As coronavirus vaccines are distributed across the United States, some questions and misleading information have emerged. Here is information to combat five common concerns.

Only the vulnerable need to get the vaccine. Many people, unfortunately including elected officials, have said publicly that they will not get vaccinated. For example, Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) announced last week that he would refuse the vaccine, saying that he is healthy and that the vaccine is only for those at risk — which he defined as health-care workers and the elderly.

There’s a lot of misinformation to unpack here. As has been well reported, younger individuals and those across many occupations are among the more than 320,000 Americans who have succumbed to covid-19. Even setting aside those facts, Buck’s statement reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how vaccines work. Vaccines protect more than the individual who is inoculated; the goal is to have enough of the population vaccinated to achieve “herd immunity,” which is also, accurately, called “community immunity.” The more people who are immune means fewer people the virus can infect — lowering the infection rate and the risk for us all.

Another reason that everyone eligible should get the vaccine is to protect those who cannot get it. With studies on children and the virus just getting started, it’s likely that young kids and babies won’t be able to receive the vaccine until fall 2021. Immunosuppressed people may need to rely on the immunity of others to help them stay healthy. In this sense, not getting a vaccine is like not wearing a mask: Your decision affects not just you but everyone around you, too.

There’s no point in getting the vaccine if we still have to wear masks. Vaccinated people should keep wearing masks and follow social distancing guidelines. In fact, we will all need to wear masks for some time. Although the vaccine is more than 94 percent effective at reducing symptomatic illness, it isn’t yet known whether it reduces the likelihood of contracting the coronavirus and being an asymptomatic carrier — a person who can unknowingly infect others.

As vaccination brings us all closer to herd immunity, there will be a point when enough of the population is protected that we can do away with masks. That could happen by the end of 2021. In the meantime, vaccination is a crucial tool. It doesn’t replace other tools but is a powerful measure that can help save lives and help the economy recover.

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A new online calculator for estimating individual and community-level risk of dying from COVID-19 has been developed by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The researchers who developed the calculator expect it to be useful to public health authorities for assessing mortality risks in different communities, and for prioritizing certain groups for vaccination as COVID-19 vaccines become available.

The algorithm underlying the calculator uses information from existing large studies to estimate risk of COVID-19 mortality for individuals based on age, gender, sociodemographic factors and a variety of different health conditions. The risk estimates apply to individuals in the general population who are currently uninfected, and captures factors associated with both risk of future infection and complications after infection.

“Our calculator represents a more quantitative approach and should complement other proposed qualitative guidelines, such as those by the National Academy of Sciences and Medicine, for determining individual and community risks and allocating vaccines,” says study senior author Nilanjan Chatterjee, PhD, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in the departments of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Bloomberg School.

The new risk calculator is presented in a paper that appears in the journal Nature Medicine.

The researchers also collaborated with PolicyMap, Inc. to develop interactive maps for viewing numbers and the proportion of individuals at various levels of risks across U.S. cities, counties and states. These maps will allow local policymakers to plan for vaccination, shielding high-risk individuals, and other targeted intervention efforts.

COVID-19, the pandemic infectious disease that has swept the world over the past ten months, afflicting nearly 70 million people and killing more than 1.5 million worldwide, can affect different people in starkly different ways. Children and young adults may suffer very mild disease or no symptoms at all, whereas the elderly have infection mortality rates of at least several percent. There are also clear ethnic and racial differences—Black and Latinx patients in the U.S., for example, have died of COVID-19 infections at much higher rates than white patients—as well as differences linked to preexisting medical conditions such as diabetes.

“Although we have long known about factors associated with greater mortality, there has been limited effort to incorporate these factors into prevention strategies and forecasting models,” Chatterjee says.

He and his team developed their risk model using several COVID-19-related datasets, including from a large U.K.-based study and state-level death rates published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and then validated the model for predicting community-level mortality rates using recent deaths across U.S. cities and counties.

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The Department of Health and Human Services this week released data on the number of beds available at individual hospitals for the first time, and said it would continue to do so on a weekly basis. Previously, HHS had only released state and national hospital-bed data.

In California, hospital admissions have risen 70% over the last two weeks, leaving just 1,700 intensive-care unit beds available out of 7,800 in the state. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has issued stay-at-home orders in regions where ICU beds fell below 15% capacity.

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Vaccination proponents and misinformation researchers had been waiting for years for Facebook to take action against the biggest and most influential anti-vaccination pages.

So it was with some trepidation that they welcomed the news that the social network last week had banned some of the most popular and prolific anti-vaccination accounts — pages that had also pushed Covid-19 vaccination misinformation to millions of people.

Their impact, however, lives on. While researchers of extremism and public health advocates see the removal of the largest anti-vaccination accounts as mostly positive, new research shows the bigger threat to public trust in a Covid-19 vaccine comes from smaller, better-connected Facebook groups that gravitated to anti-vaccination messaging in recent months.

“What we’re seeing play out with Covid is what was already in the system,” Neil Johnson, a physicist at George Washington University who studies online extremism, said. “It was primed for that at the end of 2019.”

With many Covid-19 vaccines in the works, health officials have warned that public adoption will be crucial to ensure that enough of the population is immunized to stop the spread of the virus. Experts say there isn’t an exact threshold for the percentage of people that need to get vaccinated to stop the virus’ spread, but it is expected to be at least 60 percent of the population.

 

But public sentiment about the vaccines is mixed. Only 42 percent of Americans said “yes” to whether they’d get a Covid-19 vaccine when it becomes available, according to a YouGov poll released in August. A poll from the Pew Research Center published in September found a significant decline from May to September in people who said they would get the vaccine if it were immediately available.

Johnson and a team of researchers published a paper in Nature in May that suggested the anti-vaccination movement bore a big responsibility for such hesitancy. It showed that although membership in online anti-vaccination groups was smaller than in pro-vaccination groups, there were more of them, their messages were more diverse, emotive and often persuading, and they were better at spreading those messages outside their groups, meaning they were able to reach more people.

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The Microsoft co-founder and medical school dean talked about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on global health, the race for vaccines and therapeutics, and how to renew the faltering trust many Americans feel in science and medicine.

In 2015, on the heels of a frightening Ebola outbreak in Africa, Bill Gates gave a TED talk titled “The next outbreak? We’re not ready.” In it, he outlined ways in which the world was unprepared for a threat entirely different from the one his generation had grown up fearing.

“It’s not missiles; it’s microbes,” he asserted.

On Oct. 21, the Microsoft co-founder recalled that talk when he spoke with Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the School of Medicine, during a StanfordMed LIVE event. They discussed the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on global health, the race for vaccines and therapeutics, and how to renew the faltering trust many Americans feel in science and medicine.

Gates’ wake-up call in 2015 included remarks about the importance of ensuring the availability of antiviral medications, therapeutic antibodies and high-speed diagnostic testing to prepare for a coming pandemic. “Sadly, not that much was done,” he told Minor. “The idea of ‘germ games’ to simulate what governments would need to do to move quickly — that didn’t take place.”

Gates noted that, as a result, the full scope of the COVID-19 crisis dwarfs what he had expected would happen in a pandemic.

“In 2015, I talked about a $3 trillion economic cost,” he said. “In this pandemic, even though the death rate is way lower than it might have been, the economic devastation has been much greater. It will easily get to $10 [trillion] or perhaps even $15 trillion overall over the next two years before we really get completely back to normal.”

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A study of 160 people in the United States finds associations between worries around COVID-19 and substance use. The authors warn that the pandemic may increase the risk of substance abuse in some people and advocate for specific interventions to protect mental health.

Beyond the physical effects of the novel coronavirus, the onset and continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic have dramatically affected people’s mental health in the United States and worldwide.

A recent study highlighted how levels of depression in the U.S. have tripled during the pandemic. Symptoms of anxiety may also be on the rise, according to recent trends in Google searches.

Understandably, the pandemic generates fear in many people, as the world finds itself in an unprecedented situation filled with uncertainty.

People manage uncertainties in different ways, but there is a risk that the stress the pandemic causes may trigger an ongoing mental health problem in some people.

A recent study led by the University of Houston, TX, finds that worry about COVID-19 may be a risk factor for substance use, which could, in turn, lead to misuse in some people.

The findings, which appear in Psychiatry Research, suggest the pandemic could adversely affect mental health for years to come.

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A new IBM (NYSE: IBM) study of global C-suite executives revealed that nearly six in ten responding organizations have accelerated their digital transformations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Traditional and perceived barriers like technology immaturity and employee opposition to change have fallen away – in fact, 66% of executives surveyed said they have completed initiatives that previously encountered resistance.

Participating businesses are seeing more clearly the critical role people play in driving their ongoing transformation. Leaders surveyed called out organizational complexity, inadequate skills and employee burnout as the biggest hurdles to overcome — both today and in the next two years. The study finds a significant disconnect in how effective leaders and employees believe companies have been in addressing these gaps. 74% of executives surveyed believe they have been helping their employees learn the skills needed to work in a new way, just 38% of employees surveyed agree. 80% of executives surveyed say that they are supporting the physical and emotional health of their workforce, while just 46% of employees surveyed feel that support.

The IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) study “COVID-19 and the Future of Business,” which includes input from more than 3,800 C-suite executives in 20 countries and 22 industries, shows that executives surveyed are facing a proliferation of initiatives due to the pandemic and having difficulty focusing, but do plan to prioritize internal and operational capabilities such as workforce skills and flexibility – critical areas to address in order to jumpstart progress.

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A new ILO analysis of the labour market impact of COVID-19 reveals a “massive” drop in labour income and a fiscal stimulus gap that threatens to increase inequality between richer and poorer countries.

GENEVA (ILO News) – The devastating losses in working hours caused by the COVID-19 pandemic  have brought a “massive” drop in labour income for workers around the world, says the International Labour Organization (ILO) in its latest assessment of the effects of the pandemic on the world of work.

Global labour income is estimated to have declined by 10.7 per cent, or US$ 3.5 trillion, in the first three quarters of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019. This figure excludes income support provided through government measures.

The biggest drop was in lower-middle income countries, where the labour income losses reached 15.1 per cent, with the Americas the hardest hit region at 12.1 per cent.

The ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work. Sixth edition , says that the global working hour losses in the first nine months of 2020 have been “considerably larger” than estimated in the previous edition of the Monitor (issued on 30 June).

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COVID-19 is an “unprecedented global crisis that demands an unprecedented global response”, the chief of the UN health agency said on September 21, unveiling a plan to have two billion doses of coronavirus vaccine available by the end of 2021.

Roughly 64 per cent of the global population lives in a nation that has either committed to, or is eligible to join, the coronavirus Vaccines Global Access Facility, or COVAX, which enables participating Governments to spread the risk and costs of vaccine development and provide their populations with early access to vaccines.

Working together through the COVAX Facility “is not charity, it’s in every country’s best interest. We sink or we swim together”, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO).

‘Vaccine nationalism’ will prolong pandemic

Speaking at a press briefing with the international vaccine alliance GAVI, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the WHO chief said that commitment agreements have been secured and the COVAX Facility would begin signing contracts with vaccine manufacturers and developers.

The overarching goal of the COVAX Facility is to ensure that all countries have access to vaccines at the same time, and that priority is given to those most at risk, according to the WHO chief.

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The COVID-19 pandemic and strategies to prevent its spread, such as self-quarantine and travel restrictions, have isolated families and intensified conditions that place people at greater risk for domestic violence. Reports of domestic violence are increasing around the world.

Domestic violence is harm inflicted by a romantic partner in the form of psychological, physical and sexual abuse, stalking, and economic and spiritual abuse. This violence disproportionately affects women and girls around the world. In the United States, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men experience domestic violence during their lifetime.

Victims usually turn to informal support resources like family and friends first to share their experiences and get support. Members in victims’ social networks are in a position to help in ways that social service and health care providers may not be. In fact, women seek formal support resources, like social services and police, far less frequently than they reach out to family and friends. Ethnic minority and immigrant women seek formal support resources even less than white women.

Family and friends, therefore, can have a powerful impact. Victims who receive support from people they are closest to experience less future violence, injury, suicide, depression and other negative health outcomes. Engaging and supporting family and friends in the prevention of domestic violence has never been more important. The COVID-19 global pandemic has revealed the boundaries of our current social services in reaching women in need.

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