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Health

No, the CDC did not mandate kids get the COVID-19 vaccine to go to school

Loads of misinformation keeps floating around about COVID-19 vaccines.

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

States set immunization requirements for school entry, not the CDC.

It's hard to log onto social media these days without being hit with a firehose of misinformation, especially when it comes to COVID-19. Getting accurate information during a global pandemic with a novel virus that keeps mutating is a challenge, and people's (sometimes understandable) distrust of the government, the media and various institutions certainly doesn't help.

But that doesn't mean there's no such thing as accurate information. A lot of what's floating around out there about COVID-19 is simply and verifiably wrong. As Kaiser Family Foundation President and CEO Drew Altman said, “It just isn’t enough for us to be in the business of putting out good information. We have to now also be in the business of countering misinformation and deliberate disinformation as well."

Unfortunately, studies of Facebook and Twitter have found that misinformation and disinformation spread faster and are more likely to be shared than true information. So, let's sort through some of the myths and facts about one of the biggest topics out there right now—COVID-19 vaccines and children.

Myth: The CDC is adding the COVID-19 vaccine to the mandated vaccine schedule for kids who attend school.

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Health

People shared the important lessons of the pandemic. Here are 21 of the most cathartic.

It changed how we worked, socialized and saw humanity.

via Pixabay

People are sharing the lessons of the pandemic.

Two-and-a-half years after the COVID-19 pandemic came to America, things are slowly returning to normal. Although people are still catching the virus, the seven-day average of deaths is around 15% of where we were at the pandemic’s peak. Lockdowns and mask mandates are over, kids are all back at school and there’s a definite feeling that the worst is behind us.

The last 30 months have been a time of anxiety, loneliness, fear, sickness, death, misinformation, and political and economic upheaval. Over that time, most of us were forced to change how we worked, socialized and learned. Even as the pandemic winds down, we live in a world that will never return to what it was like before the virus.

Now’s the time to try to make sense of what we’ve all been through so that if there’s a next time, we know how to do things better.

A Reddit user by the name Affectionate-Ad1060 asked the online forum, “What is the most important lesson learnt from Covid-19?” and they received more than 19,000 responses.

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Community

A group of dads in Australia got together to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks in their kids' school

We're all wondering how they did that!

Photo by Caroline Hernandez on Unsplash

Enterprising dads take COVID-19 mitigation measures into their own hands.

The pandemic has been on our minds much longer than anyone could have anticipated, and usually when you hear COVID-19, the news isn’t the best, but this news is. A group of dads in Australia were able to mitigate the spread of the very contagious omicron variant in their children’s school. The dads, whose children attend Brisbane Independent School in Pullenvale, Queensland, got together with the principal to figure out how they could prevent outbreaks of the omicron variant. They used their knowledge in science and engineering to come up with a plan to stay ahead of the contagious virus that they all knew could spread through the school like wildfire. Dads in the group included a scientist that specializes in marine ecology, an engineer and a medical specialist.

In December, the dads began discussing how they could keep the small school's 71 children safe after the border was recently reopened. They decided to do something that Bill Nye would be proud of, and turned to science and what they knew about how the virus spreads. Ventilation was key in keeping the spread as low as possible, and these dads did not disappoint when they put their heads together to figure things out. The group used a smoke machine to study airflow patterns in the classrooms and administration areas, and carbon dioxide meters were used to identify “dead spots” where ventilation was low.

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covid 19

Unbelievable. 😂

We need to be able to have tough conversations.

Loads of misinformation keeps floating around about COVID-19 vaccines.

It changed how we worked, socialized and saw humanity.

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Spoiler alert: They've gone from "surviving" to "thriving."

The G95 Oceanshield was designed to protect you and the environment.

We're all wondering how they did that!