Por que a percep??o social é importante durante os surtos de doen?as: observando como os indivíduos entendem o Zika vírus por história de infec??o autorreferidaPor qué la percepción social es importante durante los brotes de enfermedades: cómo los individ

摘要

We respond to the comment to our article Signifying Zika: Heterogeneity in the Representations of the Virus by History of Infection with the goal of reassuring our findings.Our article and supplementary material extensively discussed the limitations of survey data in lieu of biomarkers. However, the key in social health research is whether respondents believe they were infected with Zika virus (ZIKV) and had a positive diagnosis (clinical or serological). Short of directly testing individuals, directly asking them about the source of their diagnosis has been shown to be the most effective methodology for social health analysis 1. Whether or not individuals actually were infected by the virus, our article evaluated their perceptions. There is a well-established empirical and conceptual literature on how risk perceptions and perception of diseases shape behavior 2,3,4,5,6. The Health Belief Model 7, for example, suggests that individual behavior is directly shaped by their perceptions of risk. As such, both objective (serology and clinical exams) and perceived diagnosis have concrete implications on how individuals deal with a disease. Importantly, differences in how individuals perceive their risk of infection have contributed to the effectiveness (or not) of public health campaigns 8. Given the diversity of meanings towards ZIKV, our main finding remains, i.e., we showed that trying to reach the entire Brazilian population using a single message or strategy might not be effective to produce change within groups that capable of or ready to change.