Connect with us

Spread & Containment

Higher education’s reopening decisions affected the most vulnerable students

The COVID-19 pandemic hit higher education on March 6, 2020 when the University of Washington became the first major U.S. university to cancel in-person classes and have students take courses and finals remotely. What followed was a tidal wave of shuttere

Published

3 years ago

on

By Kristen E. Broady, Eliana Buckner, Jennifer Umanzor, Sarah Wheaton

The COVID-19 pandemic hit higher education on March 6, 2020 when the University of Washington became the first major U.S. university to cancel in-person classes and have students take courses and finals remotely. What followed was a tidal wave of shuttered campuses, canceled study abroad programs, and students and faculty alike scrambling to make sense of remote learning amid spiking infection rates across the country.

Surviving the end of the academic year, however, was only the beginning of a larger, looming higher education crisis. Over the summer, schools wrestled with the difficult question: what should be done about the fall? Davidson College’s College Crisis Initiative (C2i) collaboration with the Chronicle of Higher Education tracked colleges’ fall decisions, categorizing them as online, in-person, or some combination of the two. We use that data to examine trends in schools’ decision-making, shedding light on the contributing factors and eventual consequences of those decisions.

In our analysis, we find that while nearly every school in our sample offered in-person experiences in March, only about 30 percent were planning to maintain that in-person experience by September. Public schools and community colleges were particularly likely to go online. We examine some of the factors underlying those switches as well as the consequences. We find that differing financial pressures on public schools, private schools, and community colleges likely played a role in their decisions. We also find that those decisions appear to have had a significant impact on the enrollment decisions and educational outcomes of students attending each type of school, potentially changing the makeup of this generation’s college students. As schools began making decisions about the spring 2021 semester, it was especially important to reflect on what decisions were made in the fall, why they were made, and what effects these reopening plans could have on students.

Reopening Decisions

Using the C2i panel data, we look at the reopening decisions of 2,958 colleges and universities over the course of the pandemic. The non-representative sample contains 1,588 public schools and 1,355 private schools. Four-year schools are overrepresented in the sample, with 2,007 four-year institutions and 936 two-year institutions. By far, the largest group in the sample is private, non-profit four-year schools, which represent 43 percent of the total sample.

Between March and September, roughly 1,800 schools changed their reopening plans at least once. The peak of switches came after mid-July, when many schools were scrapping their intended plans for the fall and making a new reopening decision.

Figure 1 looks at a subset of schools for which we have complete data on decision making. It shows that while only 24 schools in the sample offered exclusively online education when the pandemic began in March, 1,160 schools had decided to go exclusively online by July. By September, 50 schools that had intended to be in-person and 32 that intended to be hybrid as of July had also moved to being fully online. While most schools that made changes moved toward going online, 617 schools moved to hybrid models by July. That number decreased to 586 in September as more schools moved online. Finally, in September, 742 schools chose to remain entirely in-person. There was a significant amount of public concern about schools changing their plans at the last minute. However, Figure 1 shows that in fact most schools stuck with the decisions they had made earlier in the summer even with spikes in COVID-19 cases in some parts of the country.

Figure 1

In Figure 2, we break down the decisions made by each type of school as of September 10. We find that four-year private institutions had the highest share of schools choosing to remain in person in the fall, with only 381 schools, or 34 percent, going fully online. Community colleges had the highest share of online reopening decisions, with 543 schools, or 63 percent, choosing to entirely move away from in-person classes.

This disparity is likely in part due to a decade-long trend of moving toward online learning in higher education at two-year schools. Prior to the pandemic, community college students were more likely than their counterparts at four-year public or private institutions to be enrolled in at least one online course, with 14% of all community college students studying exclusively online (although not necessarily at an exclusively online institution) in 2018. However, the differential spike in online enrollment clearly extends beyond enrollment trends that predate the pandemic. We examine one reason for the trend in the next section.

Figure 2

Money Matters

Decisions on how to hold classes are complicated and involve many factors. However, we find that one important factor associated with those decisions is the financial makeup of different types of institutions. The three sectors mentioned above (four-year private, four-year public, and two-year) receive their funding in different ways, with additional differences between public and private two-year schools, as shown in Figure 3. While both private schools and public schools have faced pressure to keep their doors open, public schools seem to have had less financial incentive and fewer resources to do so.

Four-year colleges and universities, particularly private schools, tend to offer a residential component, while only 28% of two-year programs provided on-campus housing in 2015, though it is becoming more common. As a result, four-year schools are more vulnerable to a loss of revenue from canceling in-person experiences, such as residential housing, dining services, and parking. These services represent an average of $5,000 and $3,000 in revenue per student for private and public four-year institutions respectively, compared to less than $2,000 per student for both public and private two-year institutions, according to Figure 3.

When contrasting public and private institutions of higher education, other differences in funding arise. Private schools rely on tuition and fees, private gifts, and endowment funds for revenue, while public schools rely more heavily on state and local funding sources (Figure 3).  Appropriations for public schools have been shrinking, with state funding being slashed by over $7 billion since 2008 leading to relatively constrained budgets for public schools. As a result, public schools had fewer resources than private schools to install technology like keycard systems, rapid testing, and other systems that made in-person learning possible during the pandemic.

Moreover, among all the different types of schools, endowment assets are most common in the private sector, and are highly concentrated. Not every school has utilized its endowment fund in the current crisis, as these funds are often thought of as intended for future investments. Nonetheless, endowments provide a cushion in funding that private two-year schools and public schools generally lack.

Figure 3

The Missing Cohort

This section highlights which kinds of students have forgone higher education in recent months or dropped out, likely in reaction to movements to online classes. Online learning can offer flexibility and accessibility, but it also can present challenges to learning outcomes. In particular, there are some groups of students for whom online education works poorly. Anticipating these challenges and more, 55 percent of students not returning for fall 2020 cited changes in class format.

In a case study, The Public Policy Institute of California found that students of color and nontraditional students are more likely to have challenges that put them at risk of lowered performance in an online setting, widening existing achievement gaps. Some challenges they are more likely to face include trying to study in a stressful home environment or an inability to access reliable internet.

Because of the nature of the populations that different schools serve, lower-income students are more likely to find their classes moved online. As shown above, two-year institutions were the most likely to move their classes from in-person to online. Roughly 15 percent of students at two-year schools come from families in the bottom income quintile, while the share is 9 percent of those at four-year public schools and 6 percent at four-year private schools. What this means is that low-income, underrepresented students are more likely to be struggling with the consequences of online schooling. And, if those students choose to drop out, that has dire consequences on lifetime earnings, given that those with bachelor’s degrees earn twice that of high school graduates.

Indeed, the discrepancies in experience have led to marked decreases in enrollment, especially for underprivileged students, for whom home environment or internet access may be more likely to present a challenge. New Census data suggests that students from households making less than $75,000 per year were almost twice as likely to forego college this year as those making more. The enrollment changes have also been marked along racial lines, with Black undergraduate students having been the most likely to see drops in enrollment for summer 2020. Community colleges, which typically serve students of color or of low-income backgrounds, accordingly held the largest share of enrollment drops for fall 2020, with first time student enrollment at public two-years plummeting by nearly 23 percent.

Compounding these problems, individuals who drop out are unlikely to re-enroll. From 2013-2018, within a group of 29 million observed students, 87 percent of college dropouts failed to re-enroll within the observation period.

Conclusion

Colleges have faced difficult trade-offs when deciding if, and how, to open their physical doors to students this year. While holding in-person classes can affect the health and safety of students, it is important to note the consequences of holding online classes for those who are typically underrepresented in institutions of higher education.

As the fallout of the pandemic continues to unfold, educational institutions must consider the broad impacts of online learning on retention, learning opportunities, and student achievement. They face difficult decisions for the upcoming semester and should choose policy solutions that protect and support the most academically vulnerable students.

Economic inequality persists in the United States, particularly along racial lines. A college degree is one significant pathway for lower-income young adults to improve lifetime earnings. All told, the greatest toll of the pandemic will be the disruption in upward mobility for the current cohort of low-income students.

Read More

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Spread & Containment

Separating Information From Disinformation: Threats From The AI Revolution

Separating Information From Disinformation: Threats From The AI Revolution

Authored by Per Bylund via The Mises Institute,

Artificial intelligence…

Published

8 hours ago

on

March 15, 2024

By

Separating Information From Disinformation: Threats From The AI Revolution

Authored by Per Bylund via The Mises Institute,

Artificial intelligence (AI) cannot distinguish fact from fiction. It also isn’t creative or can create novel content but repeats, repackages, and reformulates what has already been said (but perhaps in new ways).

I am sure someone will disagree with the latter, perhaps pointing to the fact that AI can clearly generate, for example, new songs and lyrics. I agree with this, but it misses the point. AI produces a “new” song lyric only by drawing from the data of previous song lyrics and then uses that information (the inductively uncovered patterns in it) to generate what to us appears to be a new song (and may very well be one). However, there is no artistry in it, no creativity. It’s only a structural rehashing of what exists.

Of course, we can debate to what extent humans can think truly novel thoughts and whether human learning may be based solely or primarily on mimicry. However, even if we would—for the sake of argument—agree that all we know and do is mere reproduction, humans have limited capacity to remember exactly and will make errors. We also fill in gaps with what subjectively (not objectively) makes sense to us (Rorschach test, anyone?). Even in this very limited scenario, which I disagree with, humans generate novelty beyond what AI is able to do.

Both the inability to distinguish fact from fiction and the inductive tether to existent data patterns are problems that can be alleviated programmatically—but are open for manipulation.

Manipulation and Propaganda

When Google launched its Gemini AI in February, it immediately became clear that the AI had a woke agenda. Among other things, the AI pushed woke diversity ideals into every conceivable response and, among other things, refused to show images of white people (including when asked to produce images of the Founding Fathers).

Tech guru and Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen summarized it on X (formerly Twitter): “I know it’s hard to believe, but Big Tech AI generates the output it does because it is precisely executing the specific ideological, radical, biased agenda of its creators. The apparently bizarre output is 100% intended. It is working as designed.”

There is indeed a design to these AIs beyond the basic categorization and generation engines. The responses are not perfectly inductive or generative. In part, this is necessary in order to make the AI useful: filters and rules are applied to make sure that the responses that the AI generates are appropriate, fit with user expectations, and are accurate and respectful. Given the legal situation, creators of AI must also make sure that the AI does not, for example, violate intellectual property laws or engage in hate speech. AI is also designed (directed) so that it does not go haywire or offend its users (remember Tay?).

However, because such filters are applied and the “behavior” of the AI is already directed, it is easy to take it a little further. After all, when is a response too offensive versus offensive but within the limits of allowable discourse? It is a fine and difficult line that must be specified programmatically.

It also opens the possibility for steering the generated responses beyond mere quality assurance. With filters already in place, it is easy to make the AI make statements of a specific type or that nudges the user in a certain direction (in terms of selected facts, interpretations, and worldviews). It can also be used to give the AI an agenda, as Andreessen suggests, such as making it relentlessly woke.

Thus, AI can be used as an effective propaganda tool, which both the corporations creating them and the governments and agencies regulating them have recognized.

Misinformation and Error

States have long refused to admit that they benefit from and use propaganda to steer and control their subjects. This is in part because they want to maintain a veneer of legitimacy as democratic governments that govern based on (rather than shape) people’s opinions. Propaganda has a bad ring to it; it’s a means of control.

However, the state’s enemies—both domestic and foreign—are said to understand the power of propaganda and do not hesitate to use it to cause chaos in our otherwise untainted democratic society. The government must save us from such manipulation, they claim. Of course, rarely does it stop at mere defense. We saw this clearly during the covid pandemic, in which the government together with social media companies in effect outlawed expressing opinions that were not the official line (see Murthy v. Missouri).

AI is just as easy to manipulate for propaganda purposes as social media algorithms but with the added bonus that it isn’t only people’s opinions and that users tend to trust that what the AI reports is true. As we saw in the previous article on the AI revolution, this is not a valid assumption, but it is nevertheless a widely held view.

If the AI then can be instructed to not comment on certain things that the creators (or regulators) do not want people to see or learn, then it is effectively “memory holed.” This type of “unwanted” information will not spread as people will not be exposed to it—such as showing only diverse representations of the Founding Fathers (as Google’s Gemini) or presenting, for example, only Keynesian macroeconomic truths to make it appear like there is no other perspective. People don’t know what they don’t know.

Of course, nothing is to say that what is presented to the user is true. In fact, the AI itself cannot distinguish fact from truth but only generates responses according to direction and only based on whatever the AI has been fed. This leaves plenty of scope for the misrepresentation of the truth and can make the world believe outright lies. AI, therefore, can easily be used to impose control, whether it is upon a state, the subjects under its rule, or even a foreign power.

The Real Threat of AI

What, then, is the real threat of AI? As we saw in the first article, large language models will not (cannot) evolve into artificial general intelligence as there is nothing about inductive sifting through large troves of (humanly) created information that will give rise to consciousness. To be frank, we haven’t even figured out what consciousness is, so to think that we will create it (or that it will somehow emerge from algorithms discovering statistical language correlations in existing texts) is quite hyperbolic. Artificial general intelligence is still hypothetical.

As we saw in the second article, there is also no economic threat from AI. It will not make humans economically superfluous and cause mass unemployment. AI is productive capital, which therefore has value to the extent that it serves consumers by contributing to the satisfaction of their wants. Misused AI is as valuable as a misused factory—it will tend to its scrap value. However, this doesn’t mean that AI will have no impact on the economy. It will, and already has, but it is not as big in the short-term as some fear, and it is likely bigger in the long-term than we expect.

No, the real threat is AI’s impact on information. This is in part because induction is an inappropriate source of knowledge—truth and fact are not a matter of frequency or statistical probabilities. The evidence and theories of Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei would get weeded out as improbable (false) by an AI trained on all the (best and brightest) writings on geocentrism at the time. There is no progress and no learning of new truths if we trust only historical theories and presentations of fact.

However, this problem can probably be overcome by clever programming (meaning implementing rules—and fact-based limitations—to the induction problem), at least to some extent. The greater problem is the corruption of what AI presents: the misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation that its creators and administrators, as well as governments and pressure groups, direct it to create as a means of controlling or steering public opinion or knowledge.

This is the real danger that the now-famous open letter, signed by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and others, pointed to:

“Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?”

Other than the economically illiterate reference to “automat[ing] away all the jobs,” the warning is well-taken. AI will not Terminator-like start to hate us and attempt to exterminate mankind. It will not make us all into biological batteries, as in The Matrix. However, it will—especially when corrupted—misinform and mislead us, create chaos, and potentially make our lives “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/15/2024 - 06:30

Read More

Continue Reading

International

‘Excess Mortality Skyrocketed’: Tucker Carlson and Dr. Pierre Kory Unpack ‘Criminal’ COVID Response

‘Excess Mortality Skyrocketed’: Tucker Carlson and Dr. Pierre Kory Unpack ‘Criminal’ COVID Response

As the global pandemic unfolded, government-funded…

Published

22 hours ago

on

March 14, 2024

By

'Excess Mortality Skyrocketed': Tucker Carlson and Dr. Pierre Kory Unpack 'Criminal' COVID Response

As the global pandemic unfolded, government-funded experimental vaccines were hastily developed for a virus which primarily killed the old and fat (and those with other obvious comorbidities), and an aggressive, global campaign to coerce billions into injecting them ensued.

Then there were the lockdowns - with some countries (New Zealand, for example) building internment camps for those who tested positive for Covid-19, and others such as China welding entire apartment buildings shut to trap people inside.

It was an egregious and unnecessary response to a virus that, while highly virulent, was survivable by the vast majority of the general population.

Oh, and the vaccines, which governments are still pushing, didn't work as advertised to the point where health officials changed the definition of "vaccine" multiple times.

Tucker Carlson recently sat down with Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care specialist and vocal critic of vaccines. The two had a wide-ranging discussion, which included vaccine safety and efficacy, excess mortality, demographic impacts of the virus, big pharma, and the professional price Kory has paid for speaking out.

Keep reading below, or if you have roughly 50 minutes, watch it in its entirety for free on X:

"Do we have any real sense of what the cost, the physical cost to the country and world has been of those vaccines?" Carlson asked, kicking off the interview.

"I do think we have some understanding of the cost. I mean, I think, you know, you're aware of the work of of Ed Dowd, who's put together a team and looked, analytically at a lot of the epidemiologic data," Kory replied. "I mean, time with that vaccination rollout is when all of the numbers started going sideways, the excess mortality started to skyrocket."

When asked "what kind of death toll are we looking at?", Kory responded "...in 2023 alone, in the first nine months, we had what's called an excess mortality of 158,000 Americans," adding "But this is in 2023. I mean, we've  had Omicron now for two years, which is a mild variant. Not that many go to the hospital."

'Safe and Effective'

Tucker also asked Kory why the people who claimed the vaccine were "safe and effective" aren't being held criminally liable for abetting the "killing of all these Americans," to which Kory replied: "It’s my kind of belief, looking back, that [safe and effective] was a predetermined conclusion. There was no data to support that, but it was agreed upon that it would be presented as safe and effective."

Carlson and Kory then discussed the different segments of the population that experienced vaccine side effects, with Kory noting an "explosion in dying in the youngest and healthiest sectors of society," adding "And why did the employed fare far worse than those that weren't? And this particularly white collar, white collar, more than gray collar, more than blue collar."

Kory also said that Big Pharma is 'terrified' of Vitamin D because it "threatens the disease model." As journalist The Vigilant Fox notes on X, "Vitamin D showed about a 60% effectiveness against the incidence of COVID-19 in randomized control trials," and "showed about 40-50% effectiveness in reducing the incidence of COVID-19 in observational studies."

Professional costs

Kory - while risking professional suicide by speaking out, has undoubtedly helped save countless lives by advocating for alternate treatments such as Ivermectin.

Kory shared his own experiences of job loss and censorship, highlighting the challenges of advocating for a more nuanced understanding of vaccine safety in an environment often resistant to dissenting voices.

"I wrote a book called The War on Ivermectin and the the genesis of that book," he said, adding "Not only is my expertise on Ivermectin and my vast clinical experience, but and I tell the story before, but I got an email, during this journey from a guy named William B Grant, who's a professor out in California, and he wrote to me this email just one day, my life was going totally sideways because our protocols focused on Ivermectin. I was using a lot in my practice, as were tens of thousands of doctors around the world, to really good benefits. And I was getting attacked, hit jobs in the media, and he wrote me this email on and he said, Dear Dr. Kory, what they're doing to Ivermectin, they've been doing to vitamin D for decades..."

"And it's got five tactics. And these are the five tactics that all industries employ when science emerges, that's inconvenient to their interests. And so I'm just going to give you an example. Ivermectin science was extremely inconvenient to the interests of the pharmaceutical industrial complex. I mean, it threatened the vaccine campaign. It threatened vaccine hesitancy, which was public enemy number one. We know that, that everything, all the propaganda censorship was literally going after something called vaccine hesitancy."

Money makes the world go 'round

Carlson then hit on perhaps the most devious aspect of the relationship between drug companies and the medical establishment, and how special interests completely taint science to the point where public distrust of institutions has spiked in recent years.

"I think all of it starts at the level the medical journals," said Kory. "Because once you have something established in the medical journals as a, let's say, a proven fact or a generally accepted consensus, consensus comes out of the journals."

"I have dozens of rejection letters from investigators around the world who did good trials on ivermectin, tried to publish it. No thank you, no thank you, no thank you. And then the ones that do get in all purportedly prove that ivermectin didn't work," Kory continued.

"So and then when you look at the ones that actually got in and this is where like probably my biggest estrangement and why I don't recognize science and don't trust it anymore, is the trials that flew to publication in the top journals in the world were so brazenly manipulated and corrupted in the design and conduct in, many of us wrote about it. But they flew to publication, and then every time they were published, you saw these huge PR campaigns in the media. New York Times, Boston Globe, L.A. times, ivermectin doesn't work. Latest high quality, rigorous study says. I'm sitting here in my office watching these lies just ripple throughout the media sphere based on fraudulent studies published in the top journals. And that's that's that has changed. Now that's why I say I'm estranged and I don't know what to trust anymore."

Vaccine Injuries

Carlson asked Kory about his clinical experience with vaccine injuries.

"So how this is how I divide, this is just kind of my perception of vaccine injury is that when I use the term vaccine injury, I'm usually referring to what I call a single organ problem, like pericarditis, myocarditis, stroke, something like that. An autoimmune disease," he replied.

"What I specialize in my practice, is I treat patients with what we call a long Covid long vaxx. It's the same disease, just different triggers, right? One is triggered by Covid, the other one is triggered by the spike protein from the vaccine. Much more common is long vax. The only real differences between the two conditions is that the vaccinated are, on average, sicker and more disabled than the long Covids, with some pretty prominent exceptions to that."

Watch the entire interview above, and you can support Tucker Carlson's endeavors by joining the Tucker Carlson Network here...

Tyler Durden Thu, 03/14/2024 - 16:20

Read More

Continue Reading

Spread & Containment

COVID-19 vaccines: CDC says people ages 65 and up should get a shot this spring – a geriatrician explains why it’s vitally important

As you get older, you’re at higher risk of severe infection and your immunity declines faster after vaccination.

Published

1 day ago

on

March 14, 2024

By

Even if you got a COVID-19 shot last fall, the spring shot is still essential for the 65 and up age group. whyframestudio/iStock via Getty Images Plus

In my mind, the spring season will always be associated with COVID-19.

In spring 2020, the federal government declared a nationwide emergency, and life drastically changed. Schools and businesses closed, and masks and social distancing were mandated across much of the nation.

In spring 2021, after the vaccine rollout, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said those who were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 could safely gather with others who were vaccinated without masks or social distancing.

In spring 2022, with the increased rates of vaccination across the U.S., the universal indoor mask mandate came to an end.

In spring 2023, the federal declaration of COVID-19 as a public health emergency ended.

Now, as spring 2024 fast approaches, the CDC reminds Americans that even though the public health emergency is over, the risks associated with COVID-19 are not. But those risks are higher in some groups than others. Therefore, the agency recommends that adults age 65 and older receive an additional COVID-19 vaccine, which is updated to protect against a recently dominant variant and is effective against the current dominant strain.

You have a 54% less chance of being hospitalized with severe COVID-19 if you’ve had the vaccine.

Increased age means increased risk

The shot is covered by Medicare. But do you really need yet another COVID-19 shot?

As a geriatrician who exclusively cares for people over 65 years of age, this is a question I’ve been asked many times over the past few years.

In early 2024, the short answer is yes.

Compared with other age groups, older adults have the worst outcomes with a COVID-19 infection. Increased age is, simply put, a major risk factor.

In January 2024, the average death rate from COVID-19 for all ages was just under 3 in 100,000 people. But for those ages 65 to 74, it was higher – about 5 for every 100,000. And for people 75 and older, the rate jumped to nearly 30 in 100,000.

Even now, four years after the start of the pandemic, people 65 years old and up are about twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than the rest of the population. People 75 years old and up are 10 times more likely to die from COVID-19.

Vaccination is still essential

These numbers are scary. But the No. 1 action people can take to decrease their risk is to get vaccinated and keep up to date on vaccinations to ensure top immune response. Being appropriately vaccinated is as critical in 2024 as it was in 2021 to help prevent infection, hospitalization and death from COVID-19.

The updated COVID-19 vaccine has been shown to be safe and effective, with the benefits of vaccination continuing to outweigh the potential risks of infection.

The CDC has been observing side effects on the more than 230 million Americans who are considered fully vaccinated with what it calls the “most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history.” Common side effects soon after receiving the vaccine include discomfort at the injection site, transient muscle or joint aches, and fever.

These symptoms can be alleviated with over-the-counter pain medicines or a cold compress to the site after receiving the vaccine. Side effects are less likely if you are well hydrated when you get your vaccine.

Getting vaccinated is at the top of the list of the new recommendations from the CDC.

Long COVID and your immune system

Repeat infections carry increased risk, not just from the infection itself, but also for developing long COVID as well as other illnesses. Recent evidence shows that even mild to moderate COVID-19 infection can negatively affect cognition, with changes similar to seven years of brain aging. But being up to date with COVID-19 immunization has a fourfold decrease in risk of developing long COVID symptoms if you do get infected.

Read more: Mounting research shows that COVID-19 leaves its mark on the brain, including with significant drops in IQ scores

Known as immunosenescence, this puts people at higher risk of infection, including severe infection, and decreased ability to maintain immune response to vaccination as they get older. The older one gets – over 75, or over 65 with other medical conditions – the more immunosenescence takes effect.

All this is why, if you’re in this age group, even if you received your last COVID-19 vaccine in fall 2023, the spring 2024 shot is still essential to boost your immune system so it can act quickly if you are exposed to the virus.

The bottom line: If you’re 65 or older, it’s time for another COVID-19 shot.

Laurie Archbald-Pannone receives funding from PRIME, Accredited provider of medical and professional education; supported by an independent educational grant from GlaxoSmithKline, LLC as Course Director "Advancing Patient Engagement to Protect Aging Adults from Vaccine-Preventable Diseases: An Implementation Science Initiative to Activate and Sustain Participation in Recommended Vaccinations”

Read More

Continue Reading

Trending