A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verified. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and to further recognize and destroy any of the microorganisms associated with that agent that it may encounter in the future.
Philip Carr Valentine was an American conservative talk radio host, author and actor. He broadcast daily on WWTN, a Cumulus Media station in Nashville, Tennessee, and hosted The Phil Valentine Show, syndicated nationally through the Westwood One radio network. He was an opponent of a proposed state income tax in Tennessee and denied climate change.
Joseph Michael Mercola is an American alternative medicine proponent, osteopathic physician, and Internet business personality. He markets largely unproven dietary supplements and medical devices. On his website, Mercola and colleagues advocate unproven and pseudoscientific alternative health notions including homeopathy and opposition to vaccination. These positions have received persistent criticism. Mercola is a member of several alternative medicine organizations as well as the political advocacy group Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which promotes scientifically discredited views about medicine and disease. He is the author of two books.
Vaccination and religion have interrelations of varying kinds. No major religion prohibits vaccinations, and some consider it an obligation because of the potential to save lives. However, some people cite religious adherence as a basis for opting to forego vaccinating themselves or their children. Many such objections are pretextual: in Australia, anti-vaccinationists founded the Church of Conscious Living, a "fake church", leading to religious exemptions being removed in that country, and one US pastor was reported to offer vaccine exemptions in exchange for online membership of his church.
Michael Specter is an American journalist who has been a staff writer, focusing on science, technology, and global public health at The New Yorker since September 1998. He has also written for The Washington Post and The New York Times. Since 2021 he has also taught writing and, along with a colleague, a course called “Safeguarding the Future” at MIT. He has previously served as an Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University, and a Visiting Professor of Environmental and Urban Studies at Bard College.
Daniel Zwerdling is an American investigative journalist who has written for major magazines and newspapers. From 1980 to 2018 he served as an investigative reporter for NPR News, with stints as foreign correspondent and host of Weekend All Things Considered from 1993 to 1999. Zwerdling retired from NPR in 2018.
Dame Sarah Catherine Gilbert FRS is an English vaccinologist who is a Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford and co-founder of Vaccitech. She specialises in the development of vaccines against influenza and emerging viral pathogens. She led the development and testing of the universal flu vaccine, which underwent clinical trials in 2011.
In the United States, the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has resulted in 103,436,829 confirmed cases with 1,127,152 all-time deaths, the most of any country, and the 20th-highest per capita worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic ranks first on the list of disasters in the United States by death toll; it was the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020, behind heart disease and cancer. From 2019 to 2020, U.S. life expectancy dropped by 3 years for Hispanic and Latino Americans, 2.9 years for African Americans, and 1.2 years for white Americans. These effects persisted as U.S. deaths due to COVID-19 in 2021 exceeded those in 2020, and life expectancy continued to fall from 2020 to 2021.
Misinformation related to immunization and the use of vaccines circulates in mass media and social media in spite of the fact that there is no serious hesitancy or debate within mainstream medical and scientific circles about the benefits of vaccination. Unsubstantiated safety concerns related to vaccines are often presented on the internet as being scientific information. A high proportion of internet sources on the topic are "inaccurate on the whole" which can lead people searching for information to form "significant misconceptions about vaccines".
COVID-19 vaccination in Angola is an ongoing immunisation campaign against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), in response to the ongoing pandemic in the country. As of 15 June 2021, Angola has administered 1,314,375 doses of vaccines.822,109 people with the first dose and 492,266 people fully vaccinated. Angola began their vaccination program shortly after receiving their first shipment of Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine in early March 2021.
Medical Racism: The New Apartheid is a 2021 video production that promotes conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines. Distributed by the anti-vaccination group Children's Health Defense, it alleges the COVID-19 vaccination efforts are a cover to conduct experiments on African American and Latin communities. Public health communication experts say the video presents past injustices committed against African Americans in order to make debunked anti-vaccination claims more believable.
Software for COVID-19 pandemic mitigation takes many forms. It includes mobile apps for contact tracing and notifications about infection risks, vaccine passports, software for enabling – or improving the effectiveness of – lockdowns and social distancing, Web software for the creation of related information services, and research and development software. A common issue is that few apps interoperate, reducing their effectiveness.
The following is the timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in India from January 2021 to the May 2021. The complexity of the COVID-19 data reporting in India has been scrutinized extensively because of the disagreement between the undocumented morbidity rate and the low rates of case fatality in comparison to other countries.
Ashwin Vasan is an American physician and epidemiologist serving as the 44th commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Vasan is also a public health professor and practicing primary care doctor at Columbia University, and was most recently the president and CEO of Fountain House, a national mental health nonprofit.
COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the United States is the sociocultural phenomenon of individuals refusing or displaying hesitance towards receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the United States can be considered as part of the broader history of vaccine hesitancy.
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 vaccine mandates have been enacted by numerous states and municipalities in the United States, and also by private entities. In September 2021, President Joe Biden announced that the federal government would take steps to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for certain entities under the authority of the federal government or federal agencies. Most federal mandates thus imposed were either overturned through litigation, or withdrawn by the administration, although a mandate on health care workers in institutions receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds was upheld. All federal mandates were lifted when the national emergency was declared to have ended in May 2023. A small number of states have gone in the opposite direction, through executive orders or legislation designed to limit vaccination mandates.
Priti Krishtel is a lawyer and advocate for patent reform and increased public participation in the patent system. She co-founded the United States-based nonprofit organization the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge.
Media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic includes reporting on the deaths of anti-vaccine advocates from COVID-19 as a phenomenon occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic. The media also reported on various websites documenting such deaths, with some outlets questioning whether this practice was overly unsympathetic. Reports noted phenomena including "deathbed conversions", in which vaccine opponents reportedly changed their minds and began encouraging vaccination before dying, with these claims meeting continued skepticism by vaccination opponents; and on groups of deaths within specific demographics, such as anti-vaccine radio hosts.
The Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism is a nonprofit media group based in South Africa. Bhekisisa, meaning "to scrutinise" in the isiZulu, focuses on health coverage from a social justice perspective, utilizing narrative and solutions journalism.
