translated from Spanish: The influence of those who are against vaccines on “Facebook” could affect covid-19 prevention

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World.- Anti-vaccination movements on Facebook are more influential than pro groups, according to a new study that has examined the interactions of nearly 100 million people on its pages. The authors warn of the danger this poses to the new coronavirus.
A team led by George Washington University (USA) has mapped the opinion on vaccines that nearly 100 million people have expressed through Facebook. According to the results, which are published in the journal Nature, the anti-vaccine movement is numerically minority, but performs a greater number of interactions.
The aim of the research was to analyze how distrust in immunization can evolve in virtual communities. To do this, the study examined the pages on this social network because, “unlike Twitter, which many academics focus on for their free access data, on Facebook communities develop, nurture in-depth narratives and exchange ideas and material without any limitation of length,” he says to SINC Neil Johnson, a researcher at the American university and one of the authors of the paper.

The authors predict that the anti-vaccine current could be the prevailing view in a decade. During the work, Facebook groups that talked about vaccines in all languages and countries were collected and classified as undecided, pro and anti-vaccine.
“Then we analyzed the clusters to which these pages were connected, that is, the interactions and links that were made at the entire page level. We don’t look at individual information,” Johnson stresses.
The size of each cluster was determined by the number of fans on a particular page. The results showed that anti-vaccine pages are a minority, but they are positioned at the center of the network, meaning they have many interactions and are closely related to groups with neutral opinions. In contrast, the pro-immunization groups appeared on the periphery of the map.
According to the authors, this indicates that anti-vaccine groups can more easily reach neutral groups and influence their opinion. Moreover, from this theoretical framework, they reproduced the growth of this movement and predicted that it could be the dominant vision in just a decade.
The work warns of a growing and complex global network that distrusts vaccines. “This not only threatens the rise of diseases such as measles, but also COVID-19,” Johnson says.
“When a vaccine for COVID-19 comes out, there is a danger that there are not enough people who want to get vaccinated and there is no group immunity,” Johnson says
In this regard, the researcher warns that “when a vaccine for COVID-19 arises, there is a danger that there are not enough people who want to get vaccinated and group immunity is not achieved”, which could prevent the end of the pandemic.
In fact, a survey conducted in France last March already found that up to 26% of respondents were reluctant to accept the hypothetical coVID-19 vaccine.
In addition, the study showed that these same groups also discuss distrust of climate change or treatments for other diseases, such as cancer. “It’s a risk to public support for science,” Johnson concludes.
Source: SINC

Original source in Spanish

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