Related papers: COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy and Information Diffusi…
Background: Vaccination programs are effective only when a significant percentage of people are vaccinated. However, vaccine acceptance varies among communities around the world. Social media usage is arguably one of the factors affecting…
The potential waning of the vaccination immunity to COVID-19 could pose threats to public health, as it is tenable that the timing of such waning would synchronize with the near-complete restoration of normalcy. Should also testing be…
Vaccination is widely recognized as the most effective way of immunization against many infectious diseases. However, unfounded claims about supposed side effects of some vaccines have contributed to spread concern and fear among people,…
Incorporating social factors into disease prevention and control efforts is an important undertaking of behavioral epidemiology. The interplay between disease transmission and human health behaviors, such as vaccine uptake, results in…
There are several reasons why the fear of vaccination has caused population rejection. Questions have been raised by students regarding the effectiveness of vaccines, which in turn has led to vaccination hesitancy. Students perceptions are…
In this paper, we propose an agent-based model of information spread, grounded on psychological insights on the formation and spread of beliefs. In our model, we consider a network of individuals who share two opposing types of information…
Healthcare workers such as doctors and nurses are expected to be trustworthy and creditable sources of vaccine-related information. Their opinions toward the COVID-19 vaccines may influence the vaccine uptake among the general population.…
The current development of vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 is unprecedented. Little is known, however, about the nuanced public opinions on the vaccines on social media. We adopt a human-guided machine learning framework using more than six million…
Social media plays a pivotal role in disseminating news globally and acts as a platform for people to express their opinions on various topics. A wide variety of views accompanies COVID-19 vaccination drives across the globe, often colored…
We introduce a geospatial bounded confidence model with mega-influencers, inspired by Hegselmann and Krause. The inclusion of geography gives rise to large-scale geospatial patterns evolving out of random initial data; that is, spatial…
Although the recent rise and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States has been encouraging, there continues to be significant vaccine hesitancy in various geographic and demographic clusters of the adult population. Surveys, such as…
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted significant challenges in the allocation of vital healthcare resources. Existing epidemiological models, specifically compartmental models, aimed to predict the spread of the COVID-19 virus and its impact…
In this work we consider a model of epidemic spreading coupled with an opinion dynamics in a fully-connected population. Regarding the opinion dynamics, the individuals may be in two distinct states, namely in favor or against a vaccination…
False claims about COVID-19 vaccines can undermine public trust in ongoing vaccination campaigns, thus posing a threat to global public health. Misinformation originating from various sources has been spreading online since the beginning of…
Misleading newsletters can shape individuals' perceptions, and pose a threat to societies; as we witnessed by lowering the severity of follow-up stay-at-home orders and burdening a significant challenge to the fight against COVID-19. In…
Societies worldwide have witnessed growing rifts separating advocates and opponents of vaccinations and other COVID-19 countermeasures. With the rollout of vaccination campaigns, German-speaking regions exhibited much lower vaccination…
Vaccine hesitancy continues to be a main challenge for public health officials during the COVID-19 pandemic. As this hesitancy undermines vaccine campaigns, many researchers have sought to identify its root causes, finding that the…
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a need for widespread and rapid vaccine development. As several vaccines have recently been approved for human use or are in different stages of development, governments across the world are preparing…
This paper reports the findings of a 606-participant study where we analyzed the perception and engagement effects of COVID-19 vaccine rumours on Twitter pertaining to (a) vaccine efficacy; and (b) mass immunization efforts in the United…
Vaccine hesitancy is widespread, despite the government's information campaigns and the efforts of the World Health Organisation (WHO). Categorising the topics within vaccine-related narratives is crucial to understand the concerns…