Vaccinations
For all its flaws, the Covid-19 vaccination rollout has been a historic win for humanity - Muizz Akhtar

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What the world got right during the Covid-19 pandemic
For all the frustrations over vaccine inequity and hesitancy, that one-year gap between the pandemic’s start and the rollout of the vaccines is nothing short of a historic success...
While the Covid-19 vaccine rollout highlights how inequities continue to leave the most marginalized populations of the world underprotected, the campaign’s broader success is promising for both the current pandemic and for pandemics that may arise in the years and decades to come. Humanity now knows how fast it can get a global vaccination program up and running, and that sets a standard for the future.
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Vaccination Locator
I can’t develop vaccines, save lives in the ICU or even put shots in arms, but I’ve gotten pretty good at finding COVID-19 vaccine appointments - Summer Hull
Fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks—but there’s a catch
Does that mean we can all take a giant garbage bag and rid the house of every last face covering we own for once and for all? Probably not. And that’s for a few reasons.
The Key Distinction That Helps Clarify the Path Forward on the Pandemic
What individuals can do to fight the pandemic is simple: Get vaccinated. This remains the most effective way to protect oneself and others. Early on in the pandemic, public-health experts asked everybody—everybody—to do their part and stay home to prevent COVID spread. But now that we have vaccines, that is no longer necessary—if you’re vaccinated (and boosted).
No, vaccinated people are not ‘just as infectious’ as unvaccinated people if they get COVID
But vaccinated people clear the virus faster, with lower levels of virus overall, and have less time with very high levels of virus present.
The Folly of World-Wide Covid Vaccination
The pandemic stole focus from other, deadlier diseases, including HIV/AIDS in the developing world.
Two Covid Americas
The unvaccinated are less worried than the boosted, according to a poll.
Why vaccinating everyone on the planet may still not wipe out covid-19
VACCINE roll-out in a growing number of countries should eventually allow life to return to normal, but it is unlikely that we will be able to eradicate the coronavirus that causes covid-19 altogether. “I don’t see that these vaccines will be eliminating SARS-CoV-2 any time in the coming years,” says Kingston Mills at Trinity College Dublin.
Yes, you can be vaccinated and still get Covid-19. But don’t panic.
Most of the time, these vaccines will prevent Covid-19 infection from taking hold in the body. That’s great! And it’s why these vaccines are our best shot at ending the pandemic. But some of the time, it won’t prevent infection, and won’t prevent symptoms.
A Digital COVID-19 Vaccine Passport System Is Still Premature
Questions of equity, access, and privacy demand answers before a vaccine passport will work.
Should People With an Autoimmune Condition Get a Covid-19 Vaccine?
In the absence of clinical trial data, how should people with autoimmune conditions approach the risk/benefit analysis of getting vaccinated? Here’s what several experts had to say.
Vaccinated? Show Us Your App
Covid-19 health pass apps could help reopen businesses and restore the economy. They could also unfairly exclude people from travel and workplaces.
Vaccine Nationalism Is Here to Stay
The EU’s vaccine rollout is a mess—and that’s bad news for everyone else, too.
Winning Trust for a Vaccine Means Confronting Medical Racism
The US has a long history of abusing minorities for pharmaceutical profit. Messaging for a Covid-19 inoculation will have to overcome that past.
A vaccine alone won’t stop Covid-19. We also need a trusted plan for it
Covid-19 vaccines can help stop the pandemic only if people trust them and want to be vaccinated. To earn and keep the trust of the American people, our government needs to ensure three key needs are met before launching any immunization campaign...
Anti-Vaxxers Are Coaching People How to 'Refuse' the COVID Vaccine
Anti-vaxxers are flooding social media with misinformation about the development and side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Bill Gates, the Virus and the Quest to Vaccinate the World
The billionaire is working with the W.H.O., drugmakers and nonprofits to defeat the coronavirus everywhere, including in the world’s poorest nations. Can they do it?
Bill Gates’s vision for life beyond the coronavirus
Bill Gates saw the coronavirus coming. Here’s his plan to beat it.
Challenges Related To The COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout
The first COVID-19 vaccines are being administered. There are, however, still great challenges ahead when it comes to making sure that people receive the vaccine sooner rather than later.
Coronavirus vaccine: lessons from the 19th-century smallpox anti-vaxxer movement
The 19th-century invention of vaccination created a new national imperative for the UK to combat endemic smallpox. The risk of dying from smallpox for those who contracted it was substantially higher than that for COVID-19 today. Survivors gained immunity but often at the cost of physical scarring and long-term health problems. Vaccination and subsequent elimination should have been a no-brainer. Yet local and regional outbreaks persisted across the 19th century.
COVID-19 vaccination: a guide for women of childbearing age, pregnant or breastfeeding
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has recognised that the potential benefits of vaccination are particularly important for some pregnant women. This includes those who are at very high risk of catching the infection or those with clinical conditions that put them at high risk of suffering serious complications from COVID-19.
Get Ready for a Vaccine Information War
Social media is already filling up with misinformation about a Covid-19 vaccine, months or years before one even exists.
How Rich Countries Are 'Hoarding' The World's Vaccines, In Charts
Healthcare workers first, along with residents and staff of nursing homes. Those people should receive the COVID-19 vaccine before anyone else, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. That recommendation applies to the U.S. But what about healthcare workers in other countries? Or the elderly with health conditions?
How to Ship a Vaccine at –80°C, and Other Obstacles in the Covid Fight
Developing an effective vaccine is the first step. Then comes the question of how to deliver hundreds of millions of doses that may need to be kept at arctic temperatures.
How will the world vaccinate seven billion?
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called it "the most urgent shared endeavour of our lifetimes". But away from the high-tech science of finding a winning formula, what about the logistics of rolling out a vaccine to seven billion people worldwide?
Israel outpaced the world in vaccinations. Now it’s seeing the results
There’s still a long way to go, but also a reason for hope.
Let’s Say There’s a Covid-19 Vaccine—Who Gets It First?
An immunization shot is still in development, but debate over who gets priority has already begun.
No Need to Sweat Covid Vaccination Rates
As long as seniors and essential workers are immunized, deaths will drop and life can resume.
People Are Willing to Risk Their Lives for a COVID Vaccine. Should We Let Them?
People Are Willing to Risk Their Lives for a COVID Vaccine. Should We Let Them?
She Hunts Viral Rumors About Real Viruses
Dr. Larson, 63, is arguably the world’s foremost rumor manager. She has spent two decades in war torn, poor and unstable countries around the globe, as well as in rich and developed ones, striving to understand what makes people hesitant to take vaccines.
Should pregnant women get the COVID-19 vaccine? Will it protect against asymptomatic infections and mutated viruses? An immunologist answers 3 questions
Yes, you can and should get a COVID-19 vaccine if you are either pregnant or breastfeeding. An important reason is that COVID-19 is more severe during pregnancy.
The curse of the incidental illness: Seen as side effects to Covid vaccinations, ailments may have little to do with them
As Covid-19 vaccines go into broad use, some rare side effects of vaccination will almost certainly emerge, like the reports of small numbers of people developing anaphylaxis. But so will medical events whose timing just comes down to random chance — and the potential ripple effects of those reports already have experts concerned.
The First Shot: Inside the Covid Vaccine Fast Track
The very first vaccine candidate entered human trials—and Neal Browning’s arm—on March 16. Behind the scenes at Moderna and the beginning of an unprecedented global sprint.
The Vaccine Line Is Illogical
Medicines should be distributed equitably, but the neediest are seldom at the front of the line.
They're A Precious Commodity, So Why Are Some COVID-19 Vaccines Going To Waste?
It's hard to know exactly how many doses are being thrown out across the country, but Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University, said strict guidelines around vaccine eligibility are causing surplus doses to be discarded.
This Is How the Super Rich Are Beating You to the Vaccine
As health workers wait to be vaccinated, the wealthy are jumping the queue to get jabs on "vaccine holidays" in places like Dubai and Goa.
With painstaking effort, Black doctors’ group takes aim at Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy
Racism in the health care system is part of the reason that the NMA exists. The American Medical Association, which set standards for the profession, repeatedly denied membership to Black doctors — so in 1895, they founded a group of their own, “conceived in no spirit of racial exclusiveness, fostering no ethnic antagonisms, but born out of the exigency of the American environment.”
COVID vaccine hesitancy is showing up in unexpected places
The uniting thread is that vaccine hesitancy tends to have staying power in tight-knit communities where people can reinforce one another’s beliefs. What someone accepts as evidence is individual, Parrish-Sprowl says, but it’s also shaped by the people around them.
Fight vaccine hesitancy, not line crashers. Vaccination for one is vaccination for all
Admittedly, it makes some sense to begrudge people who seem to be malingering to jump the line. Especially when they’re crowing about it on Instagram. This one can’t have a BMI over 18. And oh, come on, “migraines” — those have to be garden-variety headaches. The resentment is understandable. Over the last bruising year, we’ve grown accustomed to supply shortages and grinding competition for resources. Shelves were bare of canned goods, toilet paper, even yeast. And forget about N95 masks.
It’s essential to understand why some health care workers are putting off vaccination
Early data on why health care workers are delaying the Covid-19 vaccine could help us end the pandemic sooner.
The ethics of ‘vaccine passports’ and a moral case for global vaccine equity
COVID-19 vaccinations are expanding…To the point where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it's safe for vaccinated people to travel. But so-called "vaccine passports," for those who have received them are sparking debate over vaccine equity. Many developing countries are still struggling to obtain the vaccine.
We Need a Better Game Plan to Reach Global Herd Immunity
The world is still vaccinating the few while neglecting the many.
1 Shot Or 2 Shots? 'The Vaccine That's Available To You — Get That'
Public health messaging around the J&J is especially tricky because the efficacy numbers can obscure nuances about how it was studied. The trials were conducted in different countries during different times of the pandemic than the two other vaccines. And of increasing importance: the J&J was tested in places where new, more dangerous variants of the virus were already circulating. "These vaccines are all remarkably effective and there isn't sort of a vaccine that's better or worse than any others," said Jason Schwartz, an assistant professor of public health at Yale University.
Covid-19 jabs are making other inoculations less contentious
Japan is dropping its resistance to the human papillomavirus vaccine.
Delaying second COVID-19 vaccine doses will make supplies last longer but comes with risks
Drugmakers are facing challenges in manufacturing vaccines and building supply chains to meet the demand for COVID-19 vaccines. Pfizer has even lowered production targets. Scarcity of vaccines has prompted calls for a Band-Aid-like strategy to stretch the precarious supply.
Once you and your friends are vaccinated, can you quit social distancing?
Expect life to return to normal in 3 stages — not all at once.
Pregnant People Haven't Been Part Of Vaccine Trials. Should They Get The Vaccine?
"Knowing what I know about the [mRNA vaccine's] mechanism of action, I would anticipate that this vaccine should be very safe in pregnancy," Jamieson says.
Should children get the COVID-19 vaccine?
Should we really be vaccinating our children if the disease has very little adverse consequences for their age group? Historically, we have immunized against diseases like polio and diphtheria that were a clear danger to children.
Vaccine Mandates Are Coming. Good
It’s unlikely the United States can overcome the pandemic without such actions.
Vaccines Alone Are Not Enough to Beat COVID
It could take years to immunize everyone, so we need to work on discovering new treatments as well—and fast.
America’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout is way too complicated
The case for going simpler on vaccine distribution.
California technologists create website to track vaccinations
The creation of VaccinateCA underscores the growing frustration in California with the state’s handling of the pandemic and vaccine distribution.
How Black People Learned Not to Trust
Concerns about vaccination are unfortunate, but they have historical roots.
How Is The COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign Going In Your State?
This page is updated regularly.
How Long It Will Take to Get Covid-19 Vaccines to Most Americans
At current pace, it could take into 2022, although Biden administration’s efforts and vaccines in development may speed pace.
How to Get a Covid-19 Vaccine: a State-by-State Guide
While states have set the priorities for inoculations, many have pushed the responsibility for administering them onto individual hospitals, clinics and local public health agencies.
Post-vaccination Inertia Is Real
Readjusting our ideas about what’s safe is going to take time.
The US will send 20 million COVID-19 vaccines to countries in need
The federal administration has not yet announced which countries are to receive these essential resources. So far, the US has shared about 4.5 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine with Canada and Mexico.
They Had Leftover COVID Vaccines. So They Offered Them To Their Canadian Neighbors
With just over 3% of Canadians fully inoculated against COVID-19, a growing number of America's northern border states and communities have stepped up to offer excess vaccines to Canadians.
Western Anti-Vaxxers Are Undermining COVID Vaccine Rollouts in African Countries
A well-organised network of international anti-vax accounts is pumping harmful vaccine misinformation into Africa’s social media ecosystem, threatening to undermine the continent’s fragile COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
What the world got right during the Covid-19 pandemic
A new report finds that, for all its flaws, the Covid-19 vaccination rollout has been a historic win for humanity.
Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is a global partnership launched in 2017 to develop vaccines to stop future epidemics.
COVAX
CEPI, Gavi and the WHO have launched COVAX to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines and end the acute phase of the pandemic by the end of 2021.
Vaccine Confidence Project
The purpose of the project is to monitor public confidence in immunisation programmes by building an information surveillance system for early detection of public concerns around vaccines; by applying a diagnostic tool to data collected to determine the risk level of public concerns in terms of their potential to disrupt vaccine programmes; and, finally, to provide analysis and guidance for early response and engagement with the public to ensure sustained confidence in vaccines and immunisation.

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