Although different age cohorts tend to prefer different social media platforms, overall, YouTube is extremely popular, with nearly three-quarters of the US adult population known to have used the platform. Research suggests that this is no less the case for information on COVID-19. Social media platforms have become a dominant communication channel through which people seek and share health-related information. In contrast, in the latter case, the intent is clearly nefarious in nature. The spread of misinformation is likely facilitated by fear and misunderstanding of vaccine development and approval processes. Vaccine misinformation pertains to erroneous conclusions based on incomplete or incorrect facts, whereas vaccine disinformation involves the purposeful spread of falsehoods related to both specific vaccines and vaccination, in general.

Although vaccine hesitancy has a long history, it is fair to say that today, the internet facilitates, if not drives, both vaccine misinformation and disinformation. Not the least of which is a mistrust of scientific experts and government officials, which, for some populations, is grounded in the trauma of racist exploitation, disregard, and injustice. Vaccine hesitancy is multi-factorial phenomenon, often driven by a confluence of factors. ĭespite the highly encouraging safety and efficacy profiles of COVID-19 vaccines that have been granted emergency use authorization, thus far, the very processes that allowed for rapid development have also been a source of public concern, with possible negative effects on the uptake of vaccination. The nature of the mRNA vaccines, which do not require culturing or fermentation but instead rely on synthetic RNA, has further facilitated more rapid development. However, the rapid sequencing of the virus (SARS-CoV-2), international scientific collaboration, and government financial support have helped to dramatically speed up the pace in this case. It is well known that the pipeline from vaccine development to distribution is normally rather slow, in no small part due to the tremendous expense involved. Although the rollout of vaccines in many countries has been slower than anticipated, as of March 1, 2021, nearly 7.8 billion vaccinations have been administered globally. By December 18, 2020, a second mRNA vaccine developed by Moderna was also granted emergency use authorization in the United States by the FDA. By early December 2020, regulators in the United Kingdom approved the emergency authorization status for the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines, and 6 days later, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) followed suit.

In early January 2020, scientists first made the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 available on the web, and by mid-March 2020, Moderna’s experimental messenger RNA (mRNA)-based vaccine entered phase 1 of clinical trials. Yet, the record speed with which multiple COVID-19 vaccinations were developed and received emergency use authorization in under a year’s time not only provides hope but represents an astounding scientific accomplishment. The degree to which the pandemic has exacerbated preexisting economic and health inequities has been staggering. To say that the impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic on morbidity, mortality, and global economies have been devastating would be a vast understatement. The spread of the variant is of great public health concern in terms of repercussions on case counts and, consequently, hospital capacity and eventual mortality. Research suggests that B.1.1.7, as with other identified variants circulating globally, is more highly transmissible. At a similar time, the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a warning that a variant of SARS-CoV-2, first identified in England in late 2020 and known as “B.1.1.7,” had been detected in at least 10 US states. At the time of writing this manuscript, approximately 1 year following this declaration, over 2 million deaths worldwide had been directly attributed to COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. By the end of January 2020, the WHO characterized these outbreaks as a public health emergency. At the end of 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was informed by the Chinese health authorities about a cluster of pneumonia cases, which was shortly thereafter attributed to a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).

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