THE FOURTH ETHICAL COMMENT TOWARDS COVID-19 (three years later). TRUST AND FAITH: SOCIAL AND MORAL PROFILE OF VACCINATION.

The summarizing up the semantic and systemic results should comprise the next phase to provide insights into COVID-19 pandemic and consider it as a modern epidemic and humanitarian crisis on global level. The journal <<Infection and Immunity>> regularly and consistently present the results of ethically viewed legal framework of the pandemic and the administrative regulation of the public health system. Analysis and ethical assessment of the situation covers a wide range of issues, including the provision and operational adaptation of the regulatory framework, the problems of medical care, the processes and conditions for developing diagnostics, treatment and prevention, as well as all aspects related to the organization and implementing vaccination. Three previous ethical comments presented in 2020-2022 during the pandemic were devoted to these issues. Current study within the framework of the <<fourth ethical commentary>> follows directly from the data obtained while evaluating and analysing real-world experience on vaccination in the context of a regional cluster - the CIS member states, presented in the previous article. The perceived need and obvious significance of the study is to highlight objective factors of vulnerability in the vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic and identify the response spectrum to form trust/or distrust to vaccination in various sectors of society, depending on a set of social and moral factors, including those coupled to a religious denomination. The data obtained are of paramount importance to find the moral ways to support and stabilize a responsible attitude with the aim to protect moral, social and physical health in emergency situations.Copyright © 2023 Saint Petersburg Pasteur Institute. All rights reserved.

Public Health Information Seeking, Trust, and COVID-19 Prevention Behaviors: Cross-sectional Study.

BACKGROUND: Preventative health measures such as shelter in place and mask wearing have been widely encouraged to curb the spread of the COVID-19 disease. People's attitudes toward preventative behaviors may be dependent on their sources of information and trust in the information. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to understand the relationship between trusting in COVID-19 information and preventative behaviors in a racially and politically diverse metropolitan area in the United States. METHODS: We conducted a web-based cross-sectional survey of residents in St. Louis City and County in Missouri. Individuals aged ≥18 years were eligible to participate. Participants were recruited using a convenience sampling approach through social media and email. The Health Belief Model and the Socioecological Model informed instrument development, as well as COVID-19-related questions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We performed an ordinary least squares linear regression model to estimate social distancing practices, perceptions, and trust in COVID-19 information sources. RESULTS: Of the 1650 eligible participants, the majority (n=1381, 83.7%) had sought or received COVID-19-related information from a public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or both. Regression analysis showed a 1% increase in preventative behaviors for every 12% increase in trust in governmental health agencies. At their lowest levels of trust, women were 68% more likely to engage in preventative behaviors than men. Overall, those aged 18-45 years without vulnerable medical conditions were the least likely to engage in preventative behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: Trust in COVID-19 information increases an individual's likelihood of practicing preventative behaviors. Effective health communication strategies should be used to effectively disseminate health information during disease outbreaks.

“SOMETHING IS OFF WITH THIS COVID”: PRODUCTION OF MISTRUST IN RUSSIAN OBSTETRICS IN A PANDEMIC SITUATION

The article examines the mistrust of official information about coronavirus experienced by both doctors and patients who find themselves in the “special situation” of childbirth in a pandemic, and the practices of mistrust they create in response to the pandemic's challenges and restrictive epidemic measures. I refer to the theoretical approach proposed in recently published works on the anthropology of mistrust, which proposes to move away from the perception of this phenomenon only in negative terms: as a social failure and an obstacle to the development of social institutions. Proponents of this approach consider mistrust to be a special form of critical knowledge that is implemented in a variety of effective strategies. The pandemic, as a situation of high risk and uncertainty, has revealed numerous conflicts in which mistrust plays an important role. The pandemic emergency does not unite patients, in particular pregnant women and women in labor, with doctors but divides them even more than before. Women refuse medical care during pregnancy and choose to have out-of-hospital births more often than before the pandemic. The strategy of searching for medical or alternative health specialists with whom women can create trusting relationships is becoming increasingly urgent. In turn, doctors, as well as patients, often do not trust official information and the system in which they work but needed to adapt to the requirements of the governing and controlling authorities. The article is based on the author's field materials (interviews with obstetricians-gynecologists, midwives and women who gave birth during the pandemic). I also use various Internet resources, including the official pages of maternity hospitals in social networks and personal blogs of doctors. © A. A. OZHIGANOVA