arrow Shake Shack will provide free burgers or fries to vaccinated New Yorkers. Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office Reaching Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe Our Pathetic Herd Immunity Failure Why Herd Immunity Is Slipping Away What if We Can t Reach Herd Immunity? The World May Need To Learn To Live With The Virus
If a reader consumed only these headlines from The New York Times over the past two weeks, they might assume the United States had already lost the battle against COVID-19. Together, they portray that the variants and hesitancy have outmatched the scientific achievement of a generation: the development of safe and highly efficacious shots against an emergent pandemic in less than a year.
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In a novel effort to combat COVID-19 misinformation, a group of women researchers, including nurse scientists from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing), launched the Dear Pandemic social media campaign in March 2020. It delivers curated, comprehensive, and timely information about the COVID-19 pandemic in a question-and-answer format. Complex topics such as COVID-19 aerosol transmission, risk reduction strategies to avoid infection, and excess mortality are explained in common language and shared widely.
Now with more than 100,000 followers and accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the campaign has an international and multilingual impact offering important public health insight via social media. An article in the journal
What Do Women Want? For Men to Get Covid Vaccines.
As the Biden administration seeks to get most adults vaccinated by summer, men are holding back.
Holly Elgison and her husband, Len Schillaci, a mixed vaxxed couple in Valrico, Fla.Credit.Zack Wittman for The New York Times
Holly Elgison and Len Schillaci are a mixed vaxxed couple, and they are far from alone.
“I was always going to get the vaccine, 100 percent,” said Ms. Elgison, a medical claims auditor in Valrico, Fla.
Her husband, a disaster insurance adjuster, said he will pass. “To be honest with you, I think that the worst of Covid is behind us,” Mr. Schillaci said. “I’m good.”
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Back in the fall, Los Angeles County firefighter Mickey Juarez was sitting in his garage with his friend talking about COVID-19.
News about a potential vaccine had been ramping up nationally and Juarez was considering whether to get it. At his friend s urging, they turned on a podcast. He just asked me to listen to what they had to say before I got the vaccine, said Juarez. It was a guy speaking regarding the way the government works.
When we spoke he couldn t remember which show it was, but Juarez described the guy on the podcast as an advocate for people s rights, who used the interview to question the safety of the vaccine and the government s true intentions. It was enough to send him down an online rabbit hole searching for what he thought to be the little-spoken, unpopular truth.