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ABSTRACT.
Poor public health information is a hurdle in infectious disease control. The study
aims to examine whether healthcare workers adhere to hand hygiene and mask-wearing
guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic and to explore their exposure to misinformation
about the pandemic as a predictor. A cross-sectional survey was sent to 518 healthcare
workers across Indonesia, the fourth largest nation in the world, in September 2020
during the COVID-19 pandemic. The respondents reported whether they adhered to the
guidelines of hand hygiene and mask wearing and whether they believed in four pieces
of misinformation about the origin, severity, contagion, and prevention of COVID-19.
The association between misinformation and hand hygiene and mask wearing was tested
with logistic regression models controlling for demographic and health-related covariates.
Approximately 25% of healthcare workers did not always adhere to hand hygiene guidelines
and approximately 5% did not adhere to mask-wearing guidelines. There are significant
associations between all four pieces of misinformation and hand hygiene and mask wearing.
It is important to improve public health information about COVID-19, which may hold
key to healthcare workers’ hand hygiene and mask wearing and to protect their health
and patients’ safety.
Across two studies with more than 1,700 U.S. adults recruited online, we present evidence that people share false claims about COVID-19 partly because they simply fail to think sufficiently about whether or not the content is accurate when deciding what to share. In Study 1, participants were far worse at discerning between true and false content when deciding what they would share on social media relative to when they were asked directly about accuracy. Furthermore, greater cognitive reflection and science knowledge were associated with stronger discernment. In Study 2, we found that a simple accuracy reminder at the beginning of the study (i.e., judging the accuracy of a non-COVID-19-related headline) nearly tripled the level of truth discernment in participants’ subsequent sharing intentions. Our results, which mirror those found previously for political fake news, suggest that nudging people to think about accuracy is a simple way to improve choices about what to share on social media.
Rationale The COVID-19 pandemic poses extraordinary challenges to public health. Objective Because the novel coronavirus is highly contagious, the widespread use of preventive measures such as masking, physical distancing, and eventually vaccination is needed to bring it under control. We hypothesized that accepting conspiracy theories that were circulating in mainstream and social media early in the COVID-19 pandemic in the US would be negatively related to the uptake of preventive behaviors and also of vaccination when a vaccine becomes available. Method A national probability survey of US adults (N = 1050) was conducted in the latter half of March 2020 and a follow-up with 840 of the same individuals in July 2020. The surveys assessed adoption of preventive measures recommended by public health authorities, vaccination intentions, conspiracy beliefs, perceptions of threat, belief about the safety of vaccines, political ideology, and media exposure patterns. Results Belief in three COVID-19-related conspiracy theories was highly stable across the two periods and inversely related to the (a) perceived threat of the pandemic, (b) taking of preventive actions, including wearing a face mask, (c) perceived safety of vaccination, and (d) intention to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Conspiracy beliefs in March predicted subsequent mask-wearing and vaccination intentions in July even after controlling for action taken and intentions in March. Although adopting preventive behaviors was predicted by political ideology and conservative media reliance, vaccination intentions were less related to political ideology. Mainstream television news use predicted adopting both preventive actions and vaccination. Conclusions Because belief in COVID-related conspiracy theories predicts resistance to both preventive behaviors and future vaccination for the virus, it will be critical to confront both conspiracy theories and vaccination misinformation to prevent further spread of the virus in the US. Reducing those barriers will require continued messaging by public health authorities on mainstream media and in particular on politically conservative outlets that have supported COVID-related conspiracy theories.
Title:
The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
Publisher:
The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
ISSN
(Print):
0002-9637
ISSN
(Electronic):
1476-1645
Publication date
(Print):
December
2021
Publication date
(Electronic):
22
October
2021
Publication date PMC-release: 22
October
2021
Volume: 105
Issue: 6
Pages: 1483-1489
Affiliations
[1]Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore, Singapore;
[2]Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, California;
[3]School of Psychology, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia;
[4]Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Brawijaya, Malang, East Java, Indonesia,
[5]Faculty of the Professions, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
Author notes
[*
]Address correspondence to Stephen X. Zhang, Faculty of the Professions, University
of Adelaide, 9-28 Nexus10 Tower, 10 Pulteney Street, Adelaide SA 5000, Australia.
E-mail:
stephen.x.zhang@
123456gmail.com
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided
the original author and source are credited.
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