Medical Xpress November 18, 2025
Vaccination rates are falling in many communities due to widespread misinformation and previously eliminated or controlled illnesses like measles are surging across the United States and Canada.
Researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed a new approach that could help public health officials predict where outbreaks might occur. By analyzing social media posts, the method identifies early signs of increasing vaccine skepticism—a warning signal that could emerge before any disease begins to spread.
The study, “Forecasting infectious disease outbreak risks from vaccine sentiments on social media: A Data-driven dynamical systems approach,” appears in Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering.
“In nature, we have contagious systems like diseases,” said Dr. Chris Bauch, professor of Applied Mathematics at Waterloo.
“We decided to look...
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