Eight years after the pandemic influenza outbreak, a lawsuit alleging that GlaxoSmithKline’s Pandemrix vaccine caused narcolepsy has unearthed internal reports suggesting problems with the vaccine’s safety. Peter Doshi asks what this means for the future of transparency during public health emergencies

In 1976, 2 recruits at Fort Dix, New Jersey, had an influenzalike illness. Isolates of virus taken from them included A/New Jersey/76 (Hsw1n1), a strain similar to the virus believed at the time to be the cause of the 1918 pandemic, commonly known as swine flu. Serologic studies at Fort Dix suggested that >200 soldiers had been infected and that person-to-person transmission had occurred. We review the process by which these events led to the public health decision to mass-vaccinate the American public against the virus and the subsequent events that led to the program's cancellation. Observations of policy and implementation success and failures are presented that could help guide decisions regarding avian influenza.

In April 1955 more than 200 000 children in five Western and mid-Western USA states received a polio vaccine in which the process of inactivating the live virus proved to be defective. Within days there were reports of paralysis and within a month the first mass vaccination programme against polio had to be abandoned. Subsequent investigations revealed that the vaccine, manufactured by the California-based family firm of Cutter Laboratories, had caused 40 000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10.

Rapid development of a vaccine to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global imperative, and defining the stakes and potential hurdles is critical because regulatory and medical decisions are based on benefit:risk calculations. The ability of viruses to achieve pandemic spread is diminished by establishing higher levels of community (herd) immunity, and a key question is whether protection against severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) will happen by widespread deployment of an effective vaccine or by repeated waves of infection over the next few years until ∼60 to 70% of people develop immunity. Because the human population is naïve to SARS-CoV-2, the consequences of repeated epidemics will be unacceptably high mortality, severe economic disruption, and major adjustments to our way of life. Therefore, the benefit of developing an effective vaccine is very high, and even greater if it can be deployed in time to prevent repeated or continuous epidemics.

The immunization is the first approved for widespread use but could be dangerous because it hasn’t been tested in large trials, say researchers.

We carried out this study to describe the difference between intention to receive vaccine against influenza A (H1N1) before the vaccination campaign and actual vaccine coverage rate after vaccination campaign; and to find out the factors affecting the acceptability. We analyzed data on intention to receive vaccine against influenza A (H1N1) and actual vaccination coverage rate from IR (immunization registry). In a survey of pre-vaccination, the sample size was 1042 and the survey results were weighted with gender and age distribution for sample distribution to be similar to population distribution. Although the intention to receive vaccine against influenza A (H1N1) was high, the actual vaccination coverage was lower than their intention. The factors affecting their intention were the degree of fear for novel influenza A (H1N1), the possibility to be infected with the virus, priority for production of novel influenza vaccine between timing and safety, and belief for effectiveness of novel influenza vaccine. Besides 2009 influenza A (H1N1) vaccination experience developing to resolve the effecting factors on intentions to receive vaccine, which would be the effective way to prepare for anther pandemic in the future.

BackgroundOn the 30th September 2009, the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza vaccine was made available to adults and children aged 10 years and over, in Australia. Acceptance of a novel vaccine is influenced by perceptions of risk including risk of infection, risk of death or severe illness and risk of serious vaccine side-effects. We surveyed a sample of residents from Sydney, Australia to ascertain their risk perception, attitudes towards the pandemic and willingness to accept the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza vaccine.MethodsWe sampled residents using a cross-sectional intercept design during the WHO Phase 6. Members of the public were approached in shopping and pedestrian malls to undertake the survey during September and October 2009. The survey measured perceived risk, seriousness of disease, recent behavioural changes, likely acceptance of the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 vaccine and issues relating to uptake and perceived safety.ResultsOf the 627 respondents, the majority felt that they had a "very low to low" (332/627, 52.9%) risk of acquiring H1N1. 24.5% (154/627) of respondents believed that the disease would "very seriously or extremely" affect their health. Nearly half (305/627, 48.6%) reported that in response to the "swine flu" outbreak they had undertaken one or more of the investigated behavioural changes. Overall, the self-reported likelihood of accepting vaccination against novel H1N1 was 54.7% (343/627).ConclusionsWhile, most participants did not believe they were at high risk of acquiring pandemic H1N1 2009, over half of the sample indicated that they would accept the vaccine. Participants who were vaccinated against the seasonal influenza were more likely to receive the H1N1 vaccine. Concerns about safety, the possibility of side effects and the vaccine development process need to be addressed.

'The more this moves into politics, the more it becomes a little crazy,' one leading expert says

A survey of SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences from the UK has detected a number of variants that had been assigned to the B.1.1.7 lineage but which do not contain the full set of B.1.1.7 ‘lineage defining’ mutations [1]. Examination of these sequences revealed that some genome sections carry mutations characteristic of B.1.1.7, whilst other sections carry mutations specific to another lineage (Figure1; Table 1). Long runs of mutations along the SARS-CoV-2 that match different lineages are strongly indicative of virus recombination. In four instances (recombinant groups A-D) the same mosaic genome structure is observed in multiple closely-related genomes sampled from different infected people (Figure S1). These sequences are therefore highly unlikely to be artefactual (see discussion below). Additionally, we detected a further four mosaic virus genomes, each represented by only one genome sequence (Figure S2). These are also likely to be recombinants, but with a lower level of confidence.

The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the globe, and its causative agent, SARS-CoV-2, continues to rage. The prospects of ending this pandemic rest on the development of effective interventions. Single and combination monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapeutics have received emergency use authorization1–3, with more in the pipeline4–7. Furthermore, multiple vaccine constructs have shown promise8, including two with ~95% protective efficacy against COVID-199,10. However, these interventions were directed toward the initial SARS-CoV-2 that emerged in 2019. The recent emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants B.1.1.7 in the UK11 and B.1.351 in South Africa12 is of concern because of their purported ease of transmission and extensive mutations in the spike protein. We now report that B.1.1.7 is refractory to neutralization by most mAbs to the N-terminal domain (NTD) of the spike and relatively resistant to a few mAbs to the receptor-binding domain (RBD). It is not more resistant to convalescent plasma or vaccinee sera. Findings on B.1.351 are more worrisome in that this variant is not only refractory to neutralization by most NTD mAbs but also by multiple individual mAbs to the receptor-binding motif on RBD, largely owing to an E484K mutation. Moreover, B.1.351 is markedly more resistant to neutralization by convalescent plasma (9.4 fold) and vaccinee sera (10.3-12.4 fold). B.1.351 and emergent variants13,14 with similar spike mutations present new challenges for mAb therapy and threaten the protective efficacy of current vaccines.

On 30 December 2020, the UK announced a deviation from the recommended protocol for the Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine, prolonging the interval between doses from 3 to 12 weeks.12 Similar decisions were made for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, for which a longer gap between doses had been shown to improve efficacy in some age groups.3The stated intention was to maximise benefit with limited supplies and to minimise hospital admissions and deaths. For the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the decision to delay the second dose was based on extrapolations from phase III trial data showing an efficacy of 89% 15-21 days after the first dose.45At the time, Pfizer did not support the decision, stating that high efficacy could not be guaranteed.6

A small subset of Facebook users is reportedly responsible for the majority of content expressing or encouraging skepticism about Covid-19 vaccines, according to early results from an internal Facebook study.The study, first reported by the Washington Post, confirms what researchers have long argued about how the echo chamber effect can amplify certain beliefs within social media communities. It also shows how speech that falls short of outright misinformation about vaccines, which is banned on Facebook, can still contribute to vaccine hesitancy.A document outlining the study – which has not been publicly released – was obtained by the Washington Post. Researchers at Facebook divided users, groups and pages into 638 “population segments” and studied them for “vaccine hesitant beliefs”, according to the Post. This could include language such as “I am worried about getting the vaccine because it is so new”, or “I don’t know if a vaccine is safe”, rather than outright misinformation.

Thousands of adolescent girls across south-east Asia and the Pacific are being forced to leave school and get married instead as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a charity has warned, saying “a generation of girls could be lost”.

A specific form of severe cerebral venous thrombosis associated with platelet deficiency (thrombocytopenia) and bleeding has been identified in seven cases (as of 15 March 2021) in temporal association with vaccination with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca.

The aim of the article is to determine the predictors of mental health among Polish society. Research was conducted after the first wave of the pandemic. Due to such an approach, it was possible to determine whether secondary effects of the pandemic have impact on mental health, apart from socio-demographic and psychological factors. In order to gather the research material, the CAWI on-line survey method was applied and carried out within the framework of the Ariadna Research Panel on the sample of 1079 Poles aged 15 and over. The FCV-19S scale, which is used to measure the fear of COVID-19 was applied in the measurement. It is a verified diagnostic instrument used to measure mental health in a lot of countries. The results of a hierarchical regression analysis have shown that the factors which increase the level of fear of COVID-19 are demographic, social and psychological features as well as attitudes towards the pandemic. The results of research indicate the significance of social context in the analysis and explanation of the effects of disasters and cataclysms

Falsificationist and confirmationist approaches provide two well-established ways of evaluating generalizability. Yarkoni rejects both and invents a third approach we call neo-operationalism. His proposal cannot work for the hypothetical concepts psychologists use, because the universe of operationalizations is impossible to define, and hypothetical concepts cannot be reduced to their operationalizations. We conclude that he is wrong in his generalizability-crisis diagnosis.

One of the appeals of conspiracy theories in times of crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, is that they provide a scapegoat – someone to blame for what has happened. By doing this, they increase distrust, negative feelings, and even hostility toward implicated actors, whether those are powerful social outgroups or one’s own government representatives. We report two studies to examine such social consequences of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. In Study 1 (N = 501), we showed the distinct pattern of relationships between China-specific and generic COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and prejudice and discrimination toward three social groups associated with the pandemic. In Study 2 (N = 1024), lowered trust in government regulations and increased hostility associated with the COVID-19 and generic conspiracy beliefs predicted justification of and willingness to engage in non-compliance with government regulations, violent attacks on 5G masts, and anti-government protests. Also, across both studies, increased exposure to information about COVID-19 was associated with endorsing fewer conspiracy theories, but it also brought about stronger feelings of anxiety and lack of control, which in turn contributed to higher conspiracy belief. We highlight the potential social problems associated with the wide-spread COVID-19 conspiracy theories as well as potential solutions to counteract them.

Recent research suggests that shifting users’ attention to accuracy increases the quality of news they subsequently share online. Here we help develop this initial observation into a suite of deployable interventions for practitioners. We ask (i) how prior results generalize to other approaches for prompting users to consider accuracy, and (ii) for whom these prompts are more versus less effective. In a large survey experiment examining participants’ intentions to share true and false headlines about COVID-19, we identify a variety of different accuracy prompts that successfully increase sharing discernment across a wide range of demographic subgroups while maintaining user autonomy. Research questions: * There is mounting evidence that inattention to accuracy plays an important role in the spread of misinformation online. Here we examine the utility of a suite of different accuracy prompts aimed at increasing the quality of news shared by social media users. * Which approaches to shifting attention towards accuracy are most effective? * Does the effectiveness of the accuracy prompts vary based on social media user characteristics? Summary: Using survey experiments with N=9,070 American social media users (quota-matched to the national distribution on age, gender, ethnicity, and geographic region), we compared the effect of different treatments designed to induce people to think about accuracy when deciding what news to share. Participants received one of the treatments (or were assigned to a control condition), and then indicated how likely they would be to share a series of true and false news posts about COVID-19. We identified three lightweight, easily-implementable approaches that each increased sharing discernment (the quality of news shared, measured as the difference in sharing probability of true versus false headlines) by roughly 50%, and a slightly more lengthy approach that increased sharing discernment by close to 100%. We also found that another approach that seemed promising ex ante (descriptive norms) was ineffective. Furthermore, gender, race, partisanship, and concern about COVID-19 did not moderate the effectiveness of the accuracy prompts, while the prompts were more effective for participants who were more attentive, reflective, engaged with COVID-related news, concerned about accuracy, college-educated, and middle-aged. From a practical perspective, our results suggest a menu of accuracy prompts that are effective in our experimental setting and that technology companies could consider testing on their own services.

Monitoring the reasons why a considerable number of people do not receive recommended vaccinations allows identification of important trends over time, and designing and evaluating strategies to address vaccine hesitancy and increase vaccine uptake. Existing validated measures assessing vaccine hesitancy focus primarily on confidence in vaccines and the system that delivers them. However, empirical and theoretical work has stated that complacency (not perceiving diseases as high risk), constraints (structural and psychological barriers), calculation (engagement in extensive information searching), and aspects pertaining to collective responsibility (willingness to protect others) also play a role in explaining vaccination behavior. The objective was therefore to develop a validated measure of these 5C psychological antecedents of vaccination.

Historical and experimental analyses suggest contradictory deviations from efficient reasoning. In some cases, people tend to oversimplify and ignore important factors like germs, while in others they seem to overcomplicate and consider non-existent factors like imaginary demons. The current study shows how this apparent contradiction can be the product of a tendency to rely on small samples of past experience. Simulations demonstrate that reliance on small samples triggers apparent over-simplicity when simple choice rules are counterproductive but better for most sets of samples; the opposite over-complexity bias emerges when the optimal rule is simple but fails in most samples. The descriptive value of this hypothesis is demonstrated in two preregistered studies with 300 Mechanical-Turk participants. Study 1 shows the qualitative pattern predicted by the reliance on the small-samples hypothesis. Study 2 compares alternative formulations of the sampling process and clarifies the importance of a distinction between choice and sampling processes.

A dad sat down in March 2020 and started a Google doc to keep a record of resources for friends and family, track the progress of life and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and tried to stay sane. This continued for a year.

High-quality, centre-based education and care during the early years benefits cognitive development, especially in children from disadvantaged backgrounds. During the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdowns, access to early childhood education and care (ECEC) was disrupted. We investigate how this period affected the developmental advantages typically offered by ECEC. Using parent-report data from 189 families living in the UK, we explore associations between time spent in ECEC by 8-to-36-month-olds, their socioeconomic background, and their growth in language and executive functions between Spring and Winter 2020. Receptive vocabulary growth was greater in children who continued to attend ECEC during the period, with a stronger positive effect for children from less advantaged backgrounds. Growth of cognitive executive functions was boosted by ECEC attendance during the period, regardless of socioeconomic background. Our findings highlight the importance of high-quality ECEC for the development of key skills and for levelling socioeconomic inequalities.

As the first wave of COVID-19 vaccines enter the market, and global immunisation programmes are implemented, the time is right to remind researchers and regulatory agencies of the critical importance of including biological sex as a variable in trial data analysis and reporting.1Bischof E Wolfe J Klein SL Clinical trials for COVID-19 should include sex as a variable.J Clin Invest. 2020; 130: 3350-3352Crossref PubMed Scopus (21) Google Scholar The phase 3 Oxford–AstraZeneca trial interim report indicates more participation from women, which the investigators attribute to a recruitment focus on health-care workers,2Voysey M Clemens SAC Madhi SA et al.Safety and efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine (AZD1222) against SARS-CoV-2: an interim analysis of four randomised controlled trials in Brazil, South Africa, and the UK.Lancet. 2021; 397: 99-111Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (96) Google Scholar but they have not yet reported or discussed how biological sex could influence the data. Future reporting of sex-disaggregated data and a discussion of how sex factors influence the trial outcomes would benefit regulatory and public decision making and the design of mass vaccination programmes.

There is little difference in reluctance to take the coronavirus vaccine among Black and white people in the U.S., according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey. Among those who responded to the survey, 73% of Black people and 70% of White people said that they either planned to get a coronavirus vaccine or had done so already; 25% of Black respondents and 28% of white respondents said they did not plan to get a shot. Latino respondents were slightly more likely to say they would not get vaccinated at 37%, compared with 63% who either had or intended to get a vaccine. The findings come amid concerns in some states over who is getting vaccinated and who is not, with data in some states suggesting stark racial disparities. The pandemic has had an outsized impact on people of color, especially Black Americans.

A key issue in Britain’s referendum on European Union membership was the free movement of labour into Britain, with Brexit ‘Leavers’ having more negative attitudes towards immigrants compared to ‘Remainers’. Such anti-immigrant attitudes are driven by feelings of threat. As Brexit negotiations continued, the coronavirus pandemic presented a new threat, potentially heightening anti-immigrant attitudes. However, the prominent sacrifices of migrant workers in the fight against coronavirus suggests a potential for softening public attitudes. We ask: how did the COVID-19 pandemic, in the context of ongoing Brexit negotiations, affected anti-immigrant attitudes and how did these effects differ between Leavers and Remainers? Through a survey experiment, we test the effects of priming COVID-19 thoughts, showing that COVID-19 may exacerbate anti-immigrant attitudes among Leavers while having little effect on Remainers. In doing so, we explore the effect of a viral threat on immigration attitudes and heterogeneity in that effect, based on political identities.

Research shows that high levels of media multitasking (either situationally induced or chronic) may be associated with a decreased cognitive function. Since cognitive capacity is required for efficient correction of one’s judgment after learning that the judgement base is no longer valid, we expected that high levels of media multitasking would decrease one’s ability to adequately update their beliefs. We ran two studies in which participants were asked to form an impression of a target person based on their online profile from a professional networking site. The profile contained either neutral information (control condition) or negative comment from a former supervisor which was later debunked (false information conditions). We additionally manipulated media multitasking demands (in Study 1) or measured participants’ frequency of media multitasking (Study 2) and tested whether the level of media multitasking is related to the degree to which the initial attitudes were adjusted after learning that the negative comment was false. We found a significant but rather small effect of manipulation in Study 1 indicating that participants in both multitasking conditions had more negative attitudes after correction compared to the baseline, but not to the mono-tasking condition. Crucially, media multitasking demands did not impact attitude adjustment. Results of Study 2 showed that the relationship between media multitasking frequency measured with a scale and attitude adjustment were non-significant. Overall, the current findings suggest that media multitasking, experimentally manipulated or chronic, plays a negligible role in correction after misinformation.

Although there is increasing awareness of disparities in COVID-19 infection risk among vulnerable communities, the effect of behavioral interventions at the scale of individual neighborhoods has not been fully studied. We develop a method to quantify neighborhood activity behaviors at high spatial and temporal resolutions and test whether, and to what extent, behavioral responses to social-distancing policies vary with socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. We define exposure density (ExρExρ<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>E</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>x</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:mi>ρ</mml:mi></mml:math>) as a measure of both the localized volume of activity in a defined area and the proportion of activity occurring in distinct land-use types. Using detailed neighborhood data for New York City, we quantify neighborhood exposure density using anonymized smartphone geolocation data over a 3-mo period covering more than 12 million unique devices and rasterize granular land-use information to contextualize observed activity. Next, we analyze disparities in community social distancing by estimating variations in neighborhood activity by land-use type before and after a mandated stay-at-home order. Finally, we evaluate the effects of localized demographic, socioeconomic, and built-environment density characteristics on infection rates and deaths in order to identify disparities in health outcomes related to exposure risk. Our findings demonstrate distinct behavioral patterns across neighborhoods after the stay-at-home order and that these variations in exposure density had a direct and measurable impact on the risk of infection. Notably, we find that an additional 10% reduction in exposure density city-wide could have saved between 1,849 and 4,068 lives during the study period, predominantly in lower-income and minority communities.

This paper asks how strategies of information sampling are affected by a learner’s goal. Based on a theoretical analysis and two behavioral experiments, we show that learning goals have a crucial impact on the decision of when to stop sampling. This decision, in turn, affects the statistical properties (e.g. average values, or standard deviations) of the data collected under different goals. Specifically, we find that sampling with the goal of making a binary choice can introduce a correlation between the average value of a sample and its size (the number of values sampled). Across multiple rounds of sampling, this has the potential of biasing learn- ers’ inferences about the underlying process that generated the samples, specifically if learners ignore sample size when making these inferences. We find that people are indeed biased in this way and make different inferences about the same data-generating process when sampling with different learning goals. These findings highlight yet another danger of inferring general patterns from samples of evidence the learner had a hand in collecting.

EU regulators are reviewing reports of low blood platelets in patients who received any of the three approved COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Moderna.

Experts are looking into a possible link.

We are writing as behavioural scientists to express concern about the timing of UK delay measures involving social distancing. As is clear from the disaster unfolding in Italy, there is a unique window for delaying the spread of COVID-19. Current government thinking seems to crucially involve the idea of “behavioural fatigue”. This is the worry that, if implemented too early, measures limiting social contact will be undercut just at the point at which they are most required, because people will have tired of the limitations and will revert to prior behaviour –in part precisely because those measures are effective in reducing spread and hence perceived risk.

How essential is trust in science to prevent the spread of COVID-19? People who trust in science are more likely to comply with official guidelines, suggesting that higher levels of compliance could be achieved by improving trust in science. However, analysis of a global dataset (N=4341) shows that this view is mistaken. Trust in science had a small, indirect effect on adherence to the rules. It affected adherence only insofar as it predicted people's approval of prevention measures. Trust in science also mediated the relationship between political ideology and approval of the measures. These effects varied across countries, and were especially different in the USA. Overall, these results mean that any increase in trust in science is unlikely to yield strong immediate improvements in physical distancing. Nonetheless, given its relationships with both ideology and individuals' attitudes to the measures, trust in science may be leveraged to yield longer-term and more sustained social benefits.

Public opinion regarding scientific developments such as genetically modified (GM) food can be mixed. We suggest such science-based technological innovations are rejected by some because they are perceived to be advanced as part of a conspiracy. In nationally representative samples (Australia n=1,011; New Zealand n=754) we report the associations between five conspiracism facets and anti-science attitudes. Results indicate broad public opposition to GM food and use of nuclear power, but more acceptance of renewable power, potable recycled water, 5G networks, and childhood vaccinations. There were small to moderate associations between the rejection of scientific innovations and conspiracism. Multivariate models estimating unique associations of conspiracism facets with anti-science attitudes suggested several novel and important relationships, particularly for childhood vaccination, GM food, and 5G networks. We discuss the importance of examining factors such as conspiracism in understanding what may motivate and sustain rejection of scientific evidence-based claims about socially contentious technological innovations.

The infection fatality ratio (IFR) is a key statistic for estimating the burden of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and has been continuously debated throughout the current pandemic. Previous estimates have relied on data early in the epidemic, or have not fully accounted for uncertainty in serological test characteristics and delays from onset of infection to seroconversion, death, and antibody waning. After screening 175 studies, we identified 10 representative antibody surveys to obtain updated estimates of the IFR using a modelling framework that addresses the limitations listed above. We inferred serological test specificity from regional variation within serosurveys, which is critical for correctly estimating the cumulative proportion infected when seroprevalence is still low. We find that age-specific IFRs follow an approximately log-linear pattern, with the risk of death doubling approximately every eight years of age. Using these age-specific estimates, we estimate the overall IFR in a typical low-income country, with a population structure skewed towards younger individuals, to be 0.23% (0.14-0.42 95% prediction interval range). In contrast, in a typical high income country, with a greater concentration of elderly individuals, we estimate the overall IFR to be 1.15% (0.78-1.79 95% prediction interval range). We show that accounting for seroreversion, the waning of antibodies leading to a negative serological result, can slightly reduce the IFR among serosurveys conducted several months after the first wave of the outbreak, such as Italy. In contrast, uncertainty in test false positive rates combined with low seroprevalence in some surveys can reconcile apparently low crude fatality ratios with the IFR in other countries. Unbiased estimates of the IFR continue to be critical to policymakers to inform key response decisions. It will be important to continue to monitor the IFR as new treatments are introduced. 

Over the last century, we observe a steady and exponentially growth of scientific publications globally. The overwhelming amount of available literature makes a holistic analysis of the research within a field and between fields based on manual inspection impossible. Automatic techniques to support the process of literature review are required to find the epistemic and social patterns that are embedded in scientific publications. In computer sciences, new tools have been developed to deal with large volumes of data. In particular, deep learning techniques open the possibility of automated end-to-end models to project observations to a new, low-dimensional space where the most relevant information of each observation is highlighted. Using deep learning to build new representations of scientific publications is a growing but still emerging field of research. The aim of this paper is to discuss the potential and limits of deep learning for gathering insights about scientific research articles. We focus on document-level embeddings based on the semantic and relational aspects of articles, using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). We explore the different outcomes generated by those techniques. Our results show that using NLP we can encode a semantic space of articles, while with GNN we are able to build a relational space where the social practices of a research community are also encoded.

Since the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020, the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has profoundly impacted public health and the economy worldwide. But there are not the only ones to be hit. The COVID-19 pandemic has also substantially altered mental health, with anxiety symptoms being one of the most frequently reported problems. Especially, the number of people reporting anxiety symptoms increased significantly during the first lockdown-phase compared to similar data collected before the pandemic. Yet, most of these studies relied on a unitary approach to anxiety, wherein its different constitutive features (i.e., symptoms) were tallied into one sum-score, thus ignoring any possibility of interactions between them. Therefore, in this study, we seek to map the associations between the core features of anxiety during the first weeks of the first Belgian COVID-19 lockdown-phase (n = 2,829). To do so, we implemented, in a preregistered fashion, two distinct computational network approaches: a Gaussian graphical model (GGM) and a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Despite their varying assumptions, constraints, and computational methods to determine nodes (i.e., the variables) and edges (i.e., the relations between them), both GGM and DAG pointed to excessive worrying as a node playing an especially influential role in the network system of the anxiety features. Altogether, our findings offer novel data-driven clues for the ongoing field's larger quest to elucidate, and eventually alleviate, the mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Previous research has demonstrated a ‘seductive allure’ of technical or reductive language. Specifically, bad explanations – i.e., those presenting circular restatements of a phenomenon or other non-explanatory information – are judged better explanations when irrelevant technical language is included. Methods: Using a between subjects design we presented participants (N=996) with one of four possible vignettes that explain how covid-19 vaccinations and herd immunity works. The explanations varied along two factors: (1) Quality, explanations were either good or bad (tautological); (2) Language, explanations either contained unnecessary technical language or did not. We measured participants’ evaluation of the explanations (‘how good’ and ‘how satisfying’ they were) and subsequent intentions to vaccinate. Results: We demonstrate a novel ‘seductive allure’ effect of technical language on vaccine information. Including unnecessary technical language in informative explanations resulted in them being judged worse. However, including irrelevant technical terminology in bad quality explanations resulted in them being judged better. Importantly, we also observe indirect effects of the evaluation of explanations on behavioural intentions to vaccinate. Conclusions: We show that explanatory public health information that omits reductive technical language is more effective in increasing public intentions to vaccinate. We also suggest that misinformation that includes technical language could be more detrimental to vaccination rates.

How have people’s fundamental social motives changed during the COVID-19 pandemic? In data collected from 32 countries before the onset of the pandemic, we saw that a) people prioritized family-related motives (romantic relationship maintenance and kin care) over mate-acquisition motives (mate-seeking and breakup concern), and b) family-related motives were positively associated with subjective well-being, whereas mate-acquisition motives were negatively associated with subjective well-being (Ko et al., 2020). Have the pandemic-related changes in people’s social lives affected the relative priority of family-related motives and their relationship with well-being? In data collected from 28 countries during the pandemic, we see that although, as expected, people’s disease avoidance motivation has increased, a) the relative prioritization of family-related motives over mate-acquisition motives remains unchanged, and b) family-related motives remain positively associated with well-being and mate-acquisition motives remain negatively associated.

As home-based video conferencing has become increasingly popular among developmental researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a pressing need to discuss its potentials and challenges. We have augmented our own experiences with insights from many “Zoom developmentalists” (see Acknowledgments) to provide recommendations for those who are considering engaging in home-based videoconferencing studies.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting closure of daycare centers worldwide, led to unprecedented changes in children’s learning environments. This period of increased time at home with caregivers, with limited access to external sources (e.g., daycares) provides a unique opportunity to examine the associations between the caregiver-child activities and children’s language development. The vocabularies of 1742 children aged 8-36 months across 13 countries and 12 languages were evaluated at the beginning and end of the first lockdown period in their respective countries (from March to September 2020). Children who had less passive screen exposure and whose caregivers read more to them showed larger gains in vocabulary development during lockdown, after controlling for SES and other caregiver-child activities. Children also gained more words than expected (based on normative data) during lockdown; either caregivers were more aware of their child’s development or vocabulary development benefited from intense caregiver-child interaction during lockdown.

The behavioral immune system is considered to be a psychological adaptation that decreases the risk of infection. Research suggests that, in the current environment, this system can produce attitudes with negative health consequences, such as increased vaccine hesitancy. In three studies, we investigated whether two facets of the behavioral immune system—contamination aversion (i.e., avoiding potential contamination) and perceived infectability (i.e., perceived susceptibility to disease)—predicted intentions to accept COVID-19, influenza, and measles or general childhood vaccinations. Both contamination aversion and perceived infectability were higher during than before the pandemic. In contrast to previous research, those with higher contamination aversion during the pandemic perceived vaccines to be safer and had higher intentions to accept vaccination. Contamination aversion before the pandemic was not associated with perceived vaccine safety or vaccination intentions during the pandemic. Individuals who perceived themselves as more susceptible to diseases were slightly more willing to accept vaccination. We conjecture that high disease threat reverses the relationship between the behavioral immune system response and vaccination. As the associations were weak, individual differences in contamination aversion and perceived infectability are of little practical relevance for vaccine uptake.

Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented changes to the lives of youth, including social distancing measures and stay-at-home orders resulting in a sudden and stark reduction in daily social interactions for children and adolescents. Given that peer relationships are especially important during this developmental stage, it is crucial to understand the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on social behavior and risk for mental health problems in children and adolescents. Method: In a longitudinal sample (N=224, aged 7-15 years old) assessed at three strategic time points (prior to the pandemic, during the stay-at-home order period, and again six months later), we examine the social lives of children and adolescents and whether certain social behaviors may protect against increases in internalizing and externalizing problems during the pandemic. Results: Youth who reported lower levels of in-person and digital socialization, greater social isolation, and less peer and parent support had heightened internalizing and externalizing symptoms during the pandemic, controlling for pre-pandemic symptoms. Youth who reported more social connectedness and increased use of digital socialization during the pandemic were less likely to develop psychopathology after experiencing pandemic-related stressors. In addition, children, but not adolescents, who maintained some socialization in-person were less likely to develop internalizing symptoms following exposure to pandemic-related stressors. Conclusion: Using a longitudinal design, we identify social factors that promote well-being and resilience in children and adolescents during this societal event. We provide practical recommendations to mitigate risk of psychopathology resulting from the dramatic changes in youths’ social experiences during the pandemic.

We offer three recommendations to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates. First, use communication campaigns leveraging evidence-based levers and argumentation tools with experts. Second, use behavioral insights to make vaccination more accessible. Third, help early adopters communicate about their decision to be vaccinated to accelerate the emergence of pro-vaccination norms.

Pollen exposure weakens the immunity against certain seasonal respiratory viruses by diminishing the antiviral interferon response. Here we investigate whether the same applies to the pandemic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which is sensitive to antiviral interferons, if infection waves coincide with high airborne pollen concentrations. Our original hypothesis was that more airborne pollen would lead to increases in infection rates. To examine this, we performed a cross-sectional and longitudinal data analysis on SARS-CoV-2 infection, airborne pollen, and meteorological factors. Our dataset is the most comprehensive, largest possible worldwide from 130 stations, across 31 countries and five continents. To explicitly investigate the effects of social contact, we additionally considered population density of each study area, as well as lockdown effects, in all possible combinations: without any lockdown, with mixed lockdown−no lockdown regime, and under complete lockdown. We found that airborne pollen, sometimes in synergy with humidity and temperature, explained, on average, 44% of the infection rate variability. Infection rates increased after higher pollen concentrations most frequently during the four previous days. Without lockdown, an increase of pollen abundance by 100 pollen/m3 resulted in a 4% average increase of infection rates. Lockdown halved infection rates under similar pollen concentrations. As there can be no preventive measures against airborne pollen exposure, we suggest wide dissemination of pollen−virus coexposure dire effect information to encourage high-risk individuals to wear particle filter masks during high springtime pollen concentrations.

Compassion—the warm, caregiving emotion that emerges from witnessing the suffering of others—has long been considered an important moral emotion for motivating and sustaining prosocial behavior. Some suggest that compassion draws from empathic feelings to motivate prosocial behavior, while others try to disentangle these processes to examine their different functions for human pro-sociality. Many suggest that empathy, which involves sharing in others’ experiences, can be biased and exhausting, whereas warm compassionate concern is more rewarding and sustainable. If compassion is indeed a warm and positive experience, then people should be motivated to seek it out when given the opportunity. Here, we ask whether people spontaneously choose to feel compassion, and whether such choices are associated with perceiving compassion as cognitively costly. Across all studies, we found that people opted to avoid compassion when given the opportunity; reported compassion to be more cognitively taxing than empathy and objective detachment; and opted to feel compassion less often to the degree they viewed compassion as cognitively costly. We also revealed two important boundary conditions: first, people were less likely to avoid compassion for close (vs. distant) others, and this choice difference was associated with viewing compassion for close others as less cognitively costly. Second, in the final study we found that with more contextually enriched and immersive pleas for help, participants preferred to escape feeling compassion, though their preference did not differ from also escaping remaining objectively detached. These results temper strong arguments that compassion is an easier route to prosocial motivation.

Members of the public could be putting themselves more at risk from contracting coronavirus by wearing face masks, one of England’s most senior doctors has warned.

Sustained mass behaviour change is needed to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, but many of the required changes run contrary to existing social norms (e.g., physical closeness with ingroup members). This paper explains how social norms and social identities are critical to explaining and changing public behaviour. Recommendations are presented for how to harness these social processes to maximise adherence to COVID-19 public health guidance. Specifically, we recommend that public health messages clearly define who the target group is, are framed as identity-affirming rather than identity-contradictory, include complementary injunctive and descriptive social norm information, are delivered by ingroup members and that support is provided to enable the public to perform the requested behaviours.

A year into the pandemic, Louis Appleby looks at the evidence on suicide rates Not a week passes without a story in the press about the impact of covid-19 on suicide. Claims on social media seem to appear daily. A year into the pandemic, what is the evidence? The short answer is that there has been little effect. But it’s more complex than that, as it always is with suicide statistics.

Technical briefing document on novel SARS-CoV-2 variant.

BackgroundVaccination is one of the cornerstones of controlling an influenza pandemic. To optimise vaccination rates in the general population, ways of identifying determinants that influence decisions to have or not to have a vaccination need to be understood. Therefore, this study aimed to predict intention to have a swine influenza vaccination in an adult population in the UK. An extension of the Theory of Planned Behaviour provided the theoretical framework for the study.MethodsThree hundred and sixty two adults from the UK, who were not in vaccination priority groups, completed either an online (n = 306) or pen and paper (n = 56) questionnaire. Data were collected from 30th October 2009, just after swine flu vaccination became available in the UK, and concluded on 31st December 2009. The main outcome of interest was future swine flu vaccination intentions.ResultsThe extended Theory of Planned Behaviour predicted 60% of adults' intention to have a swine flu vaccination with attitude, subjective norm, perceived control, anticipating feelings of regret (the impact of missing a vaccination opportunity), intention to have a seasonal vaccine this year, one perceived barrier: "I cannot be bothered to get a swine flu vaccination" and two perceived benefits: "vaccination decreases my chance of getting swine flu or its complications" and "if I get vaccinated for swine flu, I will decrease the frequency of having to consult my doctor," being significant predictors of intention. Black British were less likely to intend to have a vaccination compared to Asian or White respondents.ConclusionsTheoretical frameworks which identify determinants that influence decisions to have a pandemic influenza vaccination are useful. The implications of this research are discussed with a view to maximising any future pandemic influenza vaccination uptake using theoretically-driven applications.

During the H1N1 pandemic, most healthcare workers in Turkey were not willing to take up the vaccine. This qualitative study aims to explore the factors that lead to vaccination resistance among a group of primary healthcare workers in Istanbul. Data were collected through focus group discussions. Thematic content analysis was conducted. All participants considered themselves at risk for infection, yet most of them were not vaccinated. Only persons with a “poor” immune system were considered by the respondents at risk for severe disease and death. Health personnel mostly did not realize their potential role in the transmission of influenza to patients. The decision of vaccination was dependent on the information source. The personnel who depended mainly on the media either did not accept vaccination or was undecided. They believed that the vaccine went through an accelerated authorization procedure. Yet the ones who accepted vaccination relied mostly on evidence-based sources and accessed information from the guidelines of the Ministry of Health, Professional Medical Associations and the World Health Organization. Social networks were also influential factors in the decision-making process. It is important to empower healthcare workers through supporting the skills of acquiring and using evidence-based information. This is particularly important for physicians who also serve as opinion leaders.

BackgroundHesitancy towards vaccination has been studied as a barrier to vaccination among children, as well as participation in vaccine trials. This study aimed to investigate hesitancy towards vaccination among parents in Indonesia, as a part of the Indonesia Zika Vaccine Study.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in eleven regencies and municipalities in Aceh and West Sumatra province, Indonesia. Parents were recruited from families at outpatient clinics of community health centers or hospitals. The survey included various questions about sociodemographic factors and the Parent Attitudes about Childhood Vaccination (PACV) scale. Linear regression was employed to assess the association between explanatory variables and vaccine hesitancy.ResultsA total of 956 parents were interviewed and 26.4% of participants had heard about Zika. Overall, 152 parents (15.9%) were vaccine hesitant, and this proportion was the highest in the safety and efficacy subdomain (61.6%). In the unadjusted analysis, having a diploma certificate, working in the health sector, and having heard about Zika were significantly associated with non-hesitancy towards children vaccination. Having heard about Zika was the only factor that was significantly associated with hesitancy towards vaccination in multivariate model (aOR: 0.43, 95% CI: 0.26–0.71). Mothers, younger parents (aged 20–29 years old), and those with only a primary school education were more concerned about vaccine safety and efficacy compared to fathers, older groups, and individuals with more education, respectively.ConclusionsHesitancy towards pediatric vaccination is observed in 15% of respondents and most of the hesitancy was expressed in terms of vaccine safety and efficacy. Therefore, continuous dissemination of vaccine information needs to be carried out to earn parents’ trust and increase vaccination coverage in Indonesia.

Free vaccination against the human papillomavirus (HPV) began in December, 2010, for Japanese girls aged 12–16 years and since April, 2013, the vaccine was included in the national immunisation programme. However, in June, 2013, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare suspended proactive recommendations for the HPV vaccine after unconfirmed reports of adverse events following vaccination appeared in the media.1Gilmour S Kanda M Kusumi E Tanimoto T Kami M Shibuya K HPV vaccination programme in Japan.Lancet. 2013; 382: 768Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (54) Google Scholar In January, 2014, the Vaccine Adverse Reactions Review Committee investigating these adverse events concluded that there was no evidence to suggest a causal association between the HPV vaccine and the reported adverse events after vaccination, but they still did not reinstate proactive recommendations for its use.2Saitoh A Okabe N Recent progress and concerns regarding the Japanese immunization program: addressing the “vaccine gap”.Vaccine. 2014; 32: 4253-4258Crossref PubMed Scopus (40) Google Scholar We report the resulting effects of such a decision by presenting data from Sapporo, a city of 2 million people in northern Japan.

ObjectivesAs Asian Americans are disproportionately affected by the hepatitis B virus (HBV), this study explores predictors of HBV screening and vaccination among Chinese and Korean Americans.MethodsThis study uses cross-sectional data from a community-based sample of Chinese Americans (N = 502) and Korean Americans (N = 487) residing in the metropolitan New York City area from 2008–2009. Logistic regression models were stratified by Asian American subgroup and sex to predict HBV screening (among the entire sample) and HBV vaccination (among those not HBV positive).ResultsOverall, screening rates were high (71.3% among Chinese and 70.1% among Koreans). The majority of respondents were aware of HBV; however, knowledge about HBV transmission was low. In logistic regression, a physician recommendation was consistently associated with HBV screening and vaccination outcomes across all groups; having heard of HBV was significantly associated with screening and vaccination among Chinese males and screening among Korean males and females. Screening and vaccination barriers were reported among all groups, and include lack of knowledge and feeling well/having no health issues.ConclusionsTargeted efforts in these at-risk communities are necessary in order to improve HBV knowledge, address misinformation about HBV, and eliminate provider-, patient-, and resource-related barriers to HBV screening and vaccination.

To determine how risk perceptions, worry, and distrust relate to pregnant women’s intentions to accept the H1N1 vaccine. Cross-sectional survey of 173 pregnant women recruited from two OB/GYN practices at an urban academic medical center. Survey items were adapted from validated measures of risk, worry, and health care distrust. Vaccination intention was analyzed as a dichotomous variable. Analyses were with student’s t tests, chi squared tests, and logistic regression. Study participants were, on average, 25.6 years old with parity = 2.8. 55% of respondents were Black; 32% completed a high school diploma or less; and half were publically or un- insured. 63% of the respondents reported that they “definitely” or “probably” would accept the H1N1 vaccine. Intention to receive the H1N1 vaccine did not vary by sociodemographic factors nor by source of health information. In univariate analysis, intention was related to higher risk perceptions about probability of and susceptibility to H1N1 influenza (57.9 vs. 31.8%, P = .001 and 67.0 vs. 45.3%, P = .005, respectively), worry about getting H1N1 influenza (48.1 vs. 15.6%, P = <.001), and less distrust in the health care system (mean score 1.07 vs. 1.51, P < .001). In multivariable analysis, only worry about getting H1N1 was related to vaccination intention (OR = 3.43, P = .04). Worry about acquiring disease was a stronger predictor of vaccine intention than risk perceptions, distrust, or worry about vaccine safety. With growing numbers of vaccines being offered during pregnancy and immediately postpartum, these results have important implications for future vaccination intervention, education, and messaging efforts in urban settings.

This thought‐provoking book makes the point that vaccination is not an exact science and it is both a medical and social science. This raises questions about how to create greater transparency in vaccine policy, address profit incentives and stop marketing vaccines as something that is done only for individual benefit. Reich recommends that vaccine conversations with parents should be adapted to balance efforts to promote population health, while supporting the concepts of consent, bodily integrity and individual choice in health care.

BackgroundThere is growing evidence of vaccine delays or refusals due to a lack of trust in the importance, safety, or effectiveness of vaccines, alongside persisting access issues. Although immunisation coverage is reported administratively across the world, no similarly robust monitoring system exists for vaccine confidence. In this study, vaccine confidence was mapped across 149 countries between 2015 and 2019.MethodsIn this large-scale retrospective data-driven analysis, we examined global trends in vaccine confidence using data from 290 surveys done between September, 2015, and December, 2019, across 149 countries, and including 284 381 individuals. We used a Bayesian multinomial logit Gaussian process model to produce estimates of public perceptions towards the safety, importance, and effectiveness of vaccines. Associations between vaccine uptake and a large range of putative drivers of uptake, including vaccine confidence, socioeconomic status, and sources of trust, were determined using univariate Bayesian logistic regressions. Gibbs sampling was used for Bayesian model inference, with 95% Bayesian highest posterior density intervals used to capture uncertainty.FindingsBetween November, 2015, and December, 2019, we estimate that confidence in the importance, safety, and effectiveness of vaccines fell in Afghanistan, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and South Korea. We found significant increases in respondents strongly disagreeing that vaccines are safe between 2015 and 2019 in six countries: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Serbia. We find signs that confidence has improved between 2018 and 2019 in some EU member states, including Finland, France, Ireland, and Italy, with recent losses detected in Poland. Confidence in the importance of vaccines (rather than in their safety or effectiveness) had the strongest univariate association with vaccine uptake compared with other determinants considered. When a link was found between individuals' religious beliefs and uptake, findings indicated that minority religious groups tended to have lower probabilities of uptake.InterpretationTo our knowledge, this is the largest study of global vaccine confidence to date, allowing for cross-country comparisons and changes over time. Our findings highlight the importance of regular monitoring to detect emerging trends to prompt interventions to build and sustain vaccine confidence.FundingEuropean Commission, Wellcome, and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Vaccine “hesitancy” is an emerging term in the literature and discourse on vaccine decision-making and determinants of vaccine acceptance. It recognizes a continuum between the domains of vaccine acceptance and vaccine refusal and de-polarizes previous characterization of individuals and groups as either anti-vaccine or pro-vaccine.The primary aims of this systematic review are to: 1) identify research on vaccine hesitancy; 2) identify determinants of vaccine hesitancy in different settings including its context-specific causes, its expression and its impact; and 3) inform the development of a model for assessing determinants of vaccine hesitancy in different settings as proposed by the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts Working Group (SAGE WG) for dealing with vaccine hesitancy.A broad search strategy, built to capture multiple dimensions of public trust, confidence and hesitancy around vaccines, was applied across multiple databases. Peer-reviewed studies were selected for inclusion if they focused on childhood vaccines [≤7 years of age], used multivariate analyses, and were published between January 2007 and November 2012.Our results show a variety of factors as being associated with vaccine hesitancy but they do not allow for a complete classification and confirmation of their independent and relative strength of influence. Determinants of vaccine hesitancy are complex and context-specific – varying across time, place and vaccines.

Background In July 2009, French public health authorities embarked in a mass vaccination campaign against A/H1N1 2009 pandemic-influenza. We explored the attitudes and behaviors of the general population toward pandemic vaccination. Methodology/Principal Findings We conducted a cross-sectional online survey among 2,253 French representative adults aged 18 to 64 from November 17 to 25, 2009 (completion rate: 93.8%). The main outcome was the acceptability of A/H1N1 vaccination as defined by previous receipt or intention to get vaccinated (“Yes, certainly”, “Yes, probably”). Overall 17.0% (CI 95%, 15.5% to 18.7%) of respondents accepted A/H1N1 vaccination. Independent factors associated with acceptability included: male sex (p = .0001); older age (p = .002); highest or lowest level of education (p = .016); non-clerical occupation (p = .011); having only one child (p = .008); and having received seasonal flu vaccination in prior 3 years (p<.0001). Acceptability was also significantly higher among pregnant women (37.9%) and other at risk groups with chronic diseases (34.8%) (p = .002). Only 35.5% of respondents perceived A/H1N1 influenza illness as a severe disease and 12.7% had experienced A/H1N1 cases in their close relationships with higher acceptability (p<.0001 and p = .006, respectively). In comparison to 26.0% respondents who did not consult their primary care physician, acceptability was significantly higher among 8.0% respondents who were formally advised to get vaccinated, and lower among 63.7% respondents who were not advised to get vaccinated (respectively: 15.8%, 59.5% and 11.7%- p<.0001). Among respondents who refused vaccination, 71.2% expressed concerns about vaccine safety. Conclusions/Significance Our survey occurred one week before the peak of the pandemic in France. We found that alarming public health messages aiming at increasing the perception of risk severity were counteracted by daily personal experience which did not confirm the threat, while vaccine safety was a major issue. This dissonance may have been amplified by having not involved primary care physicians in the mass vaccination campaign.

Italy introduced a national law extending the number of compulsory vaccines from four to 10 in July 2017. The implementation placed a further burden on immunisation centres as they were required to cover the increased demand of vaccination by the parents of unvaccinated children. Vaccine coverage (VC) estimated 6 months and 1 year later, at 24 and 30 months (same birth cohort), had increased for all vaccines. At 24 months of age, measles VC increased from 87.3% in 2016 to 91.8% in 2017 and 94.1% at 30 months of age as at June 2018. In six of 21 regions and autonomous provinces, VC for measles was >95%. Despite the implementation of this law, vaccine hesitancy is still a problem in Italy and the political and social debate on mandatory vaccination is ongoing. Regardless of the policy to be adopted in the future, strategies to maintain high vaccination rates and the related herd immunity should be considered, including adequate communication to the population and the implementation of electronic immunisation registries.

At the November 2011 meeting of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization, SAGE noted with concern the impact of reluctance to accept immunization on the uptake of vaccines reported from both developed and developing countries. These reports led SAGE to request the establishment of a working group on vaccine hesitancy1

Sharp declines in babies being born 9 months or more on from lockdowns in France, Italy and Spain

A recent mathematical model has suggested that staying at home did not play a dominant role in reducing COVID-19 transmission. The second wave of cases in Europe, in regions that were considered as COVID-19 controlled, may raise some concerns. Our objective was to assess the association between staying at home (%) and the reduction/increase in the number of deaths due to COVID-19 in several regions in the world. In this ecological study, data from www.google.com/covid19/mobility/, ourworldindata.org and covid.saude.gov.br were combined. Countries with > 100 deaths and with a Healthcare Access and Quality Index of ≥ 67 were included. Data were preprocessed and analyzed using the difference between number of deaths/million between 2 regions and the difference between the percentage of staying at home. The analysis was performed using linear regression with special attention to residual analysis. After preprocessing the data, 87 regions around the world were included, yielding 3741 pairwise comparisons for linear regression analysis. Only 63 (1.6%) comparisons were significant. With our results, we were not able to explain if COVID-19 mortality is reduced by staying at home in ~ 98% of the comparisons after epidemiological weeks 9 to 34.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Preliminary data from a study conducted at the University of Oxford indicates that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca PLC is effective against the P1, or Brazilian, variant, a source with knowledge of the study told Reuters on Friday.

The Biden administration will offer $250 million in federal grants to community organizations working to combat inequities in the response to the coronavirus, Vice President Kamala Harris announced Monday.

This is the fog of late pandemic, and it is brutal. In the spring, we joked about the Before Times, but they were still within reach, easily accessible in our shorter-term memories. In the summer and fall, with restrictions loosening and temperatures rising, we were able to replicate some of what life used to be like, at least in an adulterated form: outdoor drinks, a day at the beach. But now, in the cold, dark, featureless middle of our pandemic winter, we can neither remember what life was like before nor imagine what it’ll be like after.

Fully reopening schools could push the reproduction number (R) of SARS-CoV-2 in England above 1.0, potentially putting an end to the decline in new cases, suggests a new pre-print. The modelling study, not yet peer-reviewed, was conducted by researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Schools present more opportunities for the virus to be transmitted so are an important consideration when looking at the spread of COVID-19. In January 2021, the Government in England announced the closure of primary and secondary schools as part of the country’s third national lockdown. However, there are concerns about the potentially damaging impact closures may have on students’ academic development and general wellbeing. To date, the evidence on how effective school closures have been in curbing the spread of the virus remains unclear. 

The B.1.1.7 variant of concern (VOC) is increasing in prevalence across Europe. Accurate estimation of disease severity associated with this VOC is critical for pandemic planning. We found increased risk of death for VOC compared with non-VOC cases in England (HR: 1.67 (95% CI: 1.34 - 2.09; P<.0001). Absolute risk of death by 28-days increased with age and comorbidities. VOC has potential to spread faster with higher mortality than the pandemic to date.

This free e-book, Practical Health Psychology Volume 1, contains all posts published by the blog since its inception through the end of 2020. We hope that it will make the contents of the blog even more accessible for readers, and help open another channel of dissemination. Download your free copy of the e-book below and subscribe to our blog to get notified when new blog posts are published.

Americans who are less connected to their community are not disproportionately likely to embrace conspiracy theories. Thirty-nine percent of Americans who belong to at least two community groups believe in the deep state, while only 23 percent of Americans who report having no community connections do.More than one-quarter (27 percent) of white evangelical Protestants say the claim that Donald Trump has been fighting a group of child sex traffickers is mostly or completely accurate. This belief is far less prevalent among white Catholics (18 percent), white mainline Protestants (15 percent), religiously unaffiliated Americans (12 percent), and Hispanic Catholics (11 percent).People who are politically segregated are more likely to embrace conspiracies. Nearly one-third (34 percent) of Republicans who report having a large number of friends who are Trump supporters say the QAnon conspiracy is mostly or completely accurate, compared to only 21 percent of Republicans who have some, a few, or no friends who are Trump supporters.Even accounting for other personal traits, such as age, gender, education, and political identity, the politics of friendship networks is strongly predictive of belief in conspiracies. Americans with a large number of Trump supporters in their friendship group had a nearly 50 percent probability of believing that unelected government officials were acting against the interests of the Trump administration, while those with few if any social connections to Trump supporters had only an 11 percent probability.

The COVID crisis has turned the world upside down. It has revealed societies’ fissures and pressure points as it has mercilessly revealed any lurking weaknesses in our existing systems and structures. The public and scientists have witnessed an explosion of scientific research across all disciplines –much it of understanding the nature of the virus itself—in addition to a well-spring of data science, meta-science and science communication, some of it drawing on state-of-the-art AI and machine learning tools designed to help scientists and non-scientists keep current on the explosion of knowledge. The pandemic has brought into sharp focus questions surrounding the development, discussion, and diffusion of research. The wider issues they raise as they pertain to the ways science is and could be conducted in online information environments, whether this is among scientists themselves, in the interaction between scientists and policy-makers, or in interaction with the general public. This special track will consider what we have learned as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.  What are the tools, systems, data governance models and types of experts that we need to foster science and help maximize its societal benefits well beyond the pandemic context? We will pay special attention to the role of media in the dissemination of new scientific findings alongside misinformation: expediency, if nothing else, during the pandemic has necessitated the use of extant social media platforms for science-to-science, science-to-policy, and science-to-public discourse.

AS cases of coronavirus rise in the UK and around the world, Sun readers will understandably be concerned.

Early and strict governmental intervention is a key factor in reducing the spread of COVID-19 cases. That’s the conclusion reached by a team of researchers comparing outbreaks of the novel coronavirus between the Chinese province of Hunan and Italy in a new paper published in Frontiers in Medicine.

Covid-19 is an inherently social disease, with exposure, illness, care, and outcomes stratified along familiar social, economic, and racial lines. However, interventions from public health and clinical medicine have focused primarily on the scale-up of technical and biomedical solutions that fail to address the social contexts driving its distribution and burden. Fused with a moment of reckoning with racial injustice and economic inequality in the U.S. and across the world, these disparities charge policy leaders to develop, study, and share a response grounded in social medicine. As a yardstick for formulating, evaluating, and implementing health policy and care delivery, social medicine recommends at least three things: integrating health, social, and economic responses; bringing care to the points of greatest need; and focusing on broad equity-driven reforms in the pandemic's wake. With these tools, Covid-19 presents us with an opportunity to address the inequities that the disease highlights, exploits, and may otherwise entrench.

The UK has now experienced nearly a year of lockdowns and social restrictions, but there are areas of the world where life is approaching normality. Good governance and strict border policies mean residents in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Vietnam are enjoying relaxed restrictions and little to no community transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes covid-19.

Some people with long covid, in which individuals have long-lasting symptoms after a covid-19 infection, are reporting improvements in their health after being vaccinated against the coronavirus. The reports are based on anecdotes and a small, informal survey rather than a scientific study, but the trend might offer clues to what causes the persistent symptoms.

In this Chapter, we discuss the effects of higher-order structures on SIS-like processes of social contagion. After a brief motivational introduction where we illustrate the standard SIS process on networks and the difference between simple and complex contagions, we introduce spreading processes on higher-order structures starting from the most general formulation on hypergraphs and then moving to several mean-field and heterogeneous mean-field approaches. The results highlight the rich phenomenology brought by taking into account higher-order contagion effects: both continuous and discontinuous transitions are observed, and critical mass effects emerge. We conclude with a short discussion on the theoretical results regarding the nature of the epidemic transition and the general need for data to validate these models.

Evidence suggests that some sexual and gender minorities — especially people of color — are hesitant to get vaccinated due to mistrust of the medical establishment.

Serological rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) are widely used across pathologies, often providing users a simple, binary result (positive or negative) in as little as 5 to 20 min. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, new RDTs for identifying SARS-CoV-2 have rapidly proliferated. However, these seemingly easy-to-read tests can be highly subjective, and interpretations of the visible “bands” of color that appear (or not) in a test window may vary between users, test models, and brands. We developed and evaluated the accuracy/performance of a smartphone application (xRCovid) that uses machine learning to classify SARS-CoV-2 serological RDT results and reduce reading ambiguities. Across 11 COVID-19 RDT models, the app yielded 99.3% precision compared to reading by eye. Using the app replaces the uncertainty from visual RDT interpretation with a smaller uncertainty of the image classifier, thereby increasing confidence of clinicians and laboratory staff when using RDTs, and creating opportunities for patient self-testing.

The popular advice is to “live in the moment.” Being “present” helps us combat stress and chronic pain and improve general well-being.But research suggests that we can adapt to challenging circumstances by doing the opposite. There may be advantages to not being present.

Session 1: Open Science and Crisis Knowledge Management

A summary of the session is now available here.

Tests on more than 365,000 people in England have shown that the antibody response to the virus that causes COVID-19 wanes over time.

The data science revolution is finally enabling the development of large-scale data-driven models that provide real- or near-real-time forecasts and risk analysis for infectious disease threats. These models also provide rationales and quantitative analysis to support policy making decisions and intervention plans. At the same time, the non-incremental advance of the field presents a broad range of challenges: algorithmic (multiscale constitutive equations, scalability, parallelization), real time integration of novel digital data streams (social networks, participatory platform, human mobility etc.). I will review and discuss recent results and challenges in the area, and focus on ongoing work aimed at responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A doctor who is skeptical of coronavirus vaccines and promotes the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19 will be the lead witness at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday, prompting criticism from Democrats who say Republicans should not give a platform to someone who promotes conspiracy theories.

Pfizer and Moderna will make billions from vaccines — luckily for us all

Since it started in 2011, Academic Writing Month has seen a growth of workshops and initiatives aimed at helping researchers to prioritise writing projects.  In 2020, as many researchers are in lockdown and working from home, there are new challenges for concentrating on and completing writing. In this post, Andy Tattersall outlines his experience running online writing retreats. He finds that they not enable researchers to be productive in lockdown but also bring back a sense of academic community, which the closure of campuses has compromised. 

Since 2016, social media companies and news providers have come under pressure to tackle the spread of political mis- and disinformation (MDI) online. However, despite evidence that online health MDI (on the web, on social media, and within mobile apps) also has negative real-world effects, there has been a lack of comparable action by either online service providers or state-sponsored public health bodies. We argue that this is problematic and seek to answer three questions: why has so little been done to control the flow of, and exposure to, health MDI online; how might more robust action be justified; and what specific, newly justified actions are needed to curb the flow of, and exposure to, online health MDI? In answering these questions, we show that four ethical concerns—related to paternalism, autonomy, freedom of speech, and pluralism—are partly responsible for the lack of intervention. We then suggest that these concerns can be overcome by relying on four arguments: (1) education is necessary but insufficient to curb the circulation of health MDI, (2) there is precedent for state control of internet content in other domains, (3) network dynamics adversely affect the spread of accurate health information, and (4) justice is best served by protecting those susceptible to inaccurate health information. These arguments provide a strong case for classifying the quality of the infosphere as a social determinant of health, thus making its protection a public health responsibility. In addition, they offer a strong justification for working to overcome the ethical concerns associated with state-led intervention in the infosphere to protect public health

What we know about singing and COVID-19

ABSTRACT: Many critics of randomisation have assumed that it is supposed to guarantee balance of prognostic factors, proceeded to show that this is impossible and then concluded that the theory is flawed. However, the shocking truth about randomisation is exactly the opposite of what they suppose. If we knew that all prognostic factors in a randomised clinical trial were balanced, the standard analysis of such trials would be wrong. The analysis that Fisher proposed for randomised experiments makes an allowance for factors being unbalanced. I shall show how this fundamental misunderstanding of how the randomisation and analysis combination deals with error is the origin of a serious error in interpreting trials. I shall illustrate the points with a game of chance and an actual trial. I conclude by recommending that would-be commentators should not presume to analyse the logic of trials until they have analysed some results.

A lot of research articles concerning SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 are published every day. Many of them, so-called pre-prints, are not reviewed in a professional reviewing process at the time of publication. Others are already reviewed and published in well-known journals. Collabovid helps researchers to identify the most relevant information by using Natural Language Processing. You can search for any topic you want below. Visit search to review all articles or browse a list of predefined categories. For additional help visit the frequently asked questions.

A project to develop a new postgraduate certificate, Computing for Cultural Heritage, with The National Archives and Birkbeck University

RR:C19 relies on student-powered engine of graduate and undergraduate students, post-docs and fellows. A core team of Assistant Editors and specialists spearhead review teams across 5 subject domains. On a daily basis, teams search, screen and assess preprints across the domains: Biological and Chemical Sciences; Physical Sciences and Engineering; Social Sciences & Humanities; Public Health; and, Medical/Clinical Sciences. AI tools also support this work. Assistant Editors are also closely involved with outreach to the Editorial Board and peer review networks in subsequent stages of the RR:C19 process. See a list of students and early career researchers supporting each of our domains here.

The Oxford Internet Institute hosts Lisa Nakamura, lisanakamura.net, Director, Digital Studies Institute, Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor, Department of American Culture, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Professor Nakamura is the founding Director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, and a writer focusing on digital media, race, and gender.We are living in an open-ended crisis with two faces: unexpected accelerated digital adoption and an impassioned and invigorated racial justice movement. These two vast and overlapping cultural transitions require new inquiry into the entangled and intensified dialogue between race and digital technology after COVID. My project analyzes digital racial practices on Facebook, Twitter, Zoom, and TikTok while we are in the midst of a technological and racialized cultural breaking point, both to speak from within the crisis and to leave a record for those who come after us. How to Understand Digital Racism After COVID-19 contains three parts: Methods, Objects, and Making, designed to provide humanists and critical social scientists from diverse disciplines or experience levels with pragmatic and easy to use tools and methods for accelerated critical analyses of the digital racial pandemic.

Outputs: Our aims are to collectively (1) develop a mindmap of existing research dissemination and curation efforts that assesses their different capabilities, pros and cons; (2) design a 'minimal viable review' process that can help with manage quality standards while keeping pace with the rapid emergence of research; (3) generate a metascience research plan to test and analyse proposed process for viability (e.g., acceptability, functionality), that we can take beyond the hackathon.

Target issue: The threat posed by climate change and COVID-19 are wildly different – immediate individual-level harm vs. long-term global-level harm. The degree of scientific consensus also differs between the two issues, with a long-standing robust consensus on climate change that rests on unequivocal evidence, and a more heterogeneous and rapidly evolving knowledge landscape in COVID-19 in which areas of uncertainty remain. Yet the denialism playbook seems to be working fine in both cases, and there is even evidence that the same players are involved in both issues (see, for e.g., here and here). Self-professed COVID-19 “skeptics” voice opinions that are counter to established science, for example by variously claiming that COVID-19 is harmless or is unaffected by behavioural countermeasures, or by promulgating non-existent cures.During the hackathon, we will examine COVID-19 misinformation, with a particular focus on the differences and similarities between climate denial and COVID-19 “denial”. Our aim is to better understand if and how science denial tactics have been cross-applied between COVID-19 and Climate denial networks. We’ll examine whether COVID-19 “skeptics” have learned from or grown out of Climate denial playbooks and networks. We will compile an inventory of new tactics and networks to disseminate COVID-19 misinformation, and discuss whether research on combating misinformation could be cross-applied between the two domains.

Target issue: The COVID-19 crisis has seen a sea change in the adoption of openly accessible research outputs (see, for e.g., here and here). However, rapid production and sharing of new research is not without its drawbacks. As pre-prints become better cited—not just among researchers, but in the public media—there is increasing risk of spreading misinformation from unreliable work (e.g., this retracted pre-print. How do we ensure reliable research is rapidly disseminated?

Yelp data shows that historic Chinatowns in several U.S. cities have been enduring an economic downturn longer and more severe than in surrounding metros. 

Target issue: The threat posed by climate change and COVID-19 are wildly different – immediate individual-level harm vs. long-term global-level harm. The degree of scientific consensus also differs between the two issues, with a long-standing robust consensus on climate change that rests on unequivocal evidence, and a more heterogeneous and rapidly evolving knowledge landscape in COVID-19 in which areas of uncertainty remain. Yet the denialism playbook seems to be working fine in both cases, and there is even evidence that the same players are involved in both issues (see, for e.g., here and here). Self-professed COVID-19 “skeptics” voice opinions that are counter to established science, for example by variously claiming that COVID-19 is harmless or is unaffected by behavioural countermeasures, or by promulgating non-existent cures.During the hackathon, we will examine COVID-19 misinformation, with a particular focus on the differences and similarities between climate denial and COVID-19 “denial”. Our aim is to better understand if and how science denial tactics have been cross-applied between COVID-19 and Climate denial networks. We’ll examine whether COVID-19 “skeptics” have learned from or grown out of Climate denial playbooks and networks. We will compile an inventory of new tactics and networks to disseminate COVID-19 misinformation, and discuss whether research on combating misinformation could be cross-applied between the two domains.

The great news about RNA vaccines is that they can easily be reprogrammed. Even after we defeat covid-19, new viruses will come along. When that happens, it will take only days to code a new RNA sequence to make a vaccine to target the new threat. Tools made with RNA will enable us both to edit our genetic material and to devise easily reprogrammable vaccines.It’s been a miserable pandemic amid an annus horribilis. It’s nice that both appear to be ending with RNA — the fundamental molecule that probably spawned the existence of life on our planet a few billion years ago — giving birth to a new era of biotechnology.

The New York City "Open Culture" program will offer artists of all kinds to move the stage to the street and other public spaces. It's like an open streets program for the arts.

The impact of a new Covid vaccine will kick in significantly over summer and life should be back to normal by next winter, one of its creators has said.Prof Ugur Sahin, BioNTech co-founder, also raised hopes the jab could halve transmission of the virus, resulting in a "dramatic reduction in cases".

A sociologist embedded in the agency shows that what gets discovered depends on how scientists collaborate.

One giant psychology experiment explains why many people seem like they don’t care about the deaths of the elderly.

Coronavirus cases are rising in almost every U.S. state. But the surge is worst now in places where leaders neglected to keep up forceful virus containment efforts or failed to implement basic measures like mask mandates in the first place, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the University of Oxford. Using an index that tracks policy responses to the pandemic, these charts show the number of new virus cases and hospitalizations in each state relative to the state’s recent containment measures.

I am a game designer with experience in a very small niche. I create and research games designed to be played in reality. I’ve worked in Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), LARPs, experience fiction, interactive theater, and “serious games”. Stories and games that can start on a computer, and finish in the real world. Fictions designed to feel as real as possible. Games that teach you. Puzzles that come to life all around the players. Games where the deeper you dig, the more you find. Games with rabbit holes that invite you into wonderland and entice you through the looking glass.When I saw QAnon, I knew exactly what it was and what it was doing. I had seen it before. I had almost built it before. It was gaming’s evil twin. A game that plays people. (cue ominous music)

PRINCIPIA is a transparent blockchain-powered ecosystem for peer-review of scientific outputs (ie, papers, patents, ...). The platform allows users, including existing publishing groups, to create and manage peer-reviewed journals.

The shift to virtual conferences needs to be accompanied by a sensitivity to people in different time zones.

Today I’ll be contributing to a session on Managing Online Discourse which is part of the SciBeh 2020 Virtual Workshop on Building an online information environment for policy relevant science. I have to come up with 10 minutes of “insights” about scientific discourse on Twitter, but I have no idea what I’m going to say yet, and this thing starts in a few hours. In a panic, I’ve decided to do a shit-ton of illegal drugs and then look at the session questions and write down whatever comes to mind.

We are excited to officially announce the second annual meeting of AIMOS, the Association for Interdisciplinary Meta-research and Open Science conference! 

We are inviting suggestions, comments, resources, or pointers for this hackathon:Target issue: To deal with the complex matter that is COVID-19, researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders need a curated---even if not yet fully vetted---overview over the constantly emerging knowledge and discussions, which are scattered across the internet (e.g., preprints, webseminars, studies in progress, #academictwitter discussions, static and interactive visualizations of results and models, blog posts by researchers, policymakers, and others). To this end, SciBeh has created a living knowledge base using hypothes.is annotations. However, the search interface is designed to search for annotations and not to search the underlying documents.

In Seattle, a ZIP code can predict everything from income to social class to life expectancy. White, wealthy residents of northern neighborhoods such as Laurelhurst live 13 years longer than their poorer neighbors of color in the southern neighborhoods of South Park and Georgetown. Air and soil pollution has disproportionately affected Seattle’s communities of color for decades, but now a group of University of Washington researchers is working with those communities to understand how COVID-19 makes a dire situation worse.

Among those who are sceptical about the impact of Covid-19, scientists advising the government on policy have become a target of criticism. 

The 876 intensive care beds certified and recognized by the SGI, which are normally available in Switzerland for the treatment of adults, are currently practically fully occupied.

In times of crisis, great leaders step up. So how did the class of 2020 fare?

Senioren erkranken zwar schwerer an Covid-19, aber sie scheinen resilienter gegenüber Depressionen und Ängsten in der Pandemie zu sein. Ein Erklärungsversuch.

The November 11 session of the COVID-19 and the Law Colloquium focused on Access to Justice and Legal Innovation.

Epidemiologists from Penn State's Center for Infectious Disease discuss the uncertain future of the COVID-19 outbreak and the possible scenarios for it's end.