Health Experts on Twitter Overwhelmingly Exaggerated Risk of Kids Getting Monkeypox: Study

Health Experts on Twitter Overwhelmingly Exaggerated Risk of Kids Getting Monkeypox: Study
The Twitter app is seen on a smartphone in this illustration taken on July 13, 2021. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
Bill Pan
5/17/2023
Updated:
5/17/2023
0:00

During last summer’s monkeypox (mpox) outbreak, medical professionals on Twitter were four times more likely to exaggerate the risk of the viral disease spreading among children than share accurate information, a new study suggests.

Mpox is spread through intimate skin contact, including sex, kissing, and sharing bedding or clothing. Data from the United States and several other countries indicated that it predominantly affects men who have sex with men—a pattern that emerged early on and continued throughout the 2022 outbreak. No evidence suggests that schools are a high-risk environment for mpox transmission or that children are a high-risk population for infection.

For their study, researchers at the George Washington University and the University of California at San Fransisco identified 262 posts sent by 188 credentialed Twitter accounts, including those of health professionals and health reporters, between May and October 2022. Those posts all discuss the risk of mpox to children and young people in schools and contain the keywords “school,” “monkeypox,” “mpox,” and “pox.”

Among all 262 posts, according to the analysis, 47 (18 percent) were accurate, while 215 (82 percent) overstated the risk of mpox infection in children, predicted that mpox would spread widely in schools, and argued that schools should be closed or delayed to prevent or slow down mpox transmission. Among all the unique authors, an overwhelming 163 (87 percent) posted such fear-based messaging.

In addition, 95 of 111 (86 percent) health professionals’ Twitter posts were inaccurate. Although more than half (56 percent) of health reporters’ posts provided accurate information, this was driven by just one reporter who had 14 accurate posts.

Widespread Misinformation

A preprint version of the paper, uploaded on May 11 to MedRxiv, contains 10 selected examples of inaccurate or exaggerated posts. Many of these posts call for or support some kind of government intervention to help curb the spread of mpox among children returning to the classroom, a scenario that never materialized.

“Public health officials need to get ahead of this issue & imminent school return -> how do we have appropriate guidance & hygiene measures so we don’t see outbreaks among children in schools?” read an Aug. 2, 2022 post by a professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who has about 320,000 followers. “Monkeypox spreads mainly through prolonged skin-to-skin contact.”

“Monkeypox, if not rapidly contained, will inevitably spread among kids in daycares, schools, and sports leagues,” a professor at Université de Montréal in Canada wrote in a post dated July 22, 2022, which gained over 3,600 likes and was shared more than 1,300 times. “The vaccine currently being used won’t be the silver bullet since supply is limited and it wasn’t studied in children, so it’s not approved for [people aged under 18]. What’s the plan?”

Overall, the researchers found that Twitter users were approximately 974 times more likely to encounter inaccurate than accurate information.

This figure is calculated by multiplying the ratio of inaccurate to accurate (4.6) by a share differential for inaccurate versus accurate posts (5.4) by the follower number and repost difference for each post that suggests the actual number of views (39.2). Researchers noted that this is probably an underestimation.

“In fact, the 974-fold difference is likely to be an underestimate considering the inaccurate tweets may have been more likely to be deleted by the author before we had identified them in our search,” they wrote.

“Credentialed Twitter users were 4.6 times more likely to tweet inaccurate than accurate messages,” the authors concluded. “We also demonstrated how incorrect tweets can be quickly amplified by retweets and popular accounts. In the case of mpox in children and young people, incorrect information exaggerated the risks 100 percent of the time.

“Those seeking health information from Twitter should be aware of our documented high rates of inaccuracy even from the accounts of credentialed health professionals.”

CDC Says Mpox Outbreak ‘Not Over’

The study comes as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ramped up its warning, saying that the mpox outbreak “is not over” and could see a resurgence in the coming months.
“Spring and summer season in 2023 could lead to a resurgence of mpox as people gather for festivals and other events,” the CDC said in a May 15 alert. LGBT Pride Month is typically celebrated each year in June.

The federal public health agency said it is working with local partners to investigate a recently reported cluster of mpox cases in the Chicago area, including 12 confirmed and one probable case.

“All cases were among symptomatic men,” the CDC said, adding that nine of the 13 individuals had received two shots of JYNNEOS mpox vaccine. The youngest of them is a 24-year-old man.

As of May 10, a total of 30,395 cases and 42 deaths have been reported in the United States. This outbreak peaked at about 460 cases per day in August 2022 and gradually declined. The CDC said this was likely the result of a combination of “temporary changes in sexual behavior,” vaccination, and infection-induced immunity. About 23 percent of the estimated population at risk for mpox has received all two doses of the JYNNEOS vaccine.

Bill Pan is a reporter for The Epoch Times.
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