COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy in South Africa: Biblical discourse

Churches have always been regarded as a safe haven during calamities. This changed during COVID-19 lockdown when churches were forced to shut down. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a new normal to the world at large, calling for immediate action from authorities and introducing vaccination as an antidote. However, some religious practitioners as a vehicle of change through the institution of the church have been acting on the contrary because it discourages the uptake of vaccines, leading to vaccine hesitancy. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has been observed in the Christian community because Christians use Bible verses as a scapegoat for not getting a jab. There is a chasm that exists between faith and science, and it perpetuates the discourse of vaccine hesitancy. Contributions: This article applies a qualitative descriptive phenomenological approach and seeks to address the conspiracy theories and the use of Bible verses as discourse on vaccine uptake. © 2023. The Author. Licensee: AOSIS. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

Sociological Research on Vaccine-Related Reflexes: The Case of Van

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in changes that have disabled routines in many respects regarding the daily form social life takes around the world. Numerous restrictions such as wearing masks, physical distancing, disinfectant use, and curfews have been put into effect to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, and this has suspended the established norms of individual, societal, state, and interstate relations. Three different social reflexes and groups have emerged that can be categorized as provaccine, anti-vaccine, and hesitant with regard to vaccines' ability to end or minimize the effects of the pandemic. The aim of this study is to reveal the attitudes and perceptions toward COVID-19 vaccines regarding a sample group of 1,635 people in Van, one of the relatively least socioeconomically developed cities in Turkiye with a low elderly population and below-average rate of residents who've caught COVID-19 in Turkiye. This study focuses on determining the relationships that gender, age, marital status, education level, household size, income level, occupation, political party preference, chronic illness, and whether contracted COVID or not (if so, the severity) have with their status of being pro-vaccine, anti-vaccine, or vaccine-hesitant. The findings reveal a significant relationship to exist between vaccine attitude and the selected variables apart from gender and chronic illness, and status of having contracted COVID-19 or not.

How to Respond to Misinformation From the Anti-Vaccine Movement.

Vaccines are doubtlessly one of the most crucial life-saving medical interventions to date. However, perplexingly, they court more public controversy than their objectively excellent safety profile warrants. While doubts about the safety of vaccines, as well as opposition to vaccine policies, can be traced back at least to the mid-19th century, the modern anti-vaccine movement has come in 3 distinct waves, or generations, each precipitating around distinct key events. Here, we describe the first 2 generations and trace the origins of an emerging third generation anti-vaccine movement. Currently, this third generation is an integral part of the larger anti-COVID movement and in this more libertarian environment propagates the idea of individualism superseding the responsibility for community health. We highlight the need for a better science education of the young, as well as the general public to further enhance overall science literacy and suggests strategies to achieve these goals.

Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Decision and Doubts About Vaccination in Catalonia: Online Cross-sectional Questionnaire.

BACKGROUND: Hesitancy to get vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic may decrease vaccination coverage and facilitate the occurrence of local or global outbreaks. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Catalonia on 3 aspects: the decision to get vaccinated against COVID-19, changes in opinion about vaccination in general, and the decision to get vaccinated against other diseases. METHODS: We performed an observational study with the population of Catalonia aged 18 years or over, obtaining information through a self-completed questionnaire in electronic format. Differences between groups were determined using the chi-square test, Mann-Whitney U test, or the Student t test. RESULTS: We analyzed the answers from 1188 respondents, of which 870 were women, 47.0% (558/1187) had sons or daughters under the age of 14 years, and 71.7% (852/1188) had studied at university. Regarding vaccination, 16.3% (193/1187) stated that they had refused a vaccine on some occasion, 76.3% (907/1188) totally agreed with vaccines, 1.9% (23/1188) were indifferent, and 3.5% (41/1188) and 1.2% (14/1188) slightly or totally disagreed with vaccination, respectively. As a result of the pandemic, 90.8% (1069/1177) stated that they would get vaccinated against COVID-19 when they are asked, while 9.2% (108/1177) stated the opposite. A greater intention to get vaccinated was observed among women; people older than 50 years; people without children under 15 years of age; people with beliefs, culture, or family in favor of vaccination; respondents who had not previously rejected other vaccines, were totally in favor of vaccines, or had not increased their doubts about vaccination; and respondents who had not changed their decision about vaccines as a result of the pandemic. Finally, 30.3% (359/1183) reported an increase in their doubts regarding vaccination, and 13.0% (154/1182) stated that they had changed their decision about routinely recommended vaccines as a result of the pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: The population studied was predominantly in favor of vaccination; however, the percentage of people specifically rejecting vaccination against COVID-19 was high. As a result of the pandemic, we detected an increase in doubts about vaccines. Although the final decision about vaccination did not primarily change, some of the respondents did change their opinion about routine vaccinations. This seed of doubt about vaccines may be worrisome as we aim to maintain high vaccination coverage.

Accuracy-sensitisation promotes the sharing of pro- (but not anti-) vaccine information.

OBJECTIVE: This study investigated (i) factors predicting the seeking and sharing of vaccinerelated information, and (ii) the effect of an accuracy-sensitisation prime on sharing intentions. Design:This was a preregistered online survey with 213 participants. Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention group (who were exposed to an accuracy-sensitisation prime) or a control group. DESIGN: This was a preregistered online survey with 213 participants. Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention group (who were exposed to an accuracy-sensitisation prime) or a control group. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Measures included decision-making style, COVID-19 anxiety, and percentages of pro and anti-vaccine friends. We also measured preferences to seek pro or anti-vaccine-related information and sharing intentions with respect to this information. RESULTS: Compared with those seeking both pro and anti-vaccine information, participants seeking only pro-vaccine information had lower hypervigilance and buck-passing and higher COVID-19 anxiety. The likelihood of sharing anti-vaccine information was positively predicted by the percentage of one's anti-vaccine friends, the size of one's social network, and conservative political orientation. Conversely, the likelihood of sharing pro-vaccine information was positively predicted by the percentage of one's pro-vaccine friends, and liberal political orientation. Participants sensitised to accuracy were significantly more likely to share provaccine information; however, accuracy-sensitisation had no effect on anti-vaccine information sharing. CONCLUSIONS: Individuals who seek anti-vaccine information have a tendency towards disorganised and impulsive decision-making. Accuracy-sensitisation may prime people to internalise a norm promoting truth-sharing.

Coordinated inauthentic behavior: An innovative manipulation tactic to amplify COVID-19 anti-vaccine communication outreach via social media.

Coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) is a manipulative communication tactic that uses a mix of authentic, fake, and duplicated social media accounts to operate as an adversarial network (AN) across multiple social media platforms. The article aims to clarify how CIB's emerging communication tactic "secretly" exploits technology to massively harass, harm, or mislead the online debate around crucial issues for society, like the COVID-19 vaccination. CIB's manipulative operations could be one of the greatest threats to freedom of expression and democracy in our society. CIB campaigns mislead others by acting with pre-arranged exceptional similarity and "secret" operations. Previous theoretical frameworks failed to evaluate the role of CIB on vaccination attitudes and behavior. In light of recent international and interdisciplinary CIB research, this study critically analyzes the case of a COVID-19 anti-vaccine adversarial network removed from Meta at the end of 2021 for brigading. A violent and harmful attempt to tactically manipulate the COVID-19 vaccine debate in Italy, France, and Germany. The following focal issues are discussed: (1) CIB manipulative operations, (2) their extensions, and (3) challenges in CIB's identification. The article shows that CIB acts in three domains: (i) structuring inauthentic online communities, (ii) exploiting social media technology, and (iii) deceiving algorithms to extend communication outreach to unaware social media users, a matter of concern for the general audience of CIB-illiterates. Upcoming threats, open issues, and future research directions are discussed.

Psycho-linguistic Differences among Competing Vaccination Communities on Social Media

Currently, the significance of social media in disseminating noteworthy information on topics such as health, politics, and the economy is indisputable. During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-vaxxers have used social media to distribute fake news and anxiety-provoking information about the vaccine. Such social media practice may harm the public. Here, we characterise the psycho-linguistic features of anti-vaxxers on the online social network Twitter. For this, we collected COVID-19 related tweets from February 2020 to June 2021 to analyse vaccination stance, linguistic features, and social network characteristics. Our results demonstrated that, compared to pro-vaxxers, anti-vaxxers tend to have more negative emotions, narrative thinking, and immoral tendencies. Furthermore, we found a tighter network structure in anti-vaxxers even after mass vaccination. This study can advance our understanding of the online anti-vaccination movement, and become critical for social media management and policy action during and after the pandemic.

What promotes cognitive dissonance among anti-vaccine members in Indonesia?

This study aimed to examine the influence of expectations on vaccines, trust in government, perceived threats, and information overload to cognitive dissonance and its implications for vaccine use, behavioral negotiation, and information avoidance. After we formulated eight hypotheses, all of them was tested using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method. This study involved 173 community members to fill out a questionnaire with 31 questions. The results showed that expectations of vaccines and information overload affected cognitive dissonance. In contrast, the perceived threat due to the COVID-19 pandemic and trust in the government did not affect cognitive dissonance. We also found that cognitive dissonance negatively and significantly affected vaccine use and positively and significantly affected behavior to continue negotiating and avoiding information related to COVID-19 vaccination. This study is among the first to examine members of the anti-vaccine community quantitatively and practically attempts to intervene in the anti-vaccine community so that they are cognitively dissonant are to increase expectations of vaccination and confuse them by presenting the information overload they receive. © 2023, Intelektual Pustaka Media Utama. All rights reserved.

Vaccine Hesitancy: Contemporary Issues and Historical Background.

Vaccination, despite being recognized as one of the most effective primary public health measures, is viewed as unsafe and unnecessary by an increasing number of individuals. Anxiety about vaccines and vaccination programs leading to vaccine hesitancy results from a complex mix of social and political influences, cultural and religious beliefs, the availability of and ability to interpret health and scientific information, and personal and population experiences of health systems and government policies. Vaccine hesitancy is becoming a serious threat to vaccination programs, and was identified as one of the World Health Organization's top ten global health threats in 2019. The negative impact of anti-vaccination movements is frequently cited as one of the major reasons for rising vaccine hesitancy amongst the general public world-wide. This review discusses the various issues surrounding vaccine hesitancy and the anti-vaccine movement, starting with the definitions of vaccine hesitancy and the anti-vaccine movement in their early history and in the modern era, before discussing the key drivers of vaccine hesitancy, particularly across different regions of the world, with a focus on various countries with low-, middle-, or high-income economies with different socio-economic populations. The review concludes with the impact of vaccine hesitancy on herd immunity and social, psychological, and public health measures to counter vaccine hesitancy.

Correlation between Parental Vaccine Hesitancy, Socio-demographic Factors, and Novel SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination in Puerto Rico.

OBJECTIVE: Accurate and inaccurate vaccination information is readily accessible. Unfortunately, the information found by parents may be wrong. Due to the limited studies on this issue in Puerto Rico, we aim to correlate Puerto Rican parents' sociodemographic characteristics to their vaccine hesitancy level. METHODS: We quantified vaccine hesitancy in Puerto Rican parents and legal guardians who were at least 18 years old using the Parent Attitudes about Childhood Vaccines survey, their attitudes towards a possible SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, and the correlation between vaccine hesitancy and socio-demographic factors. The subjects were recruited through social networks and by distributing the online survey among pediatricians in Puerto Rico. RESULTS: We identified a vaccine hesitancy prevalence of 38.3%, higher than has been found by other similar studies. The results also demonstrated a significant association between vaccine hesitancy, income, and the type of legal guardian. Participants with a household income less than $75,000 and a legal guardian were more likely to be vaccine-hesitant. Most participants surveyed (80.8%) would not immediately vaccinate their children against SARS-CoV-2, independent of vaccine-hesitancy status, citing general worries of vaccine safety and side effects. CONCLUSION: Our results demonstrate the need for better vaccine-education campaigns in Puerto Rico and the challenges that SARS- CoV-2 vaccine fears pose to the proper control of the COVID-19 pandemic. It should be noted that at the time of the survey described herein, a COVID-19 vaccine had yet been developed.

Why Do Trump's Authoritarian Followers Resist COVID-19 Authorities? Because They Are Not Really Authoritarian Followers

People's responses to the threat posed by COVID-19 varied widely. In direct contradiction to the popular theory that Trump supporters prefer to submit to powerful people, Trump's most enthusiastic followers actually were the most vocal in resisting the urgings of authorities to get vaccinated and to wear masks. I explain this anomaly by showing that Trump's followers are driven less by a desire for authority and more by a desire to be secure from the threats human outsiders pose to society's historically dominant racial, language, religious, and cultural group. Far from being authoritarians, the followers of leaders such as Donald Trump stridently oppose all authority figures who divert attention from what they believe are the real threats: immigrants, powerful foreign enemies, diversity, terrorists, and criminals. From this perspective, it is unsurprising that those with a securitarian orientation would not take seriously authorities who are concerned with the threat posed by an mRNA virus. Copyright © 2022 Hibbing.

CAVES: A Dataset to facilitate Explainable Classification and Summarization of Concerns towards COVID Vaccines

Convincing people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is a key societal challenge in the present times. As a first step towards this goal, many prior works have relied on social media analysis to understand the specific concerns that people have towards these vaccines, such as potential side-effects, ineffectiveness, political factors, and so on. Though there are datasets that broadly classify social media posts into Anti-vax and Pro-Vax labels, there is no dataset (to our knowledge) that labels social media posts according to the specific anti-vaccine concerns mentioned in the posts. In this paper, we have curated CAVES, the first large-scale dataset containing about 10k COVID-19 anti-vaccine tweets labelled into various specific anti-vaccine concerns in a multi-label setting. This is also the first multi-label classification dataset that provides explanations for each of the labels. Additionally, the dataset also provides class-wise summaries of all the tweets. We also perform preliminary experiments on the dataset and show that this is a very challenging dataset for multi-label explainable classification and tweet summarization, as is evident by the moderate scores achieved by some state-of-the-art models. © 2022 ACM.

Health and science in contemporaneity: The compulsory vaccination process and the thesis fixed by the STF

The anti-vaccine movements have gained expressiveness in recent years, leading to the realization that diseases, previously eradicated, started to return. The pandemic of the new coronavirus rekindled the debate, leading the Supreme Court to consider constitutional compulsory vaccination, never forced, provided that, among other requirements, immunizers have a scientific basis. Adopting the phenomenological method, combined with the case study - by analyzing the decisions of the STF on the matter –, and the method of bibliographic approach, this article aims to analyze to what extent the STF effectively closed the question about the State having (or not) the power to compel the individual to be vaccinated. The first section is dedicated to the study of anti-vaccine movements, with data exposure and the historical resumption of the movement. The second section analyzes the decisions of the STF, issued at the end of 2020, as well as the operation of the rhetoric of truth in contemporary times and the relationship of mandatory vaccination with the principles of bioethics. The discussion on the credibility of the safety and efficacy of vaccines, to justify the compulsory application, goes beyond legal and political limits, deflating the decision of the Superior Court. Therefore, it appears that the STF did not resolve the issue, it only relegated the debate to science and the formation of truth in contemporary times. © 2022

Anti-Vaccine Attitudes among Adults in the U.S. during the COVID-19 Pandemic after Vaccine Rollout.

Even though vaccination is the most effective measure against COVID-19 infections, vaccine rollout efforts have been hampered by growing anti-vaccine attitudes. Based on current knowledge, we identified three domains (beliefs, discrimination, and news) as our correlates of primary interest to examine the association with anti-vaccine attitudes. This is one of the first studies to examine key correlates of anti-vaccine attitudes during the critical early stages of vaccine implementation in the United States. An online survey was administered in May 2021 to a non-representative, nationally based sample of adults (N = 789). Using multivariable logistic regression analysis, we found that individuals who expressed worry about COVID-19 (OR = 0.34, 95% CI 0.21, 0.55) and had greater knowledge of COVID-19 (OR = 0.50, 95% CI 0.25, 0.99) were less likely to hold anti-vaccine attitudes. Conversely, individuals who held stigmatizing views of COVID-19 (OR = 2.47, 95% CI 1.53, 3.99), had experienced racial discrimination (OR = 2.14, 95% CI 1.25, 3.67) and discrimination related to COVID-19 (OR = 2.84, 95% CI 1.54, 5.24), and who had been watching Fox News (OR = 3.95, 95% CI 2.61, 5.97) were more likely to hold anti-vaccine attitudes. These findings suggest COVID-19 beliefs, experiences of discrimination, and news sources should be considered when designing targeted approaches to address the anti-vaccine movement.

The Polyvocality of Online COVID-19 Vaccine Narratives that Invoke Medical Racism

Vaccine hesitancy has always been a public health concern, and anti-vaccine campaigns that proliferate disinformation have gained traction across the US in the last 25 years. The demographics of resistance are varied, with health, religious, and, increasingly, political concerns cited as reasons. With the COVID-19 pandemic igniting the fastest development of vaccines to date, mis- and disinformation about them have become inflammatory, with campaigning allegedly including racial targeting. Through a primarily qualitative investigation, this study inductively examines a large online vaccine discussion space that invokes references to the unethical Tuskegee Syphilis Study to understand how tactics of racial targeting of Black Americans might appear publicly. We find that such targeting is entangled with a genuine discussion about medical racism and vaccine hesitancy. Across 12 distinct voices that address race, medical racism, and vaccines, we discuss how mis- and disinformation sit alongside accurate information in a "polyvocal"space. © 2022 Owner/Author.

[Adherence to influenza vaccination campaign 2020/21 in the pandemic SARS-CoV-2. Context analysis in management changes: A pilot study]. / Adherencia a la campaña de vacunación de la gripe 2020/21 en el contexto de la pandemia de SARS-CoV-2. Análisis de los cambios en la gestión: un estudio piloto.

INTRODUCTION: Vaccination campaigns against influenza virus achieve coverages under recommended and desired values. In current context of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic it becomes more relevant. Our objective is to evaluate the impact on vaccination coverage of a set of implementation strategies carried out. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Vaccine implementation strategies were introduced in our basic health zone as active caption of patients and schedule extension. Then the vaccination coverage achieved in the current campaign was evaluated and compared with previous in the 8th week and at the end of the campaign. Besides, a transversal study through a survey was carried out to measure the impact of the applied strategies. RESULTS: In the 8th week of the campaign significant differences were detected in the increase of vaccination coverage compared with previous years. These results were confirmed at the end of the campaign, getting a significant difference (<.05) of vaccination coverage in all the studied centers, these data support the effectivity of the applied strategies. CONCLUSIONS: The vaccine implementation strategies applied have shown effectivity, achieving an increase of until 74% in the total administered doses compared to previous campaigns and even a 15% of vaccination coverage increased in the group of patients older than 64 years; even in a pandemic context and the increasing of anti-vaccine movements.

Detecting Public Outlook Towards Vaccination Using Machine Learning Approaches: A Systematic Review

Vaccination is an effective measure to prevent the spread of harmful diseases. The prevalence towards vaccine hesitancy, however, has been growing throughout the years and expressed openly in various social media platforms. Research works on automating the detection of public’s opinion towards vaccination in social media has recently gained significant popularity with the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper presents a systematic review on the machine learning approaches used by researchers to detect the inclination of the public towards vaccination. We analyzed the research work conducted within the past five years and summarized their findings. Our systematic review reveals that Support Vector Machine is the most widely used machine learning technique in identifying public sentiment towards vaccination producing the best performance with an F1-score of 97.3, while Twitter is found to be the most popular platform for extracting source of data. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The impact of Facebook's vaccine misinformation policy on user endorsements of vaccine content: An interrupted time series analysis.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the impact of Facebook's vaccine misinformation policy in March 2019 on user endorsements of vaccine content on its platform. METHODS: We identified 172 anti- and pro-vaccine Facebook Pages and collected posts from these Pages six months before and after the policy. Using interrupted time series regression models, we evaluated the policy impact on user endorsements (i.e., likes) of anti- and pro-vaccine posts on Facebook. RESULTS: The number of likes for posts on anti-vaccine Pages had decreased after the policy implementation (policy = 153.2, p < 0.05; policy*day = -0.838, p < 0.05; marginal effect at the mean = -22.74, p < 0.01; marginal effect at the median = -24.56, p < 0.01). When the number of subscribers was considered, the policy effect on the number of likes for anti-vaccine posts was much smaller, but still statistically significant (policy = 4.849, p < 0.05; policy*day = -0.027, p < 0.05; marginal effect at the mean = -0.742, p < 0.01; marginal effect at the median = -0.800, p < 0.01). There was no policy effect observed for posts on pro-vaccine Pages. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis suggested that Facebook's March 2019 vaccine misinformation policy moderately impacted the number of endorsements of anti-vaccine content on its platform. Social media companies can take measures to limit the popularity of anti-vaccine content by reducing their reach and visibility. Future research efforts should focus on evaluating additional policies and examining policies across platforms.

Social-Cyber Maneuvers During the COVID-19 Vaccine Initial Rollout: Content Analysis of Tweets.

BACKGROUND: During the time surrounding the approval and initial distribution of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine, large numbers of social media users took to using their platforms to voice opinions on the vaccine. They formed pro- and anti-vaccination groups toward the purpose of influencing behaviors to vaccinate or not to vaccinate. The methods of persuasion and manipulation for convincing audiences online can be characterized under a framework for social-cyber maneuvers known as the BEND maneuvers. Previous studies have been conducted on the spread of COVID-19 vaccine disinformation. However, these previous studies lacked comparative analyses over time on both community stances and the competing techniques of manipulating both the narrative and network structure to persuade target audiences. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to understand community response to vaccination by dividing Twitter data from the initial Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine rollout into pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine stances, identifying key actors and groups, and evaluating how the different communities use social-cyber maneuvers, or BEND maneuvers, to influence their target audiences and the network as a whole. METHODS: COVID-19 Twitter vaccine data were collected using the Twitter application programming interface (API) for 1-week periods before, during, and 6 weeks after the initial Pfizer-BioNTech rollout (December 2020 to January 2021). Bot identifications and linguistic cues were derived for users and tweets, respectively, to use as metrics for evaluating social-cyber maneuvers. Organization Risk Analyzer (ORA)-PRO software was then used to separate the vaccine data into pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine communities and to facilitate identification of key actors, groups, and BEND maneuvers for a comparative analysis between each community and the entire network. RESULTS: Both the pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine communities used combinations of the 16 BEND maneuvers to persuade their target audiences of their particular stances. Our analysis showed how each side attempted to build its own community while simultaneously narrowing and neglecting the opposing community. Pro-vaccine users primarily used positive maneuvers such as excite and explain messages to encourage vaccination and backed leaders within their group. In contrast, anti-vaccine users relied on negative maneuvers to dismay and distort messages with narratives on side effects and death and attempted to neutralize the effectiveness of the leaders within the pro-vaccine community. Furthermore, nuking through platform policies showed to be effective in reducing the size of the anti-vaccine online community and the quantity of anti-vaccine messages. CONCLUSIONS: Social media continues to be a domain for manipulating beliefs and ideas. These conversations can ultimately lead to real-world actions such as to vaccinate or not to vaccinate against COVID-19. Moreover, social media policies should be further explored as an effective means for curbing disinformation and misinformation online.