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Celebrities may have helped shape anti-vaccine opinions during Covid-19 pandemic, study finds | CNN

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Celebrities may have helped shape anti-vaccine opinions during Covid-19 pandemic, study finds | CNN



CNN
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Covid-19 vaccines are identified to be protected and efficient, and so they’re accessible without spending a dime, however many People within the US refuse to get them – and a latest research means that celebrities could share a number of the blame for folks’s distrust.

Celebrities have lengthy tried to positively affect public well being, research present, however throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, additionally they appeared to have a big affect on spreading misinformation.

A long time in the past, within the Fifties, folks might see stars like Elvis Presley, Dick Van Dyke and Ella Fitzgerald in TV adverts that inspired polio vaccination. This movie star affect boosted the nation’s normal vaccination efforts, and vaccination almost eradicated the lethal illness.

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In 2021, US officers used celebrities in TV adverts to encourage extra folks to get vaccinated in opposition to Covid-19. Large names like way of life guru Martha Stewart, singer Charlie Puth and even Senate Minority Chief Mitchell McConnell confirmed up in spots that had billions of advert impressions.

The world isn’t restricted to solely three TV networks any extra, so celebrities like actress Hilary Duff, actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, singer Dolly Parton and even Large Hen additionally used their huge presence on Instagram and Twitter to advertise a professional Covid-19 vaccine message.

However social media additionally grew to become a car for celebrities to forged doubt concerning the security and effectiveness of the vaccine and even to unfold disinformation about Covid.

Their unfavourable messages appeared to search out an viewers.

For his or her research, revealed within the journal BMJ Well being & Care Informatics, researchers examined almost 13 million tweets between January 2020 and March 2022 about Covid-19 and vaccines. They designed a pure language mannequin to find out the sentiment of every tweet and in contrast them with tweets that additionally talked about folks within the public eye.

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The celebs they picked to research included individuals who had shared skepticism concerning the vaccines, who had Covid-related tweets that had been recognized as misinformation or who retweeted misinformation about Covid.

They included rapper Nicki Minaj, soccer participant Aaron Rodgers, tennis participant Novak Djokovic, singer Eric Clapton, Sen. Rand Paul, former President Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, TV host Tucker Carlson and commentator Joe Rogan.

The researchers discovered 45,255 tweets from 34,407 distinctive authors speaking about Covid-19 vaccine-related points. These tweets generated a complete of 16.32 million likes. The tweets from these influencers, total, had been extra unfavourable concerning the vaccine than optimistic, the research discovered. These tweets had been particularly extra associated to antivaccine controversy, moderately than information about vaccine growth, the research mentioned.

The best variety of unfavourable feedback was related to Rodgers and Minaj. Clapton had “only a few” optimistic tweets, the research mentioned, and that will have had an affect, however he additionally caught flak for it from the general public.

Probably the most-liked tweet that talked about Clapton and the vaccine mentioned, “Strongly disagree with [EC] … tackle Covid and the vaccine and disgusted by his earlier white supremacist feedback. However when you reference the loss of life of his son to criticize him, you’re an ignorant scumbag.”

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Trump and Cruz had been discovered to have essentially the most substantial affect inside this group, with mixed likes totaling greater than 122,000.

They too got here in for criticism on the subject, with many customers questioning whether or not these politicians had been certified to have opinions concerning the vaccines. The research mentioned the most-liked tweet mentioning Cruz was, “I referred to as Ted Cruz’s workplace asking to make an appointment to speak with the Senator about my blood stress. They instructed me that the Senator was not certified to provide medical recommendation and that I ought to name my physician. So I requested them to cease advising about vaccines.”

Probably the most-liked tweet related to Rogan was an antivaxx assertion: “I really like how the identical individuals who don’t need us to hearken to Joe Rogan, Aaron Rodgers concerning the covid vaccine, need us to hearken to Large Hen & Elmo.”

Posts shared by information anchors and politicians appeared to have essentially the most affect when it comes to essentially the most tweets and retweets, the research discovered.

“Our findings recommend that the presence of constant patterns of emotional content material co-occurring with messaging shared by these individuals within the public eye that we’ve talked about, influenced public opinion and largely stimulated on-line public discourse, for the not less than over the course of the primary two years of the Covid pandemic,” mentioned research co-author Brianna White, a analysis coordinator within the Inhabitants Well being Intelligence lab on the College of Tennessee Well being Science Middle – Oak Ridge Nationwide Laboratory Middle for Biomedical Informatics.

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“We additionally argue that clearly as the chance of extreme unfavourable well being outcomes improve with the failure to adjust to well being protecting conduct suggestions, that our findings recommend that polarized messages from societal elite could downplay these extreme unfavourable well being consequence dangers.”

The research doesn’t get into precisely why movie star tweets would have such an affect on folks’s attitudes concerning the vaccine. Dr. Ellen Selkie, who has carried out analysis on affect on the intersection of social media, movie star and public well being outcomes, mentioned celebrities are influential as a result of they entice loads of consideration.

“I believe a part of the affect that media have on conduct has to do with the quantity of publicity. Simply on the whole, the amount of content material that’s targeted on a particular subject or on a particular kind of interpretation of that subject – on this case misinformation – the repeated publicity to any given factor goes to extend the chance that it’s going to have an impact,” mentioned Selkie, who was not concerned within the new analysis. She is an adolescent well being pediatrician and researcher with UW Well being Youngsters and an assistant professor of pediatrics on the College of Wisconsin College of Medication and Public Well being.

Simply as folks hearken to a good friend’s ideas, they’ll hearken to a star whom they have a tendency to love or establish with as a result of they belief their opinion.

“With fandoms, when it comes to the connection between musical artists and actors and their followers, there’s this kind of mutual love that followers and artists have for one another, which kind of can approximate that sense that they’re looking for one another,” Selkie mentioned.

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She mentioned she would have an interest to see analysis on the affect of celebrities who tweeted optimistic messages concerning the Covid-19 vaccine.

The authors of the research hope public well being leaders will use the findings instantly.

“We argue this risk to inhabitants well being ought to create a way of urgency and warrants public well being response to establish, develop and implement revolutionary mitigation methods,” the research says.

Publicity to massive quantities of this misinformation can have a long-lasting affect and work in opposition to the general public’s finest curiosity with regards to their well being.

“As populations develop to belief the influential nature of movie star exercise on social platforms, followers are disarmed and open to persuasion when confronted with false info, creating alternatives for dissemination and fast unfold of misinformation and disinformation,” the research says.

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Video: Heavy Rains and Wind Wreak Havoc on the West Coast

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Heavy Rains and Wind Wreak Havoc on the West Coast

A series of atmospheric rivers has caused flooding and damage in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people.

It just crashed through the front of the house, crashed through the kitchen, and it broke the whole ridge beam. The whole peak of the house is just crushed.

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How long will Trump’s honeymoon with the stock market last?

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How long will Trump’s honeymoon with the stock market last?

Few were surprised when US stocks jumped after Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the presidential election. Amid widespread assumptions of weeks of uncertainty, a clear result was always likely to prompt an initial relief rally. More unexpected was what has happened since.

The president-elect has nominated a string of hardliners to senior positions, signalling his intent to push ahead with a radical agenda to enact sweeping tariffs and deport millions of illegal immigrants that many economists warn would cause inflation and deficits to spiral upward.

Yet the stock market — the economic barometer most closely watched by the general public, and one often referenced by Trump himself — seems to have shown little sign of concern.

The S&P 500, Wall Street’s benchmark index for large stocks, is still up about 3 per cent since the vote, even after a slight pullback. The main index of small cap stocks is up almost 5 per cent.

The relative cost of borrowing for large companies has also plummeted to multi-decade lows, and speculative assets such as bitcoin have surged.

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Under the surface, not every part of the stock market has been so calm. A Citi-created index of stocks that may be vulnerable to government spending cuts, for example, has tumbled 8 per cent since the election, while healthcare stocks have been hit by the nomination of vaccine sceptic Robert Kennedy Jr to head the health department.

The prospect of inflation arising from tariffs and a tighter labour market has also spooked many in the $27tn Treasury market, with some high-profile groups warning about over-exuberance.

But the contrasting signals raise some key questions for traders and policymakers alike: are equity investors setting themselves up for a fall by ignoring high valuations and potential downsides of Trumponomics, or will they be proved right as gloomy economists once again have to walk back their dire prognoses?

“Any time . . . you get to the point where markets are beyond priced to perfection, you have to be concerned about complacency”, says Sonal Desai, chief investment officer at Franklin Templeton Fixed Income.

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But, she adds, “the reality is you also need to very actively look for triggers for sell-offs, and right now . . . I think the underlying economy is strong and the policies of the incoming administration are unlikely to move that significantly.”


The bull case was on full display at the Wynn resort in Las Vegas this week, where more than 800 investors, bankers and executives were gathered for Goldman Sachs’ annual conference for “innovative private companies”.

With interest rates now trending downward, capital markets specialists had already been preparing for a recovery in stock market listings and mergers and acquisitions activity, but the election result has poured fuel on the fire.

Walter Lundon, a trader, shows off his pro-Trump T-shirt on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange
Walter Lundon, a trader, shows off his pro-Trump T-shirt on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Investors believe Trump will follow through on pledges to cut taxes and regulation © Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress in addition to the White House, investors are assuming that it will be easy for the Trump administration to fulfil promises to slash corporate taxes and scale back regulation. At the same time, more contentious proposals such as the introduction of tariffs were frequently dismissed by attendees as a “negotiating tactic”.

David Solomon, Goldman chief executive, said at the conference: “The market is basically saying they think the new administration will bring [regulation] back to a place where it’s more sensible.”

One hedge fund manager in attendance sums up the atmosphere more bluntly. “There are lots of giddy investors here getting excited about takeout targets,” he says. “M&A is now a real possibility because of the new administration. That’s been the most exciting [element of Trump’s proposals] . . . I think the mood is better than it’s been in the past four years.”

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The emphasis on tax and deregulation is clear when looking at which sectors have been the biggest winners in the recent market rally: financial services and energy.

The S&P 500 financials sub-index has jumped almost 8 per cent since the vote, while the energy sub-index is up almost 7 per cent. Energy executives have celebrated the president-elect’s pledges to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and open up federal lands for fracking in pursuit of US “energy dominance”.

The Russell 2000 index, which measures small cap companies, has also risen faster than the S&P thanks to its heavy weighting towards financial stocks, and a belief that smaller domestically focused companies have more to gain from corporate tax cuts.

Chris Shipley, co-chief investment officer at Fort Washington Investment Advisors, which manages about $86bn, says that “we believe the market has acted rationally since the election”, citing the concentration of gains in areas that could benefit from trends such as deregulation and M&A.

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Even policies that most mainstream economists think would have a negative effect overall — like a sharp increase in tariffs — could ironically boost the relative appeal of US stocks by hitting other countries even harder.

The Europe-wide Stoxx 600 index, for example, has slipped since the election as investors bet the export-dependent region will be heavily hit by any increase in trade tensions. At the same time, the euro has dipped to a two-year low against the dollar.

“The ‘America First’ policy, not surprisingly, will be good for the US versus the rest of the world,” says Kay Herr, US chief investment officer for JPMorgan Asset Management’s global fixed income, currency and commodities team.


The worry among economists and many bond investors, however, is that Trump’s policies could create broader economic problems that would eventually be hard for the stock market to ignore.

Some of Trump’s policies, such as corporate tax cuts, could boost domestic growth. But with the economy already in a surprisingly robust state despite years of worries about a potential recession, some like former IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard fear an “overheating” that would lead to a resurgence in inflation and a subsequent slowdown.

A shale gas well drilling site in Pennsylvania
A shale gas well drilling site in Pennsylvania. The incoming Trump administration is expected to open up federal lands for fracking in pursuit of US ‘energy dominance’ © Keith Srakocic/AP

Demand-driven inflation could be exacerbated by supply-side pressures if Trump follows through with some of his more sweeping policy pledges.

On the campaign trail, Trump proposed a baseline 10 per cent import tariff on all goods made outside the US, and 60 per cent if they are made in China. Economists generally agree that the cost of tariffs falls substantially on the shoulders of consumers in the country enacting them. Walmart, the largest retailer in the US, warned this week it might have to raise prices if tariffs are introduced.

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Deporting millions of undocumented immigrants, meanwhile, would remove a huge source of labour from the US workforce, driving up wages and reducing the capacity of US companies to supply goods and services.

Economists at Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank both predicted this week that Trump’s policies would drag on GDP growth by 2026, and make it harder for the Federal Reserve to bring inflation back to its 2 per cent target.

Tom Barkin, president of the Richmond Fed and a voting member on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee, says he understands concerns among the business community about tariffs reigniting inflation, and says the US was “somewhat more vulnerable to cost shocks” than in the past.

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But some investors believe the risks to be minimal. “In our view, the inflationary concerns . . . regarding tariffs are overblown,” says Shipley of Fort Washington.

Fed policymakers have been quick to stress that they will not prejudge any potential policies before they have been officially announced, but bond investors have already scaled back their forecasts for how much the central bank will be able to cut interest rates over the next year.

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Interest rate futures are now pricing in a fall in Fed rates to roughly 4 per cent by the end of 2025, from the current level of 4.5-4.75 per cent. In September, investors were betting they would fall below 3 per cent by then.

Meanwhile, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which rises when prices fall, is up about 0.8 percentage points since mid-September to 4.4 per cent. As a consequence, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage is also ticking upward, to near 7 per cent.

“The bond market has been very focused on deficits and fiscal expansion, and the equity market has been focused, it seems, on deregulation and the growth aspect,” says JPMorgan’s Herr. But “at some point, a higher [Treasury yield] is problematic to equities”.

In part, that is because higher bond yields represent an alternative source of attractive returns at much lower risk than stocks. But the more important impact could come from the warning signal a further increase in yields would represent.

The rise in yields is being driven by concerns both about inflation and also higher government debt levels, says Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco. “2024 marks the first year in which the US spends more to service its debt than it spends on its entire defence budget. And that’s not sustainable in my opinion over the longer term, and so we have to worry about the potential for a mini Liz Truss moment.”

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Former UK prime minister Truss’s attempt to introduce billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts and increased borrowing in 2022 caused a massive sell-off in British government debt that spilled into currency and equity markets.

Demonstrators in New York protests against Trump’s immigration proposals
Demonstrators in New York protest against Trump’s immigration proposals. His plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants would remove a large chunk from the US workforce © Michael Nigro/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

The structure and scale of the US Treasury market makes this sort of “bond vigilantism” less likely, strategists and investors stress, but many institutions have begun paying more attention to the possibility.

“Over the next two to four years, do I think that there’s a very serious risk of bond vigilantes coming back? Absolutely. And that’s entirely based on what the multiyear plan will be, and the impact which comes out of it,” says Franklin Templeton’s Desai.


Trump and his advisers have dismissed concerns about their economic agenda, arguing that policies such as encouraging the domestic energy sector will help keep inflation low and growth high.

Even if they do not, several investors in Las Vegas this week suggested that the president-elect’s personal preoccupation with the stock market would help restrain him from the most potentially damaging policies.

“I think Trump and all his donors measure their success and happiness around where the US stock market is,” says the hedge fund manager. “It’s one reason why I’m pretty bullish despite the market being where it is.”

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Economists have also consistently underestimated the resilience of the US economy in recent years. The combination of Trump’s attentiveness and economists’ poor past forecasting means even sceptical investors are wary of betting against the US market.

“There are risks out there,” says Colin Graham, head of multi-asset strategies at Robeco. “If some of the more extreme policies that were talked about during the campaign get implemented, our core view for next year is going to be wrong.

“But what is our biggest risk here? Missing out on the upside. The momentum is very strong.”

Data visualisation by Keith Fray and Chris Giles

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Can Matt Gaetz return to Congress? He says he won’t.

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Can Matt Gaetz return to Congress? He says he won’t.

Gaetz not returning to Congress

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Gaetz on not returning to Congress after dropping out of Trump attorney general consideration

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Former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida says he doesn’t intend to return to Congress in January, after resigning from his seat and withdrawing from consideration as U.S. attorney general. 

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Gaetz announced his withdrawal Thursday, citing the distraction his impending nomination was causing, and President-elect Donald Trump soon afterward said former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi would be his new pick for the job. But Gaetz won reelection to his U.S. House seat earlier this month, so there were some questions about whether he was considering a return to Congress in January. 

But Gaetz told conservative personality Charlie Kirk on Friday that he doesn’t intend to go back to Congress, though he vowed to continue to fight for Trump and do “whatever he asks of me.”

“I’m still going to be in the fight, but it’s going to be from a new perch,” Gaetz told Kirk. “I do not intend to join the 119th Congress. … Charlie, I’ve been in an elected office for 14 years. I first got elected to the state house when I was 26 years old, and I’m 42 now, and I’ve got some other goals in life that I’m eager to pursue with my wife and my family, and so I’m going to be fighting for President Trump. I’m going to be doing whatever he asks of me, as I always have. But I think that eight years is probably enough time in the United States Congress.”

But it may not be the end of his political career. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, first elected in 2018, will not be running again in 2026, since he’s limited by law to two terms as the state’s chief executive. 

Gaetz stepped down from Congress as the House Ethics Committee was weighing whether to release the report from its yearslong investigation into sexual misconduct and illegal drug use allegations. The committee lacked sufficient votes to release the report earlier this week but will, according to Democratic Rep. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, reconvene on Dec. 5 to “further consider” the matter. 

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