"Seeing COVID rates hit another high, and vaccine uptake remain low, doctors don’t have an antidote for something they see as an ongoing risk factor: the spread of misinformation, including on the presidential campaign trail.
"This week, speaking before a crowd of Republicans in New Hampshire, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis laid out another falsehood about COVID vaccines.
"'Every booster you take, you’re more likely to get COVID as a result of it,' said DeSantis, one of several political leaders who have consistently and without evidence challenged the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.
"Public health experts and doctors are worried that this kind of misinformation is still shaping how people perceive the virus and tools designed to protect individuals and communities against COVID’s worst outcomes. In recent weeks, U.S. wastewater surveillance data has shown that COVID cases have risen to second-highest levels since the pandemic began, fueled by a new dominant strain, an omicron subvariant called JN.1, that is not as well understood as past surges. According to the World Health Organization, around 10,000 people died from COVID in December and hospitalizations rose by more than 40 percent in the Americas and across Europe.
"Just 17 percent of eligible U.S. adults and children have gotten the updated vaccines, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Misinformation and disinformation are fueling 'a vaccine revolution right now' in ways that Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, has not seen in his 50 years of work as an epidemiologist.
"Up until the early 2000s, Osterholm said vaccines were 'largely trusted' and “the public followed the recommendations of the public health community about what vaccines to get and when. Overall, safety was accepted. But for a small but growing segment of the population, maintaining public safety is no longer a driving concern, he said. 'It’s about, ‘I don’t want to be told what to do.’ It’s an area where we don’t know how to respond to that. It’s the fallout of the pandemic itself.'
"Even as we’re in 'a significant wave, and all the numbers are going in the wrong direction,' the public is battle-weary with pandemic fatigue, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
"'Everybody’s sick of it,” he said,
"Misinformation plays 'a major role in vaccine hesitancy and the extent to which people trust institutions and the media,' while also shaping people’s personal health decisions, said Sander van der Linden, a social psychologist who directs the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab at Cambridge University. A small group of social media superspreaders are generating much of the misinformation that infects people’s understanding of the world around them, he added."
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Everybody's sick of it? Well, they'll be a lot sicker of it when they end up at the doctor or the hospital with COVID!
You'd think by now, 4 years in, that they would understand this. But I think they just don't care.
I'm immunocompromised, so from the very start of the pandemic, I chose to protect myself. I read every reputable piece of information I could find in order to educate myself, and I listened to the doctors, NOT the politicians or the quacks like Florida's "Doctor" Ladapo. I've gotten all my vaccinations, followed the guidelines, have continued to wear a mask, and have protected myself and others.
It's your choice -- do nothing, be selfish, and make everyone else around you sick; or act like an adult and do your part as an American to fight COVID.
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