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Deep-seated psychological histories of COVID-19 vaccine hesitance and resistance.

ABSTRACT: To design effective pro-vaccination messaging, it is important to know "where people are coming from"-the personal experiences and long-standing values, motives, lifestyles, preferences, emotional tendencies, and information-processing capacities of people who end up resistant or hesitant toward vaccination. We used prospective data from a 5-decade cohort study spanning childhood to midlife to construct comprehensive early-life psychological histories of groups who differed in their vaccine intentions in months just before COVID vaccines became available in their country. Vaccine-resistant and vaccine-hesitant participants had histories of adverse childhood experiences that foster mistrust, longstanding mental-health problems that foster misinterpretation of messaging, and early-emerging personality traits including tendencies toward extreme negative emotions, shutting down mentally under stress, nonconformism, and fatalism about health. Many vaccine-resistant and -hesitant participants had cognitive difficulties in comprehending health information. Findings held after control for socioeconomic origins. Vaccine intentions are not short-term isolated misunderstandings. They are part of a person's style of interpreting information and making decisions that is laid down before secondary school age. Findings suggest ways to tailor vaccine messaging for hesitant and resistant groups. To prepare for future pandemics, education about viruses and vaccines before or during secondary schooling could reduce citizens' level of uncertainty during a pandemic, and provide people with pre-existing knowledge frameworks that prevent extreme emotional distress reactions and enhance receptivity to health messages. Enhanced medical technology and economic resilience are important for pandemic preparedness, but a prepared public who understands the need to mask, social distance, and vaccinate will also be important.

SUBMITTER: Moffitt TE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9245853 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:In the last two years, the coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been a scientific and social challenge worldwide. Vaccines have been the most effective intervention for reducing virus transmission and disease severity. However, virus genetic variants are still circulating among vaccinated individuals with different symptomatology disease cases. Understanding the protective or disease associated mechanisms in vaccinated individuals is relevant to advance in vaccine development and implementation. To address this objective, serum protein profiles were characterized by quantitative proteomics and data analysis algorithms in four cohorts of vaccinated individuals uninfected and SARS-CoV-2 infected with asymptomatic, nonsevere and severe disease symptomatology. The results showed that immunoglobulins were the most overrepresented proteins in infected cohorts when compared to PCR-negative individuals. The immunoglobulin profile varied between different infected cohorts and correlated with protective or disease associated capacity. Overrepresented immunoglobulins in PCR-positive individuals correlated with protective response against SARS-CoV-2, other viruses, and thrombosis in asymptomatic cases. In nonsevere cases, correlates of protection against SARS-CoV-2 and HBV together with risk of myasthenia gravis and allergy and autoantibodies were observed. Patients with severe symptoms presented risk for allergy, chronic idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, and autoantibodies. The analysis of underrepresented immunoglobulins in PCR-positive compared to PCR-negative individuals identified vaccine-induced protective epitopes in various coronavirus proteins including the Spike receptor-binding domain RBD. Non-immunoglobulin proteins were associated with COVID-19 symptoms and biological processes. These results evidence host-associated differences in response to vaccination and the possibility of improving vaccine efficacy against SARS-CoV-2.

Project description:BackgroundThe successful control of the COVID-19 pandemic depends largely on the acceptance and uptake of a COVID-19 vaccine among the public. Thus, formative research aiming to understand and determine the causes of weak and/or positive vaccination intentions is vital in order to ensure the success of future and current vaccination programmes through the provision of effective, evidence-based health messaging.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was completed by a sample of Irish (N = 500) and UK (N = 579) citizens using the online platform 'Qualtrics'. Participants completed a questionnaire battery comprised of health, attitudes/beliefs, influences, and behavioural intention measures. Demographic information was also assessed.ResultsResults highlighted similar rates of vaccine intention among both samples; where a total of 76.8% Irish respondents, and 73.7% of UK respondents indicated that they intended to be immunized if the government advised them to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Overall, 23.2% of Irish respondents reported being vaccine hesitant or vaccine resistant, while a rate of 26.3% of UK respondents reported vaccine hesitancy or resistance. Univariate analysis highlighted that both gender and age played a significant role in vaccine intention, with women under age 30 reporting higher rate of vaccine hesitancy. Multivariate analysis revealed that significant correlates of vaccine acceptance included peer influence, GP influence, civic responsibility, perceived benefit, and positive vaccination attitudes. Those who reported vaccine resistance and hesitancy were more likely to have less positive vaccination attitudes and perceive higher vaccination risk.DiscussionThe current sociodemographic and psychological profiles of vaccine resistant and hesitant individuals provide a useful resource for informing health practitioners in the UK and Ireland with the means of enhancing pro-vaccine attitudes and promoting vaccination uptake. The current research shows indications of associations between distrust in the vaccine itself and vaccine hesitancy and resistance. Thus, to effectively design and deliver public health messages that ensures the success of vaccination uptake, it is likely that governments and public health officials will need to take actions to garner trust in the safety of the vaccine itself. Additionally, campaigns to decrease hesitancy and resistance in the COVID-19 vaccine may benefit in targeting altruism to increase willingness to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Project description:BackgroundPrevious research has shown that young adults are more hesitant/resistant to COVID-19 vaccine uptake than older age groups, although the factors underlying this tendency are still under debate. The current study aimed to identify the sociodemographic and psychological correlates of vaccine hesitancy and resistance among young adults (18-40 years) during the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Italy, the first country after China being hit by the pandemic and which suffered a large number of fatalities.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional, web-based study conducted in Italy using an ISO-certified international survey company (respondi.com). Data were collected on 1200 participants in June 2021.ResultsVaccine hesitancy/resistance was found for 25% of the sample. In multinomial logistic regression (N = 1159), being aged 30-40 years, residing in northern Italy, having lower educational and income level, being unemployed, and not knowing any friends/relatives diagnosed with COVID-19 were associated with higher odds of hesitancy or resistance. In multivariate analysis of variance (N = 1177), both vaccine hesitant and resistant young adults perceived significantly less social support from friends and family than vaccine accepting ones. Resistant individuals reported significantly higher levels of conspiracy theories and negative attitudes toward vaccines than their accepting and hesitant counterparts. Moreover, resistant individuals reported significantly lower levels of attachment to country and perceptions of a just government compared to accepting ones, with hesitant young adults scoring in between.ConclusionsOur findings support the idea that young adults with a hesitant (vs. resistant) attitude show a more nuanced and less extreme psychological profile. Public health messaging should capitalize on social media to provide accessible, transparent, and age-appropriate information concerning COVID-19 vaccine safety. Moreover, policy efforts improving the availability of social support systems are warranted to strengthen connectedness and foster trust in institutions amongst this particular segment of the population.

Project description:Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is our generation's greatest global challenge to our public health system. Vaccines are considered one of the most effective tools available for preventing COVID-19 infection and its complications and sequelae. Understanding and addressing the psychological stress related to COVID-19 vaccination may promote acceptance of these vaccines. Methods: We conducted an online survey from January 29 to April 26, 2021 to explore stress levels related to COVID-19 vaccination among the general public in China. Participants were asked to evaluate their psychological stress of considering whether or not to get vaccinated at the beginning period of the COVID-19 mass vaccination, after getting access to the information about the vaccine, as well as after getting vaccinated, using visual analog stress scale. Multiple linear regression analysis was performed to explore factors potentially associated with COVID-19-related psychological stress levels before and after getting vaccinated. Results: A total of 34,041 participants were included in the final analysis. The mean stress score concerning COVID-19 vaccination was 3.90 ± 2.60 among all participants, and significantly decreased over time. In addition, the vaccine-related stress level significantly decreased after accessing information about the COVID-19 vaccine (N = 29,396), as well as after getting vaccinated (N = 5,103). Multivariable regression analysis showed higher stress levels related to COVID-19 vaccination in participants who were younger, having lower education level, having history of chronic diseases, mistrusting vaccine's efficacy, experience of vaccine allergy events, being affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, and having mental illness symptoms. Moreover, mistrust in vaccine efficacy and experience of vaccine allergy events had a long-term impact on psychological stress levels about COVID-19 vaccination even after getting vaccinated. Conclusions: The current findings profiled the COVID-19 vaccine-related psychological stress among the general public in China. Population-specific management and interventions targeting the stress related to COVID-19 vaccination are needed to help governments and policy makers promote individual's willingness to get vaccinations for public well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Project description:The worldwide coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic made dramatic and rapid progress in the year 2020 and requires urgent global effort to accelerate the development of a vaccine to stop the daily infections and deaths. Several types of vaccine have been designed to teach the immune system how to fight off certain kinds of pathogens. mRNA vaccines are the most important candidate vaccines because of their capacity for rapid development, high potency, safe administration and potential for low-cost manufacture. mRNA vaccine acts by training the body to recognize and response to the proteins produced by disease-causing organisms such as viruses or bacteria. This type of vaccine is the fastest candidate to treat COVID-19 but it currently facing several limitations. In particular, it is a challenge to design stable mRNA molecules because of the inefficient in vivo delivery of mRNA, its tendency for spontaneous degradation and low protein expression levels. This work designed and implemented a sequence deep model based on bidirectional GRU and LSTM models applied on the Stanford COVID-19 mRNA vaccine dataset to predict the mRNA sequences responsible for degradation by predicting five reactivity values for every position in the sequence. Four of these values determine the likelihood of degradation with/without magnesium at high pH (pH 10) and high temperature (50 degrees Celsius) and the fifth reactivity value is used to determine the likely secondary structure of the RNA sample. The model relies on two types of features, namely numerical and categorical features, where the categorical features are extracted from the mRNA sequences, structure and predicted loop. These features are represented and encoded by numbers, and then, the features are extracted using embedding layer learning. There are five numerical features depending on the likelihood for each pair of nucleotides in the RNA. The model gives promising results because it predicts the five reactivity values with a validation mean columnwise root mean square error (MCRMSE) of 0.125 using LSTM model with augmentation and the codon encoding method. Codon encoding outperforms Base encoding in MCRMSE validation error using the LSTM model meanwhile Base encoding outperforms codon encoding due to less over-fitting and the difference between the training and validation loss error is 0.008.

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Deep-seated psychological histories of COVID-19 vaccine hesitance and resistance.

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