Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Tackling Vaccine Hesitancy In The Religious Community; Doctors Exhausted By Latest Covid Surge
Los Angeles Times: Why Vaccination Hesitancy Runs Deep Among The Religious — And What We Can Do To Reach Them
“Don’t come knocking on my door with your Fauci ouchi!” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) yelled at last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference. “You leave us the hell alone!” Boebert has described her election to Congress as “a sign and a wonder, just like God promised.” She’s a moderate in some circles. One Florida pastor hears parishioners call the vaccination the “sign of the beast,” a biblical reference to the apocalypse. A Tennessee pastor who threatens to expel anyone who wears a mask to his church also discourages people from getting the vaccination, which he falsely claims contains aborted fetal tissue. (J.M. Opal, 8/11)
The Atlantic: Doctors Feel Compassion Fatigue About Vaccine Refusers
On social media, I’ve been seeing sentiments that I never thought I’d see anyone express in a public forum. People who choose to be unvaccinated should not be offered lung transplants. What if people with COVID-19 who didn’t get the vaccine have to wait in the Emergency Department until everyone else is seen? Should unvaccinated patients just be turned away? These are harsh, angry feelings. And some of the people giving voice to them are doctors. (Chavi Eve Karkowsky, 8/11)
The Washington Post: Africa’s Vaccine Shortages And The Global Apathy About Protecting Black Lives
Interviewing Ayoade Alakija, an epidemiologist who co-chairs the African Union’s Africa Vaccine Delivery Alliance, about vaccine access was a brief, brutal lesson in global necropolitics. “Karen, it feels like the world doesn’t care about us,” the doctor said during a WhatsApp video call from Lagos, Nigeria. “The global community does not care about whether we live or die.” (Karen Attiah, 8/10)
The Baltimore Sun: We Did Everything Right, But Our Kid Still Got COVID
We hunkered down, worked from home, wore masks, shopped online, did virtual school (the whole time), joined a pandemic pod, avoided large gatherings, ate outside, and my husband and I got vaccines the second we were eligible. Yet, as I write this, our 8-year-old daughter is upstairs in her room, under a fort of blankets, with a sore throat, fever, cough and a confirmed case of COVID. Where did we go wrong? Summer camp. (Tricia Bishop, 8/10)
The Washington Post: Why Our School District Is Defying Florida’s Ban On Mask Mandates — Even If It Means We Lose Funding
Just a few weeks ago, my district was planning for a more “normal” school year free from many of the safety restrictions of the past year. But a surge in covid-19 cases has upended those plans, at least temporarily. And unfortunately, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) refuses to take the steps necessary to address the surge. Even worse, he’s preventing local leaders from doing what they can to protect their own communities. The governor recently threatened to withhold funds from school districts that implement certain safety measures, particularly masking. But we don’t have the luxury of ignoring the current crisis to score political points. (Alachua County Public Schools Superintendent Carlee Simon, 8/9)
Los Angeles Times: More Employers Are Talking About Vaccination Mandates, But They Need To Turn Talk Into Action
At least on the surface, the tide has turned in favor of employers mandating that workers, and in some cases even customers visiting their premises, be vaccinated. ... But there’s less here than meets the eye. Some of these companies are exempting their front-line retail workers, who are most at risk of infection — and most likely to spread it to customers and family members. (Michael Hiltzik, 8/9)
USA Today: Cruel, Counterproductive: Don't Mock The COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitant
Now that 70% of adult Americans have received at least one COVID-19 vaccination, most case fatalities occur among the unvaccinated. But the recent uptick in cases has led to another disturbing trend: COVID-19 schadenfreude, where social media users heap invectives upon unvaccinated patients who contract the virus. (Dr. Yoo Jung Kim, 8/11)
