PHILADELPHIA - Belief in conspiracies about the COVID-19 pandemic increased through the early months of the U.S. outbreak among people who reported being heavy users of conservative and social media, a study by Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) researchers has found.
Prior APPC research found that people who regularly used conservative or social media during the early months of the pandemic were more likely to report believing in a group of COVID-19 conspiracies. The current study expands on that, finding that a reliance on conservative or social media actually predicted an increase in conspiracy beliefs from March to July 2020.
From March to July 2020, for example, the share of conservative media users who reported believing that the Chinese government created the coronavirus as a bioweapon rose from 52% to 66%. Conservative media included sources such as Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart News, One America News, and the Drudge Report.
Further, these increases in conspiracy beliefs were associated with less mask wearing and decreased intentions to get a vaccine when it became available, according to the study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
"The media played a role in the promotion or reduction of conspiracy beliefs," said Dan Romer, research director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, who co-authored the study with APPC Director Kathleen Hall Jamieson. "There were media sources that hindered the ability of the country to confront the pandemic."
https://www.eurekale...c-ccb050321.php
Some nurses in Japan are incensed at a request from Tokyo Olympic organizers to have 500 of them dispatched to help with the Games. They say they're already near the breaking point dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.
Olympic officials have said they will need 10,000 medical workers to staff the games, and the request for more nurses comes amid a new spike in the virus with Tokyo and Osaka under a state of emergency.
"Beyond feeling anger, I was stunned at the insensitivity," Mikito Ikeda, a nurse in Nagoya in central Japan, told the Associated Press. "It shows how human life is being taken lightly."
The appeal for more nurses is typical of the impromptu changes coming almost daily as organizers and the International Olympic Committee try to pull off the games during a pandemic.
https://www.cbc.ca/s...mpics-1.6011610
Late last month Fiji ordered two of its largest cities into lockdown after the Pacific Island nation recorded its first cases of community transmission of COVID-19 since a handful of cases were identified early on in the pandemic.
With cases only reported in hotel quarantine in the past 12 months, the new community transmission caught many Fijian’s by surprise. Confirmed cases have risen steadily since a Fijian soldier was infected at a quarantine facility, with active cases jumping to 50 in the two weeks since. While seemingly trivial compared to the 400,000 recorded daily in India or the 300,000 cases recorded daily in the U.S. back in January, it’s a huge hit to a country that had high hopes of making it through the pandemic unscathed.
Health authorities believe the virus found its way back into the community after a soldier providing security at a quarantine facility became infected and passed the virus onto a maid, who infected several of her family members and other soldiers at the facility. More than 330 people who were believed to have come into contact with the woman were forced into isolation while police began to enforce a strict 24-hour curfew in Fiji’s largest cities and surrounding towns, with no one allowed to leave their home unless it is a medical emergency.
Despite contact tracing efforts and the snap lockdown of urban hubs, cases have continued to rise, with new areas being forced into lockdown and existing lockdowns being extended. In addition to the increase in cases in the community, cases inside quarantine have also risen due to soldiers who had recently returned to the country after serving on a United Nationals peacekeeping mission “fraternizing” with one another, according to Fiji’s Permanent Secretary of Health Dr. James Fong.
https://thediplomat....-19-cases-rise/
TUNIS, Tunisia — A Tunisian hidden camera prank show that stages fake side effects of the coronavirus vaccine has drawn criticism from health authorities, as the country experiences a surge in virus cases and struggles to convince citizens to get vaccinated.
The series, titled "Angelina19," features a lookalike of actress and UN goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie who claims to have brought thousands of approved COVID-19 vaccine doses to Tunisia.
In each episode, Tunisian celebrities are invited to be vaccinated as part of an awareness campaign. As they wait to receive their shot, a chaotic scene emerges as other supposed vaccine recipients pretend to collapse and fall fatally ill in front of them.
The 20-minute program runs daily on the private Nessma TV channel during Ramadan season and includes prominent politicians, sports stars and musicians.
The World Health Organization (WHO) wrote a letter to the Tunisian government calling for the series to be pulled off the air because it could “undermine public confidence in the vaccine.” Tunisia’s national order of doctors told its members not to participate in any show that could hurt the “national vaccination effort.”
The producer of "Angelina19," Walid Zribi, told Al-Monitor that the program will “continue broadcasting every day” and called efforts to ban it “shameful in a country whose constitution provides for freedom of expression.”
Concern over the TV program has centered on its potential to spread conspiracies about the vaccine at a time when the health sector is overwhelmed and skepticism about the vaccine is already high.
“While Tunisia is going through an unprecedented health crisis with not enough resuscitators, some are taking advantage of people’s fears to create a buzz,” Tunisian anesthesiologist and public health advocate Mohamed Ghedira told Al-Monitor. “The hidden camera show 'Angelina 19' should have been interrupted after its first episode.”
https://www.al-monit...vid-19-vaccines
БУЭНОС-АЙРЕС, 4 мая – РИА Новости. Глава МИД Мексики Марсело Эбрард сообщил, что во время визита в Россию провел переговоры с российским центром "Вектор", мексиканских специалистов проинформируют о вакцине от коронавируса.
BUENOS AIRES, May 4 - RIA Novosti. Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said that during his visit to Russia he held talks with the Russian center "Vector", Mexican specialists will be informed about the coronavirus vaccine.
https://ria.ru/20210...1731107406.html
КАИР, 4 мая – РИА Новости. Премьер-министр Ирака Мустафа аль-Каземи во вторник принял прошение об отставке главы министерства здравоохранения Хасана ат-Тамими после пожара в больнице для больных коронавирусом, унесшего жизни 82 человек.
CAIRO, May 4 - RIA Novosti. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kazemi on Tuesday accepted the resignation of Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi after a fire in a hospital for coronavirus patients that killed 82 people.
https://ria.ru/20210...1731114660.html
The pharmaceutical industry is pouring resources into the growing political fight over generic coronavirus vaccines.
Newly filed disclosure forms from the first quarter of 2021 show that over 100 lobbyists have been mobilized to contact lawmakers and members of the Biden administration, urging them to oppose a proposed temporary waiver on intellectual property rights by the World Trade Organization that would allow generic vaccines to be produced globally.
Pharmaceutical lobbyists working against the proposal include Mike McKay, a key fundraiser for House Democrats, now working on retainer for Pfizer, as well as several former staff members to the U.S. Office of Trade Representative, which oversees negotiations with the WTO.
Several trade groups funded by pharmaceutical firms have also focused closely on defeating the generic proposal, new disclosures show. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the International Intellectual Property Alliance, which all receive drug company money, have dispatched dozens of lobbyists to oppose the initiative.
The push has been followed by a number of influential voices taking the side of the drug lobby. Last week, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., released a letter demanding that the administration “oppose any and all efforts aimed at waiving intellectual property rights.” Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chair, has similarly criticized the proposal, echoing many of the arguments of the drug industry.
Currently, only 1 percent of coronavirus vaccines are going to low-income countries, and projections show much of the world’s population may not be vaccinated until 2023 or 2024. In response, a coalition of countries, led by India and South Africa, have petitioned the WTO to temporarily suspend intellectual property rights on coronavirus-related medical products so that generic vaccines can be rapidly manufactured.
https://theintercept...aiver-lobbying/
https://www.democrac..._property_rules
פייזר היכתה את התחזיות: רשמה הכנסות של 3.5 מיליארד דולר ברבעון מהחיסון לקורונה
יצרנית התרופות דיווחה על הכנסות בסך 14.6 מיליארד דולר ברבעון הראשון של 2021, זינוק של 45% ביחס לאשתקד • פייזר מעלה את התחזיות השנתיות
Pfizer has beaten forecasts: it recorded $ 3.5 billion in quarterly revenue from the vaccine for Corona
Pharmaceutical maker reported revenue of $ 14.6 billion in the first quarter of 2021, a 45% jump from last year • Pfizer raises annual forecasts
https://www.globes.c...?did=1001369878
Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.
Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.
Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.
How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon.
Continued immunizations, especially for people at highest risk because of age, exposure or health status, will be crucial to limiting the severity of outbreaks, if not their frequency, experts believe.
“The virus is unlikely to go away,” said Rustom Antia, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University in Atlanta. “But we want to do all we can to check that it’s likely to become a mild infection.”
https://www.nytimes....ty-vaccine.html
Edited by amor de cosmos, 04 May 2021 - 08:17 AM.
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