Measuring the impact of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on vaccination intentions in the UK and US
Widespread acceptance of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine is the next major step in fighting the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, but achieving high uptake is a challenge and may be hampered by misinformation online. To inform the success of vaccination campaigns, we conducted randomized controlled trials in the UK and US to quantify how exposure to online misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine affects the intention to vaccinate to protect oneself and others. Here, we show that as of September 2020, fewer people were "definitely" vaccinated than might be needed for herd immunity in both countries, and that recent misinformation caused a 6.2 percentage point drop in intention compared with factual information (95th percentile intervals of 3.9 to 8.5 in the UK) and 6.2 to 8.5 in the UK. Among those who said they would definitely accept the vaccine, it was 4 percentage points in the United States (95th percentile interval 4.0 to 8.8). We also found that some sociodemographic groups are affected differently by exposure to misinformation. Finally, we show that scientific-sounding misinformation is more strongly associated with lower vaccination intentions.
Loomba, S., de Figueiredo, A., Piatek, SJ etal. Measuring the impact of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on vaccination intention in the UK and US. Nat Hum Behav 5, 337-348 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01056-1
Commentary
The results of this study stated that social networking sites increase the number of people who refuse to be vaccinated, but the impact of this conclusion has caused many online reports to exclude these negative campaigns.
The author agrees with this, and often seen on Facebook are "vaccine conspiracy theories" and "exaggerated reports of adverse reactions from vaccination. It seems that we need to reconsider who would benefit from spreading such information and influencing people without disclosing whether it is based on facts or not.
I can only hope that this situation will continue for a while, and that the posting of such false information will be restricted, but it is likely that some people will respond with claims of deprivation of freedom of expression.
