Author Meets Critics: An Introduction

Maya J. Goldenberg's (2021) I Vaccine Hesitancy: Public Trust, Expertise, and the War on Science i argues that vaccines are about much more than vaccines, and vaccine hesitancy reflects the cultural anxieties of the moment (as the histories and geographies of vaccine hesitancy and refusal show). Reflecting on a prepandemic monograph on vaccine hesitancy two years into the COVID-19 pandemic demands answer to the questions whether the analysis still holds and whether it offers sufficient resources to address the current situation. This was the point of discussion at a 2022 book panel on I Vaccine Hesitancy: Public Trust, Expertise, and the War on Science i , featuring author Maya J. Goldenberg and respondents Miriam Solomon and Inmaculada De Melo-Martin. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Crowdfunding narratives and the valuation of vaccines for COVID-19.

Social media spreads information about vaccines and can be used to better understand public attitudes about them. Using American crowdfunding campaigns that mentioned COVID-19 vaccines from January 2020 to March 2021, this paper investigates public attitudes towards vaccines, specifically the perceived role vaccines could (or couldn't) play in ending the pandemic. We identified 776 crowdfunding campaigns and coded each for their aims and whether they valued vaccines as returning their community to a pre-pandemic state (utopian), helping some but not all people (cautious), and doubtful about the likely positive impacts of vaccines (skeptical). Cautious and skeptical valuations increased over time whereas utopian views declined. This paper uniquely situates attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines in the context of financial need (as characterized by the campaigners). It offers insight into the "vaccine class gap" in America and demonstrates the usefulness of crowdfunding campaigns for assessing public views on vaccines.