Invincibility threatens vaccination intentions during a pandemic.

Some people feel they are invincible to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). They believe that being infected with COVID-19 would not be a serious threat to their health. While these people may or may not be correct in their personal risk assessment, we find that such perceived invincibility may undermine community efforts to achieve herd immunity. Multi-level analysis of survey respondents across 51 countries finds that perceived invincibility from COVID-19 is negatively associated with believing there is a need to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in one's community (n = 218,956) and one's willingness to inoculate against the disease (n = 71,148). These effects are most pronounced among individuals from countries lower in cultural collectivism (e.g., USA, UK, Canada) and highlight the need to consider the interplay of individual and cultural factors in our efforts to understand, predict, and promote preventative health behavior during a pandemic.

Twitter=quitter? An analysis of Twitter quit smoking social networks.

OBJECTIVE: Widely popular, Twitter, a free social networking and micro-blogging service, offers potential for health promotion. This study examined the activity of Twitter quit smoking social network accounts. DESIGN: A cross-sectional analysis identified 153 activated Twitter quit smoking accounts dating back to 2007 and examined recent account activity for the month of August 2010. RESULTS: The accounts had a median of 155 followers and 82 total tweets per account; 49% of accounts had >100 tweets. Posted content was largely inconsistent with clinical guidelines; 48% linked to commercial sites for quitting smoking and 43% had tweets on e-cigarettes. In August 2010, 81 of the accounts (53%) were still active. CONCLUSIONS: Though popular for building quit smoking social networks, many of the Twitter accounts were no longer active, and tweet content was largely inconsistent with clinical guidelines. Future research is needed to examine the effectiveness of Twitter for supporting smoking cessation.