If you want the privilege of traveling on a plane or train, you need to do your part and get vaccinated.
2) Urging businesses to implement "no vaccine, no service" rules, and supporting San Francisco and New York in requiring vaccines to enter indoor restaurants, bars, gyms and other venues.
3) Mandating for all children 12 and older to be vaccinated, as we do for other childhood immunizations (as Los Angeles Unified School District has just decided to).
4) Issuing a national proof of vaccination, as many other countries have done.
5) Urging states, local governments, and businesses to re-implement indoor mask mandates until vaccinations rates are much higher and cases are much lower.
Half-measures are not enough. We need to take drastic action to end the devastation of the #covid19 pandemic. /END
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To explain the risk the unvaccinated pose to themselves and others, @SamWangPhD & I propose an analogy: The choice to remain unvaccinated is equivalent to drunk driving.
Some may balk at the comparison, but here are the similarities.
1) Both causes of severe bodily harm are largely preventable.
2) Both are individual decisions with societal consequences.
3) Both can cause substantial mortality, though deaths due to coronavirus far outstrip those due to drunken driving.
And more....
2/
4) Both increase risk for self and others. Being unvaccinated increases the risk of infection by 5 & death by 11. The risk of a crash when driving drunk is 14X higher.
5) The risk is borne not only by the person making the decision but also by others who cross their path.
3/
First, let's talk about the origin of this myth. It originated with anti-vaccine advocates who alleged that the spike protein targeted by the vaccine is "disturbingly similar" to a protein found in the placenta.
This claim has no basis in science or reality. /2
As Dr. Paul Offit wrote in a @Hill op-ed, "To say that these two proteins are disturbingly similar would be the equivalent of saying that two people share the same social security number because both contain the number six." /3 thehill.com/opinion/health…
Of the 323 documented cases in those under 30, nearly 80% are known to have recovered. 9 are still hospitalized, 2 are in intensive care. No one has died.
Most myocarditis cases are mild, treatable and do not leave lasting effects.
And covid itself causes myocarditis. /2
Second, adolescents & young adults now constitute 33% of all new #covid19 cases.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been 7.7 million infections in the 12 to 29 age group, resulting in 2,767 deaths.
More than 300 of these deaths occurred since April 1. /3
This is not a hypothetical concern. According to @StopAAPIHate, over 6,600 anti-AAPI incidents have been reported since the pandemic started.
Many are related to blaming AAPIs for #covid19. Speculating on culpability could provoke more acts of harm against our community. /2
I interviewed @RepJudyChu: “So many are concerned that after a year of AAPIs being blamed for coronavirus, this could further hatred & discrimination... We need to get to the truth & we need to be careful in our messaging so as to not further stoke the flames of xenophobia.” /3
The CDC's new guidance has devolved into a giant mess. It was a major blunder to cede responsibility: Effectively ending mask mandates is not just about science--it's a major policy decision that should have been made by President Biden himself.🧵
To be clear, it was appropriate for the CDC, as a scientific agency, to review the data & come out with a statement that vaccinated people are at little risk for contracting #covid19 & spreading it to others.
But they went way beyond this to basically end all indoor masking. /2
Arguably, this was the single biggest decision that the Biden team has made on #covid19, yet the president himself didn't find out about it until the morning of the announcement.
Don't get me wrong--the vaccinated are very well protected. They are safe to take off masks if they wish.
The problem is: do we trust the honor system for people to now go maskless? What about the danger to people who can't be vaccinated (i.e. kids) or the immunocompromised? /2
The CDC recommendation removes a powerful incentive. Many who were on the fence might have been motivated to get the shot because they could go back to activities they were missing, without a mask.
Now, if no one is checking, and they can do everything anyway, why bother? /3