Department of Urology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States.
Department of Urology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2022 Jul 27;24(7):e38395. doi: 10.2196/38395.
Crowdfunding is increasingly used to offset the financial burdens of illness and health care. In the era of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated infodemic, the role of crowdfunding to support controversial COVID-19 stances is unknown.
We sought to examine COVID-19-related crowdfunding focusing on the funding of alternative treatments not endorsed by major medical entities, including campaigns with an explicit antivaccine, antimask, or antihealth care stances.
We performed a cross-sectional analysis of GoFundMe campaigns for individuals requesting donations for COVID-19 relief. Campaigns were identified by key word and manual review to categorize campaigns into "Traditional treatments," "Alternative treatments," "Business-related," "Mandate," "First Response," and "General." For each campaign, we extracted basic narrative, engagement, and financial variables. Among those that were manually reviewed, the additional variables of "mandate type," "mandate stance," and presence of COVID-19 misinformation within the campaign narrative were also included. COVID-19 misinformation was defined as "false or misleading statements," where cited evidence could be provided to refute the claim. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize the study cohort.
A total of 30,368 campaigns met the criteria for final analysis. After manual review, we identified 53 campaigns (0.17%) seeking funding for alternative medical treatment for COVID-19, including popularized treatments such as ivermectin (n=14, 26%), hydroxychloroquine (n=6, 11%), and vitamin D (n=4, 7.5%). Moreover, 23 (43%) of the 53 campaigns seeking support for alternative treatments contained COVID-19 misinformation. There were 80 campaigns that opposed mandating masks or vaccination, 48 (60%) of which contained COVID-19 misinformation. Alternative treatment campaigns had a lower median amount raised (US $1135) compared to traditional (US $2828) treatments (P<.001) and a lower median percentile of target achieved (11.9% vs 31.1%; P=.003). Campaigns for alternative treatments raised substantially lower amounts (US $115,000 vs US $52,715,000, respectively) and lower proportions of fundraising goals (2.1% vs 12.5%) for alternative versus conventional campaigns. The median goal for campaigns was significantly higher (US $25,000 vs US $10,000) for campaigns opposing mask or vaccine mandates relative to those in support of upholding mandates (P=.04). Campaigns seeking funding to lift mandates on health care workers reached US $622 (0.15%) out of a US $410,000 goal.
A small minority of web-based crowdfunding campaigns for COVID-19 were directed at unproven COVID-19 treatments and support for campaigns aimed against masking or vaccine mandates. Approximately half (71/133, 53%) of these campaigns contained verifiably false or misleading information and had limited fundraising success.
INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): RR2-10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.3330.
众筹越来越多地被用来减轻疾病和医疗保健的经济负担。在 COVID-19 大流行和相关信息泛滥的时代，众筹支持有争议的 COVID-19 立场的作用尚不清楚。
我们旨在研究与 COVID-19 相关的众筹活动，重点是为未得到主要医疗机构认可的替代治疗方法提供资金，包括明确具有反疫苗、反口罩或反医疗立场的活动。
我们对寻求 COVID-19 救济捐款的个人的 GoFundMe 活动进行了横断面分析。通过关键字和手动审查来识别活动，将活动分类为“传统治疗”、“替代治疗”、“商业相关”、“强制”、“第一反应”和“一般”。对于每个活动，我们提取了基本叙述、参与度和财务变量。在手动审查的活动中，还包括了“强制类型”、“强制立场”以及活动叙述中是否存在 COVID-19 错误信息等附加变量。COVID-19 错误信息被定义为“虚假或误导性陈述”，其中可以提供证据来反驳该声明。使用描述性统计来描述研究队列。
共有 30368 个活动符合最终分析的标准。经过手动审查，我们确定了 53 个（0.17%）寻求为 COVID-19 的替代医疗治疗方法提供资金的活动，包括伊维菌素（n=14，26%）、羟氯喹（n=6，11%）和维生素 D（n=4，7.5%）等流行疗法。此外，23 个（43%）寻求支持替代治疗的活动包含 COVID-19 错误信息。有 80 个反对强制戴口罩或接种疫苗的活动，其中 48 个（60%）包含 COVID-19 错误信息。替代治疗活动的中位数筹款金额（1135 美元）低于传统治疗活动（2828 美元）（P<.001），目标实现的中位数百分比（11.9% vs 31.1%）（P=.003）。替代治疗活动的筹款金额（115000 美元）和目标筹款金额（25000 美元）分别显著低于传统治疗活动（52715000 美元）和（10000 美元），反对口罩或疫苗强制的活动中位数目标显著高于支持强制的活动（P=.04）。寻求为解除医护人员强制命令筹款的活动达到 622 美元（0.15%），而目标为 410000 美元。
少数基于网络的 COVID-19 众筹活动针对未经证实的 COVID-19 治疗方法，以及支持反对口罩或疫苗强制的活动。这些活动中有近一半（71/133，53%）包含可验证的虚假或误导性信息，并且筹款活动成功的机会有限。
