Misinformation and behaviour in COVID-19 vaccine deployment

Nuffield Fellow and Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science Melinda Mills writes in this rapid review about the behavioural aspects of vaccine uptake and misinformation. Among its recommendations on how to effectively deploy a vaccination program, the review addresses the problem of misinformation surrounding vaccinations.

Melinda also wrote about this subject in a comment piece for The Guardian (‘We must prevent a vaccine 'infodemic' from fuelling the Covid pandemic’, 11 November 2020) and her advice was covered in the national press (e.g. ‘Spreading anti-vaxx myths “should be made a criminal offence”’ in The Telegraph, 10 November 2020). She also wrote the case for criminalising anti-vaccine misinformation for a 'Head to Head' article in the BMJ in February 2021 ('Should spreading anti-vaccine misinformation be criminalised?', in BMJ 2021:372, doi:10.1136/bmj.n272). 

(Melinda Mills, ‘COVID-19 vaccine deployment: Behaviour, ethics, misinformation and policy strategies’. Published as a preprint by The Royal Society, 21 October 2020.)