In several European countries, adolescents and young adults are among the worst affected by outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease. Catchup campaigns are helping address immunisation gaps arising from low MMR uptake in the early years of the 21st century, but low vaccination rates may also stem from complacency about the need to stay up to date with vaccination schedules.

Parents’ most frequently asked questions about vaccines.

The Google-owned video site previously only banned misinformation about coronavirus vaccines. Facebook made the same change months ago.

Streaming site cracks down on harmful content about all approved Covid jabs

During the COVID-19 pandemic, information is being rapidly shared by public health experts and researchers through social media platforms. Whilst government policies were disseminated and discussed, fake news and misinformation simultaneously created a corresponding wave of “infodemics.” This study analyzed the discourse on Twitter in several languages, investigating the reactions to government and public health agency social media accounts that share policy decisions and official messages. The study collected messages from 21 official Twitter accounts of governments and public health authorities in the UK, US, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Nigeria, from 15 March to 29 May 2020. Over 2 million tweets in various languages were analyzed using a mixed-methods approach to understand the messages both quantitatively and qualitatively. Using automatic, text-based clustering, five topics were identified for each account and then categorized into 10 emerging themes. Identified themes include political, socio-economic, and population-protection issues, encompassing global, national, and individual levels. A comparison was performed amongst the seven countries analyzed and the United Kingdom (Scotland, Northern Ireland, and England) to find similarities and differences between countries and government agencies. Despite the difference in language, country of origin, epidemiological contexts within the countries, significant similarities emerged. Our results suggest that other than general announcement and reportage messages, the most-discussed topic is evidence-based leadership and policymaking, followed by how to manage socio-economic consequences.

Background Conflicting evidence has emerged regarding the relevance of smoking on risk of COVID-19 and its severity.Methods We undertook large-scale observational and Mendelian randomisation (MR) analyses using UK Biobank. Most recent smoking status was determined from primary care records (70.8%) and UK Biobank questionnaire data (29.2%). COVID-19 outcomes were derived from Public Health England SARS-CoV-2 testing data, hospital admissions data, and death certificates (until 18 August 2020). Logistic regression was used to estimate associations between smoking status and confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19-related hospitalisation, and COVID-19-related death. Inverse variance-weighted MR analyses using established genetic instruments for smoking initiation and smoking heaviness were undertaken (reported per SD increase).Results There were 421 469 eligible participants, 1649 confirmed infections, 968 COVID-19-related hospitalisations and 444 COVID-19-related deaths. Compared with never-smokers, current smokers had higher risks of hospitalisation (OR 1.80, 95% CI 1.26 to 2.29) and mortality (smoking 1–9/day: OR 2.14, 95% CI 0.87 to 5.24; 10–19/day: OR 5.91, 95% CI 3.66 to 9.54; 20+/day: OR 6.11, 95% CI 3.59 to 10.42). In MR analyses of 281 105 White British participants, genetically predicted propensity to initiate smoking was associated with higher risks of infection (OR 1.45, 95% CI 1.10 to 1.91) and hospitalisation (OR 1.60, 95% CI 1.13 to 2.27). Genetically predicted higher number of cigarettes smoked per day was associated with higher risks of all outcomes (infection OR 2.51, 95% CI 1.20 to 5.24; hospitalisation OR 5.08, 95% CI 2.04 to 12.66; and death OR 10.02, 95% CI 2.53 to 39.72).Interpretation Congruent results from two analytical approaches support a causal effect of smoking on risk of severe COVID-19.

Clinical trial on joint flu, Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccinations reported only mild to moderate side-effects

A large study reveals the scale of long Covid, with symptoms affected by sex, age and severity of infection

Billions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered around the world, dramatically reducing SARS-CoV-2 incidence in some settings. Many studies suggest vaccines provide a high degree of protection against infection and disease, but precise estimates vary and studies differ in design, outcomes measured, dosing regime, location, and circulating virus strains. Here we conduct a systematic review of COVID-19 vaccines as of August 2021. We included efficacy data from Phase 3 clinical trials for 13 vaccines within the WHO Emergency Use Listing evaluation process and real-world effectiveness for 5 vaccines with observational studies meeting inclusion criteria. Vaccine metrics collected include effects against asymptomatic infection, any infection, symptomatic COVID-19, and severe outcomes including hospitalization and death, for both partial and complete vaccination, and against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. In addition, we review the epidemiological principles behind the design and interpretation of vaccine effects and explain important sources of heterogeneity between studies.

This brief article presents a spiritually-oriented model of wellbeing: CasMac

A union representing Massachusetts state troopers sought to make a splash this week in its fight against the state’s coronavirus vaccine mandate. Dozens of troopers had submitted resignation paperwork over the mandate, the State Police Association of Massachusetts announced Monday after an adverse court ruling. It suggested that the mandate-linked resignations would deplete an agency that is “already critically short staffed.”

Ohio has the country's second highest total of pediatric COVID hospitalizations.

“The J&J results exceed expectations,” Yale Radiology and Public Health Professor @thehowie says about the COVID-19 vaccine. “They continue to point out that the J&J vaccine is highly effective even as a one dose vaccine.”

In February 2020 the U-Report for Humanitarian Action initiative, a joint effort of Office of Innovation , Programme division , Communication for development and Office of Emergency programmes developed a U-Report Information chatbot to support COVID-19 Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE). As of 20th June 2020, U-Report’s Covid-19 bot has been  Accessed by over 6 million people Across 52 countries Over 7 million interactions Over 20 million young people and communities engaged on COVID-19 through U-Report

A large study reveals the scale of long Covid, with symptoms affected by sex, age and severity of infection

Objective: Past research suggests that having a stronger ability to regulate feelings and behaviors can help individuals cope during stressful events, but little is known about why and when this might be the case. We examined if being more focused on prevention (i.e., health security motives) impacted personal well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also examined possible underlying mechanisms for this effect, and whether perceived social support buffered it. Design: We conducted a pre-registered longitudinal study over one month (N = 1,269). Main outcome measures: Regulatory focus, worry for health (T1), adherence to preventive measures (T2, two weeks after T1), loneliness, negative and positive affect, frequency of social interactions, and perceived social support (T3, two weeks after T2). Results: Prevention scores (T1) increased the adherence to health behaviors (T2), which then predicted negative affect (T3). Exploratory results further showed that prevention scores predicted more loneliness and more negative affect (T3), but only for individuals with fewer social interactions and less perceived social support. Conclusions: Security motives in threatening times can be a double edge sword, with benefits for health behaviors and negative consequences for personal well-being. Having a strong social network during these times appears to alleviate these consequences.

Participants performed a categorization training task, where each trial presented an example scenario in which an individual makes a claim based on an observation, and participants marked which fallacy or bias, if any, the individual in the scenario was committing. In two studies, we measure the effect of this training task on critical thinking, measured using an open-ended critical thinking assessment, both pre- and post-training. In Study 1, we pilot these materials in an online college course across a full academic semester and observe credible improvements in critical thinking performance. In Study 2, we conduct a pre-registered randomized controlled experiment using online research participants and observe credible improvements in critical thinking relative to no training, and relative to comparable learning activities focused on conventional curricular content. We infer that the categorization training task facilitated inductive learning of patterns of biased and flawed reasoning, which improved participants’ ability to detect and identify such patterns in the delayed open-ended critical thinking assessment. Such categorization training shows promise as an effective and practical method for improving learners’ resistance to online disinformation.

Here, we aim to investigate the effect of background uncertainty on decision making systematically. After reviewing the existing empirical studies, we argue that two types of uncertainty should be distinguished: a) ambiguity, i.e., uncertain outcomes without probability information, and b) risk, i.e., uncertainties involving probabilities regarding a negative outcome. We test the hypothesis that the type of uncertainty moderates the effect of background uncertainty on risk preferences. To test our hypothesis, we conducted four experimental studies. In this project we host all analyses scripts, data and linked preregistration of Study 3 and Study 4.

The news media can influence how the public and policymakers feel about vaccination. Perhaps under the impression that such messages can be fear-inducing and thus mobilizing, the media often laments low immunization rates. This could, however, activate a powerful descriptive social norm (“many people are not getting vaccinated”) and may be especially ill-advised in the absence of a herd-immunity explanation (that if enough people have immunity through vaccination, the virus is contained). To identify typical media practices, we analyzed the content of 160 vaccination-related news stories by nine highest-trafficked news websites in Serbia, published July–December 2017, around the start of the measles outbreak. We coded both the news story as a whole and every vaccination-rate mention (N = 339). News stories framed current vaccination rates and changes in vaccination rates in a predominantly negative way (175/241 and 67/98, respectively) (e.g., “only 50% vaccinated”, “fewer parents vaccinating their children”). A total of 24/86 of news stories mentioning vaccination rates did not provide any numerical values. Reference groups for vaccination rates were rarely specified. Out of the 32 news stories mentioning the term herd or collective immunity, 11 explained the effect. We show that even routine communication of vaccination rates can be biased through (often negatively valenced) attribute frames and imprecise descriptions. We provide initial recommendations for news media organizations and journalists, including strategies to promote positive dynamic norms and prescriptive norms and explain benefits of herd immunity.

Current Vaccine Intro Status

Background Pre-Delta, vaccination reduced transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from individuals infected despite vaccination, potentially via reducing viral loads. While vaccination still lowers the risk of infection, similar viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals infected with Delta question how much vaccination prevents onward transmission. Methods We performed a retrospective observational cohort study of contacts of SARS-CoV-2-infected index cases using contact testing data from England. We used multivariable logistic regression to investigate the impact of index case and contact vaccination on transmission, and how this varies with Alpha and Delta variants (classified using S-gene detection/calendar trends) and time since second vaccination. Results 51,798/139,164(37.2%) contacts tested were PCR-positive. Two doses of BNT162b2 or ChAdOx1 vaccines in Alpha variant index cases independently reduced PCR-positivity in contacts (aOR, adjusted odds ratio vs. unvaccinated=0.18[95%CI 0.12-0.29] and 0.37[0.22-0.63] respectively). The Delta variant attenuated vaccine-associated reductions in transmission: two BNT162b2 doses reduced Delta transmission (aOR=0.35[0.26-0.48]), more than ChAdOx1 (aOR=0.64[0.57-0.72]; heterogeneity p<0.001). Variation in viral load (Ct values) explained only a modest proportion of vaccine-associated transmission reductions. Transmission reductions declined over time since second vaccination, for Delta reaching similar levels to unvaccinated individuals by 12 weeks for ChAdOx1 and attenuating substantially for BNT162b2. Protection from vaccination in contacts also declined in the 3 months after second vaccination. Conclusions Vaccination reduces transmission of Delta, but by less than the Alpha variant. The impact of vaccination decreased over time. Factors other than PCR-measured viral load are important in vaccine-associated transmission reductions. Booster vaccinations may help control transmission together with preventing infections.

Exponential growth is frequently underestimated, an error that can have a heavy social cost in the context of epidemics. To clarify its origins, we measured the human capacity to extrapolate linear and exponential trends in scatterplots. Four factors were manipulated: the function underlying the data (linear or exponential), the response modality (pointing or venturing a number), the scale on the y axis (linear or logarithmic), and the amount of noise in the data. While linear extrapolation was precise and largely unbiased, we observed a consistent underestimation of noisy exponential growth, present for both pointing and numerical responses. A biased ideal-observer model could explain these data as an occasional misperception of noisy exponential graphs as quadratic curves. Importantly, this underestimation bias was mitigated by participants’ math knowledge, by using a logarithmic scale, and by presenting a noiseless exponential curve rather than a noisy data plot, thus suggesting concrete avenues for interventions.

The uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of understanding how attitudes towards uncertainty affect well-being. Intolerance of uncertainty is a trait associated with anxiety, worry, and mood disorders. As adaptive emotion regulation supports well-being and mental health, it is possible that intolerance of uncertainty decreases the capacity to use adaptive emotion regulation and increases the use of maladaptive strategies. However, little research exists on the relationship between intolerance of uncertainty and use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies, such as reappraisal and suppression. Study 1 demonstrated that scores on the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale were associated with greater worry related to the COVID-19 pandemic, decreased capacity to implement reappraisal, and greater self-reported use of suppression in daily life. Study 2 provided a preregistered replication of these findings. These results suggest that intolerance of uncertainty may impact mental health by reducing the capacity and tendency to use adaptive emotion regulation.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused millions of deaths and unprecedented disruptions on societies. Negative impacts are coupled with optimism the pandemic may shift public opinion on other cross-national crises. Comparing matched samples of New Zealanders assessed before and after nationwide lockdowns in 2020 (Ns = 15,815), we show the pandemic enhanced participants’ political efficacy, which in turn amplified respondents’ pro-environmental attitudes. Climate beliefs and concern increased as a function of political efficacy, and similar effects were observed for support for a government subsidy for public transport and decrease in support for government spending on new motorways. The crisis might offer a window-of-opportunity to foster sustainability actions.

Many people practiced COVID-19-related safety measures in the first year of the pandemic, but Republicans were less likely to engage in behaviors such as wearing masks or face coverings than Democrats, suggesting radical disparities in health practices split along political fault lines. We developed an “intervention tournament” which aimed to identify the framings that would promote mask wearing among a representative sample of Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. (N = 4,931). Seven different conditions reflecting different moral values and factors specific to COVID-19—including protection from harm (self), protection from harm (community), patriotic duty, purity, reviving the economy, threat, and scientific evidence—were implemented to identify which framings would “win” in terms of promoting mask wearing compared to a baseline condition. We found that Republicans had significantly more negative attitudes toward masks, lower intentions to wear them, and were less likely to sign or share pledges on social media than Democrats, which was partially mediated by Republicans, compared to Democrats, perceiving that the threat of COVID-19 was lower. None of our framing conditions significantly affected Republicans’ or Democrats’ attitudes, intentions, or behaviors compared to the baseline condition, illustrating the difficulty in overcoming the strength of political polarization during COVID-19.

Results of two studies may explain why some people develop diabetes after catching the virus

Advocacy organisation condemns rollout failures, including difficulties securing appointments, inaccessible environments and challenges for those requiring sedation

CLAIM: Those who have had COVID-19 have natural immunity against the disease and do not need a vaccine. No one should be vaccinated without first testing for COVID-19 antibodies. AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Studies have shown that infection from COVID-19 provides short-term immunity, but that protection fades over time. In addition, natural immunity differs from person to person. Even those who have had COVID-19 can benefit from the vaccine because it boosts existing immunity. THE FACTS: Social media users are spreading misleading information about immunity after COVID-19.

This is a short technical brief with important steps and resources on how country programs can track and address rumors around COVID-19 (as needed). The guide includes a number of great resources and links while also sharing nuggets from global, collective thinking around rumors.

In May 2012, the Decade of Vaccines (DoV) (1) collaboration presented for ratification a Global Vaccination Action Plan to the World Health Assembly. This document acknowledges that all stakeholders must do better with public acceptance of vaccination. Here, we propose a comprehensive new framework for vaccination advocacy that calls for a better understanding of public perceptions to build and sustain individual and community acceptance of vaccines.

The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is the first pandemic in history in which technology and social media are being used on a massive scale to keep people safe, informed, productive and connected. At the same time, the technology we rely on to keep connected and informed is enabling and amplifying an infodemic that continues to undermine the global response and jeopardizes measures to control the pandemic.  

Anti-vaccine sentiment can be extremely resistant to change, making it difficult to promote childhood vaccines. Thus, there is a need for effective strategies to communicate the benefits of vaccination to vaccine hesitant parents. Understanding how anti-vaccine advocates successfully persuade parents against vaccinating their children can provide insight into communication tactics that could be incorporated into vaccine promotion efforts. The internet is an important source of vaccine information for many parents, and plays a role informing vaccine hesitancy. To understand what might make anti-vaccine websites so convincing, we used persuasion theory as a lens to examine what information was being presented, and the persuasive tactics being used to communicate the information. We conducted a content analysis of 480 anti-vaccine websites. Four trained coders coded sites for the content of the vaccine information being presented, types of persuasive tactics used, and values and lifestyle norms associated with anti-vaccine advocacy. Anti-vaccine websites contain a considerable amount of misinformation, most commonly that vaccines are dangerous, cause autism and brain injury. Websites used both scientific evidence and anecdotes to support these claims. Values such as choice, freedom, and individuality were linked to anti-vaccine beliefs. The most commonly co-promoted behaviors included the use of alternative medicine and homeopathy, and eating a healthy or organic diet. Anti-vaccine websites use a battery of effective persuasive techniques to forward their agenda. The use of similar persuasive techniques and tapping into parents’ values and lifestyles are potentially useful strategies for vaccine promotion communication.

Misinformation poses significant challenges to evidence-based practice. In the public health domain specifically, treatment misinformation can lead to opportunity costs or direct harm. Alas, attempts to debunk misinformation have proven sub-optimal, and have even been shown to “backfire”, including increasing misperceptions. Thus, optimized debunking strategies have been developed to more effectively combat misinformation. The aim of this study was to test these strategies in a real-world setting, targeting misinformation about autism interventions. In the context of professional development training, we randomly assigned participants to an “optimized-debunking” or a “treatment-as-usual” training condition and compared support for non-empirically-supported treatments before, after, and six weeks following completion of online training. Results demonstrated greater benefits of optimized debunking immediately after training; thus, the implemented strategies can serve as a general and flexible debunking template. However, the effect was not sustained at follow-up, highlighting the need for further research into strategies for sustained change.

The number of people with post-Covid syndrome depends on the statistical method used

Science communication can be a tough game. There is so much noise — and misinformation — circulating in popular culture that it can be difficult to create a message that resonates.

Loud, proud and wrong took center stage on podiums across the NBA, with star players gladly spouting off misinformation and nonsense reminiscent of presidential campaigns of recent vintage.

It’s clear who loses from health misinformation. Mothers lose children after seeking advice in Facebook free-birth groups, measles break out in anti-vaxx communities, children with autism are poisoned from being fed bleach marketed as a miracle cure, and people die from misleading hope about a fake COVID-19 cure.

Two studies investigated the effectiveness of a self-affirmation exercise on vaccine safety beliefs and intent to vaccinate future children. In Study 1, a sample of 585 parents with at least one child under the age of 18 in the home participated through Amazon’s MTurk. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 x 2 design. Participants read either correcting information refuting a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism or a control passage about bird feeding. Additionally, participants either completed a self-affirmation exercise where they reflected on their personal values or in a control condition in which they reflected on least-personally-important values that might be important to others. Participants exposed to the correcting information were less likely to believe that vaccines cause serious side effects, but no less likely to believe that the MMR vaccine causes autism. For parents with initially positive vaccine attitudes, there was no effect of condition on intent to vaccinate a future child. For parents with initially negative vaccine attitudes, self-affirmation was ineffective in the presence of correcting information and resulted in less intention to vaccinate in the absence of correcting information. This effect was partially replicated in Study 2 (N = 576), which provided no correcting information but otherwise followed the same procedure as Study 1.

The main objective of this study was to determine whether one of the most commonly employed pro-vaccination strategies based on the "myths vs. facts" format can be considered an effective tool to counter vaccines misinformation. Sixty parents were randomly presented with either a control message or a booklet confronting some common myths about vaccines with a number of facts. Beliefs in the autism/vaccines link and in vaccines side effects, along with intention to vaccinate one's child, were evaluated both immediately after the intervention and after a 7-day delay to reveal possible backfire effects. Data provided support for the existence of backfire effects associated with the use of the myths vs. facts format, with parents in this condition having stronger vaccine misconceptions over time compared with participants in the control condition. The myths vs. facts strategy proved to be ineffective. Efforts to counter vaccine misinformation should take into account the many variables that affect the parents' decision-making.

Internews first developed our rumour tracking methodology in 2014 in Liberia, in order to address the deadly Ebola outbreak. Since then, we’ve implemented rumour tracking as a way to address misinformation during humanitarian crises in numerous countries and contexts, reaching hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries. This guide was authored by Viviane Lucia Fluck, PhD, and produced with financial support from the United States Agency for International Development. The rumor tracking methodology, which is part of Internews’ Learning Collection, includes three parts: Context, Case Studies, and a How To Guide. The How To Guide is usually packaged separately for ease of use.

The proliferation of disinformation online amidst the DRC’s outbreak of the Ebola virus is a serious threat to global health. Efforts to curb bad information and conspiracy theories on social media about the disease and other health issues have been no more successful in health than in other contexts.

Pakistan is one of just two countries where polio is still endemic (Afghanistan is the other). The global initiative to eradicate polio in Pakistan has experienced varying degrees of success, but has been complicated by ongoing distrust in the motives of global health authorities and recent spikes in polio-related misinformation on social media. 

How the US vaccine effort derailed and why we shouldn’t be surprisedLow vaccine rates may be the predictable outcome subject to entrenched social forces that have diminished American health and life expectancy since the 1980s, health researchers say

The past several months have seen thousands of hospitals announce COVID-19 vaccination requirements for staff and clinicians as a condition of employment. <!--//--><![CDATA[// ><!-- document.addEventListener("googletagEvent", function () { let hideOnMobile = "0"; let isMobileQuery = false; if (typeof window.dataLayerValues === "undefined" || !window.dataLayerValues.hasOwnProperty('isMobileQuery') || window.dataLayerValues.isMobileQuery) { isMobileQuery = window.dataLayerValues.isMobileQuery; } // Don't display the ad unit if this is a mobile browser and we're supposed to hide the unit in mobile view. if (isMobileQuery && hideOnMobile === '1') { console.log("[debug] [mobile] [skipping] ad unit: ", 'content-embed-one'); return; } let hideOnDesktop = "0"; // Don't display this ad unit if this is a desktop broser and we're supposed to hide the mobile ad unit if(!isMobileQuery && hideOnDesktop === '1') { //console.log("[debug] [desktop] [skipping] ad unit on: ", 'content-embed-one',"hideOnDesktop:",hideOnDesktop); return; } //console.log("[debug] content-embed-one","firing"); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display('content-embed-one'); }); }); //--><!]]> Although controversial, the policies picked up steam when Pfizer and BioNTech’s Comirnaty received a full regulatory approval and then really kicked into gear when the Biden administration made workforce vaccination a requirement for Medicare and Medicaid participation. Most health system leaders and professional organizations have been supportive of the requirement, with some describing vaccination as “the logical fulfillment of the ethical commitment of all healthcare workers to put patients as well as residents of long-term care facilities first.” <!--//--><![CDATA[// ><!-- document.addEventListener("googletagEvent", function () { let hideOnMobile = "0"; let isMobileQuery = false; if (typeof window.dataLayerValues === "undefined" || !window.dataLayerValues.hasOwnProperty('isMobileQuery') || window.dataLayerValues.isMobileQuery) { isMobileQuery = window.dataLayerValues.isMobileQuery; } // Don't display the ad unit if this is a mobile browser and we're supposed to hide the unit in mobile view. if (isMobileQuery && hideOnMobile === '1') { console.log("[debug] [mobile] [skipping] ad unit: ", 'ad-slot_1__mobile'); return; } let hideOnDesktop = "1"; // Don't display this ad unit if this is a desktop broser and we're supposed to hide the mobile ad unit if(!isMobileQuery && hideOnDesktop === '1') { //console.log("[debug] [desktop] [skipping] ad unit on: ", 'ad-slot_1__mobile',"hideOnDesktop:",hideOnDesktop); return; } //console.log("[debug] ad-slot_1__mobile","firing"); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display('ad-slot_1__mobile'); }); }); //--><!]]> However, some executives and industry figures have warned that mandates might place provider organizations in a bind as disgruntled employees choose to walk away rather than comply.

Asking if breakthrough infections are rare misses the point.

This week the Royal Society of Medicine held a webinar “Vaccines, variants and infections: the position this winter.” Almost 18 months after the UK’s first lockdown, Jacqui Wise listened to experts’ predictions

Dear vaccinated, We did not take your freedom. The government did. We are not holding your freedoms to ransom. The government is. If we are a danger to you, then your vaccine doesn't work. If it does, then you should already be free. The government has lied to you.

AbstractAs the COVID-19 pandemic continues causing problems around the world, Chile is facing a new episode of increasing cases and deaths. However, at the same time, the country has succeeded in providing vaccines for an important part of its population over a short period.What are the factors behind this successful process? What are the challenges faced by the country today? This article explores potential explanations for the “Chilean paradigm”, regarding the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Borrowing from implementation science frameworks, the analysis proposed an alternative explanation—based on multiple actors, approaches, and history—as opposed to one in which the outcome is due mainly to the government’s performance.The rapid and extensive coverage of vaccination can be explained by the role played by the government and the academia in securing vaccines through a pragmatic approach; the capacity built at local level, as well as the coordination between the health system and local authorities; and favorable vaccine culture, developed through the implementation of the National Immunization Program. Short and long-term elements (such as investment in infrastructure and relationships between stakeholders, and actions carried out during the pandemic), as well as contextual factors (such as the political and socioeconomic context), provide a more complex story to explain the observed outcomes.While other countries could try to follow the Chilean example, the article shows that short-term actions are necessary but might not be sufficient to achieve results. At a global level, the situation calls for rethinking how countries will face these global challenges, including issues such as international cooperation and global health governance.

Three recent polls show that a majority of Americans support vaccine mandates.  The popularity of vaccine requirements has risen as the Delta variant surged. Hardline opposition to getting vaccinated has fallen to a new low. 

Now that covid-19 vaccination of children in the UK is starting, it is essential that the legal basis of consent for a medical intervention in this group are well understood

As of 28 July 2021, 60% of adults in the United States had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and more than 34 million cases had been reported. Given the uncertainty regarding undocumented infections, the population level of immunity against COVID-19 in the United States remains undetermined.Objective:To estimate the population immunity, defined as the proportion of the population that is protected against SARS-CoV-2 infection due to prior infection or vaccination.Design:Statistical and simulation modeling to estimate overall and age-specific population immunity.Setting:United States.Participants:Simulated age-stratified population representing U.S. demographic characteristics.Measurements:The true number of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the United States was inferred from data on reported deaths using age-specific infection-fatality rates (IFRs). Taking into account the estimates for vaccine effectiveness and protection against reinfection, the overall population immunity was determined as the sum of protection levels in vaccinated persons and those who were previously infected but not vaccinated.Results:Using age-specific IFR estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it was estimated that as of 15 July 2021, 114.9 (95% credible interval [CrI], 103.2 to 127.4) million persons had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the United States. The mean overall population immunity was 62.0% (CrI, 58.4% to 66.4%). Adults aged 65 years or older were estimated to have the highest immunity level (77.2% [CrI, 76.2% to 78.6%]), and children younger than 12 years had the lowest immunity level (17.9% [CrI, 14.4% to 21.9%]).Limitation:Publicly reported deaths may underrepresent actual deaths.Conclusion:As of 15 July 2021, the U.S. population immunity against COVID-19 may still have been insufficient to contain the outbreaks and safely revert to prepandemic social behavior.

Study falsely showing 1 in 1,000 risk of heart inflammation after mRNA vaccines 'weaponized' online

OTTAWA -- Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam says “active” discussions are underway with various countries, including the U.S., to permit the entry of Canadians with mixed COVID-19 vaccine doses.

As the anti-vaccine movement escalates its rhetoric, doctors warn that they're dealing with the fallout: "They’re starting to target people, the messengers — nurses and doctors."

The number of people in these ivermectin groups have exploded. So has the number of people in the groups who have contracted COVID, since the groups are largely filled with unvaccinated people seeking "alternative therapies." So they developed a makeshift “protocol.”

We have been asked on WhatsApp whether pregnant women will be prioritised for booster Covid-19 vaccines, and what the current guidance is. 

Could a simple rule of thumb help to find the truth? People struggle with integrating many putative cues to deception into an accurate veracity judgement. Heuristics simplify difficult decisions by ignoring most of the information and relying instead only on a few but highly diagnostic cues (’Use the best, ignore the rest’). We examined whether people would be able to tell lie from truth when instructed to make decisions based on a single, diagnostic cue (verifiability and richness in detail). We show that these simple judgements by lay people allowed to discriminate dishonest from honest statements. These judgements performed at or above state-of-the-art, resource-intensive content analysis by trained coders. For a tech- and training-free approach, heuristics were surprisingly accurate, and hold promise for practice.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the mental health of many individuals and has caused global increases in psychological distress. Research has shown that social support, psychological flexibility, and coping mechanisms are important protective factors against psychological distress. However, recent evidence suggested that psychological flexibility might not be a coping mechanism but could be the mechanisms to determine the type of coping approach an individual will employ during stressful events. In this study, we test a novel theoretical mediation model to identify if, during stressful events (i.e., COVID-19), individuals perceived level of social support directly increases their psychological flexibility; and if the effect of psychological flexibility on psychological distress is mediated by approach and avoidant coping strategies. To test the model, 360 participants completed the following surveys: COVID-19 concerns scale, the multidimensional scale of perceived social support, the comprehensive assessment of acceptance and commitment therapy, and the brief COPE. Results show that most participants report a high level of psychological distress. One novel finding in our study was the mediating role of coping mechanism between psychological flexibility and psychological distress. Our results partially confirm that psychological flexibility might influence the type of coping an individual will employ during stressful events. Within the context of COVID-19, we have shown that social support, psychological flexibility and the types of coping mechanisms individuals employ have an impact on their levels of psychological distress. However, we argue that the proposed model could be applied to other stressful events.

Misinformation about COVID-19 is a major threat to public health. Using five national samples from the UK (n= 1050 and n= 1150), Ireland (n = 700), the USA (n = 700), Spain (n= 700) and Mexico (n= 700), we examine predictors of belief in the most common statements about the virus that contain misinformation. We also investigate the prevalence of belief in COVID-19 misinformation across different countries and the role of belief in such misinformation in predicting relevant health behaviours. We find that while public belief in misinformation about COVID-19 is not particularly common, a substantial proportion views this type of misinformation as highly reliable in each country surveyed. In addition, a small group of participants find common factual information about the virus highly unreliable. We also find that increased susceptibility to misinformation negatively affects people's self-reported compliance with public health guidance about COVID-19, as well as people's willingness to get vaccinated against the virus and to recommend the vaccine to vulnerable friends and family. Across all countries surveyed, we find that higher trust in scientists and having higher numeracy skills were associated with lower susceptibility to coronavirus-related misinformation. Taken together, these results demonstrate a clear link between susceptibility to misinformation and both vaccine hesitancy and a reduced likelihood to comply with health guidance measures, and suggest that interventions which aim to improve critical thinking and trust in science may be a promising avenue for future research.

We identified the 2,000 most active Twitter accounts in the vaccine discourse from 2019, identifying both vaccine opponents and proponents. Only 17% of this sample appeared to be bots.  In addition to tweeting about vaccines, vaccine opponents also tweeted about conservative politics and conspiracy theories. Vaccine proponents tended to represent doctors, researchers, or health organizations, but also included non-medical accounts.On February 20, we collected the most recent tweets for each account and automatically extracted 35 distinct topics of conversation related to COVID-19 (roughly 80,000 tweets). Topics were categorized as: more reliable (public health updates & news), less reliable (discussion), and unreliable (misinformation). Misinformation included conspiracy theories, unverifiable rumors, and scams promoting untested prevention/cures.Vaccine opponents shared the greatest proportion (35.4%) of unreliable information topics including a mix of conspiracy theories, rumors, and scams.  Vaccine proponents shared a much lower proportion of unreliable information topics (11.3%). Across both vaccine proponents and vaccine opponents, the largest single topic of conversation was “Disease & Vaccine Narratives,” a discussion-based topic where users made comparisons between COVID-19 and other diseases—most notably influenza. These messages likely added to public confusion around the seriousness and nature of COVID-19 that endures months later. In the context of an ‘infodemic,’ efforts to address and correct misinformation are complicated by the high levels of scientific uncertainty. Focusing on only the most conspicuous forms of misinformation—blatant conspiracy theories, bot-driven narratives, and known communities linked by conspiracist ideologies—is one approach to addressing misinformation, but given the complexity of the current moment, this strategy may fail to address the more subtle types of falsehoods that may be shared more broadly. 

ObjectiveUsing longitudinal methods to assess regional associations between social media posts about vaccines and attitudes and actual vaccination against influenza in the US.MethodsGeolocated tweets from U.S. counties (N = 115,330) were analyzed using MALLET LDA (Latent Dirichlet allocation) topic modeling techniques to correlate with prospective individual survey data (N = 3005) about vaccine attitudes, actual vaccination, and real-life discussions about vaccines with family and friends during the 2018–2019 influenza season.ResultsTen topics were common across U.S. counties during the 2018–2019 influenza season. In the overall analyses, two of these topics (i.e., Vaccine Science Matters and Big Pharma) were associated with attitudes and behaviors. The topic concerning vaccine science in November-February was positively correlated with attitudes in February-March, r = 0.09, BF10 = 3. Moreover, among respondents who did not discuss the influenza vaccine with family and friends, the topic about vaccine fraud and children in November-February was negatively correlated with attitudes in February-March and with vaccination in February-March, and April-May (rs = −0.18 to −0.25, BF10 = 4–146). However, this was absent when participants had discussions about the influenza vaccine with family and friends.DiscussionRegional vaccine content correlated with prospective measures of vaccine attitudes and actual vaccination.ConclusionsSocial media have demonstrated strong associations with vaccination patterns. When the associations are negative, discussions with family and friends appear to eliminate them. Programs to promote vaccination should encourage real-life conversations about vaccines.

People’s inability to update their memories in light of corrective information may have important public health consequences, as in the case of vaccination choice. In the present study, we compare three potentially effective strategies in vaccine promotion: one contrasting myths vs. facts, one employing fact and icon boxes, and one showing images of non-vaccinated sick children. Beliefs in the autism/vaccines link and in vaccines side effects, along with intention to vaccinate a future child, were evaluated both immediately after the correction intervention and after a 7-day delay to reveal possible backfire effects. Results show that existing strategies to correct vaccine misinformation are ineffective and often backfire, resulting in the unintended opposite effect, reinforcing ill-founded beliefs about vaccination and reducing intentions to vaccinate. The implications for research on vaccines misinformation and recommendations for progress are discussed.

We have each spent more than 50 years doing research that has had little impact. Even more lamentable is that our field, judgment and decision making (JDM), has on the whole had little impact during that span. We attribute that failure to the use of methodologies that emphasize testing models rather than looking for differences in behavior. The “cognitive revolution” led the field astray, toward the goal of studying model fit rather than comparing observable results. With modeling as the goal, experimentation was stultified. Simple tasks became dominant. Although a poor metaphor for real decision making, the gambling paradigm has lasted forever because the inputs to the decision are known to the researcher and thus easily modeled.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a significant toll on the global population, but biotechnology has a big role to play in arresting the spread of the virus. However, the adoption of biotechnologies may be held back by cognitive biases. In particular, omission bias – the observation that people are more sensitive to the negative outcomes of acting than to those of failing to act – has been suggested to influence vaccination decision making. Omission bias might also underpin attitudes towards newer biotechnologies. In this study, we explored the role of omission bias in vaccination, gene editing, and nanotechnology decision-making using a US sample (N = 613). We examined participant’s risk choices across these three biotechnologies, focussing on the point at which they would use the respective biotechnology to treat a fictional illness (COVID-23). Although our findings are nuanced, overall we observed evidence consistent with an omission bias across all three biotechnologies.

The early signs were not good. France is a poster child for vaccine scepticism and surveys last year revealed a lack of enthusiasm for any COVID-19 vaccine. In the 2016 Vaccine Confidence Index, France was the hesitancy hotspot. Just 41% of people agreed that vaccines are safe. A similar EU study in 2018 suggested some improvement but, as COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, there was reason for pessimism in Paris. There was no reason to hope that minds would change during a public health crisis. During the 2009/2010 H1N1 flu pandemic, vaccine uptake in France was abysmal. Even among GPs, flu vaccine uptake in 2010 was low. A study on attitudes to COVID-19 vaccines published in April 2021, predicted 29% refusal rates. 

Chief medical officer says transmission in England highest among 12- to 15-year-olds

Knowing what misinformation is being shared can help you generate effective messaging.These insights are based on a combination of automated media monitoring and manual review by public health data analysts. Media data are publicly available data from many sources, such as social media, broadcast television, newspapers and magazines, news websites, online video, blogs, and more. Analysts from the Public Good Projects triangulate this data along with other data from fact checking organizations and investigative sources to provide an accurate, but not exhaustive, list of currently circulating misinformation.

Guidelines say health staff can decide whether children receive jab without parental consent, as headteachers fear protests

Here’s a round up of the latest key developments: Coronavirus has caused male life expectancy in the UK to drop for the first time since records began. A boy born between 2018 and 2020 is expected to live until he is 79 years old - a drop from 79.2 years for 2015-2017, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. The number of people testing positive for Covid-19 in England has dropped to its lowest level since the end of June. Novavax has announced that it has applied to the World Health Organization for an emergency-use listing of its Covid-19 vaccine. The listing is a prerequisite for export to several countries participating in the Covax vaccine-sharing facility Covid-19 could resemble the common cold by spring next year as people’s immunity to the virus is boosted by vaccines and exposure, a leading British expert has said. Prof Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said the UK was “over the worst”. Portugal will lift almost all remaining Covid-19 restrictions, allowing full occupancy in restaurants and cultural venues from 1 October, the prime minister, Antonio Costa, said on Thursday. Thailand is considering cutting hotel isolation requirements for vaccinated tourists in half to one week in a bid to attract foreign visitors again. It comes amid delays to plans to waive quarantine and reopen Bangkok and other tourist destinations from next month after the pandemic caused a collapse in the country’s tourism industry Covid deaths in Russia, where 820 people died from the virus in the last 24 hours, matched the all-time one-day high reached in August. Since the start of the pandemic, Russia has recorded 7,354,995 coronavirus cases. The US Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for those ages 65 and older and some high-risk Americans, paving the way for a quick rollout of the shots, Reuters reports. In the UK, record numbers of children and young people are seeking access to NHS mental health services, figures show, as the devastating toll of the pandemic is revealed in a new analysis. In just three months, nearly 200,000 young people have been referred to mental health services – almost double pre-pandemic levels, according to the report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. More than 100 countries face cuts to public spending on health, education and social protection as the Covid-19 pandemic compounds already high levels of debt, a new report says. The International Monetary Fund believes that 35 to 40 countries are “debt distressed” – defined as when a country is experiencing difficulties in servicing its debt, such as when there are arrears or debt restructuring. A judge in the Netherlands has ruled that a 12-year-old boy can be administered a Covid vaccine against the wishes of his father. The unnamed boy in the city of Groningen had argued that he needed a vaccine to safely visit his dying grandmother. AstraZeneca has announced a deal with a startup founded by an Imperial College London vaccinologist to develop and sell drugs based on its self-amplifying RNA technology platform in other disease areas. That’s it from me. I’m handing over to my colleague Nadeem Badshah now. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Thanks for following along – this blog is now closed. You can catch up with the latest coronavirus coverage here.

Zhou Xun and Sander Gilman show how fear and poor terminology have fuelled racial prejudice during the pandemic

As pandemic widens inequalities, many developing countries spend more on debt than health, study says

The 2020 US mortality totaled 2.8 million after early March, which is 17.3% higher than age-population–weighted mortality over the same time interval in 2017 to 2019, for a total excess death count of 413,592. We use data on weekly death counts by cause, as well as life tables, to quantify excess mortality and life years lost from both COVID-19 and non–COVID-19 causes by race/ethnicity, age, and gender/sex. Excess mortality from non–COVID-19 causes is substantial and much more heavily concentrated among males and minorities, especially Black, non-Hispanic males, than COVID-19 deaths. Thirty-four percent of the excess life years lost for males is from non–COVID-19 causes. While minorities represent 36% of COVID-19 deaths, they represent 70% of non–COVID-19 related excess deaths and 58% of non–COVID-19 excess life years lost. Black, non-Hispanic males represent only 6.9% of the population, but they are responsible for 8.9% of COVID-19 deaths and 28% of 2020 excess deaths from non–COVID-19 causes. For this group, nearly half of the excess life years lost in 2020 are due to non–COVID-19 causes.

This has become a common refrain among the cautious—and it’s wrong.

Vaccines typically require years of research and testing before reaching the clinic, but in 2020, scientists embarked on a race to produce safe and effective coronavirus vaccines in record time. Researchers are currently testing 105 vaccines in clinical trials on humans, and 35 have reached the final stages of testing. More than 75 preclinical vaccines are under active investigation in animals.

Today, President Biden convened heads of state and leaders from international organizations, the private sector, philanthropies, non-government organizations, and other partners for the Global COVID-19 Summit: Ending the Pandemic and Building Back Better, a virtual summit on the margins of the UN General Assembly.

Previous research has demonstrated that higher levels of belief in conspiracy theories are related to higher levels of distrust toward others, greater antisocial tendencies, and more self-centeredness. These findings suggest that conspiracy believers may also be less likely to be generous. However, very little research has thus far investigated this possibility. In the current study, we examined the association between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and generosity across a sample of 45,073 participants from 52 countries. We found that participants with higher COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs were less likely to donate to national and international charities, and that this negative association was stronger for donations to national charities. Exploratory analyses revealed that the discrepancy between national and international charity donations was more salient in countries with high levels of corruption, suggesting that conspiracy believers might be more suspicious of ingroups, rather than outgroups, in more corrupt countries.

The current climate surrounding childhood vaccination in the United States is one of confusion and vitriol. Despite the well-documented achievements of vaccines and extensive efforts by the public health community to ensure their safety, vocal critics of vaccination proffer a growing list of theories that link vaccines to an array of medical conditions, most prominently autism. Others question the necessity of newer vaccines, seeing their arrivals not as triumphs of medical research but as overreaches by a profit-obsessed pharmaceutical industry and an accommodating, financially conflicted medical establishment. In response to these charges, physicians, scientists, and government public health officials are routinely on the defensive, refuting allegations of unconfirmed risks, justifying the value of recommended vaccines, and striving to preserve public trust in vaccination overall. While national data suggest that a strong foundation of support for vaccination remains, regional clusters of unvaccinated children and increases in nonmedical exemptions from state school-entry vaccination requirements are causes for alarm among advocates of vaccines. Even more worrisome is research suggesting that the safety of vaccines is a growing concern among many parents [1]. The contours of the current debate regarding vaccination may be notable for their novelty—new vaccines, new recommendations, new research evidence, and new trends in diagnoses, to name a few examples. Just as striking, however, are the echoes in contemporary vaccine debates of the history of such movements. At the heart of these conflicts are the complex, long-contested relationships among citizens, science, and the state and their implications for public health policy and practice. The historical antecedents of contemporary vaccine hesitancy and refusal reveal that the present state of affairs is not an unprecedented crisis but an opportunity for renewed education, dialogue, and consensus-building regarding the value of vaccines.

The phenomenon known as vaccine hesitancy (a term that includes the concepts of indecision, uncertainty, delay and reluctance) is complex, closely linked to social contexts, and has different determinants: historical period, geographical area, political situation, complacency, convenience and confidence in vaccines. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that vaccine hesitancy and any proxy of it should be constantly monitored. Given the growing importance and pervasiveness of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the new media could be exploited in order to track lay-people's perceptions of vaccination in real time, thereby enabling health-care workers to actively engage citizens and to plan ad hoc communication strategies. Analysis of so-called "sentiments" expressed through the new media (such as Twitter) and the real-time tracking of web-related activities enabled by Google Trends, combined with the administration of specific online "surveys" on well-defined themes to target groups (such as health-care workers), could constitute a "Fast data monitoring system" that yields a snapshot of perceptions of vaccination in a given place and at a specific time. This type of dashboard could be a strategic tool that enables public services to organize targeted communication actions aimed at containing vaccine hesitancy.

Influenza vaccines have a long history of safety and demonstrated efficacy; however, they are seldom used in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Although reasons for underuse are multifactorial and differ from country to country, the need for up to twice-annual reformulation and yearly vaccination are obstacles to influenza prevention in LMICs. Major efforts are underway to produce next-generation influenza vaccines that provide durable protection against drifted strains, and such vaccines could address these unmet needs. However, additional information is required to influence immunization policies in most LMICs. Better estimates of vaccine impact on important public health outcomes, more affordable vaccines, improved programmatic suitability, and strengthened immunization delivery infrastructures are needed and must be considered early during the development of new vaccines if widespread adoption in LMICs is to be achieved.

Background: Despite the availability of a universal influenza vaccination program in the United States and Canada, seasonal influenza vaccine (SIV) uptake among the elderly remains suboptimal. Understanding the factors that determine SIV uptake in this important population subgroup is essential for designing effective interventions to improve seasonal influenza vaccination among the elderly. We evaluated the determinants of SIV uptake in the elderly in the United States and Canada. Methods: We systematically searched relevant bibliographic databases and websites from 2000 to 2017 for population-based clinical trials or observational studies conducted in community-based elderly individuals in the United States or Canada, irrespective of health status. Two reviewers independently screened the identified citations for eligibility using a two-stage sifting approach to review the title/abstract and full-text article. We gathered data on determinants of uptake (any vaccine receipt) and adherence (receipt of vaccine in more than one season) to seasonal influenza vaccination. Where possible, we pooled the data using inverse variance methods to minimize the variance of the weighted average. Results: Five cross-sectional studies on SIV uptake (none on adherence) from the United States met our eligibility criteria. Being older (pooled odds ratio [POR] = 1.44, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] = 1.11, 1.86); White (POR = 1.33, 95% CI = [1.10, 1.64]); and having higher income (POR = 1.06, 95% CI = [1.04, 1.09]); and health insurance (POR = 1.40, 95% CI = [1.25, 1.55]) were associated with increased SIV uptake. Conclusion: Older, ethnically White, higher income elderly individuals with access to health insurance coverage and a regular health care provider have higher SIV uptake in the United States. There was limited evidence for other socioeconomic and health-related determinants. Further studies are needed to provide an evidence base for planning more effective influenza vaccination programs in the United States.

An annual influenza (flu) vaccination is recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for all people 6 months and older who do not have contraindications to vaccination; vaccination is the primary way to prevent sickness and death caused by flu.[1] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed data from two telephone surveys, the National Immunization Survey-Flu (NIS-Flu) and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), to estimate flu vaccination coverage for the U.S. population during the 2018–19 flu season. Vaccination coverage with ≥1 dose of flu vaccine was 62.6% among children 6 months through 17 years, an increase of 4.7 percentage points from the 2017–18 flu season and 3.6 percentage points higher than coverage in the 2016–17 season. Flu vaccination coverage among adults ≥18 years was 45.3%, an increase of 8.2 percentage points from the 2017–18 flu season and 2.0 percentage points higher than the 2016–17 season. Vaccination coverage varied by state, ranging from 46.0%–81.1% among children and from 33.9%–56.3% among adults, and of the ten states with the lowest coverage for children eight were also among the ten states with the lowest coverage for adults. Interpretation of the estimates in this report should take into account limitations of the surveys, including reliance on self-report/parental-report of vaccination status, low response rates, and level of consistency with findings from other surveys and data sources. CDC is exploring the use of administrative data sources to track flu vaccination coverage. To improve flu vaccination coverage, healthcare providers are encouraged to offer influenza vaccination during routine health care visits and hospitalizations, continuing to offer vaccination as long as influenza viruses are circulating. For people who cannot visit a doctor’s office during the flu season, there are alternative and convenient places available for flu vaccinations. Improvements in vaccination coverage could provide greater benefit; in a recently published study, CDC estimated that increasing coverage by five percentage points could have prevented another 4,000 to 11,000 hospitalizations, depending on the severity of the season.[2]

Depersonalisation is a common dissociative experience characterised by distressing feelings of being detached or ‘estranged’ from one’s self and body and/or the world. The COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of people to socially distance from others and to change life habits. We have conducted an online study on 622 participants worldwide to investigate the relationship between digital media-based activities and distal social interactions in influencing peoples’ sense of self during the lockdown as opposed to before the pandemic. We found that increased use of digital media-based activities and online social e-meetings correlated with higher feelings of depersonalisation. We also found that people reporting higher experiences of depersonalisation also reported enhanced vividness of negative emotions (as opposed to positive emotions). Our study also reveals a weak negative correlation between the frequency of physical exercise during the lockdown and the occurrence of depersonalisation experiences. Finally, participants who reported that lockdown influenced their life to greater extent had higher occurrences of depersonalisation experiences. Our findings may help address key questions regarding well-being during a lockdown, in the general population. Our study points to potential risks related to an overly sedentary and hyper-digitalized life habits that may induce feelings of living in one’s ‘head’ (mind), disconnected from one’s body, self and the world.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, government-mandated protection measures such as contact restrictions and mask wearing significantly affected social interactions. In the current preregistered study we hypothesized that such measures could influence self-reported mood and the ability to recognize emotional expressions from the eye region of faces. We found that mood was positively related to face-to-face but not to virtual interactions. This suggests that contact restrictions leading to a decrease in face-to-face compared to virtual interactions may be related to negative mood. We also found slight improvements in emotion recognition from the eyes in a student sample tested during the pandemic relative to a comparable sample tested prior to the pandemic although these differences were restricted to female participants.

CNN's John Avlon discusses how members of the Republican Party have handpicked doctors who align with their own personal Covid-19 beliefs.

Elimination still the strategy but PM is relying on luck and people doing the right thing in easing measures while there are still new cases, say experts

Unless something really changes, US could hit a million total COVID deaths in next 6 months...

The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine has been shown to be safe and highly effective in young children ages 5 to 11 years, the companies announced early Monday morning. The news should help ease months of anxiety among parents and teachers about when children, and their close contacts, might be shielded from the coronavirus.

Antiviral drugs are among the most researched tools for treating covid-19. They either prevent a virus entering a host cell or prevent it from being able to replicate once it is inside.And yet, over 18 months into the pandemic, finding ones that are effective against SARS-CoV-2 has proved challenging.

pandemics: where everyone’s actions only affect themselves & their family and never anyone else

As the Covid pandemic continues, experts are divided over the potential risks and benefits of masks for preschoolers.

@HPRU_BSE @JoshCompton2011 @WlliamCrozierIV @SeifertColleen @d_j_flynn @M_B_Petersen @tinaeliassi @UlliEcker @BrendanNyhan @JaneSuit @DanLarhammar @mariabaghramian @PieroBianucci @a_b_powell @ProfDFreeman @andrew_chadwick @ipanalysis @SineadPLambe @SJVanders @mariejuanchich 6/6

@julieleask @profrapp @roozenbot @PhilippMSchmid @GaleSinatra @emilythorson @ekvraga @LeticiaBode @lkfazio @JasonReifler @philipplenz6 @jayvanbavel @AndyPerfors @MicahGoldwater @M_B_Petersen @Karen_Douglas @CorneliaBetsch @ira_hyman @lingtax @annaklas_ @DerynStrange @adamhfinn 5

@olbeun @SciBeh @lombardi_learn @kostas_exarhia @stefanmherzog @commscholar @johnfocook @Briony_Swire @Sander_vdLinden @DG_Rand @kendeou @dlholf @ProfSunitaSah @HendirkB @gordpennycook @andyguess @emmapsychology @ThomsonAngus @UMDCollegeofEd @gavaruzzi @katytapper @orspaca 4/n

The latest on public attitudes now at https://c19vax.scibeh.org/pages/publicattitudes… More facts about COVID https://c19vax.scibeh.org/pages/covidfacts… And information about healthcare professionals vis-a-vis COVID: https://c19vax.scibeh.org/pages/healthpros… 3/n

The latest on vaccine mandates on our page at https://c19vax.scibeh.org/pages/vaxmandates… Updates to the issue of risk perception at https://c19vax.scibeh.org/pages/riskperception… 2/n

Major update to the wiki underlying our COVID-19 Vaccination Communication Handbook https://sks.to/c19vax 1/n

What do the data on hospital admissions show?An analysis of UK data from the National Immunisation Management Service (NIMS) and the Coronavirus Clinical Information Network (CO-CIN),1 endorsed by the UK Scientific and Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE),2 shows that of 40 000 patients with covid-19 who were admitted to hospital between December 2020 and July 2021 a total of 33 496 (84%) had not been vaccinated. It found that 5198 (13%) of these patients had received their first vaccine and 1274 (3%) their second. A total of 611 patients with previous covid-19 (reinfection) were not included in the analysis.Is the picture similar for deaths?The important figure here is the number of “breakthrough” deaths, those involving covid-19 that occurred in someone who had received both vaccine doses and had a first positive PCR test result at least 14 days after the second vaccination dose. Data from the Office of National Statistics show that 256 (0.5%) of the 51 281 covid related deaths that occurred in England between 2 January and 2 July 2021 were breakthrough deaths.3 Nearly two thirds (61.1%) of the breakthrough deaths were in men, whereas 52.2% of other covid-19 deaths were in men. And 13.1% of breakthrough deaths were people who were identified from hospital episode data or causes of death as likely to have been immunocompromised, compared with 5.4% for other covid-19 deaths. SAGE noted this trend in its latest minutes, stating, “Vaccination generally reduced the odds of in-hospital mortality, although immunocompromised patients in the study had persistently high risk of mortality after both first and second dose vaccines.”4

Demand for MIQ spaces is vastly outstripping supply, with spots snapped up in just two hours

UK and airlines welcome news that US will lift Covid-19 travel restrictions from early November

At a certain point, it was no longer a matter of if the United States would reach the gruesome milestone of 1 in 500 people dying of covid-19, but a matter of when. A year? Maybe 15 months? The answer: 19 months.Given the mortality rate from covid and our nation’s population size, “we’re kind of where we predicted we would be with completely uncontrolled spread of infection,” said Jeffrey D. Klausner, clinical professor of medicine, population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. “Remember at the very beginning, which we don’t hear about anymore, it was all about flatten the curve.”

More than 90% of Fox Corporation staff inoculated, according to memo announcing daily testing for unvaccinated employees

A province that has long boasted of its loose coronavirus restrictions has also been the site of North America’s highest caseloads

There is no perfect option and it is a matter of choosing "the best set of trade-offs that we would wish to have", said Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, an infectious diseases expert at the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.

England’s deputy medical chief asked for data to be withheld unless British vaccine guinea pigs allowed to travel abroad

How does Australia’s coronavirus vaccine rollout and schedule compare with other countries, and when will Australia reach 70% and 80% double dose vaccination? We bring together the latest numbers on the vaccination rate in Victoria, NSW, Queensland and other states, as well as stats, maps, live data and Indigenous vaccination rates.

People living with chronic conditions such as Down’s syndrome and dementia remain among the most vulnerable to Covid-19 even after vaccination, research has found.The study, based on data from more than 6.9 million vaccinated adults, 5.2 million of whom had received both doses, found that being vaccinated offers powerful protection against hospitalisation for almost all groups. However, a risk calculator based on the data shows that some groups remain at particular risk and may benefit from booster vaccine doses and treatments such as monoclonal antibodies.

Rates of infection and of severe illness were substantially lower in people aged over 60 who received a booster (third) dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine than in those who had only two doses, Israeli researchers have reported.1

AbstractObjectives To derive and validate risk prediction algorithms to estimate the risk of covid-19 related mortality and hospital admission in UK adults after one or two doses of covid-19 vaccination.Design Prospective, population based cohort study using the QResearch database linked to data on covid-19 vaccination, SARS-CoV-2 results, hospital admissions, systemic anticancer treatment, radiotherapy, and the national death and cancer registries.Settings Adults aged 19-100 years with one or two doses of covid-19 vaccination between 8 December 2020 and 15 June 2021.Main outcome measures Primary outcome was covid-19 related death. Secondary outcome was covid-19 related hospital admission. Outcomes were assessed from 14 days after each vaccination dose. Models were fitted in the derivation cohort to derive risk equations using a range of predictor variables. Performance was evaluated in a separate validation cohort of general practices.Results Of 6 952 440 vaccinated patients in the derivation cohort, 5 150 310 (74.1%) had two vaccine doses. Of 2031 covid-19 deaths and 1929 covid-19 hospital admissions, 81 deaths (4.0%) and 71 admissions (3.7%) occurred 14 days or more after the second vaccine dose. The risk algorithms included age, sex, ethnic origin, deprivation, body mass index, a range of comorbidities, and SARS-CoV-2 infection rate. Incidence of covid-19 mortality increased with age and deprivation, male sex, and Indian and Pakistani ethnic origin. Cause specific hazard ratios were highest for patients with Down’s syndrome (12.7-fold increase), kidney transplantation (8.1-fold), sickle cell disease (7.7-fold), care home residency (4.1-fold), chemotherapy (4.3-fold), HIV/AIDS (3.3-fold), liver cirrhosis (3.0-fold), neurological conditions (2.6-fold), recent bone marrow transplantation or a solid organ transplantation ever (2.5-fold), dementia (2.2-fold), and Parkinson’s disease (2.2-fold). Other conditions with increased risk (ranging from 1.2-fold to 2.0-fold increases) included chronic kidney disease, blood cancer, epilepsy, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary heart disease, stroke, atrial fibrillation, heart failure, thromboembolism, peripheral vascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. A similar pattern of associations was seen for covid-19 related hospital admissions. No evidence indicated that associations differed after the second dose, although absolute risks were reduced. The risk algorithm explained 74.1% (95% confidence interval 71.1% to 77.0%) of the variation in time to covid-19 death in the validation cohort. Discrimination was high, with a D statistic of 3.46 (95% confidence interval 3.19 to 3.73) and C statistic of 92.5. Performance was similar after each vaccine dose. In the top 5% of patients with the highest predicted covid-19 mortality risk, sensitivity for identifying covid-19 deaths within 70 days was 78.7%.Conclusion This population based risk algorithm performed well showing high levels of discrimination for identifying those patients at highest risk of covid-19 related death and hospital admission after vaccination.

Doctors are still watching the data to see if there’s a Labor Day weekend bump, but generally speaking they say efforts in Connecticut are working, as the numbers show.However, the Centers for Disease Control is also watching two new variants. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('ad-681744'); }); For the third time in the last week, the governor’s daily COVID update shows a drop in hospitalizations.

Getting people to agree to covid-19 vaccination is an ongoing challenge in the US. But one demographic group shines, reports Joanne Silberner

Exhausted healthcare workers admit they feel demoralized as the fourth surge spreads across the US

A cheap 5-minute test can accurately determine whether you have had covid-19 in the past or determine whether you have protection from a vaccine by detecting antibodies in blood or saliva. When a person is infected with the coronavirus or is vaccinated against it, their immune system produces antibodies to fight the virus. These antibodies continue to be produced for at least six months, so they can be used to detect a past infection or vaccine response. Tests for coronavirus antibodies already exist, but they tend to be expensive, complicated or not very accurate.

A better understanding of the metabolic alterations in immune cells during severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection may elucidate the wide diversity of clinical symptoms experienced by individuals with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Here, we report the metabolic changes associated with the peripheral immune response of 198 individuals with COVID-19 through an integrated analysis of plasma metabolite and protein levels as well as single-cell multiomics analyses from serial blood draws collected during the first week after clinical diagnosis. We document the emergence of rare but metabolically dominant T cell subpopulations and find that increasing disease severity correlates with a bifurcation of monocytes into two metabolically distinct subsets. This integrated analysis reveals a robust interplay between plasma metabolites and cell-type-specific metabolic reprogramming networks that is associated with disease severity and could predict survival.

Germany has decided to stop using the coronavirus infection rate as its yardstick for deciding if restrictions should be in force to contain the spread of the virus, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday.

A link is plausible and should be investigated Common side effects of covid-19 vaccination listed by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) include a sore arm, fever, fatigue, and myalgia.1 Changes to periods and unexpected vaginal bleeding are not listed, but primary care clinicians and those working in reproductive health are increasingly approached by people who have experienced these events shortly after vaccination. More than 30 000 reports of these events had been made to MHRA’s yellow card surveillance scheme for adverse drug reactions by 2 September 2021, across all covid-19 vaccines currently offered.1Most people who report a change to their period after vaccination find that it returns to normal the following cycle and, importantly, there is no evidence that covid-19 vaccination adversely affects fertility. In clinical trials, unintended pregnancies occurred at similar rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated groups.2 In assisted reproduction clinics, fertility measures and pregnancy rates are similar in vaccinated and unvaccinated patients.34

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented upheaval for universities and their delivery of education and training. Many institutions have adapted to lockdown and social distancing requirements by moving teaching and research online.This resulted in a huge change in the teaching and learning dynamic between staff and students, with the suspension of face-to-face teaching (including lectures, seminars and one-to-one sessions) as well as placements and other programme specific activities that required direct contact with others. Many students were restricted to halls or other university accommodation, others (UK and overseas) returned home to continue their studies online. Although research has been conducted on the impacts of Covid-19; particularly around the experiences, behaviour and wellbeing of university students, very little focused specifically on academic staff during the pandemic and none on those just in psychology

Risk of severe disease drops by factor of almost 20 in people over 60 — but some dispute the benefits of offering a third dose.

Despite the widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines, the United States has a depressed rate of vaccination as of September 2021. Understanding the psychology of collective vaccine refusal, particularly the sources of variation across U.S. sub-populations, can aid in designing effective intervention strategies to increase vaccination across different regions. Here, we demonstrate that county-level moral values (i.e., Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity) are associated with COVID-19 vaccination rates across 3,106 counties in the contiguous United States. Specifically, in line with our hypothesis, we find that fewer people are vaccinated in counties whose residents prioritize moral concerns about bodily and spiritual purity. Further, we find that stronger endorsements of concerns about fairness and loyalty to the group predict higher vaccination rates. These associations are robust after adjusting for structural barriers to vaccination, the demographic make-up of the counties, and their residents' political voting behavior. Our findings have implications for health communication, intervention strategies based on targeted messaging, and our fundamental understanding of the moral psychology of vaccination hesitancy and behavior.

It looks different in the regions when it comes to the proportion of 16- and 17-year-olds who have been vaccinated before starting school. In the Uppsala Region, just over 70 per cent were vaccinated even on Friday, while the Kronoberg Region vaccinated just under eleven per cent even on Thursday. "We hope that it provides good conditions for upper secondary schools," says Erik Sköldenberg, chief physician in the Uppsala Region.

Here’s a guide to help you separate vaccine fact from fiction

A new wave of COVID-19 cases caused by the highly transmissible delta variant is exacerbating the worldwide public health crisis, and has led to consideration of the potential need for, and optimal timing of, booster doses for vaccinated populations.1 Although the idea of further reducing the number of COVID-19 cases by enhancing immunity in vaccinated people is appealing, any decision to do so should be evidence-based and consider the benefits and risks for individuals and society. COVID-19 vaccines continue to be effective against severe disease, including that caused by the delta variant. Most of the observational studies on which this conclusion is based are, however, preliminary and difficult to interpret precisely due to potential confounding and selective reporting. Careful and public scrutiny of the evolving data will be needed to assure that decisions about boosting are informed by reliable science more than by politics. Even if boosting were eventually shown to decrease the medium-term risk of serious disease, current vaccine supplies could save more lives if used in previously unvaccinated populations than if used as boosters in vaccinated populations.

If Covid deaths continue to rise we could be in trouble by November

An estimated 1.5 million children worldwide have lost a parent, custodial grandparent, or other relative who cared for them, due to COVID-19.

A majority of Americans — including suburban voters — support vaccine mandates for federal workers as well as private companies, according to the latest installment of the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index.

The risk of 12-15 year old healthy boys experiencing cardiac adverse events such as myocarditis after their second dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is around four times adolescents’ risk of being admitted to hospital as a result of infection with SARS-CoV-2, a preprint study has found.1