The institutional origins of vaccines distrust: Evidence from former-Soviet countries.

How is vaccines scepticism related to the exposure to Soviet communism? Using individual level evidence on vaccine trust with regards to its efficiency and safety in 122 countries that differ in their exposure to communism, we document that past exposure to Soviet communism is associated with lower trust in vaccination. We show that exposure to socio-political regimes can negatively affect trust in vaccines, which is explained by weak trust in both government and medical advice from doctors as well as in people from the neighbourhood. These results suggest that roots of vaccine scepticism lie in a wider distrust in public and state institutions resulting from the exposure to Soviet communism.

The COVID-19 curtain: Can past communist regimes explain the vaccination divide in Europe?

As of December 2021, all former Communist countries from Central and Eastern Europe were still lagging behind in terms of COVID-19 vaccination rates in Europe. Can institutional legacy explain, at least in part, this heterogeneity in vaccination decisions across Europe? To study this question we exploit novel data from the second wave of the SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe) COVID-19 Survey fielded in Summer (2021) that covers older individuals in 27 European countries. First, we document lower COVID-19 vaccine take-up amongst those who were born under Communism in Europe. Next, we turn to reunified Germany to get closer to a causal effect of having lived behind the Iron Curtain. We find that exposure to the Communist regime in East Germany decreased one's probability to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by 8 percentage points and increased that of refusing the vaccine by 4 percentage points. Both effects are large and statistically significant, and they hold when controlling for individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics. We explore several possible mechanisms. The East-West Germany gap does not seem to be explained by differences in the impact of the first wave of the pandemic or in general exposure to vaccines. We find that East Germans have lower social capital than West Germans and that social capital correlates negatively with Covid-10 vaccine uptake, but only a small fraction of the East-West Germany Covid-19 vaccination gap can be explained by our measures of social capital.

The Political Determinants of China'S New Health Constitution.

The Basic Healthcare and Health Promotion Law 2019 became the new constitution of China's health system in June 2020, giving legal effect to ambitious health reform programmes like Healthy China 2030. The concurrent outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 must not distract us from appreciating the fact that this Law will comprehensively overhaul the health regulatory framework of the world's most populous country during the coming decade, if not beyond. This article offers an original evaluation of the Law in its political context. The Law commendably promises to safeguard the right to health, assist citizens to live a 'complete cycle of life', and promote health using the resources of the public health system. However, it is also deeply politicised, guaranteeing extensive and penetrative political control in health campaigns, digitalised health data, the governance of health institutions, and the resolution of medical disputes. This can be explained by the consequential roles played by epidemics in China's historical dynastic cycles, but even more so by powerful tendencies of centralisation on the part of the Leninist Party-state. The Law's potential is thus subject to the overriding caveat that the Party-state's existence and influence over law and public health must be secured.

Neoliberal economics, planetary health, and the COVID-19 pandemic: a Marxist ecofeminist analysis.

Planetary health sees neoliberal capitalism as a key mediator of socioecological crises, a position that is echoed in much COVID-19 commentary. In this Personal View, I set out an economic theory that emphasises some of the ways in which neoliberal capitalism's conceptualisation of value has mediated responses to COVID-19. Using the intersection of ecological, feminist, and Marxist economics, I develop an analysis of neoliberal capitalism as a specific historical form of the economy. I identify the accumulation of exchange value as a central tendency of neoliberal capitalism and argue that this tendency creates barriers to the production of other forms of value. I then analyse the implications of this tendency in the context of responses to COVID-19. I argue that resources and labour flow to the production of exchange value, at the expense of production of other value forms. Consequently, the global capitalist economy has unprecedented productive capacity but uses little of this capacity to create the conditions that improve and maintain people's health. To be more resilient to coming crises, academics, policy makers, and activists should do theoretical work that enables global economies to recognise multiple forms of value and political work that embeds these theories in societal institutions.