Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Perspectives: Biden Should Help Vaccinate Poor Countries; Mask Debate Really About A Lack Of Trust
The New York Times: How Biden Can Help Vaccinate The World
Let’s begin with a quick quiz question: What’s the highest-return investment you can think of? Private equity? A hedge fund? Here’s something with a far higher return: a global campaign to vaccinate people in poor countries against the coronavirus. So far the United States and other Group of 7 “leading” countries haven’t actually shown leadership in fighting the pandemic globally. American vaccine nationalism means that we are hoarding both vaccines and the raw materials to make them, in ways that lead to unnecessary deaths abroad and also undermine our own recovery. (Nicholas Kristof, 5/26)
Stat: The CDC's Latest Blunder Is About Trust, Not Masks
The announcement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that fully vaccinated people do not have to wear face coverings indoors, unless specified by their states or local jurisdictions, triggered a backlash from public health experts. They called the new guidelines premature — rightly so — and said that the coordination and rollout should have been better planned with the states and the rest of the Biden administration. While the criticism is accurate, the guidelines reveal another deep problem that the CDC can’t fix on its own: Americans don’t trust each other, and around half don’t fully trust the CDC. (Abraar Karan, 5/27)
San Francisco Chronicle: No, You Probably Won't Need A COVID-19 Vaccine Booster Shot, Says UCSF's Monica Gandhi
Pharmaceutical company executives have been hinting for months that booster shots will be necessary to maintain the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. A study of such boosters is already underway. But the companies that stand to profit from these shots shouldn’t get to unilaterally determine the need for a repeat mass vaccination campaign without scientific questioning. Moreover, focus groups among the vaccine-hesitant have shown that talk of boosters can decrease the likelihood of people getting a vaccine now. Bodies of scientific research indicate that your immune system should offer you long-lived protection from reinfection if you’ve been vaccinated, even with the emergence of more infectious variants. (Monica Gandhi, 5/25)
Kasier Family Foundation: Polling Shows Vaccine Myths Are Persisting Among Unvaccinated People
Big myths about COVID vaccines are showing real staying power among unvaccinated Americans. While misinformation isn't the only factor fueling hesitancy, it's an ongoing problem the media, health leaders and trusted messengers need to chip away at. (Drew Altman, 5/26)
CNN: The Origin Of Covid Is Now An Intelligence Operation
[President Joe Biden] wants the intelligence community to cooperate with other elements of the government, but getting to the bottom of how this disease occurred, at least in the eyes of the President dealing with obstruction from China, is now fully an intelligence operation. But that order likely poses a complicated challenge for intelligence agencies, which, as CNN has repeatedly reported, are limited in their ability to confidently answer the question of what actually happened. While the intelligence community has been actively engaged on the issue since it broke, Biden's order is a public call for more, despite the fact that it has been unable to make significant progress for more than a year. (Zachary B. Wolf, 5/26)
CNN: The Covid-19 Origin Story Has Massive Political Consequences
A growing storm over the origins in China of Covid-19 has explosive political implications for the United States at home and abroad, as well as the dueling legacies of two presidents that will be defined by the pandemic. President Joe Biden on Wednesday told Americans he had ordered US intelligence agencies to report in 90 days on whether the virus originated not in animals and spread to humans but might have escaped from a Chinese laboratory. (Stephen Collinson, 5/27)
