critical parameters for costs/benefits and social influence to obtaineither one large group or the stable coexistence of several groups with different opinions.Analytic investigations allow to derive different critical densities that control the formationand coexistence of groups. Our novel approach sheds new light on the early stage of networkgrowth and the emergence of large connected components.

In standard times, approximately 20% of children and youth experience significant emotional, behavioral, or social challenges. During COVID-19, however, over half of parents have reported mental health symptoms in their children. Specifically, depressive symptoms, anxiety, contamination obsessions, family well-being challenges, and behavioral concerns have emerged globally for children during the pandemic. Without treatment or prevention, such concerns may hinder positive development, personal life trajectory, academic success, and inhibit children from meeting their potential. A school-based resiliency program for children (DREAM) for children was developed, and the goal of this study was to collaborate with stakeholders to translate it into an online-live hybrid. Our team developed a methodology to do this based on Knowledge Translation-Integration (KTI), which incorporates stakeholder engagement throughout the entire research to action process. KTI aims to ensure that programs are acceptable, sustainable, feasible, and credible. Through collaboration with parents and school board members, qualitative themes of concerns, recommendations and validation were established, aiding in meaningful online-live translation. Even though the original program was developed for intellectually gifted children, who are at greater risk for mental health concerns, stakeholders suggested using the program for both gifted and non-gifted children, given the universal applicability of the tools, particularly during this pandemic time period when mental health promotion is most relevant. An online-live approach would allow students studying at home and those studying in the classroom to participate in the program. Broader implications of this study include critical recommendations for the development of both online-live school programs in general, as well as social-emotional literacy programs for children.

During sudden school closures in spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers had to move to distance teaching. This unprecedented situation could be expected to influence teacher well-being and schools as organizations. This article reports a qualitative study that aims at understanding how changes in teachers’ professional lives that were related to school closure affected Swiss primary teachers’ professional well-being. In semi-structured online-interviews, 21 teachers from 15 schools sampled by snowball method reported their experiences during school closure and distance teaching and how this situation influenced their professional well-being. Results showed that medium to high levels of teacher well-being could accompany a general negative evaluation of the move to distance teaching. Factors such as high work-load, social distancing and feelings of lack of competence and self-efficacy were among the most aversive aspects of distance teaching and associated with deteriorating professional well-being. Among a plethora of factors that supported teachers in maintaining their well-being, contextual work-related aspects such as school resources, collegial support or leadership support along with individual aspects such as resilience, coping strategies, and clear work structures were important. Additionally, it was found that teacher well-being was nourished by positive experiences with the new forms of distance teaching and feelings of professional mastery. Despite methodological limitations (snowball sampling, retrospective interviews), the findings of this study could inform schools and authorities about what is needed to support teacher well-being and might help to develop organizational strategies that aim at preventing harmful declines in teacher well-being during challenging and difficult times such as a pandemic.

The rapid and unplanned change to teaching and learning in the online format brought by COVID-19 has likely impacted many, if not all, aspects of university students' lives worldwide. To contribute to the investigation of this change, this study focuses on the impact of the pandemic on student well-being, which has been found to be as important to student lifelong success as their academic achievement. Student well-being has been linked to their engagement and performance in curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities, intrinsic motivation, satisfaction, meaning making, and mental health. The purpose of this study was to examine how student perceptions of their degree completion and future job prospects during the pandemic impact their well-being and what role university support plays in this relationship. We used the conservation of resources theory to frame our study and to develop five hypotheses that were later tested via structural equation modeling. Data were collected from 2,707 university students in France, Germany, Russia, and UK via an online survey. The results showed that university support provided by instructors and administration plays a mediating role in the relationship between the perceived impact of COVID-19 on degree completion and future job prospects and levels of student well-being. Student well-being is decreased by their concerns for their degree completion but not by their concerns for future job prospects. In turn, concerns for future job prospects affect student well-being over time. These results suggest that in a “new normal,” universities could increase student well-being by making support to student studies a priority, especially for undergraduates. Also, universities should be aware of the students' changing emotional responses to crisis and ensure visibility and accessibility of student support.

The presence of pathogens has imposed constant threats to human survival and reproduction. Selective pressures exerted by pathogens have shaped our array of immune functions—including physiological, psychological, and behavioral immune systems. Pathogens and epidemics have plagued humankind and our ancestors from their dawn, yet despite advances in hygiene and medicine, these threats remain with us today. In 2020–2021, pathogens have become a particularly salient part of everyday life as we have faced a worldwide outbreak of SARS-CoV-2. We launched this Research Topic with the specific recognition that evolutionary approaches, which acknowledge the biological forces shaping and underlying human cognition and behavior, are uniquely positioned within psychology and behavioral science to offer insights on the responses to and outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic. The collection of 14 articles published in this Research Topic has surpassed our original vision, introducing diverse evolutionary perspectives on various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Varella et al. captured the importance of an evolutionary approach to COVID-19 by stating that “Everything in pandemics is stamp collection except in the light of evolution.” Research focused on pandemics without an explicit evolutionary framework can also be very valuable as it can offer the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that evolutionarily oriented researchers need to integrate in their quest to understand the bigger picture.

The present research studied Chinese and Euro-Canadian students during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on their affect, optimism, well-being, and meaning in life. The results revealed both differences and similarities across cultures. As predicted, Chinese participants reported more positive affect and less negative affect, higher optimism, higher state psychological well-being, and higher meaning presence, compared to Euro-Canadian participants. The findings were replicated after a week’s delay. Analyses on longitudinal data showed that state optimism, state well-being, and meaning presence influenced one another over time. These variables also mediated the cultural differences in one another. These results are consistent with cultural work on naïve dialecticism and non-linear lay theory of change. Results also demonstrate underlying relationships among the constructs that are common to both cultural groups. Broadly, the present research highlights the impact of culture on people’s response to challenging life situations and the mechanisms underlying these cultural differences.

The public appears to trust scientists, the WHO, and the traditional media rather than state announcements

Background: As mass vaccination campaigns against COVID-19 accelerate worldwide, there remains only limited evidence regarding vaccine effectiveness (VE) among pregnant women. Pregnant women have been shown to be at risk for severe COVID-19, resulting in adverse obstetrics outcomes, and their immune system is known to undergo alterations during pregnancy. Phase III clinical trials of the approved mRNA COVID-19 vaccines excluded pregnant women, yet current guidelines encourage offering the vaccine to pregnant women. In this study, we examine data from Israel’s largest healthcare organization to evaluate the effectiveness of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine among pregnant women. 

Vaccination is one of the most effective public health interventions. We investigate the impact of vaccination activities for Haemophilus influenzae type b, hepatitis B, human papillomavirus, Japanese encephalitis, measles, Neisseria meningitidis serogroup A, rotavirus, rubella, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and yellow fever over the years 2000–2030 across 112 countries.

Unnecessary, disproportionate, and misguided

The principal mode by which people are infected with SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is through exposure to respiratory droplets carrying infectious virus. It is possible for people to be infected through contact with contaminated surfaces or objects (fomites), but the risk is generally considered to be low.

In the week after the U.S. failed to reach President Biden’s July 4 vaccination goal, the conversation of what to do next has yielded increasingly preposterous suggestions. Slowing vaccine rates have many officials worried that the optimal immunity levels of 85 to 90 percent may not be reached any time soon. But in the flurry of proposals, there is one option of which the American people should be exceptionally wary: a federal vaccine mandate.

An newly identified immune molecule raises hopes for a vaccine against a range of viruses related to SARS-CoV-2.

Workers are anxious because the coronavirus is still infecting people. Here are ways to evaluate the safety of a shared work space

What was claimed According to a University of Bristol study, mask-wearing by large numbers of people can reduce the R rate by 0.25. Our verdict The study estimated that if everyone in a given population wore a mask it could lead to a median reduction of the R number of 25%, not a flat reduction of 0.25.

Children get long COVID too, but researchers are still working to determine how frequently and how severely.

The structure of contact networks affects the likelihood of disease spread at the population scaleand the risk of infection at any given node. Though this has been well characterized for both theoreticaland empirical networks for the spread of epidemics on completely susceptible networks, the long-termimpactofnetworkstructureonriskofinfectionwithanendemicpathogen,wherenodescanbeinfectedmorethanonce,hasbeenlesswellcharacterized. Here,weanalyzedetailedrecordsofthetransportationofcattlebetweenfarmsinTurkeytocharacterizetheglobalandlocalattributesoftheshipmentsnetworkbetween 2007-2012. We build an aggregated static directed - weighted network, using the informationabout source-destination of shipments and the frequency of shipments between farms as weights. Wethenstudythecorrelationbetweennetworkpropertiesandthelikelihoodofinfectionwith,orexposureto, foot-and-mouth (FMD) disease over the same time period using recorded outbreaks. The shipmentsnetworkshowspropertiesof"small-worldness"inthattheshortestpathlengthissmall(similartothatofarandom-equivalentnetworksensemble),combinedwithalargeclusteringcoefficient(muchlargerthanonarandomnetwork). Thedegreedistributionisscale-freeovertheintermediaterangeofdegrees,buthas an exponential cut-off for high degrees. Further, high degree nodes disproportionately have morefrequentshipmentsonaverage. Inaddition,theshipmentsnetworkillustratesstrongmodularstructure,where farms are more preferentially attached to other geographically proximate farms than to distantfarms; and lack of assortativity, i.e. farms connecting other farms regardless of their connections. Thiscombination of features has not been previously observed in other reported networks of shipments.Locally, the shipments network shows signs of spatial constraints, with relatively few long-distance con-nections, and a strong similarity to other spatially constrained networks. We find that farms that wereeither infected or at high risk of infection with FMD (within one link from an infected farm) had highervalues of centrality (eigenvector centrality, betweenness centrality, degree, coreness); farms that werenever less than 2 links from an infected farm had disproportionately low centrality. However, the corre-lation of the rankings of farms shows that central farms (high eigenvector centrality) are not necessarilythosewithmoreconnectionsto/fromit(in/outdegree). Severalfarmswithinfluentialconnections(higheigenvector centrality) serve asbridgesof densely connected farms (high betweenness centrality); i.e.,areconnectionsbetweenmodules. TheseresultssuggestthattodetectFMDspread,surveillanceeffortscould be focused preferentially on farms with centralities greater than the mean

Canada's vaccination program is sound, experts say after WHO remarks were taken out of context

Pregnant women are being given dangerously mixed messaging from health professionals, with figures suggesting a “very high” vaccine hesitancy among the vulnerable group, according to campaigners.

The agency cites link to a small number of Guillain-Barré cases after vaccination but says the shot’s benefits outweigh the risk

The backfire effect is when a correction increases belief in the very misconception it is attempting to correct, and it is often used as a reason not to correct misinformation. The current study aimed to test whether correcting misinformation increases belief more than a no-correction control. Furthermore, we aimed to examine whether item-level differences in backfire rates were associated with test-retest reliability or theoretically meaningful factors. These factors included worldview-related attributes, namely perceived importance and strength of pre-correction belief, and familiarity-related attributes, namely perceived novelty and the illusory truth effect. In two nearly identical experiments, we conducted a longitudinal pre/post design with N = 388 and 532 participants. Participants rated 21 misinformation items and were assigned to a correction condition or test-retest control. We found that no items backfired more in the correction condition compared to test-retest control or initial belief ratings. Item backfire rates were strongly negatively correlated with item reliability (⍴ = -.61 / -.73) and did not correlate with worldview-related attributes. Familiarity-related attributes were significantly correlated with backfire rate, though they did not consistently account for unique variance beyond reliability. While there have been previous papers highlighting the non-replicable nature of backfire effects, the current findings provide a potential mechanism for this poor replicability. It is crucial for future research into backfire effects to use reliable measures, report the reliability of their measures, and take reliability into account in analyses. Furthermore, fact-checkers and communicators should not avoid giving corrective information due to backfire concerns.

Anyone entering a restaurant, café, shopping centre, hospital or taking a long-distance train in France will have to show a special Covid health pass from August, Emmanuel Macron has announced, as France tightens restrictions to contain the surging Delta variant.

New research published in Applied Cognitive Psychology provides evidence that critical thinking skills are negatively related to belief in conspiracy theories. In other words, the study suggests that people with greater critical thinking skills are less likely to believe that terrorist attacks are being covertly directed by a country’s own government or that mind-control technology is secretly being used to control the population.

What is already known about this topic?An elevated risk for myocarditis among mRNA COVID-19 vaccinees has been observed, particularly in males aged 12–29 years.What is added by this report?On June 23, 2021, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices concluded that the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination to individual persons and at the population level clearly outweighed the risks of myocarditis after vaccination.What are the implications for public health practice?Continued use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in all recommended age groups will prevent morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 that far exceed the number of cases of myocarditis expected. Information regarding the risk for myocarditis with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines should be disseminated to providers to share with vaccine recipients

BackgroundBNT162b2 was shown to be 92% effective in preventing COVID-19. Prioritizing vaccine rollout, and achievement of herd immunity depend on SARS-CoV-2 transmission reduction. The vaccine's effect on infectivity is thus a critical priority.MethodsAmong all 9650 HCW of a large tertiary medical center in Israel, we calculated the prevalence of positive SARS-CoV-2 qRT-PCR cases with asymptomatic presentation, tested following known or presumed exposure and the infectious subset (N-gene-Ct-value<30) of these. Additionally, infection incidence rates were calculated for symptomatic cases and infectious (Ct<30) cases. Vaccine effectiveness within three months of vaccine rollout was measured as one minus the relative risk or rate ratio, respectively. To further assess infectiousness, we compared the mean Ct-value and the proportion of infections with a positive SARS-CoV-2 antigen test of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated. The correlation between IgG levels within the week before detection and Ct level was assessed.FindingsReduced prevalence among fully vaccinated HCW was observed for (i) infections detected due to exposure, with asymptomatic presentation (VE(i)=65.1%, 95%CI 45-79%), (ii) the presumed infectious (Ct<30) subset of these (VE(ii)=69.6%, 95%CI 43-84%) (iii) never-symptomatic infections (VE(iii)=72.3%, 95%CI 48-86%), and (iv) the presumed infectious (Ct<30) subset (VE(iv)=83.0%, 95%CI 51-94%).Incidence of (v) symptomatic and (vi) symptomatic-infectious cases was significantly lower among fully vaccinated vs. unvaccinated individuals (VE(v)= 89.7%, 95%CI 84-94%, VE(vi)=88.1%, 95%CI 80-95%).The mean Ct-value was significantly higher in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated (27.3±1.2 vs. 22.2±1.0, p<0.001) and the proportion of positive SARS-CoV-2 antigen tests was also significantly lower among vaccinated vs. unvaccinated PCR-positive HCW (80% vs. 31%, p<0.001). Lower infectivity was correlated with higher IgG concentrations (R=0.36, p=0.01).InterpretationThese results suggest that BNT162b2 is moderately to highly effective in reducing infectivity, via preventing infection and through reducing viral shedding.FundingSheba Medical Center, Israel

Policy-makers and the general public have made decisions using COVID-19 data visualizations that have affected the health of the global population. However, the impact that such wide use of data visualizations has had on people's beliefs about their personal risk for COVID-19 is unclear. We conducted two experiments (N = 2,549) during the height of the COVID-19 epidemic in the United States to examine if real-time COVID-19 visualizations influenced participants' beliefs about the risk of the pandemic to themselves and others. This work also examined the impact of two elements of COVID-19 data visualizations, data properties (cumulative- vs. incident-death metrics) and uncertainty visualization techniques (historical data only, and forecasts with no uncertainty, vs. nine uncertainty visualization techniques). The results revealed that viewing COVID-19 visualizations with rising trends resulted in participants believing themselves and others at greater risk than before viewing the COVID-19 visualizations. Further, uncertainty visualization techniques that showed six or more models evoked the largest increases in risk estimates compared to the visualizations tested. These results could inform the design of public pandemic risk communication.

Covid-status certification – certificates for those who test negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, test positive for antibodies, or who have been vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 – has been proposed to enable safer access to a range of activities. Realising these benefits will depend in part upon the behavioural and social impacts of certification. The aim of this rapid review was to describe public attitudes towards certification, and its possible impact on uptake of testing and vaccination, protective behaviours, and crime.

To mitigate the burden of COVID-19 on healthcare systems and to reduce infections and associated deaths, public health measures including physical distancing and mask-wearing have been recommended. We know little regarding important predictors of adherence and motivation to engage in public guidelines among at-risk populations, such as adolescents. Objectives. The purpose of the present study was to examine differences in adherence to public health measures across provinces, and to examine developmental differences in both adherence and motivations to engage in public health among adolescents and adults across Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods. Participants from two samples, including adolescents (N=788, 56.7% female, M=15.68, SD=1.36) and adults (N=578, 94.6% female; M=45.12, SD=5.83) completed online quesionnaires during the summer 2020. Results. Both adolescents and adults in provinces mandating masks were more likely to wear a mask. There were no provincial differences in adherence to social distancing. Adolescents were more likely to be motivated by social reasons, while adults were motivated by social responsibility. For both adults and adoeslcents, social responsibility was associated with more adherence to public health measures, while social concerns(e.g., maintaining social ties, social judgment) was associated with less adherence. Conclusion. Adherence to public health measures was mixed, with most participants reporting socializing in-person with people outside of their home. At the time of the survey, provincial mask mandates were associated with more mask-wearing. Results also suggest social responsibility was the main predictor of increased adherence to public health measures.

In the past decade, the social and behavioral sciences underwent a methodological revolution, offering practical prescriptions for improving the replicability and reproducibility of research results. One key to reforming science is a simple and scalable practice: pre-registration. Pre-registration constitutes pre-specifying an analysis plan prior to data collection. A growing chorus of articles discusses the prescriptive, field-wide benefits of pre-registration. To increase adoption, however, scientists need to know who currently pre-registers and understand perceived barriers to doing so. Thus, we weigh costs and benefits of pre-registration. Our survey of researchers reveals generational differences in who pre-registers and uncertainty regarding how pre-registration benefits individual researchers. We leverage these data to directly address researchers’ uncertainty by clarifying why pre-registration improves the research process itself. Finally, we discuss how to pre-register and compare available resources. The present work examines the who, why, and how of pre-registration in order to weigh the costs and benefits of pre-registration to researchers and motivate continued adoption.

Ideological convictions are known to shape attitudes and behaviour in various life domains. Based on existing psychological analyses of political ideology, we use an ideological dual-process approach to explain people’s vaccine hesitancy, in which distinguish between authoritarian (RWA) and hierarchical (SDO) facets of conservatism as potential antecedents of vaccination attitudes. In a large international study performed in Germany (N = 1210), Poland (N = 1209), and the United Kingdom (N = 1222), we tested the roles of SDO and RWA in predicting vaccination hesitancy, as well as cross-cultural universality of the the pattern of relationships between political ideologies and attitudes toward vaccines. In all three countries, high SDO was associated with higher vaccine hesitancy, whereas high RWA was associated with lower vaccine hesitancy. These findings contribute to our understanding of the distinctive roles that these two facets of right-wing ideology might play in the domain of public health.

B.1.617 is, of course, worrisome and may gain ground quickly on other lineages, although its lack of significant immune escape makes me less worried about large-scale spread in the US. However, there is still a large unvaccinated population in which B.1.617 may drive cases. 10/10

Because the genomic data is necessarily lagged, this is looking back to the beginning of May and the last 3 weeks of declines in cases are not included. However, even here, there are some encouraging trends of absolute growth of P.1 starting to level off. 9/10

Doing so with this latest data gives the following picture where it's clear that non-variant viruses have been declining throughout the spring, while variant viruses have been responsible for multiple state-level epidemics (B.1.526 in NY, B.1.1.7 in MI, MD and MN). 8/10

Although frequencies are useful to assess competitiveness of different variants, we're interested in case counts to assess whether a variant may be driving an epidemic. Here, I'm using genomic data to partition case counts as described previously. 7/10

Looking across these nine states, the current ranking of logistic growth rate seems to be B.1.617 > P.1 > B.1.1.7 > B.1.526 > B.1.351. 6/10

I'm now watching Illinois in particular where P.1 is at ~30% frequency and B.1.1.7 is at ~60% frequency to see if P.1 starts to displace B.1.1.7 there. 5/10

Relative fitness becomes more clear as variants are placed in direct competition. B.1.1.7 and B.1.526 had been increasing rapidly in frequency in New York. However, since they reached high frequency they've been in more direct competition and B.1.1.7 has edged out B.1.526. 4/10

Using genomic data shared to @GISAID, we can plot frequency of different variant lineages through time and across states to get a sense of competitive dynamics. Here, I'm plotting lineage frequency on a logit axis, so that logistic growth is visible as a straight-line fit. 3/10

If we look at state-level cases with a log-axis we can see exponential growth and then exponential decline visible as straight lines on the log plot. Some states have had recent precipitous declines (NY, MA, MI), while others have been more stable (WA, CO, OR). 2/10

#COVID19 cases in the US reported by @CDCGov have continued their week-after-week exponential decline that began in mid-April. This is exceptionally welcome news, although I'm now watching closely for variants driving sub-epidemics despite overall cases falling. 1/10

Face masks slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but it has been unknown whether masks influence how individuals communicate emotion through facial expressions. Masks could influence how accurately—or how quickly—individuals perceive expressions, and how rapidly they accumulate evidence for emotion. Over two independent pre-registered studies, conducted three and six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, participants judged expressions of 6 emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) with the lower or upper face “masked” or unmasked. Participants in Study 1 (N = 228) identified expressions above chance with lower face masks. However, they were less likely—and slower—to correctly identify these expressions versus without masks, and they accumulated evidence for emotion more slowly—via decreased drift rate in drift-diffusion modeling. This pattern replicated and intensified three months later in Study 2 (N = 264). These data could inform interventions to promote mask wearing by addressing concerns with emotion communication.

I see countries are introducing reactive bilateral travel bans again...

Pfizer Inc.’s vaccine was less effective at keeping people from getting the coronavirus in Israel in recent weeks, but it continues to provide a strong shield against severe Covid-19, according to government data.The vaccine protected 64% of people against the illness between June 6 and early July, down from a previous 94%. The drop was observed as the delta variant was spreading in Israel, the Health Ministry said. It also coincided with the lifting of virus restrictions at the start of June.

Hesitancy towards the coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine, based on the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey covering the period 26 May to 20 June 2021.

This study examined the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on American daily life. In May 2020, adults living in the United States (N=345; 63% European American; 64% male) completed an online survey on their functioning, psychological stress, and health locus of control. Inductive thematic analysis was used to identify themes in qualitative responses about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Themes included, but were not limited to, impacts on employment and finances (“I have not been paid a dime for the last eight weeks”), physical distancing practices (“I have left my neighborhood three times in eight weeks”), work environment (“I am working from home”), emotional well-being (“I feel stressed, anxious, and nervous pretty much all the time”), and social support (“I miss seeing and being with my friends and family”). Results showed moderate correlations between changes in mood and concentration, time spent caregiving and quality of caregiving, quality of social interactions and quality of work, quality of social interactions and mood, time spent working and quality of work, and number of social interactions and quality of social interactions. Being an essential worker and holding beliefs that health is determined by others and chance but not themselves was associated with increased psychological stress; holding beliefs that health is determined by others and chance also predicted changes in functioning. These findings supplement existing knowledge about the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight opportunities for promoting well-being and functioning as Americans recover from consequent health, economic, and social stressors.

Is containing COVID-19 a requirement for preserving the economy? My analysis suggests: probably not. In the US, there is no correlation between Covid deaths & changes in unemployment rates. However, blue states are much more likely to have higher increases in unemployment.

Two doses of the new CoronaVac vaccine made in China have an efficacy of 83.5% against symptomatic covid-19, an interim analysis has shown.1

The novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 that first emerged in Wuhan, China, in Nov-Dec 2019 has already impacted a significant proportion of the world population. Governments of many countries imposed quarantines and social distancing measures in 2020, many of which remain in place, to mitigate the spread of the SARS-Cov-2 virus causing the COVID-19 disease. The direct impact of COVID-19 on people infected with the virus, their families and the health care workers, as well as the impact of the mitigation measures such as quarantine, social distancing, and self-isolation on the rest of the population have contributed to a global mental health pandemic, including anxiety, depression, panic attacks, posttraumatic stress symptoms, psychosis, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and suicidality. These effects are present acutely (for example, due to fear of contamination or losing loved ones, effects of quarantine/isolation, withdrawal of community and social services, etc.) and may continue long after the pandemic is over (for example, due to bereavement, unemployment, financial losses, etc). The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered mental health problems in people without previous history of mental illness, as well as worsened the symptoms in those with pre-existing psychiatric diagnosis. Therefore, the global effort is called for to deal with this mental health pandemic secondary to COVID-19 itself to address the emergence of new as well as the exacerbation of the existing mental health issues. Conversely, this global context provides an extraordinary opportunity for studying individual differences in response to and resilience in the face of physical and psychological threat, challenge to “normal” way of life, and long-term uncertainty. In this viewpoint article we outline the particular suitability of mindfulness, its skills and mechanisms, as an approach to the prevention and management of mental health issues, as well as to the promotion of well-being and building the foundations of adaptability and flexibility in dealing with the long-term uncertainty and profound changes to the social, economic, and possibly political systems as this pandemic continues to unfold.

A single exposure to statements is typically enough to increase their perceived truth. This Truth-by-Repetition (TBR) effect has long been assumed to occur only with statements whose truth value is unknown to participants. Contrary to this hypothesis, recent research found a TBR effect with statements known to be false. Of note, a recent model even posits that repetition could increase the perceived truth of highly implausible statements. As for now, however, no empirical evidence has reported a TBR effect for highly implausible statements. Here, we reasoned that one may be found provided a sensitive truth measure is used and statements are repeated more than just once. In a preregistered experiment, participants judged the truth of highly implausible statements on a 100-point scale, and these statements were either new to them or had been presented five times before the judgment task. We observed a TBR effect: truth judgments were higher for repeated statements than for new ones - even if all statements were still judged as false. Exploratory analyses additionally suggest that all participants were not equally prone to this TBR effect: about half the participants showed no or even a reverse effect. Overall, the results provide direct empirical evidence to the claim that repetition can increase perceived truth even for highly implausible statements, although not equally so for all participants and not to the point of making the statements look true.

More than 100 scientists and doctors say move risks creating a generation with problems due to long Covid

Ukraine has been the target of a long-running Russian disinformation campaign. We investigate susceptibility to this pro-Kremlin disinformation from a cognitive science perspective. Is greater analytic thinking associated with less belief in disinformation, as per classical theories of reasoning? Or does analytic thinking amplify motivated reasoning, such that analytic thinking is associated with more polarized beliefs (and thus more belief in pro-Kremlin disinformation among pro-Russia Ukrainians)? In online (N=1,974) and face-to-face representative (N=9,474) samples of Ukrainians, we find support for the classical reasoning account. Analytic thinking, as measured using the Cognitive Reflection Test, was associated with greater ability to discern truth from disinformation – even for Ukrainians who are strongly oriented towards Russia. We found similar, albeit somewhat weaker, results when operationalizing analytic thinking using the self-report Active Open-minded Thinking scale. These results demonstrate a similar pattern to prior work using American participants. Thus, the positive association between analytic thinking and the ability to discern truth versus falsehood generalizes to the qualitatively different information environment of post-communist Ukraine. Despite low trust in government and media, weak journalistic standards, and years of exposure to Russian disinformation, Ukrainians who engage in more analytic thinking are better able to tell truth from falsehood.

A growing share of infections among unvaccinated youths in countries with high vaccination rates is putting the spotlight on the role of young people in the pandemic.

Do we preferentially learn from outcomes that confirm our choices? This is one of the most basic, and yet consequence-bearing, questions concerning reinforcement learning. In recent years, we investigated this question in a series of studies implementing increasingly complex behavioral protocols. The learning rates fitted in experiments featuring partial or complete feedback, as well as free and forced choices, were systematically found to be consistent with a choice-confirmation bias. This result is robust across a broad range of outcome contingencies and response modalities. One of the prominent behavioral consequences of the confirmatory learning rate pattern is choice hysteresis: that is the tendency of repeating previous choices, despite contradictory evidence. As robust and replicable as they have proven to be, these findings were (legitimately) challenged by a couple of studies pointing out that a choice-confirmatory pattern of learning rates may spuriously arise from not taking into consideration an explicit choice autocorrelation term in the model. In the present study, we re-analyze data from four previously published papers (in total nine experiments; N=363), originally included in the studies demonstrating (or criticizing) the choice-confirmation bias in human participants. We fitted two models: one featured valence-specific updates (i.e., different learning rates for confirmatory and disconfirmatory outcomes) and one additionally including an explicit choice autocorrelation process (gradual perseveration). Our analysis confirms that the inclusion of the gradual perseveration process in the model significantly reduces the estimated choice-confirmation bias. However, in all considered experiments, the choice-confirmation bias remains present at the meta-analytical level, and significantly different from zero in most experiments. Our results demonstrate that the choice-confirmation bias resists the inclusion of an explicit choice autocorrelation term, thus proving to be a robust feature of human reinforcement learning. We conclude by discussing the psychological plausibility of the gradual perseveration process in the context of these behavioral paradigms and by pointing to additional computational processes that may play an important role in estimating and interpreting the computational biases under scrutiny.

Do people have privileged and direct access to their own minds, or do we infer our own thoughts and feelings indirectly, as we would infer the mental states of others? In this study we shed light on this question by examining how mentalizing ability—the set of processes involved in understanding other people’s thoughts and feelings—relates to metacognitive efficiency—the ability to reflect on one’s own performance. In a general population sample (N = 477) we showed that mentalizing ability and self-reported socio-communicative skills are positively correlated with perceptual metacognitive efficiency, even after controlling for choice accuracy. By modelling the trial-by-trial formation of confidence we showed that mentalizing ability predicted the association between response times and confidence, suggesting those with better mentalizing ability were more sensitive to inferential cues to self-performance. In a second study we showed that both mentalizing and metacognitive efficiency were lower in autistic participants (N = 40) when compared with age, gender, IQ, and education-matched non-autistic participants. Together, our results suggest that the ability to understand other people’s minds predicts self-directed metacognition.

Overprecision--excessive faith in the accuracy of one's beliefs--may be the most consequential of the many biases in judgment. We offer a theory to explain the ubiquity of overprecision as a consequence of finite cognitive capacity. The individual who considers only a subset of all possibilities or hypotheses will come away excessively confident in focal hypotheses. In our theory, individuals consider only a subset of the "true" (modeled) probability space, but correctly apprehend relative probabilities. The resulting beliefs follow a simple formula in which the probability assigned to all considered hypotheses are scaled up by a constant factor. We show that this framework rationalizes five well-known behavioral phenomena concerning overprecision of beliefs and identifies interventions to improve calibration in judgment.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated restrictions caused significant stress and anxiety among many, but individual effects of the pandemic vary widely. We examine if specific forms of anxiety (generalized vs. social) predict distinct trajectories of anxiety, perceived stress, and COVID-related worries during three early months of the pandemic. As part of a longitudinal study (N=291), adolescents’ (n=194) levels of social and generalized anxiety were assessed via parent- and self-reports and clinical diagnostic interviews. In young adulthood (n=164), anxiety, stress, and COVID-related worries were assessed three times during the pandemic. Pre-pandemic generalized anxiety predicted higher initial levels and maintenance of anxiety, stress, and COVID-related worries during the pandemic. In contrast, pre-pandemic social anxiety predicted lower initial levels of anxiety, stress, and COVID-related worries followed by increases in anxiety and stress. Our results highlight the importance of understanding how pre-pandemic psychological factors influence individuals’ responses to the pandemic.

In series of studies, we sought to assess the extent to which social media use was related to the false consensus effect. Study 1 (N = 493) and Study 2 (N = 364, preregistered) assessed the relationship between social media use and the false consensus effect for three psychological characteristics: political attitudes, personality traits, and fundamental social motives. Study 3 (N = 875) explored lay beliefs about the strength of the relationships between social media use and false consensus effects. Across studies, we found that heavier use of social media was associated with stronger false consensus effects. However, these effects were smaller in magnitude than lay beliefs about these linkages.

The reality on the ground is likely much higher because states and private labs are taking weeks to report testing results to the CDC.

One of the earliest people to get Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine was a nurse in Tennessee, who fainted after getting the shot on live television in December. The incident sparked rumors that she had died and that the vaccine was a tool of genocide. Five months later the nurse, who is not dead, continues to be bombarded by messages from strangers on social media. They send condolences to her family or demand details about the incident. Oddly, they often do so in German, Italian, or Portuguese.The international fixation on this case follows what is becoming a common pattern. U.S.-based social media users begin spreading misleading or false information, which then moves to other countries, according to researchers studying the rumors. The U.S. may not yet have figured out an efficient way to distribute shots to other countries, but it has become a major exporter of misinformation.

xclusive: Almost half of those refusing vaccine say a lack of information is the problem

This article is more than 3 months oldExclusive: hopes raised for vaccine safety, although children, some of whom have cystic fibrosis, were not part of a clinical trial

Russia's vaccine is in use in nearly 70 nations, but its adoption has been slowed by controversies and questions over rare side effects, and it has yet to garner World Health Organization approval.

IndicatorRAG*ConfidenceAssessment and ratio

There are 5variants of concern and 9variants under investigation (Table 1).This report has been published to continue to sharedetailed surveillance ofDelta (VOC-21APR-02,B.1.617.2).A separate report is published covering ourroutine data on allothervariants of concern and variants under investigation. These additional specialist technical briefings represent early data and analysis on an emerging variant and findings have a high level of uncertainty.

This document includes routine data on variants of concern and under investigation. VOC-21APR-02 (B.1.617.2) is detailed in technical briefing 14. There are 5 variants of concern and 9 variants under investigation (Table 1).

SARS-CoV-2 and the resulting COVID-19 pandemic has affected more than 106 million people worldwide with more than 2.31 million deaths as of February 2021.1 Upon the emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine by the US Food and Drug Administration, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine developed an overarching framework to assist US policy makers in planning for equitable allocation of COVID-19 vaccines.2 Minority populations have approximately 5 times greater risk of adverse COVID-19 consequences related to social determinants of health that may exacerbate patient comorbidities.4,6 Equitable distribution would eliminate vaccination disparities while mitigating the disproportionate effect of the COVID-19 pandemic in underserved populations, which are disadvantaged because of limited access to health care, low socioeconomic status, or race. This study aims to determine how every state planned to ensure equitable vaccine distribution.

We tested the link between COVID-19 conspiracy theories and health protective behaviours in three studies: one at the onset of the pandemic in the United Kingdom (UK), a second just before the first national lockdown, and a third during that lockdown (N = 302, 404 and 399). We focused on conspiracy theories that did not deny the existence of COVID-19 and evaluated the extent to which they predicted a range of health protective behaviours, before and after controlling for psychological and sociodemographic characteristics associated with conspiracy theory belief. COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs were positively correlated with beliefs in other unrelated conspiracies and a general conspiracy mind-set, and negatively correlated with trust in government and a tendency towards analytical thinking (vs. intuitive thinking). Unexpectedly, COVID-19 conspiracy believers adhered to basic health guidelines and advanced health protective measures as strictly as non-believers. Conspiracy believers were, however, less willing to install the contact-tracing app, get tested for and vaccinated against COVID-19, and were more likely to share COVID-19 misinformation – all of which might undermine public health initiatives. Study 3 showed conspiracy theory believers were less willing to undertake health protective behaviours that were outside of their personal control, perceiving these as having a negative balance of risks and benefits. We discuss models explaining conspiracy beliefs and health protective behaviours, and suggest practical recommendations for public health initiatives.

Balancing the rights of stakeholders

Identity schemes have a part to play in the return to life as normal, but only a modest one

A third of county’s residents still not inoculated against COVID-19

They are likely to make the biggest difference to international travel

Use our live data to follow the battle against the pandemic

A slew of studies suggests that mixing vaccines provokes potent immune responses, but scientists still want answers on real-world efficacy and rare side effects.

If you’re a reporter, getting your queries right really matters.In 2015, Daniel Victor of The New York Times was searching for witnesses to an incident on a plane involving a female passenger and a Hasidic Jewish man who didn’t feel comfortable sitting next to her. Victor found that querying for “hasidic” and “flight” on social media brought up a lot of people talking about the incident, but not people who were actually there.But then he discovered something. There were three words that could identify genuine eyewitness accounts: “me,” “my” and “I.”“Most people relating a personal experience — [also known as] good sources — will use [them],” Victor explained. “Most people observing from afar — aka, useless sources — won’t.”For anyone researching social media, skillful query design is critical. Get it wrong and you won’t find what you’re looking for. Get it right and you can discover surprising things that others are missing

One term I worry that we (as a public health community) have mis-messaged during the pandemic: "herd immunity threshold" A non-technical thread on why this is not "% of the population that needs to be vaccinated for us to return to life as normal while eradicating COVID-19"...

This report summarises the information from the surveillance systems which are used to monitor Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), influenza, and other seasonal respiratory viruses in England. References to COVID-19 represent the disease name and SARS-CoV-2 represent the virus name. The report is based on data from week 19(between 10and 16May2021) and for some indicators daily data up to 18May2021. Surveillance indicators suggest that at a national levelCOVID-19 activity remained stablein week 19of 2021. There is currently limited testing for other respiratory viruses, however, laboratory indicators suggest that influenza activity is low. Overall case rates remained stablein week 19. Case rates remained stable in the majority of age groups andregionsand increased in certain ethnic groups.Overall Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 positivity remained stablecompared to the previous week.The number of reported acute respiratory incidents in the past week increasedcomparedto the previous week. SARS-CoV-2 was identified in the majority of these.COVID-19 hospitalisationsdecreased further in week 19and havebeen decreasing since week 2.Deaths with COVID-19decreased further in week 19and havebeen decreasing since week 3. This continued decrease is likely to reflect the impact of both social and physical distancing measures and the vaccination programme.COVID-19 vaccine coverage was 49.4% for dose 1 at the end of week 19, reaching over 90% in all cohorts over the age of 65years andover 80% in all cohorts over 50years. COVID-19 vaccine coverage was 27.8% for dose 2 at the end of week 19.The impact of the vaccination programme is particularly notable in the seroprevalence data which indicates that approximately71.8% of the population have antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 from either infection or vaccination, compared to 15.8% from infection alone.Increases in seropositivity for vaccination or infection continue to be observed in older age groups, as well as sharp increases in those aged 50 to 59 and 40 to 49,following vaccination rollout.Through Respiratory Datamart, there were noinfluenza positive samples detected in week 19. Other indicators for influenza such as hospital admissions and GP influenza-like illness consultation rates remain low. Slight decreasesin rhinovirus activity were noted this week.

The costs of anti-science sentiment in the United States have become magnified in the past year. The inability of scientists to convince the American public about the reality of COVID-19, the effectiveness of masks, and the safety of vaccines has led to loss of life and has decreased the possibility that the pandemic will end soon. We’ve seen the same problem of persuasion with the realities of climate change. Although many remedies have been proposed to combat this, the events of 2020 make clear that none of what we have been doing has worked. We need some new ideas. In an editorial this week, Aaron Mertz and Abhilash Mishra propose that one solution would be for the United States to launch an American Science Corps that would pay recent Ph.D.’s to fan out across the country and—armed with training in communications from appropriate experts—begin to build trust for science in the broader public.

Vaccine hesitancy (delay in obtaining a vaccine, despite availability) represents a significant hurdle to managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccine hesitancy is in part related to the prevalence of anti-vaccine misinformation and disinformation, which are spread through social media and user-generated content platforms. This study uses qualitative coding methodology to identify salient narratives and rhetorical styles common to anti-vaccine and COVID-denialist media. It organizes these narratives and rhetorics according to theme, imagined antagonist, and frequency. Most frequent were narratives centered on “corrupt elites” and rhetorics appealing to the vulnerability of children. The identification of these narratives and rhetorics may assist in developing effective public health messaging campaigns, since narrative and emotion have demonstrated persuasive effectiveness in other public health communication settings.

For the moment, reports of a very rare, dangerous blood disorder among recipients cannot be ignored.

As time goes on, it’s getting easier to get a COVID-19 vaccine—in many places in L.A. County you can now just walk up to a vaccine site without an appointment. Millions of Californians have already gotten their Fauci Ouchie, but it’s also okay to have questions about the vaccine. Do you ever wonder if vaccines are safe and effective? This very question came up when we last talked to Kenneth Phillips—if you haven’t listened to his episode about contact tracing yet, be sure to check it out. Ken recommended that we talk to Shira Shafir (@IDPhD), a professor and infectious disease epidemiologist at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She’s also working with the L.A. County Department of Public Health to help train contact tracers. She answered all our questions about the vaccines, from how scientists and doctors know they’re safe to when we might be able to start vaccinating younger kids.

In countries such as the UK and the USA that are privileged to have adequate supplies of COVID-19 vaccines but are also plagued by histories of deep inequities and white supremacy, it was predictable that the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines would not be equally shared across all sectors of society. The challenge of low vaccine access and uptake by some groups is multidimensional. Although vaccine hesitancy is often implicated, this framing mistakenly places the responsibility on minoritised groups to become less hesitant, rather than on public health systems to become more trustworthy and accessible. This framing also inadvertently underemphasises barriers to vaccine access that have been incompletely addressed for these populations.

Your immune system stands between you and deadly infections. But as you get older so does your immune age, making you more susceptible to disease. How exactly does the immune system work and what can we do to give it a boost? Science with Sam looks at things you can do to turn back the clock and stay healthy.

Big myths about COVID vaccines are showing real staying power among Americans who are not vaccinated. They are not the only factor fueling vaccine hesitancy, but they are a continuing problem the media, health leaders and trusted messengers ought to be able to chip away at to get more people vaccinated.

Outdated public health guidance about children and Covid-19 vaccines is being misleadingly passed off as a new development. In guidance posted April 8, the World Health Organization said that several Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective for most people over 18, and that children “should not be vaccinated for the moment.”

Even as we focus on the short-term dangers caused by variants, we need to be thinking about the longer-term health dangers that result from social divisions.

Over half (52%) of GP practice staff have received threats of physical abuse while working on the covid-19 vaccination programme, a survey has found.The poll of 222 GP practice staff by the Medical Protection Society (MPS) also found that over half (53%) of staff said that their surgery or vaccination centre had been defaced by anti-vaccination material. The survey included GPs, nurses, …

Although two-dose mRNA vaccination provides excellent protection against SARS-CoV-2, data are scarce on vaccine efficacy against variants of concern (VOC) in individuals above 80 years of age1. Here we analysed immune responses following vaccination with mRNA vaccine BNT162b22 in elderly participants and younger health care workers. Serum neutralisation and binding IgG/IgA after the first vaccine dose diminished with increasing age, with a marked drop in participants over 80 years old. Sera from participants above 80 showed significantly lower neutralisation potency against B.1.1.7, B.1.351 and P.1. variants of concern as compared to wild type and were more likely to lack any neutralisation against VOC following the first dose. However, following the second dose, neutralisation against VOC was detectable regardless of age. Frequency of SARS-CoV-2 Spike specific B-memory cells was higher in elderly responders versus non-responders after first dose. Elderly participants demonstrated clear reduction in somatic hypermutation of class switched cells. SARS-CoV-2 Spike specific T- cell IFNγ and IL-2 responses decreased with increasing age, and both cytokines were secreted primarily by CD4 T cells. We conclude that the elderly are a high risk population that warrant specific measures to boost vaccine responses, particularly where variants of concern are circulating.

Social and cultural forces shape almost every aspect of infectious disease transmission in human populations, as well as our ability to measure, understand, and respond to epidemics. For directly transmitted infections, pathogen transmission relies on human-to-human contact, with kinship, household, and societal structures shaping contact patterns that in turn determine epidemic dynamics. Social, economic, and cultural forces also shape patterns of exposure, health-seeking behaviour, infection outcomes, the likelihood of diagnosis and reporting of cases, and the uptake of interventions. Although these social aspects of epidemiology are hard to quantify and have limited the generalizability of modelling frameworks in a policy context, new sources of data on relevant aspects of human behaviour are increasingly available. Researchers have begun to embrace data from mobile devices and other technologies as useful proxies for behavioural drivers of disease transmission, but there is much work to be done to measure and validate these approaches, particularly for policy-making. Here we discuss how integrating local knowledge in the design of model frameworks and the interpretation of new data streams offers the possibility of policy-relevant models for public health decision-making as well as the development of robust, generalizable theories about human behaviour in relation to infectious diseases.

The University of Oregon’s “Emotions and Polarization in Decisions & Media in COVID-19” (UO-EPIDeMIC) study tracked perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic from February 17th of 2020 through December 17th of 2020 in a single cohort of 1,284 American Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers. Affect, attitudes, risk perceptions, intentions for protective behaviors, trust in various actors, media usage, and attitudes towards potential solutions were measured throughout the pandemic’s progression. Through six longitudinal waves of surveys, we demonstrate Mturk’s potential as a tool for recruiting high-quality longitudinal cohorts of participants. The data collected through these surveys have been used in various lines of research to learn about how individuals react and adapt to a global catastrophe.

Despite evidence in support of the benefits of wearing masks, attitudes about mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic became politicized, and therefore tied with political values and group identities. When communicating about political issues, messages targeted to resonate with the core values of the receiver may be effective, an approach known as moral reframing. We first tested the relationships between moral values and mask-wearing in a sample (N=540) of self-identified liberals, conservatives, and moderates in the United States. Anti-mask attitudes were stronger in conservatives, and were associated with increased concerns for in-group loyalty, national identity, and personal liberty. We then crafted messages about the benefits of mask-wearing framed to resonate with these moral concerns, and in a pre-registered study of N=597 self-identified U.S. conservatives, tested the effect of moral reframing on anti-mask attitudes and behaviors. We found that messages framed in terms of loyalty, with appeals to the protection of the community and America, were effective in reducing anti-mask beliefs, compared with unrelated control messages and messages delivering purely scientific information, and that these changes in belief persisted for at least one week. Exploratory analyses showed that participants who saw loyalty-framed messages reported wearing masks in public more frequently in the subsequent week. These data provide evidence that moral reframing of messages about politicized issues can be effective, and specifically that framing messages about health behaviors in terms of group loyalty may be the most productive way of communicating with conservative audiences.

A significant paradigm shift is underway in communication research as open science practices (e.g., preregistration, open materials) are becoming more prevalent. The current work identified how much the field has embraced such practices and evaluated their impact on authors (e.g., citation rates). We collected 10,517 papers across 26 journals from 2010-2020, observing that 5.1% of papers used or mentioned open science practices. Communication research has seen the rate of non-significant p-values (ps > .055) increasing with the adoption of open science over time, but p-values just below p < .05 have not reduced with open science adoption. Open science adoption was unrelated to citation rate at the article level; however, it was inversely related to the journals’ h-index. Our results suggest communication organizations and scholars have important work ahead to make open science more mainstream. We close with suggestions to increase open science adoption for the field at large.

How support for remote freelancers and remote workers could revitalize heartland economies across the U.S. 

Vaccines are still beating the variants, but the unvaccinated world is being pummeled.

Informing solutions for public health crises through psychological science.

Vaccines authorised by the European Medicines Agency for use in the European Union (EU) are known to be safe and effective in preventing infectious diseases. Nonetheless, misinformation that incorrectly links these vaccines to harms to health or other undesirable consequences has, over recent years, continued to proliferate online and elsewhere. Misinformation about vaccines is not a new phenomenon, but it has become more prominent due to the rise of social media and, more recently, due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has clearly illustrated how easily misinformation can spread online and how rapidly new narratives can emerge and evolve. Vaccine misinformation can be dangerous: it decreases confidence in vaccines and can lead to vaccine hesitancy and reduced vaccination uptake. Public health authorities can play an important role in identifying and countering online vaccine misinformation to limit the harm it can do to a country’s vaccination efforts. In order to do this effectively, however, they need to have a good understanding of the landscape of vaccine misinformation in their respective countries, and of the tools and strategies that are available to fight misinformation effectively. This study, commissioned by ECDC, thus set out to explore: The main sources of online vaccine misinformation in the EU/European Economic Area (EEA); The evidence base for how to counter online vaccine misinformation; The current strategies used by national public health authorities in the EU/EEA and other organisations to counter online vaccine misinformation; and The training needs of national public health authorities in the EU/EEA for how to develop effective strategies for countering online vaccine misinformation. The study applied a mixed-methods approach consisting of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, including a literature review, interviews with representatives of national public health authorities of six EU Member States (MS) and several pan-European and global organisations involved in countering vaccine misinformation, and a social media analysis in the six selected countries (Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Romania). The focus of this study was misinformation relating to vaccination against measles (in combination with mumps and rubella), human papillomavirus (HPV), influenza, and COVID-19. The findings from this study provide insights for national public health authorities into the factors behind the spread of vaccine misinformation online and the options and capacities needed for responding to it. The findings will also serve to inform the development of a training package to support those authorities (and other interested organisations) in their work in this area.

With the Delta variant surging, questions about how to control infections, especially in children, are as urgent as ever

Following the first wave of SARS-CoV-2 infections in spring 2020, Europe experienced a resurgence of the virus starting in late summer 2020 that was deadlier and more difficult to contain1. Relaxed intervention measures and summer travel have been implicated as drivers of the second wave2. Here, we build a phylogeographic model to evaluate how newly introduced lineages, as opposed to the rekindling of persistent lineages, contributed to the COVID-19 resurgence in Europe. We inform this model using genomic, mobility and epidemiological data from 10 European countries and estimate that in many countries over half of the lineages circulating in late summer resulted from new introductions since June 15th. The success in onward transmission of newly introduced lineages was negatively associated with local COVID-19 incidence during this period. The pervasive spread of variants in summer 2020 highlights the threat of viral dissemination when restrictions are lifted, and this needs to be carefully considered by strategies to control the current spread of variants that are more transmissible and/or evade immunity. Our findings indicate that more effective and coordinated measures are required to contain spread through cross-border travel even as vaccination begins to reduce disease burden. Download PDF

Prime minister’s comments come after border worker diagnosed last week said to have missed two vaccine appointments

Using refutation-based learning to enhance vaccine uptake and knowledge among healthcare professionals and the public.

The interval between the first and second doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine can be extended up to 10 months and a third dose of the vaccine provides a strong boost to the immune response, according to preliminary results.

Many questions remain about both natural and vaccine induced immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Chris Baraniuk reviews what we know so far

Almost a year and a half into the pandemic, the best and worst places to be in the Covid-19 era are increasingly defined by one thing: normalization.

Each week, we answer frequently asked questions about life during the coronavirus crisis. If you have a question you'd like us to consider for a future post, email us at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the subject line: "Weekly Coronavirus Questions." See an archive of our FAQs here.

A study published last week that quickly became another flashpoint for those arguing that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe has earned an expression of concern.

More than half of people polled in Germany, France and Spain now believe the shot is unsafe.

Who are the people who have come to follow wild conspiracy theories about Covid-19?

A briefing by the authors of DFRLab’s report “Weaponized: How rumors about COVID-19’s origins led to a narrative arms race.”

What determines the pecking order in a flock of birds? Or the page rank of a website in a Google search? Or which academics land the most prestigious jobs? Hierarchies are everywhere, and new research continues to advance our understanding of how and why some end up high and others low. As it turns out, if we look at the general patterns that emerge when hierarchies form, we can offer a single answer to each of these questions.