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Latest Blog Posts: Open for Debate
The Surprise of COVID Vaccine Hesitancy Among Health Care Professionals
The COVID vaccines were the one big hope story for the dismal year of 2020. The first shipments arrived in December to a few high-income countries and rollout started immediately amidst “joy and relief”.[1] The first phase of the rollout was supposed to be the easy part. Vaccinate residents in long-term care (LTC) settings as
CONSPIRACIES AND ‘COUNTERSPEECH’
‘The 2020 US election was stolen.’ ‘COVID-19 was intentionally developed as a biological weapon.’ ‘Climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese.’ The times have been good for conspiracy theories. This, in turn, is dangerous. As these examples illustrate, conspiracy theories often sow confusion or scepticism about crucially important matters—matters such as the democratic
Our warped geometry of attention and trust: The mutually exploitative relationship between anti-vaxxers and the far right is undermining public health
Over the last half decade, I’ve been monitoring the discourse on Twitter about vaccines and immunization. For a while, this was one of the few polarized debates that wasn’t politically polarized. The ranks of anti-vaxxers included lefties skeptical of Big Pharma, hippies distrustful of anything that isn’t “natural,” cultural conservatives who opposed the human papillomavirus
