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Being a Democrat from South Mississippi, I have long believed that I have an obligation to communicate to people in Washington how Americans are feeling outside the Beltway and the corridors of power and wealth. Now, I believe I must speak up about the deep-seated reluctance of many of my friends and neighbors to take the COVID-19 vaccine, due to their distrust of Washington. Simply put: The federal government must take aggressive and immediate actions to dispel the irrational concerns stopping so many Americans from being vaccinated. (Ronnie Shows, 3/26)

The United States’ coronavirus vaccine rollout has finally hit its stride, with well over two million doses administered daily. Soon, vaccines will be available to all adults who want them. Children are the next vaccination frontier. When it comes time to vaccinate them, the same urgency and large-scale coordination efforts driving adult vaccination must continue if we want to sustainably drive down Covid-19 cases and ultimately end the pandemic. Currently, vaccine demand among adults exceeds the supply. But there’s reason to worry that once children are eligible, vaccination rates for them will initially be far lower and rise more slowly than those seen among adults. Children are much less likely than adults to be hospitalized with Covid-19, and deaths from the disease among kids are rare. Parents may wonder, if Covid-19 is relatively harmless for my children, what’s the hurry? (Dr. Jeremy Samuel Faust and Dr. Angela L. Rasmussen, 3/29)

A friend invited me to her home for a birthday party. “Ten of us will be there,” she wrote. “I’m pretty sure we’ve all been vaccinated, so we should be OK. ”It was the first invitation to an indoor dinner I had received in almost a year. Six other friends are planning a tropical vacation and invited me to join them. “Aren’t you worried about Covid?” I asked, feeling a bit nerdy for raising the question. “Not really. Two of us have gotten both our vaccines.” (Robert Klitzman, 3/28)

Anyone who is older than they care to admit remembers the time when smoking not only was expected, but welcome outside the small designated areas designed to corral and shame those within. Smokers and non-smokers mingled easily in offices, hospitals and bars — wherever people tended to gather in clumps large and small. That all changed when science determined the hazardous chemicals within smoke withered the lungs of all who inhaled it. Non-smokers insisted on social distancing from smokers, the kind requiring physical barriers. For those too young to have ever boarded a plane divided into smoking and non-smoking sections — apparently airborne particulates could do what no 3-year-old could, stay in their area — you’ll soon experience what it was like as the vaccinated and non-vaccinated mix in greater numbers. The divide between the two is already emerging. (Scott Craven, 3/28)

For all the spring break partiers in Miami and the eager grandparents boarding planes, there is a silent group — maybe not a majority, but a not-insignificant minority — who aren’t happy that quarantine is most likely drawing to a close. The exact size of this group will never be known because it can be shameful to admit that certain components of lockdown were not only welcome, but downright joy-filled. People with social anxiety, introverts and others who find the “normal” expectations of life stressful woke up to a world that more closely resembled the one of their dreams. ( Maggie Mulqueen, psychologist, 3/28)

Public opinion polling shows that vaccine hesitancy remains prevalent and diverse in Texas, even as the number of Texans vaccinated against COVID-19 slowly climbs. Perhaps the most important lesson after a year of extensive polling is that although there are well-documented partisan differences in the stated intention to get vaccinated among Texans, hesitancy is not only a Republican problem. More Republicans than Democrats expressed hesitancy or outright refusal to get a COVID-19 vaccine, but 1 in 4 Texas Democrats (27%) also expressed reluctance in a recent University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll. This is representative of a broader underlying problem: Skepticism about vaccines exists among a broad array of Texans. (Jim Henson and Joshua Blank, 3/29)

We have seen this coming. We know that early childhood trauma can confer lifelong vulnerability to physical and mental health problems. Today’s middle-schoolers were born during the Great Recession as foreclosure and unemployment rates soared, and parents worried about keeping their children housed and fed. Even before that, income inequality—also strongly associated with worsening health—grew from historically low levels in the mid-20th century to levels not seen since the Gilded Age. Opiate deaths and family disruption spiked as these children were in their school years. Youth suicide rates have been trending up since 2007. The COVID-19 pandemic represents a “second hit” to a population already at risk. (Dr. Larry Wissow, 3/27)

California is in a costly and precarious stalemate, and the educational trajectory of millions of K-12 students hangs in the balance. The situation is particularly dire for Black, brown and Indigenous students. School shutdowns are producing high levels of anxiety and depression, contributing to profound learning loss and exacerbating achievement gaps, and will likely drive more such students to drop out. We are in a crisis within a crisis, and the social, economic and moral consequences will be lifelong and felt by all Californians. (Anthony Iton, 3/28)