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With 200 million doses administered, America’s vaccine-distribution program has been remarkably successful, but now it is hitting a wall. The rate of COVID-19 vaccinations is dropping; the percentage of people not returning for their second shot has risen. Fortunately, the number of Americans who are resolutely anti-vaccine remains small, a stubborn 13 percent, so finding ways to win over the rest remains an urgent task. (Juliette Kayyem, 4/29)

There is a split scenario unfolding as the world battles the pandemic. In countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, jubilant, newly-vaccinated people hug their loved ones after a long period of separation. In India, distraught families count their dead. Sick people are being turned away from hospitals that have run out of beds and oxygen, as the number of new cases rises to record levels each day, creating a national crisis with global repercussions. (Aditi Sangal, 4/29)

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed outdoor masking guidelines. They declared that fully vaccinated people can go maskless outdoors unless they are in a big crowd of strangers, and the unvaccinated can also forego masks when walking, biking, or running only with members of their COVID-19 “pod” or congregating with small groups of vaccinated people. Not everyone is adopting the new guidelines. While the Pennsylvania Department of Health adopted the new recommendations, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said his state is keeping their more restrictive ones. (4/29)

People turn to religion for comfort and hope in times of crisis and uncertainty, and March 2020 was one of those times. Americans experienced a spike in distress during this tumultuous period, but is it possible that religion could have spared some Americans from that distress? To measure the impact of religion during the early days of the COVID pandemic in the United States, I analyzed data from about 12,000 Americans surveyed March 19–24, shortly after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global health pandemic. (Landen Schnabel, 4/29)

Despite the widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines to health care workers in the United States, there still appears to be a stubborn resistance to getting them among nursing home staff. And unfortunately, that resistance has proved to be fatal: According to a recent study by the CDC, a nursing home in Kentucky experienced a COVID outbreak when an unvaccinated worker triggered a string of infections among residents and staff. And though most residents had been inoculated, the virus still managed to spread its way through the home — disproportionately infecting unvaccinated people — and three residents wound up dead. (4/29)

It has been a year of terrible takes on Covid-19. Despite the presumed universal goal of getting through this pandemic sooner rather than later, a surprising number of Americans have lent their voices and platforms to conspiratorial thinking, rumors and medical myths. Enter comedian and self-styled thought leader Joe Rogan, who, honestly, nobody asked but has nonetheless weighed in with harmful and misinformed opinions about whether young people should be vaccinated against Covid-19. Rogan may play for laughs on his podcast, but none of this is funny. (Dr. Anand Swaminathan, 4/29)

When I received my first dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine last December, nobody paid me to roll up my sleeve. Yet, as vaccination efforts approach an expected tipping point, at which the amount of available vaccine exceeds the number of willing recipients, with the rate of vaccination far below the threshold required for herd immunity, paying people to take their shots likely offers our society’s best chance at stemming the pandemic. Private employers — including American Airlines, Marriott and Dollar General, have already taken the lead in this regard — but payouts are generally low: an extra day off or a few hours pay. The sooner the government starts offering larger cash incentives to the public the safer all of us will be; former Maryland Congressman John Delaney has proposed $1,500. (Jacob M. Appel, 4/30)

Has-been rock star Ted Nugent told the world last week that he has COVID-19.  Nugent’s announcement was an oddity because he previously called the viral pandemic a “leftist scam to destroy” former president Donald Trump. As I watched Nugent’s Facebook Live post, in which he repeatedly hocked up wads of phlegm and spit them to the ground, I got emotional when he described being so sick he thought he “was dying.” But when he trashed the COVID-19 vaccine and warned people against taking it, I realized that the emotion I was feeling was not empathy, it was anger. For the better part of a year, as the coronavirus racked up hundreds of thousands of American deaths, the flickering light at the end of the tunnel was herd immunity — the antibody force-shield that comes when enough people have survived the illness or have been vaccinated against it. "Go get vaccinated, America," President Biden said in his speech to Congress this week, referring to the shot as "a dose of hope.” (Michael J. Stern, 4/30)