Tag Archive for: Twitter

Of Bots and Trolls

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Have you heard any of these about vaccinations on social media or the Internet?

“Big Pharma only wants vaccine profits.”

“Natural immunity is better.”

“Vaccines cause autism.”

If you’ve read those articles, they seem to be full of truth about vaccinations, don’t they? Did you ever get into a conversation with someone who posted these types of articles? How did it go—especially if you disagreed with them?

Would you be surprised to learn it might not even have been a human doing the answering? It may have been bots or if actual humans, trolls.

Bots are social media accounts that automate content promotion. Trolls are people who misrepresent their identity and post inflammatory remarks with the express purpose of creating discord. The idea is to amplify the arguments to fever pitch so people end up angry at each other. They draw in friends and relatives to get them at each other’s throats with false narratives about health. You could use the same approach with cancer treatment or cholesterol levels.

Researchers at the George Washington University examined Twitter posts between July 2014 and September 2017 and did a computer search of close to two million tweets about vaccines and vaccinations. The most stunning revelation, at least to me, was that 9.3% of all tweets were sent by accounts that could not be verified as automated bots or trolls, yet exhibited malicious behavior by spreading misinformation about vaccines.

We’ll continue this on Thursday.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Reference: Am J Public Health. August 23, 2018: e1–e7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567.

 

Are Prenatal Vaccinations Safe?

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Vaccinations for infants and children always inspire debate. Sometimes, fierce debate. Today I’m going to look at a study that examined whether it’s safe for pregnant women to get the tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis (Tdap) vaccination or if it increases the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in their babies.

Researchers examined the records of over 81,000 mothers and offspring who were continuously in the care of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Hospitals. They determined which pregnant women were vaccinated with Tdap. Those women and their children along with the women who were not vaccinated with Tdap and their children were monitored for four to seven years.

The rate of ASD diagnosis was 1.4% of the total subjects. The rate for the children was 3.78 out 1,000 per year for those who were exposed to the vaccination and 4.05 per 1,000 per year for those who were not. In other words, there was no impact on the children of the Tdap vaccination during pregnancy. The researchers concluded that the use of Tdap vaccinations was supported during pregnancy.

But my focus isn’t really on the use of vaccinations; you can look at the data and decide for yourself. It’s on the controversy around vaccinations.

Debate is good, especially as it relates to health, and nothing inspires more debate than vaccinations. But are all debates a real discussion of the issues or are they an attempt to create discord? A recent study may give us some insight. More on that Thursday.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Reference: PEDIATRICS 14(3) September 2018:e20180120