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The effect of opinion clustering on disease outbreaks
Open accessAbstract
Many high-income countries currently experience large outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles despite the availability of highly effective vaccines. This phenomenon lacks an explanation in countries where vaccination rates are rising on an already high level. Here, we build on the growing evidence that belief systems, rather than access to vaccines, are the primary barrier to vaccination in high-income countries, and show how a simple opinion formation process can lead to clusters of unvaccinated individuals, leading to a dramatic increase in disease outbreak probability. In particular, the effect of clustering on outbreak probabilities is strongest when the vaccination coverage is close to the level required to provide herd immunity under the assumption of random mixing. Our results based on computer simulations suggest that the current estimates of vaccination coverage necessary to avoid outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases might be too low.
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“While large-scale vaccine rejection threatens herd immunity goals, large-scale acceptance with local vaccine rejection can also have negative consequences for community (herd) immunity, as clustering of non-vaccinators can disproportionately increase the needed percentage of vaccination coverage to achieve herd immunity in adjacent geographical regions and encourage epidemic spread 24 .”
From Measuring the impact of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on vaccination intent in the UK and USA (2021) · cites this paper as [24]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Salathé, M., & Bonhoeffer, S.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- Corresponding author
- Salathé, Marcel
- Venue
- Journal of The Royal Society Interface
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2008-08-19
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 29
- Pages
- 1505-1508
- ISSN
- 1742-5662 (ISSN-L)
- 1742-5689
- PMC
- PMC2607358
- OpenAlex
- W2109953716
- Cited by
- 238
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 28 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 14
- FWCI
- 4.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Journal of The Royal Society Interface (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Infoscience (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) (submittedVersion)
- Infoscience (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (GM28016, R01GM028016)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Applied Mathematics › Mathematical and Theoretical Epidemiology and Ecology Models
- Keywords
- opinion clustering, outbreak, measles, vaccine-preventable diseases, vaccination coverage, herd immunity, belief systems, opinion formation, high-income countries, outbreak probability
- MeSH terms
- Computer Simulation, Culture, Disease Outbreaks, Humans, Models, Theoretical, Patient Acceptance of Health Care, Public Opinion, Vaccination, Cluster Analysis
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