Covid-19 News

During an Ethnic Media Services community conversation with ethnic media organized by Saint Paul AME Church in San Bernardino, Black Voice News, and California Black Media, community leaders and Black family caregivers discussed the importance of vaccines in helping keep themselves safe and able to care for their families. Family caregivers have not been considered essential workers, and therefore were ineligible to be first in line when Covid vaccines appeared on the scene in early 2021, said Donna Benton, director of the USC Family Caregiver Support Center and the Los Angeles Caregiver Resource Center. There are more than 4.5 million family caregivers in California alone, but Benton said they are largely invisible in the broader healthcare system. “Caregivers are saying ‘we want the masks.’ We need PPE. We need to be prioritized for boosters, and also for testing,’” she said.

NBC News quoted Postdoctoral Researcher Theresa Andrasfay regarding an Oxford study illustrating last year’s decline in life expectancy for the U.S. “It reveals the U.S. did a poor job protecting younger individuals or they were more susceptible compared to other countries,” said Andrasfay, who was not involved in the study. It could mean that the country was worse at protecting essential workers or that working-age people had more conditions that put them at greater danger from Covid, she added.

Marketplace featured a study coauthored by Mireille Jacobson on the low effectiveness of financial incentives for COVID-19 vaccination.

Bloomberg featured a study regarding the low effectiveness of financial incentives for vaccination. “Reaching a goal of very high vaccination rates likely requires much stronger policy levers, such as employer rules or government mandates,” wrote the authors, including Mireille Jacobson.

Wall Street Journal featured a study coauthored by Mireille Jacobson on how financial incentives for COVID-19 vaccination may not work.

San Francisco Chronicle featured a study coauthored by Mireille Jacobson on why financial incentives to encourage vaccination may not work. “(T)his is not the road to getting to ‘herd immunity.’ It might be that these small incentives nudge a few people one way or another, but it’s really just not going to get us anywhere near where we hope to get … we’re not nudging our way out of this epidemic,” said Jacobson.

The Wall Street Journal quoted Theresa Andrasfay of the USC Leonard Davis School on her research into the pandemic’s impact on life expectancy by race and ethnicity. One reason for the heavy toll among Hispanic people is that many who died were younger than those in other groups, she said.

NBC News Los Angeles affiliate KNBC-TV featured research by Mireille Jacobson of the USC Leonard Davis School and the USC Schaeffer Center on the racial and ethnic disparities in who is getting sick and dying from COVID-19. “Even among a population of Medicaid patients who are similarly economically disadvantaged, Latinos are shouldering an unfair burden of this deadly pandemic,” she said. Additional coverage was found on Univision Los Angeles affiliate KMEX-TV, Telemundo Los Angeles affiliate KVEA-TV, La Opinión, KNX 1070 AM, Spectrum News 1 and the Los Angeles Daily News.

CNN featured research by Theresa Andrasfay of the USC Leonard Davis School and a colleague on how COVID-19 has impacted U.S. life expectancy, especially among Black and Latino populations. “This unprecedented change likely stems from social and economic inequities that are associated with both higher exposure to infection and higher fatality among those infected,” they wrote. Additional coverage was found in The Guardian, the New York Daily News and Axios.

USA Today featured Jessica Ho of the USC Leonard Davis School on life expectancy falling in the United States during the pandemic. “Going in, we already expected the U.S. was going to be hit quite harder, but the question was, how much does it put us back,” she said.