Damar Hamlin: How anti-vaxxers exploited player’s collapse

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Online activists used the on-field collapse of American football star Damar Hamlin to spread anti-vaccination messages starting just minutes after Monday night’s incident.

In what has become a familiar pattern since Covid vaccines became available about two years ago, several influential accounts used the event to spread anti-vaccination content.

They included the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who tweeted: “Before the covid vaccines we didn’t see athletes dropping dead on the playing field like we do now… Time to investigate the covid vaccines.”

That tweet was viewed around a million times within a day. But the idea that young, healthy athletes have never collapsed suddenly before Covid vaccines is easily disproven.

Read more at BBC.

Amid low demand, global coronavirus vaccination set to slow in 2023

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For much of the pandemic, the main obstacle to vaccinating the world against the coronavirus was a lack of supply, as wealthy nations bought up vaccine doses and logistical bottlenecks hampered access for the poorest countries.

But increasingly, global vaccination efforts — spearheaded by Covax, a vaccine-sharing initiative backed in part by the World Health Organization — face a problem just as complex: a lack of demand. Backers of Covax say they have seen a sharp decline in dose orders, including in countries with relatively low vaccination rates.

This decline, fueled in part by pandemic fatigue, could prove the biggest obstacle to vaccination initiatives worldwide in the year ahead.

Read more at The Washington Post.

Top vaccine news from 2022: COVID-19 boosters, malaria, Ebola and more

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Updated COVID-19 shots, including bivalent boosters, dominated vaccine news in 2022, but good news also came for vaccines against malaria, Ebola and cancer.

Vaccines made news in other ways. Many people planned to skip influenza vaccines, record numbers of children missed measles vaccines globally, and a case of vaccine-derived polio in New York raised concerns of potential poliovirus spread.

Below are some of the vaccine-related stories you may have missed this year.

Fewer than half of US adults planned to get flu vaccine despite warnings of a severe season

After a mild 2021-2022 influenza season, a survey showed 49% of people in the U.S. were not planning to be vaccinated, despite widespread concern for a “tripledemic” in the fall.

Read more at Healio.

Local health departments working to restore trust as they fight vaccine misinformation

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OKLAHOMA CITY — By the summer of 2021, Phil Maytubby, deputy CEO of the Health Department here, was concerned to see the numbers of people getting vaccinated against Covid slipping after an initially robust response.

With doubt, fear and misinformation running rampant nationwide — both online and offline — he knew the agency needed to rethink its messaging strategy.

So the Health Department conducted something called an online “sentiment search,” which gauges how certain words are perceived on social media. The tool found that many people in Oklahoma City didn’t like the word “vaccinate” — a word featured prominently in the health department’s marketing campaign.

“If you don’t know how your message is resonating with the public,” Maytubby said, “you’re shooting in the dark.”

Read more at NBC.

Researchers make important progress toward a possible universal flu vaccine

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Influenza is continuing its early and severe rampage through the United States, but there’s some hopeful news for flu seasons of the future.

In a significant step, researchers recently said they’ve been able to immunize animals against all 20 known influenza A and B virus strains, marking an important step toward the goal of a single vaccine against all types of the flu.

Our current flu vaccines prime the body to protect against four strains: two influenza A strains and two B strains. The composition of these vaccines is changed each year in anticipation of which strains will make most people sick during the coming season.

Certain strains are known to circulate among humans, but many more circulate in animals and scientists worry that these viruses could jump to humans – suddenly exposing us to viruses our immune systems have never seen.

That’s where a universal flu vaccine would help.

Read more at CNN.

Misinformation: A Threat to the Health of All

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It’s probably not news to you that misinformation abounds on the internet, especially on social media. Nor is the subject of misinformation unfamiliar to those in the pro-vaccine world; the Team Vaccine Blog has covered this subject before. In recent weeks, Twitter eliminated its COVID-19 misinformation policy, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a survey showing that 1/3 of parents believe they shouldn’t have to vaccinate their children for school, and the CDC Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, proclaimed that vaccine misinformation is one of the biggest threats to public health. It’s safe to say the threat of misinformation to people’s health is at an all-time high.

What is misinformation?

First, let’s define misinformation: Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. Sometimes it is created or shared innocently; most people don’t knowingly or intentionally share false information. But when it’s done deliberately, that’s what we call “disinformation.” Misinformation is most often shared and spread on social media.

Consumers of online information should be protected from harmful content.

As of November 23, Twitter is no longer enforcing its COVID-19 misinformation policy. Critics of such policies claim violations of free speech and personal choice, but the truth is that policies that protect social media users from harmful content save lives! (Not to mention, these policies are legal because social media users do not have a right to free speech under the First Amendment on private social media platforms.) Misinformation about COVID-19 and other vaccine-preventable diseases fans the flames of vaccine hesitancy, often having the greatest negative impact on the most vulnerable in our communities. When people see a flood of inaccurate information online, it can be incredibly dangerous and even deadly. But when people get accurate information, they can make informed decisions. Social media platforms that limit the spread of false information do so in the name of protecting public health.

A growing number of parents don’t support vaccine requirements for schools amid an outbreak of a disease once eliminated by vaccines.

The Kaiser Family Foundation found that more than 1/3 of adults say healthy children should not be required to get vaccinated for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) to attend public schools. This is alarming! There is currently a growing measles outbreak in Ohio where a majority of the children infected were unvaccinated. Others only had one dose of the vaccine and the remaining were too young to be vaccinated. No measles cases have been reported in fully vaccinated children. Measles, an extremely contagious disease that was considered eliminated in the United States in 2000 thanks to the MMR vaccine, can be deadly and have lasting complications. Measles has been the subject of vaccine misinformation for decades, largely thanks to a widely debunked fraudulent study which claimed the MMR vaccine causes autism. The truth is the MMR vaccine is safe and effective, and well-meaning families who want to protect their children should not be derailed by misinformation, nor should their children suffer or worse, die.

“Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.” – Jonathan Swift

But misinformation is not limited to MMR and COVID-19 vaccines. There is misinformation about all vaccine-preventable diseases; it is abundant and it is loud. Interestingly though, findings from an analysis conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate from February to March of 2021 show that vaccine misinformation on social media which was shared over 812,00 times originated from only a dozen individuals. Further, many of the individuals on this list are behind organizations that have seen large increases in profits during the COVID-19 pandemic (while more than a million people have died in the U.S. alone). This brings us to Dr. Walensky’s statement in a recent NBC news article:

Doctor’s appointments missed during the first years of Covid contributed to a dip in childhood vaccination rates, but it’s the onslaught of vaccine disinformation that continues to put young kids at risk for preventable death and disease. As I think about the challenges that we have to public health, vaccine misinformation is among the biggest threats.”

Vaccines, hailed as the one of the biggest achievements in public health, are rigorously tested and monitored and save lives – 4 to 5 million a year worldwide, to be exact! It’s completely normal to have questions about vaccines, and it’s precisely these questions that bad actors online take advantage of when they deliberately spread inaccurate information and sow doubt. Families should turn to reliable experts like their family’s healthcare provider, local public health agency, and the CDC for answers to questions.

Before liking or sharing on social media, ask yourself: Can I trust this source to provide reliable information?

When it comes to health-related information online, it’s hard to know what’s true and reliable. It’s best to pause to consider whether the source is trustworthy and the content accurate before you like or share. That’s why we’ve developed a fact sheet to help you spot misinformation online. Key tips include ensuring that information is evidence-based and peer-reviewed rather than anecdotal. Ask yourself: Is the source manipulative, emotional, or alarmist? Is someone asking you to purchase something, or will they see a monetary gain in another way? Can the information be verified by outside sources?

We invite you to help us combat misinformation. Each week we tackle a new vaccine myth on social media where you can like, comment, and share. You can also visit our website for answers to commonly asked questions about COVID-19 and get access to reliable resources and information on other vaccine-preventable diseases. Together, we can ensure that truth triumphs and that everyone in our communities has the opportunity to be healthy and thrive!

Immunize Colorado was formed in 1991 in response to alarmingly low vaccination rates across the state. At the time, only about 50% of Colorado’s children were adequately vaccinated. A group of physicians and other concerned individuals came together to strategize how to best protect Coloradans from vaccine-preventable diseases. Much work remains, and Immunize Colorado continues our efforts to protect Colorado families, schools, and communities from vaccine-preventable diseases. You can donate or discover other ways to get involved to support our commitment to healthy Colorado communities today!

Parents struggle to find bivalent booster appointments for younger kids

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COLORADO, USA — Some parents that are trying to get their kids the omicron-specific COVID-19 booster ahead of the holidays are having a hard time finding a place that administers the vaccine to younger children. 

Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the Food and Drug Administration approved Moderna and Pfizer’s bivalent vaccine for children 6 months and older.

But, many major pharmacies, like CVS and Walgreens, do not administer vaccines to children younger than three.

Lea Gibbens, who is from Loveland, said finding COVID-19 vaccines for her two-year-old son has been a challenge. Gibbens said she searched on Colorado’s vaccine website and a very limited number of vaccine buses make that age-specific vaccine available.

Read more at 9 News.

Vaccination rates are falling, and it’s not just the COVID-19 vaccine that people are refusing

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Vaccines offer a potent armour against infectious diseases that once carried a heavy toll of mortality and morbidity, particularly among children. Gaps were already forming in that armour in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic. But amid stagnating vaccination rates, the pandemic acted like a shotgun, punching many more holes in humanity’s defences against preventable diseases such as measles.

The risks of allowing these infections to flourish are clear. Zimbabwe is currently working to contain a huge measles outbreak that claimed the lives of more than 750 children between April and October. And poliovirus has recently re-emerged in the United States after decades of successful elimination, prompting a state of emergency in New York.

Read more at Nature.

Updated COVID booster shots reduce the risk of hospitalization, CDC reports

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New bivalent COVID booster shots are more effective at reducing risk of hospitalization than boosters of the original vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in two new studies Friday.

The CDC recommended a bivalent booster in September to better protect against the omicron variant. The new booster targets a component of the omicron variant and a component of the original virus strain to offer both broad and omicron-specific protection.

Two small studies from Columbia University and Harvard University in October suggested the new shots did not produce better antibody response against the omicron BA.5 variant than boosters of the original vaccines.

But the CDC came out with two studies Friday detailing the bivalent vaccine’s effectiveness against COVID-related emergency department visits and hospitalizations and effectiveness against hospitalization specifically among older people.

Read more at NPR.

More than a third of parents oppose vaccine requirements in schools, KFF survey finds

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More than a third of US parents say that vaccinating children against measles, mumps and rubella should be an individual choice and not a requirement to attend public school, even if that may create health risks, according to survey data published Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

That’s a notable increase from pre-pandemic times. A similar poll from the Pew Research Center found that 23% of parents opposed vaccine requirements in schools in 2019, but that’s now jumped to 35% in the KFF survey.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia require children attending public school to be vaccinated against certain diseases, including measles and rubella. Exemptions are allowed in only some circumstances.

Read more at CNN.

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