Coronavirus | Penn Today

In the foreground, a blurred out student holding a pencil over a notebook watching a math lesson on a computer screen. In the background are blurred out plants, table and chairs.

Remote learning affected high schoolers’ social, emotional health

Research from Angela Duckworth and colleagues found that teenagers who attended school virtually fared worse than classmates who went in person, results that held even when accounting for variables like gender, race, and socioeconomic status.

Defense secretary weighs recommending vaccine mandate for troops

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel said that service members, if required to be vaccinated, could positively influence others to follow suit. “People admire our military,” he said.

Cash for shots? Studies suggest payouts improve vaccination rates

Dena Gromet of the Wharton School said vaccine incentives like lotteries may be effective, “but we are likely going to have to rely on a multiprong approach to be able to really make a dent in vaccination going forward.”

What you need to know as events and restaurants start requiring proof of vax

Harald Schmidt of the Perelman School of Medicine spoke about businesses that require proof of vaccination from customers. “There is a risk that vaccine passports turn into antagonism, when really what we need is a partnership approach,” he said.

Lack of progress in treating COVID causes worry for unvaccinated

Jeffrey Morris of the Perelman School of Medicine said there’s been little progress in treating COVID-19 in recent months.

How to turn the tide on vaccine hesitancy: Apply an algorithm that actually works

Damon Centola of the Annenberg School for Communication wrote an opinion piece about the best strategies for promoting COVID-19 vaccination. “It takes time to digest an idea with substance to it; it takes repeatedly seeing an idea successfully adopted by others for it to be accepted, take hold and become a norm, and that kind of messaging is most effective when an idea works its way from the outside in,” he said.

To get shots in arms, governments turn to money in pockets

Harald Schmidt of the Perelman School of Medicine reflected on the use of incentives to motivate people to get vaccinated for COVID-19. “If we just get needles into arms we haven’t really made any progress on the bigger picture, which is that whole communities are lacking trust in health care systems or the government,” he said.

historic illustration of a phrenology map of someone’s skull.

When trust in science fosters pseudoscience

A study co-authored by PIK Professor Dolores Albarracín finds that people who trust science are more likely to believe and disseminate false claims containing scientific references than people who do not trust science.

Breakthrough COVID infections show ‘the unvaccinated are now putting the vaccinated at risk’

Drew Weissman of the Perelman School of Medicine said the COVID-19 vaccines are “still working great,” but highly contagious variants and low vaccination rates are eroding progress. “You can’t control a pandemic when 30 percent or even half the people are immunized,” he said.

COVID symptoms may linger in some vaccinated people who get infected, study finds

Paul Offit of the Perelman School of Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said that initially, COVID-19 “was billed falsely as a winter respiratory virus that, like influenza, could cause severe and occasionally fatal pneumonia. But this virus is much more than that.”

Filters