Urgent call for mass immunization against coronavirus in Bangladesh

Bangladesh showed initial success in the mass inoculation drive. However, the program was going through an alarming situation when the serum institute of India halted the shipments. Now the authority is administering US Moderna vaccines, Chinese Sinopharm vaccines, and Pfizer vaccines. Mass immunization is the only way for Bangladesh besides the present COVID-19 responses. Therefore, Bangladesh can utilize its previous experience in the roll-out of mass vaccination. The country can search for all available alternatives of COVID-19 vaccines besides maintaining diplomatic consistency with the existing sources for early vaccination of its population. The authority can try to get the committed vaccines from the COVAX program. Also, the country needs to maintain diplomatic relations with other global alliances that are promising support to poor and developing countries for the COVID-19 vaccine. The government can also consider direct purchases from vaccine manufacturers.

The shot, the message, and the messenger: COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in Latin America

Herd immunity by mass vaccination offers the potential to substantially limit the continuing spread of COVID-19, but high levels of vaccine hesitancy threaten this goal. In a cross-country analysis of vaccine hesitant respondents across Latin America in January 2021, we experimentally tested how five features of mass vaccination campaigns—the vaccine’s producer, efficacy, endorser, distributor, and current population uptake rate—shifted willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine. We find that citizens preferred Western-produced vaccines, but were highly influenced by factual information about vaccine efficacy. Vaccine hesitant individuals were more responsive to vaccine messengers with medical expertise than political, religious, or media elite endorsements. Citizen trust in foreign governments, domestic leaders, and state institutions moderated the effects of the campaign features on vaccine acceptance. These findings can help inform the design of unfolding mass inoculation campaigns.

Damaging effects of vaccine geopolitics and the EU’s distorted soft power

The authors deliberate that the EU?s soft power leadership has been inadequate during certain periods of the pandemic, being additionally challenged by proactive campaigns of other international actors. According to the authors, such EU underperformance primarily lies in the damaging fact that the Union perceives and treats aspects like the inoculation process not solely as a health-humanitarian issue, but also as a geostrategic activity. The authors consider that EU logic has been largely shaped by the pre-existing geopolitical distaste for China and Russia, and hence also their subsequent COVID-19-related engagement in Europe. Apart from strategic rivalries, EU international status has been exacerbated by deteriorating relations with the UK. According to the authors, the aforementioned international actors have been applying various soft power instruments during the mass inoculation process against COVID-19 in Europe, which also resulted in consequences that are usually attributed to hard power. Antagonisms between the abovementioned stakeholders manifest in unfavorable phenomena such as ?vaccine nationalism? and ?jab geopolitics?. The authors argues that a less selective, and more flexible and pragmatic approach would have been more beneficial both for public health and the EU?s impaired reputation in certain parts of CEE.

Mass Inoculation and Rural Rhythms: Local Agents, Population Data, and Restructured Social Systems during the Cholera Pandemic in China, 1962–1965

This article examines the dynamics between the mass inoculation campaigns and China’s restructured rural social system during the 1962–1965 cholera pandemic, with a focus on the role of local agents and population data during the integration of the medical and administrative systems. The inoculation campaigns not only harnessed local agents and household and accounting information provided by the broader social restructuring initiatives but also directly contributed to these by compiling inoculation registers and certificates. These campaigns included the administrative and medical systems and combined social, production, and epidemiological data in a reciprocal process. The mass inoculations therefore functionalized social control; facilitated the formation and top-down imposition of a new, broad-reaching social structure; and contributed to the formation of a sedentary society. In this sense, these inoculation campaigns were a significant social and political exercise rather than just a pathological, medical, and health incident.

Transmission of Moroccan watermelon mosaic virus (MWMV) by Aphids in Greece

The aphid-transmitted Moroccan watermelon mosaic virus (MWMV; Potyvirus, Potyviridae) is an emerging pathogen in cucurbit crops in the Mediterranean basin but information on its transmitting vector species is limited. This study aimed to record the competence of 22 species of the Greek aphid fauna to vector MWMV. Timed-probe transmission experiments and arena tests were performed using laboratory colonies of aphid species abundant in field surveys; less common species were tested as apterous individuals collected directly from field plants in mass-inoculation (nonpersistent) tests. Depending on the test, aphids were tested in cohorts of 10 or 20 individuals on zucchini (Cucurbita pepo L.) plants and the frequency of transmission was calculated for a single aphid. Among 12 species tested in timed-probe transmission tests, Myzus persicae nicotianae (74.0%) appeared to be the most efficient vector, followed by M. persicae (48.0%), Aphis gossypii (11.8%), an unidentified Aphis sp. (11.8%), and A. spiraecola (11.0%). Alatae of nine species tested in arena tests transmitted the virus in rates varying from 0.7 to 53.6%; M. persicae was the most efficient species in virus spread. In mass-inoculation tests, the probability that apterae of 12 aphid species collected from field plants transmitted MWMV fluctuated from 0.3 to 5.3%. No transmission was obtained by Brevicoryne brassicae. The following species are reported as new vectors of MWMV: A. fabae, A. nerii, A. spiraephaga, A. umbrella, Capitophorus eleaegni, Dysaphis (Pomaphis) pyri, Macrosiphoniella sanborni, Macrosiphum rosae, Myzocallis castanicola, Myzus persicae nicotianae, M. cerasi, M. varians, Phorodon humuli, Ovatus crataegarius, Takecallis arundicolens (first report in Greece), Uroleucon sonchi, and U. (Uromelan) aeneum. These results contribute to a better understanding of MWMV epidemiology.

Disease and Mortality, 1860–1924

This chapter argues that the intensification of long-distance trade from the 1860s increased mortality levels due to famine, heightened conflict, and new epidemic diseases in Buganda and Buhaya much more than in Ankole. The colonial takeover quickly reduced the incidence of war-related deaths, but only in the 1920s did the colonial state begin to exert a degree of control over crisis mortality. Early hospital data and vital registration records indicate that child survival had improved significantly by the early 1920s, due to a rise in birthweight, investment in sanitation, and the cumulative impact of mass inoculation campaigns against major epidemic diseases. By the mid-1920s medical data on cause of death revealed the emerging dominance of endemic diseases, a pattern that would survive, with some variation, until the emergence of AIDS.

Health and Medicine in the Enlightenment

This article discusses the transformation of medicine at the very end of the century and thus represents a shift both in the training of medical practitioners and in accounts of the body. The eighteenth century has been described as a time of increasing medicalization of Western societies. Though this is usually portrayed as a growth in the power of medical practitioners over ordinary life, in practice lay people may also understand it as an increasing embrace of the medical. The eighteenth century continues to be viewed as a critical period in the history of medicine, as the century when bodies became the subject of large-scale political intervention, from centralized responses to plague epidemics or mass inoculation programmes early in the century to the growing use of mortality tables at its end. To portray these knowledge projects in all their complexity, historians still need to embrace the full implications of treating eighteenth-century medical knowledge as a political enterprise.