Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

FacebookʼS Latest Attempt To Address Vaccine Misinformation — And Why ItʼS Not Enough, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

On October 13, 2020 Facebook announced the adoption of a series of measures to promote vaccine trust “while prohibiting ads with misinformation that could harm public health efforts.” In the post written by Kang-Xing Jin (head of health) and Rob Leathern (director of product management), the company explained that the new measures were designed with an emphasis on encouraging widespread use of this yearʼs flu vaccine, as well as in anticipation of potential COVID-19 vaccines becoming available in the near future.

The changes focus mainly on the establishment of a multiprong informational campaign about the seasonal flu vaccine, which includes …

Pandemic Response As Border Politics, Michael R. Kenwick, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

Pandemics are imbued with the politics of bordering. For centuries, border closures and restrictions on foreign travelers have been the most persistent and pervasive means by which states have responded to global health crises. The ubiquity of these policies is not driven by any clear scientific consensus about their utility in the face of myriad pandemic threats. Instead, we show they are influenced by public opinion and preexisting commitments to invest in the symbols and structures of state efforts to control their borders, a concept we call border orientation. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, border orientation was already generally …

Mapping Misinformation In The Coronavirus Outbreak, Ana Santos Rutschman

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The coronavirus outbreak has sent ripples of fear and confusion across the world. These sentiments—and our collective responses to the outbreak—are made worse by rampant misinformation surrounding the new strain of the virus, COVID-2019. In this post, I survey some of the most pervasive areas of tentacular coronavirus-related misinformation that has proliferated online -- as well as the responses of social media companies like YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest and TikTok that may ultimately prove inadequate given the magnitude of the problem.

Comments On The Preliminary Framework For Equitable Allocation Of Covid-19 Vaccine, Ana Santos Rutschman, Julia Barnes-Weise, Robert Gatter, Timothy L. Wiemken

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On September 1, 2020 the National Academies released a draft framework for Equitable Allocation of a COVID-19 Vaccine. In this response, we analyze the proposed framework and highlight several areas.

Among the proposed changes, we highlight the need for the following interventions. The final framework for distribution of COVID-19 vaccines should give a higher priority to populations made most vulnerable by the social determinants of health. It should incorporate more geography-based approaches in at least some of the four proposed phases of vaccine distribution. It should address the possibility of a vaccine being made available through an emergency use authorization …

Lessons From China's Response To Covid-19: Shortcomings, Successes, And Prospects For Reform In China's Regulatory State, Jacques Delisle, Shen Kui

All Faculty Scholarship

China’s response to COVID-19 offers a case study of law, the regulatory state and governance in China. The costly delay in the initial response reflected distinctive features of the Chinese system, including perverse incentives local-level officials face to try to cover up problems, fragmentated institutions and rules, and politically weak public health bureaucracies. After the initial shortcomings, China’s largely successful efforts to contain the pandemic also reflected defining features of the Chinese system, including a highly capable, centralized and authoritarian party-state that could mobilize vast resources, coordinate across fractious institutions, create ad hoc government and party leadership bodies, and deploy …