Advocacy

Don't just protect yourself

Communication techniques that heal relationships

Getting vaccines to the world

Advocacy

 

WHAT'S YOUR PLAN

Do you find yourself stunned that part of your community won't listen to epidemiology experts, perhaps especially your online community? Conversations that just lead to online shouting matches that cause everyone to dig deeper foxholes? Are fights over vaccinations ending relationships?

Much of our social media and tv news is engineered to get us arguing: it keeps us paying attention, and attention means clicking ads or watching ads. 

COVID Safer Travel is gathering resources that we think might if you want to gently and slowly influence vaccine-hesitant friends and family. Most of these aren't coming from epidemiology: we think the fight over the facts is long won. The science we need is communication science: we want everyone to list to epidemiology experts; are we ready to listen to communications experts? Let's get to work faster than the variants:

Do you like the ideas we're sharing? Learn more about Theory: Communicating Across Partisan Divides

Or want to just get started sharing on social media? Share this!

Or want to do a deep dive into communicating with family who don't agree with you on politics?

  • Take the workshops at Smart Politics.
  • Or we recommend Beyond Your Bubble for a very gentle introduction to talking across politics: this is a great book to share. If you have a relative who is unhappy that vaccines have ruined your connection, see if they would like to read the book with you and have the recommended conversations. 
  • Or for some more intensive — and deeply worthwhile — self-training, we recommend Just Listen, or Getting the War Out of Our Words.

 

RESOURCES READY-TO-USE

 

Every case of COVID means another chance for a new variant that gets around the vaccines, or that infects young people the way the 1918 flu did. The oft quoted "Smith's Law of Decreasing Virulence" has been known to be wrong since the mid 20th century, and yet it is still quoted by people who ought to know better. Counter examples such as rabies and HIV abound. And although in vaccinated individuals, the most recent Omicron strain of COVID has been be less severe, it can spread as fast as the measles.  The even newer BA.2 strain can spread faster.

Likewise, we just don't know the longterm effects of COVID. People who have survived COVID hospitalization have an increased chance of dying in the next year, and it is likely that even those who experienced mild symptoms may have longterm or potentially lifelong effects. And just as with the common cold virus, it seems that immunity to COVID fades quickly and that one can easily get COVID twice. There are even examples of death after a second bout of COVID.

Given all this, it's not clear that we can live with endemic COVID without enhanced precautions or else without resigning ourselves to lower span and quality of life. Will the rich countries help see that every human on earth can get vaccinated soon, to get ahead of new variants? What can you do to help your friends and family stay safe and limit the spread? 

Start first with testing you can trust.

 

We're still working on: http://covidsafertravel.com/science-fire

 

 

Advocacy

  • Public vs personal health in Omicron – NYC as an example

    Tim Niiler —2022-01-10
    Is Omicron better than Delta or worse? This piece looks at what the data show on both a personal level and at a public health level. The bottom line is that we're likely to see a surge that swamps our hospitals with mostly unvaccinated individuals. While vaccinations and boosters may keep you out of the hospital, you still may get very sick.

  • Science in the Fire

    One of our favorite techniques is to take a journey together with people you want to influence. Start where they are, and then begin in the direction you want to go together. Where people are today is lacking trust. For-profit medicine has sometimes taken obscene profits from desperate people.  The WHO and CDC have made some mistakes. Some media corporations have manipulated this mistrust by exaggerating mistakes.  Model the behaviors you want: a willingness to listen, to point out when "your side" makes mistakes. Model how to change your mind.

  • Vaccine Hesitancy in Conservative Circles

    admin —2021-06-12
    Most — but not all — conservative media have long underplayed the dangers of Covid and exaggerated the risks of the vaccine, or waffled back and forth. While we're a bit baffled how medical science became so political, we find that arguing facts tends to cause people to dig in deeper. One of our favorite communication techniques that we recommend for conservative circles is broadcasting conservative messengers: we're collecting science-based non-political health information coming from voices acceptable in conservative circles. Read more...

Advocacy, Communications and Activism

Understanding Risk

Turning once more to Katelyn Jetelina, a professional epidimiologist, we get her take on relative risk of COVID.  Rather than just reporting percentages, she adopts a relative risk measure called the micro-mort (MM) which gives risk in terms of death per million.  In this post, she compares relative risks of dying of COVID to driving, flying, and serving in Afghanistan for a year.  Breakdowns are also given based on age and vaccination status.  The bottom line is that your relative risk can depend on a lot of things, but f

Results of Denmark's Removal of COVID Restrictions

Carolyn Crist of WebMD writes about the state of affairs in Denmark where they lifted all COVID restrictions in February 2022 which is 81% vaccinated and 62% boosted (see summary here).  In addition to growing case counts, hospitalizations and deaths in Denmark have increased by nearly a third - providing a cautionary tale to other countries which may be thinking of acting similarly.

COVID-19 Crisis in Ukraine

In this article by Thaisa Semenova of the Kyiv Independent, we see how war has exacerbated the spread of COVID, and how this new crisis in Eastern Europe is likely to prolong the pandemic.  Given the low vaccination rate of Ukrainians, the article underscores the need for effective communication strategies to promote vaccination as well as the need for the availability of vaccines on the ground.

Death, Boosters, and Morality Exhaustion

admin —2022-01-31

Compassion for the Immune Compromised

Yesterday one of my friends said her favorite uncle died from Covid — both too early, and a horrible way to go. He was boosted but booster shots work with your immune system, and there are lots of us who could spend a good few more years with grandkids but are vulnerable. Meanwhile I'm feeling pretty relaxed, healthy enough (and to be honest, previously exposed enough from having housemates even when I try to be cautious) not to worry.

Community response

Public vs personal health in Omicron – NYC as an example

Tim Niiler —2022-01-10
Is Omicron better than Delta or worse? This piece looks at what the data show on both a personal level and at a public health level. The bottom line is that we're likely to see a surge that swamps our hospitals with mostly unvaccinated individuals. While vaccinations and boosters may keep you out of the hospital, you still may get very sick.

Traveling in the US: Hospital Bed Map

admin —2021-12-16
I'm vaccinated, boosted, and healthy enough to be willing to take some smaller risks of exposure. Especially with omicron breaking through even among the vaccinated, this pandemic is not ending soon: it is likely that most of us wlll be exposed: we'll be relying on our vaccines and immune systems and not just relying on social distancing. So I might grab my mask and start getting back to life. But traveling while hospital systems crash is still a really bad idea.
United States
Hospital Capacity