Fauci urges national COVID-19 coordination
Vaccine acceptance requires clear messaging and leadership, experts say. Meantime, states tighten restrictions as case count keeps growing.
Coordination across the nation is essential to controlling COVID-19, says National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anythony Fauci. In a round of interviews Monday and Tuesday, Fauci said that the public must hear consistent messages and follow public health guidelines (such as wearing masks) until enough people are vaccinated against COVID-19.
Based on the latest vaccine data, Fauci said he expects vaccinations to begin in late December, with most people getting access before next summer.
Convincing Americans to get immunized requires separating COVID-19 from the political discourse, Fauci said, urging Americans to pay attention to what the science indicates.
Medical leaders urge the Trump Administration to stop stonewalling the transition because it worsens the USA’s pandemic response and costs lives.
Canada is having a hard time keeping its up-til-now good COVID response going.
Ohio joins New Mexico and Puerto Rico in imposing an overnight curfew, aimed at reducing gatherings where COVID-19 has been spreading.
Interest in COVID-19 among the general public appears to be as low as it was in March, when the outbreaks in the USA took off. A sociologist tells Axios that the media should avoid “overproducing the article of the day” and go deeper.
How risky is the event I’m thinking of attending? Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a tool that integrates live data to calculate risk estimates based on crowd size and location. The scientific paper that describes it was published in Nature Human Behavior, and the tool is available at this link: https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/.
More data shows that masks reduce COVID-19. Vox published a series of charts that show the difference between places that have imposed mask mandates and those without. The highest rate of increased COVID-19 has been in North Dakota, where mask requirements were implemented last Friday.
COVID-19 may be altering risk tolerance: There are indications that more people are driving recklessly while fewer people are on the roads during the pandemic.
Keep those masks on and wash your hands, please!