Viewing the pandemic as an opportunity to sow distrust of vaccines and health authorities, they drew up plans to train people to share misleading information through Facebook pages, WhatsApp groups, and YouTube Channels, along with Twitter and Instagram accounts. In October 2020, as clinical trials on leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates were nearing a conclusion, anti-vaccine campaigners gathered for an online meeting. Campaigners call on tech companies to curb the spread of false information.Virtual conference infiltrated by Center for Countering Digital Hate.Falsely claim COVID-19 is not dangerous and that vaccines are high risk.Anti-vaxx groups drew up plan to spread false information online.“A nationalistic rather than global approach to vaccine delivery is not only morally wrong but will also delay any return to a level of ‘normality’…because no country can be safe until all countries are safe,” they said. They call the Covax facility-an international effort to secure equitable global access to Covid-19 vaccines-“just an initial step towards addressing vaccine equity and global coordination”.ĭecisions by governments and global agencies would “greatly affect the journey ahead”, they note.Ĭountries acting purely in their own interests could face dire consequences. Hackmann and her colleagues want coordination to ensure that all countries get the vaccine. This would likely lead to repeated outbreaks even in high-income nations. But that control would still take a long time to achieve.Īt the other extreme, the virus mutates quickly and only high-income countries can vaccinate their citizens “while the rest of the world struggles with repeated waves and vaccines”. In their 16 February paper, the team says the most optimistic scenario sees researchers develop vaccines effective against all variants of the virus and countries coordinate to effectively control it. The researchers-who also include New Zealand’s former chief science adviser Peter Gluckman, South African epidemiologist and adviser Salim Abdool Karim and German medical ethicist Christiane Woopen-warn that “naive assumptions about herd immunity, given the appearance of new and challenging variants could seriously risk repeated outbreaks and recurrences”. “Vaccine hesitancy, misinformation, and disinformation could compromise the global Covid-19 response,” said the team, who between them have advised governments around the world and shaped policy on research issues for years. In an article published in medical journal The Lancet, scientists-including chief executive of the International Science Council Heide Hackmann, and EU Covid-19 adviser and director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Peter Piot-cautioned against assuming that recent scientific progress on diagnostics and treatment would end the pandemic. Some of the world’s most eminent figures in science policy have warned that a poorly informed public reluctant to take vaccines, alongside nationalistic approaches to vaccine delivery, may severely undermine global recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. Misinformation and “naive assumptions” on vaccine immunity risk repeated outbreaks, warns team of top advisers
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