Public Perception of COVID-19 Vaccines on Twitter in the United States

Background: COVID-19 vaccines play a vital role in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media provides a rich data source to study public perception of COVID-19 vaccines. Objective: In this study, we aimed to examine public perception and discussion of COVID-19 vaccines on Twitter in the US, as well as geographic and demographic characteristics of Twitter users who discussed about COVID-19 vaccines. Methods: Through Twitter streaming Application Programming Interface (API), COVID-19-related tweets were collected from March 5th, 2020 to January 25th, 2021 using relevant keywords (such as "corona", "covid19", and "covid"). Based on geolocation information provided in tweets and vaccine-related keywords (such as "vaccine" and "vaccination"), we identified COVID-19 vaccine-related tweets from the US. Topic modeling and sentiment analysis were performed to examine public perception and discussion of COVID-19 vaccines. Demographic inference using computer vision algorithm (DeepFace) was performed to infer the demographic characteristics (age, gender and race/ethnicity) of Twitter users who tweeted about COVID-19 vaccines. Results: Our longitudinal analysis showed that the discussion of COVID-19 vaccines on Twitter in the US reached a peak at the end of 2020. Average sentiment score for COVID-19 vaccine-related tweets remained relatively stable during our study period except for two big peaks, the positive peak corresponds to the optimism about the development of COVID-19 vaccines and the negative peak corresponds to worrying about the availability of COVID-19 vaccines. COVID-19 vaccine-related tweets from east coast states showed relatively high sentiment score. Twitter users from east, west and southern states of the US, as well as male users and users in age group 30-49 years, were more likely to discuss about COVID-19 vaccines on Twitter. Conclusions: Public discussion and perception of COVID-19 vaccines on Twitter were influenced by the vaccine development and the pandemic, which varied depending on the geographics and demographics of Twitter users.

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Vaccine Regulation, Licensing and Approval in USA

Journal of Pharmaceutical Research International ◽

10.9734/jpri/2021/v33i60a34530 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 664-673

Author(s):

S. Shashank ◽

M. P. Venkatesh

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Public Perception ◽

Vaccine Development ◽

The United States ◽

Vaccine Preventable Diseases ◽

System A ◽

The Us ◽

Recent Developments ◽

Community Protection ◽

Us Fda

Vaccines are the foremost effective public and personal preventive health interventions, leading to vital reductions in vaccine-preventable diseases and in substantial price savings to the United States health care system. A vaccine is a biological preparation that will increase the immunity to a particular illness. Vaccine development is commonly found to be difficult and needs sharp understanding and information of recent developments by physicians and experts to confirm that safe and effective vaccines are manufactured with minimum risk. A strict regulative method to see the safety, efficacy, and quality should be achieved throughout the event of vaccine development for its authorization. The Office of Vaccines Research and Review at the CBER of the US-FDA is the federal administrative body charged with guaranteeing the safety, purity, and efficacy of vaccines within US. The licensing rules are published in the Title 21 CFR Part 60. Current authority for the regulation of vaccines is in Section 351(a) of the Public Health Service Act (PHS). Vaccine licensure, development of recommendations to be used, and implementation of these recommendations resulting in uptake, community protection, and result on illness burden represent a posh system that needs collaboration within the areas of basic science, public health, vaccine delivery and outcome observance, and public perception.

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Food vs. fuel — A turning point for bioethanol?

Acta Agronomica Hungarica ◽

10.1556/aagr.56.2008.4.8 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 56 (4) ◽

pp. 429-433 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

K. Harlander

Keyword(s):

Agricultural Production ◽

Public Perception ◽

Turning Point ◽

The United States ◽

The Public ◽

The Us ◽

Additional Demand ◽

Oil Crisis ◽

Emotional Resistance ◽

The Eu

Bioethanol is made from sugar- or starch-containing plants that are also used in food production. In the public perception this has led to an emotional resistance against biofuels, which in real terms is not substantiated. Generally biofuels are a political product. Triggered by the oil crisis in the 1970s, fuel ethanol programmes were first launched in Brazil and in the United States. Concerns regarding energy security and sustainability, together with the option of new markets for surplus agricultural production, have led to similar measures in the EU and other countries in recent years. Accordingly, the industry invested heavily in new bioethanol plants — especially in the US — and created an additional demand for maize and wheat, with some record-breaking prices noted in late 2007. A look back into statistics shows a drastic decline in real prices for decades, which have now simply returned to the level of 30 years ago. The grain used for bioethanol is currently only 1.6% in the EU and is therefore unlikely to be the real driver of price development. The European Commission concludes in its review of agricultural markets that Europe can do both: nutrition and biofuels.

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The COVID-19 Pandemic and Mental Health Concerns on Twitter in the United States

10.1101/2021.08.23.21262489 ◽

2021 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Senqi Zhang ◽

Li Sun ◽

Daiwei Zhang ◽

Pin Li ◽

Yue Liu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

United States ◽

Topic Modeling ◽

The United States ◽

Allocation Model ◽

Health Concerns ◽

Demographic Composition ◽

The Us ◽

Mental Health Concerns ◽

Twitter Users

AbstractBackgroundMental health illness is a growing problem in recent years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health concerns (such as fear and loneliness) have been actively discussed on social media.ObjectiveIn this study, we aim to examine mental health discussions on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and infer the demographic composition of Twitter users who had mental health concerns.MethodsCOVID-19 related tweets from March 5th, 2020 to January 31st, 2021 were collected through Twitter streaming API using COVID-19 related keywords (e.g., “corona”, “covid19”, “covid”). By further filtering using mental health keywords (e.g., “depress”, “failure”, “hopeless”), we extracted mental health-related tweets from the US. Topic modeling using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation model was conducted to monitor users’ discussions surrounding mental health concerns. Demographic inference using deep learning algorithms (including Face++ and Ethnicolr) was performed to infer the demographic composition of Twitter users who had mental health concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic.ResultsWe observed a positive correlation between mental health concerns on Twitter and the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. Topic modeling showed that “stay-at-home”, “death poll” and “politics and policy” were the most popular topics in COVID-19 mental health tweets. Among Twitter users who had mental health concerns during the pandemic, Males, White, and 30-49 age group people were more likely to express mental health concerns. In addition, Twitter users from the east and west coast had more mental health concerns.ConclusionsThe COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact on mental health concerns on Twitter in the US. Certain groups of people (such as Males, White) were more likely to have mental health concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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DiSSCo, iDigBio and the Future of Global Collaboration

Biodiversity Information Science and Standards ◽

10.3897/biss.3.37896 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Gil Nelson ◽

Deborah L Paul

Keyword(s):

Working Group ◽

Application Programming Interface ◽

The United States ◽

Common Source ◽

Data Generation ◽

Biodiversity Data ◽

Global Biodiversity Information Facility ◽

Data Accessibility ◽

The Us ◽

Biodiversity Information

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio) is the United States’ (US) national resource and coordinating center for biodiversity specimen digitization and mobilization. It was established in 2011 through the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) program, an initiative that grew from a working group of museum-based and other biocollections professionals working in concert with NSF to make collections' specimen data accessible for science, education, and public consumption. The working group, Network Integrated Biocollections Alliance (NIBA), released two reports (Beach et al. 2010, American Institute of Biological Sciences 2013) that provided the foundation for iDigBio and ADBC. iDigBio is restricted in focus to the ingestion of data generated by public, non-federal museum and academic collections. Its focus is on specimen-based (as opposed to observational) occurrence records. iDigBio currently serves about 118 million transcribed specimen-based records and 29 million specimen-based media records from approximately 1600 datasets. These digital objects have been contributed by about 700 collections representing nearly 400 institutions and is the most comprehensive biodiversity data aggregator in the US. Currently, iDigBio, DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections), GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), and the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) are collaborating on a global framework to harmonize technologies towards standardizing and synchronizing ingestion strategies, data models and standards, cyberinfrastructure, APIs (application programming interface), specimen record identifiers, etc. in service to a developing consolidated global data product that can provide a common source for the world’s digital biodiversity data. The collaboration strives to harness and combine the unique strengths of its partners in ways that ensure the individual needs of each partner’s constituencies are met, design pathways for accommodating existing and emerging aggregators, simultaneously strengthen and enhance access to the world’s biodiversity data, and underscore the scope and importance of worldwide biodiversity informatics activities. Collaborators will share technology strategies and outputs, align conceptual understandings, and establish and draw from an international knowledge base. These collaborators, along with Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG), will join iDigBio and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History as they host Biodiversity 2020 in Washington, DC. Biodiversity 2020 will combine an international celebration of the worldwide progress made in biodiversity data accessibility in the 21st century with a biodiversity data conference that extends the life of Biodiversity Next. It will provide a venue for the GBIF governing board meeting, TDWG annual meeting, and the annual iDigBio Summit as well as three days of plenary and concurrent sessions focused on the present and future of biodiversity data generation, mobilization, and use.

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Islam as a point of reference for political and social groups in Iraq

International Review of the Red Cross ◽

10.1017/s1816383108000039 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 89 (868) ◽

pp. 843-855 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Pierre-Jean Luizard

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Social Groups ◽

The United States ◽

Vital Role ◽

Political Life ◽

General Context ◽

Special Position ◽

The Us ◽

Arab Societies ◽

Point Of Reference

AbstractIraq occupies a special position in the general context of re-Islamization of Arab societies because of the US occupation and the absence of a viable state. The attempt to rebuild communities under the aegis of the United States led to a widespread withdrawal back into communities in which Islam plays a vital role. Sectarian identities were intensified, particularly because they built on layers largely secularized by years of a form of political life that had been partly dominated by secular or secularist parties (Communist Party, Baath party). It looks as if a secularized form of Islam, whose vocation is primarily to confer an identity and which has become impervious to any religious code, is likely to fuel the fighting, which is all the more inexpiable because each person believes that he is fighting for survival as a member of his community.

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Characterization of Vaccine Tweets During the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Outbreak in the United States: Topic Modeling Analysis

JMIR Infodemiology ◽

10.2196/25636 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. e25636

Author(s):

Li Crystal Jiang ◽

Tsz Hang Chu ◽

Mengru Sun

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Topic Modeling ◽

Vaccine Development ◽

Close Association ◽

Negative Emotions ◽

The United States ◽

Conspiracy Theories ◽

Early Stages ◽

Twitter Users ◽

Public Concerns

Background During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, developing safe and effective coronavirus vaccines was considered critical to arresting the spread of the disease. News and social media discussions have extensively covered the issue of coronavirus vaccines, with a mixture of vaccine advocacies, concerns, and oppositions. Objective This study aimed to uncover the emerging themes in Twitter users’ perceptions and attitudes toward vaccines during the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak. Methods This study employed topic modeling to analyze tweets related to coronavirus vaccines at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States (February 21 to March 20, 2020). We created a predefined query (eg, “COVID” AND “vaccine”) to extract the tweet text and metadata (number of followers of the Twitter account and engagement metrics based on likes, comments, and retweeting) from the Meltwater database. After preprocessing the data, we tested Latent Dirichlet Allocation models to identify topics associated with these tweets. The model specifying 20 topics provided the best overall coherence, and each topic was interpreted based on its top associated terms. Results In total, we analyzed 100,209 tweets containing keywords related to coronavirus and vaccines. The 20 topics were further collapsed based on shared similarities, thereby generating 7 major themes. Our analysis characterized 26.3% (26,234/100,209) of the tweets as News Related to Coronavirus and Vaccine Development, 25.4% (25,425/100,209) as General Discussion and Seeking of Information on Coronavirus, 12.9% (12,882/100,209) as Financial Concerns, 12.7% (12,696/100,209) as Venting Negative Emotions, 9.9% (9908/100,209) as Prayers and Calls for Positivity, 8.1% (8155/100,209) as Efficacy of Vaccine and Treatment, and 4.9% (4909/100,209) as Conspiracies about Coronavirus and Its Vaccines. Different themes demonstrated some changes over time, mostly in close association with news or events related to vaccine developments. Twitter users who discussed conspiracy theories, the efficacy of vaccines and treatments, and financial concerns had more followers than those focused on other vaccine themes. The engagement level—the extent to which a tweet being retweeted, quoted, liked, or replied by other users—was similar among different themes, but tweets venting negative emotions yielded the lowest engagement. Conclusions This study enriches our understanding of public concerns over new vaccines or vaccine development at early stages of the outbreak, bearing implications for influencing vaccine attitudes and guiding public health efforts to cope with infectious disease outbreaks in the future. This study concluded that public concerns centered on general policy issues related to coronavirus vaccines and that the discussions were considerably mixed with political views when vaccines were not made available. Only a small proportion of tweets focused on conspiracy theories, but these tweets demonstrated high engagement levels and were often contributed by Twitter users with more influence.

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Public perception of the United States’ Affordable Care Act

International Journal of Healthcare ◽

10.5430/ijh.v5n2p28 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 28

Author(s):

Azizur R. Molla ◽

Theresa Ann Bacon-Baguley ◽

Susan DeVuyst-Miller ◽

William Wonderlin ◽

Elizabeth Benedetti

Keyword(s):

Affordable Care Act ◽

Public Perception ◽

The United States ◽

Political Affiliation ◽

The Us ◽

Health Physician ◽

Convenience Sampling ◽

Personal Sacrifice ◽

The Impact ◽

Out Of Pocket Costs

Background/Objective: Implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the US has given opportunity to obtain health insurance for thousands who were previously uninsured. Many believe that the ACA is an improvement over previous insurance, while others view it as making health care more costly. The purpose of this study was to survey individuals regarding knowledge and perceptions of the ACA.Methods: Researchers in public health, physician assistant studies, pharmacy and medical education developed a survey to assess the impact of the ACA. The survey included demographic questions and statements which assessed ACA support, and perspectives of the ACA’s impact on pharmaceutical and medical coverage and personal out of pocket costs. A convenience sampling was used to recruit participants at a public venue in an urban setting.Results: Demographics of the 179 surveyed include: median age 31 years; 84% Caucasian; 37% married; 58% completed a minimum of four years of college; and 45% with income exceeding $50,000. 13 (7%) were uninsured before the ACA, and 8 (4%) after. 130 (73%) had prescription coverage before the ACA with 107 (60%) reported no change in coverage, 22 (12%) better coverage, and 21 (12%) less coverage after the ACA. An association for ACA support was found based on political affiliation with more Democrats than Republicans supporting the ACA (p < .001). 71 (71%) who support the ACA, reported insurance did not improved after the ACA.Conclusions: These findings identify that in a sample of upper middle class individuals, a majority support the ACA despite a lack of improvement in their own insurance indicating that personal sacrifice for the general population is occurring.

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Twitter Users Display Desensitization to Bad Health News: An Observational Study (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.26876 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Hannah R Stevens ◽

Yoo Jung Oh ◽

Laramie R Taylor

Keyword(s):

The United States ◽

Emotional Reactions ◽

Coping Behaviors ◽

Health News ◽

The Public ◽

Death Toll ◽

The Us ◽

Twitter Users ◽

Novel Coronavirus ◽

Over Time

BACKGROUND Among the countries affected by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the US shows the highest number of confirmed cases (18.7 million, 23.5% of confirmed cases worldwide) and deaths (0.3 million, 18.9% of death worldwide) as of December 26, 2020. Early on in the pandemic, widespread social, financial, and mental insecurities led to extreme and irrational coping behaviors, such as panic buying. Yet, despite the consistent spread of COVID-19 transmission, the public have begun to violate public safety measures. From such observations, two key considerations arise. First, fear-eliciting health messages have a significant effect on eliciting motivation to take action in order to control the threat. However, repeated exposure to these messages over long periods results in desensitization to those stimuli. OBJECTIVE In this work, we examine the effect of fear-inducing news articles on people’s expression of anxiety on Twitter. Additionally, we investigate desensitization to the fear-inducing health news over time, despite the steadily rising COVID-19 death toll. METHODS This study examined the anxiety levels in news articles (n=1,465) and corresponding tweets containing “COVID,” “COVID-19,” “pandemic,” and “coronavirus” over 11 months, then correlated that information with the death toll of COVID-19 in the United States. RESULTS Overall, tweets that shared links to anxious articles were more likely to be anxious. (OR 2.62, 95% CI 1.58-4.43, p < .001). These odds decreased (OR 0.41, 95% CI 0.2-0.83, p = .01) when the death toll reached the 3rd quartile and 4th quartile (OR 0.42, 95% CI 0.21-0.85, p = .01). Yet tweet anxiety rose rapidly with articles when the death toll was low and then decreased in the 3rd quartile of deaths (OR .61, 95% CI 0.37-1.01, p=.058). As predicted, in addition to the increasing death toll being matched by a lower level of article anxiety, the extent to which article anxiety elicited tweet anxiety decreased when the death count reached the 2nd quartile. CONCLUSIONS Tweets increased sharply in response to article anxiety early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, but as the casualty count climbed, news articles seemingly lost their ability to elicit anxiety among readers. This work investigated how individuals' emotional reactions to news of the COVID-19 pandemic manifest as the death toll increases. Findings suggest individuals became desensitized to the increased COVID-19 threat and their emotional responses were blunted over time.

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The Impact of Unconscious Bias in Healthcare: How to Recognize and Mitigate It

The Journal of Infectious Diseases ◽

10.1093/infdis/jiz214 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 220 (Supplement_2) ◽

pp. S62-S73 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

Jasmine R Marcelin ◽

Dawd S Siraj ◽

Robert Victor ◽

Shaila Kotadia ◽

Yvonne A Maldonado

Keyword(s):

Healthcare Professionals ◽

Health Inequities ◽

The United States ◽

Demographic Characteristics ◽

Unconscious Bias ◽

Cultural Stereotypes ◽

Underrepresented Groups ◽

The Us ◽

Cognitive Unconscious ◽

The Impact

AbstractThe increasing diversity in the US population is reflected in the patients who healthcare professionals treat. Unfortunately, this diversity is not always represented by the demographic characteristics of healthcare professionals themselves. Patients from underrepresented groups in the United States can experience the effects of unintentional cognitive (unconscious) biases that derive from cultural stereotypes in ways that perpetuate health inequities. Unconscious bias can also affect healthcare professionals in many ways, including patient-clinician interactions, hiring and promotion, and their own interprofessional interactions. The strategies described in this article can help us recognize and mitigate unconscious bias and can help create an equitable environment in healthcare, including the field of infectious diseases.

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Public risk perception and responsive behaviors in the United States, United Kingdom, and Brazil during the COVID-19 Pandemic: a cross-sectional study

10.21203/rs.3.rs-124810/v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Anran Wang ◽

Xiaolei Xiu ◽

Sizhu Wu

Keyword(s):

Risk Perception ◽

Public Perception ◽

Close Contact ◽

The United States ◽

Living Environment ◽

Online Questionnaire ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Protective Measures ◽

The Public ◽

The Us

Abstract Background: Understanding public perception and behaviors toward COVID-19 is valuable for mitigating the severe epidemic. Our study aimed to investigate differences of the public from the US, UK, and Brazil on the aspects of the living environment, behaviors, attitude and risk perception. Methods: Dataset were taken from the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Survival Calculator project. 89554 respondents from the US (n=71812), UK (n=10392), and Brazil (n=7350) completed online questionnaire survey from April 28 to July 8. Frequencies and percentages were calculated to describe respondents’ responses. Chi-square tests with Holm-Bonferroni correction and binary logistic regression were used to determine the differences in environmental status, behaviors and worried degree of participants among the three countries, and further explore the sociodemographic characteristics related to protective measures. Results: Brazil participants had the highest risk perception to COVID-19, followed by the US, and the UK was the lowest (39.02±24.57 vs. 32.72±22.38 vs. 29.47+22.39, P<0.001). More Brazil participants expressed that they were worried about COVID-19. The proportion of respondents from the US and UK who reported they were not worried about COVID-19 was 2.00 times (95%CI: 1.80-2.23) and 3.24 times (95%CI: 2.88-3.65) that of Brazil. A higher percentage of Brazil respondents reported they were in close contact with more than ten people, using public transport and engaging in work. Regarding behaviors, social distancing (ranges:84.9%-86.8%) and washing hands (ranges:84.8%-90.3%) were the most frequently used protective measures, but respondents from the US (69.8%) and UK (15.8%) were relatively reluctant to wear masks. Moreover, it was found that participants from ethnic minorities were more likely to take protective measures. But males, respondents under 20 years, and respondents with poor economic conditions had various degrees of neglect to take steps. Meanwhile, healthcare workers also had a relatively stronger awareness of protection. Conclusion: There are significant differences in the environment, behaviors, attitude and risk perception of the public from the US, UK and Brazil. The sociodemographic subgroups analysis indicated that it is necessary to enhance protection publicity and support for specific groups. Our findings are conducive to the public health authorities to carry out more targeted publicity work of COVID-19 protection measures.

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