Health experts call on authorities to combat anti-vaccine activism: ‘It’s a matter of life and death.’
A group of health experts is calling on public and private sector health officials and policymakers to counter anti-vaccine activism and sentiment in the U.S. and educate Americans about the life-saving benefits of vaccines against COVID and other diseases. Let me know. Be more convincing.

In an article published in the medical journal The Lancet, a team of experts from the University of California, Riverside, says that anti-vaccine activism has led to reluctance about the Covid vaccine and its spread to other vaccines. There are signs.

“We need to continue to disseminate the best science and find better ways to communicate it so that people hear it through multiple channels rather than just one or two sources,” said Richard M. Carpiano, the paper’s lead author and a public policy consultant. can.” Professor at UC Riverside.

“It’s a matter of life and death. People don’t always see it that way,” he added. “We’ve forgotten how many people have died, gotten sick or are getting sick from COVID-19 as well as many other vaccine-preventable diseases.”
In the past, anti-vaccine activism primarily targeted parents and school immunization needs, but COVID gave activists a much larger and broader audience, the authors wrote. As the crisis unfolded, they were able to demonstrate dissatisfaction with public safety measures, such as physical distancing, school closures and masks. Activists joined right-wing groups — and some Christian nationalist clergy — in opposing vaccines and downplaying the disease.

Once vaccine trials began, activists quickly began to discredit the process and spread distrust among Americans who were unfamiliar with the clinical trial system.
“Examples include promoting messaging that links COVID-19 vaccines to past medical abuses such as the Tuskegee syphilis study when targeting black communities, or health care for Latinos. And government agencies. Exacerbating existing mistrust of, and fueling concerns about, fertility-related COVID-19. 19 vaccine side effects that resonate with women,” he wrote.

The group suggested three ways to deal with misrepresentations. First, recognizing that anti vaccine activists are networked, they propose developing networked communities that can deliver the right vaccine message to the public at the right time and place. .

Second, they recommend getting input from outside the typical public health agencies. “Combating widespread efforts to influence or monetize disinformation efforts by anti-vaccine activists and groups or individuals requires a wide range of skills,” the authors wrote. ”
“This action will include separating the narrative about freedom from anti-vaccine attitudes and reducing the harassment of anti-vaccine activists as public health communicators,” they wrote.

According to the researchers, there is a lot at stake.

“Without concerted efforts to counter the anti-vaccine movement, the USA faces an increased burden of disease and death from vaccine insufficiency, a vaccine-hesitant society,” he concluded.

Other COVID-19 news you should know:

• New reports about the origin of the pandemic quickly give rise to misleading claims about the virus, including alien conspiracy theories. According to the Associated Press, news this week that the Department of Energy confirmed that a classified report determined “with low confidence” that the virus escaped the lab and did not jump from an animal to humans. . , this is an important matter. Within hours, online mentions of conspiracy theories involving COVID-19 began to spread, with many commentators saying the classified report was proof they were true. The report has not been made public, and officials in Washington stressed that multiple US agencies disagree on its origin. Many scientists believe that one possible explanation is that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 jumped from animals to humans, possibly at Wuhan’s Huanan Market, a scenario that has been supported by several studies and Reports are supported. The World Health Organization has supported that although animal origin remains the most likely, the possibility of a leak in a laboratory should be further investigated before it can be ruled out.
• The World Health Organization is still monitoring seven omicron subvariants, according to its weekly epidemiological update, up from four two weeks ago. The seven are BF.7, BQ.1, BA.2.75, CH.1.1, XBB, XBB.1.5 and XBF. “These variants are being monitored because of their observed transmission advantage and additional amino acid changes compared to other circulating variants known or suspected to confer a fitness advantage,” the agency wrote. More than 4.8 million new Covid cases were reported in the 28-day period from February 26, a 76 percent drop, the WHO said.
Last 28 day period

From. There were about 39,000 deaths, a 66 percent decrease. As always, he cautioned that the reported numbers are underestimates of the true numbers as shown in prevalence surveys.

• Britain’s former health minister denied wrongdoing this week after a newspaper published excerpts of private messages he sent in the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic. The Daily Telegraph said the exchange showed then health secretary Matt Hancock had ignored scientific advice to test everyone entering nursing homes for Covid-19. Hancock said the WhatsApp messages had been fraudulently edited, with key lines omitted to give a “distorted account”. The Telegraph said it obtained 2.3 million words from Isabelle Oakeshott, a journalist who helped Hancock write the memoir. Oakeshott, a critic of the strict lockdown imposed during the pandemic, defended the leaking of the messages, saying he did it to avoid a “whitewash” of the crisis.

Here’s what the numbers say:

The global number of confirmed COVID-19 cases topped 675.5 million on Friday, while the death toll topped 6.87 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The US leads the world with 103.5 million cases and 1,120,878 deaths. Johns Hopkins will stop tracking live data on March 10.

The CDC’s tracker shows that 230 million people in the U.S., or 69.3 percent of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they’ve had their initial shots.

So far, only 53.74 million Americans, or 16.2% of the population, have an updated COVID booster that targets both the original virus and Omicron strains.