May vaccine misinformation undermine efforts immunize

Others with expertise in misinformation disagree, saying the government needs a concentrated assault on disinformation - about the pandemic and other crises. In an interview, a senior administration official working on those efforts argued that вЂњcarving out Covid misinformation as a standalone bucket of workвЂќ would be less productive than attacking it from multiple angles. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, White House digital strategist Rob Flaherty and officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for instance, have all been in touch with Facebook about combating misinformation.

But it has dispersed the anti-misinformation tasks among many different staffers. The administration - which spent its initial months consumed with the enormous task of making vaccines available - says it has acted aggressively to denounce the conspiracy theories and promote accurate messages about Covid prevention. вЂњThe COVID-19 infodemic is about to dangerously intersect with a misinformation-laden anti-vaccine movement that has led to tragic consequences in our country,вЂќ they wrote. In a separate letter in mid-December, five leading Democrats from the House and Senate urged Biden to name a misinformation expert to his coronavirus task force, citing statistics showing that four in 10 Americans opposed being vaccinated against Covid-19. But getting the vaccine out had to take precedence, he added. вЂњI wish they had,вЂќ said Blair Levin, a former Obama official and top Federal Communications Commission staffer who late last year called on the incoming administration to launch a Covid misinformation commission. And some who offered that advice at the time say the vaccination push may have made more progress had Biden and his team heeded it.

To achieve the estimated 80% of uptake of a vaccine required for community protection, we need a serious, well-funded and community-based public engagement strategy,' said Melinda Mills, an Oxford University professor and expert in demographic science who led the report.But more than six months ago, the administration disregarded calls for appointing either one person or a federal commission to help lead the fight against misinformation. 'Vaccines and vaccination are two very different things. It said an 'open dialogue' is critical to building public support for COVID-19 vaccination, and called for a 'frank conversation' to manage public expectations that life will not immediately get back to normal when vaccines arrive.

LONDON (Reuters) - An 80% uptake of a COVID-19 vaccine may be needed to protect communities from the novel coronavirus, but volatile levels of misinformation and vaccine mistrust could undermine efforts to tackle the pandemic, British scientists said on Tuesday.ДЄ report by scientific institutions the British Academy and the Royal Society found that, in part due to circulating misinformation and behavioural factors, around 36% of people in Britain say they are either uncertain or very unlikely to agree to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

May vaccine misinformation undermine efforts immunize