In the Media

  • Mom Says No, But Dad Says Yes: The Split At Home Over Vaccinating The Kids

    GBH -- 05/06/2021

    Matthew Simonson, a doctoral student at Northeastern University, a researcher with The COVID States Project and the lead author of a new report “Vaccinating America’s Youth” joined Morning Edition to discuss a new study that looked at parents and their willingness to vaccinate their children.

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  • Poll Shows Parents Are Reluctant to Get Their Children Vaccinated for Covid-19

    The New York Times -- 05/06/2021

    A consortium of universities that includes Harvard, Northeastern and Rutgers has been conducting online polls during the pandemic and recently focused on parents. The group’s latest survey, conducted throughout April and reaching 21,733 adults across 50 states, found that the divide between mothers and fathers in views about the vaccine for children had widened.

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  • How to detect, resist and counter the flood of fake news

    Science News -- 05/06/2021

    Awash in bad information, people have swallowed hydroxychloroquine hoping the drug will protect them against COVID-19 — even with no evidence that it helps (SN Online: 8/2/20). Others refuse to wear masks, contrary to the best public health advice available. In January, protestors disrupted a mass vaccination site in Los Angeles, blocking life-saving shots for hundreds of people. “COVID has opened everyone’s eyes to the dangers of health misinformation,” says cognitive scientist Briony Swire-Thompson of Northeastern University in Boston.

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  • Calls for drug companies to share vaccine formulas grow as global COVID crisis worsens

    CBS News -- 05/06/2021

    Brook Baker, a law professor at Northeastern University who specializes in intellectual property and access to medicines, told CBS News that the current system “has resulted in artificially restricted supplies, artificially high prices and grotesquely inequitable distribution.” “The waiver is saying we cannot let the status quo stand,” Baker said. “We cannot let those intellectual property protections stand in the way of mobilizing the kind of response that the pandemic requires, which is massively increasing vaccine production as quickly as possible and vaccinating everyone in the world as quickly as possible so that we get herd immunity before the virus mutates over and over again.”…

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  • The good news: Our region has the highest vaccination rates in the country. The bad news: We can’t secede

    Boston Globe -- 05/06/2021

    That Republican orthodoxy — that government is not to be trusted (and therefore not adequately funded) — is central to our current predicament, according to David Lazer, a professor of political science and computer science at Northeastern University. Since March of last year, Lazer and researchers at other universities have been analyzing public attitudes to COVID via monthly polls as part of The Covid States Project.

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  • CDC projects a ‘sharp decline’ in Covid cases in the U.S. by July

    NBC News -- 05/05/2021

    Alessandro Vespignani, a computational epidemiologist at Northeastern University, was on one of the modeling teams. “On one side, it was encouraging because we were observing that even in the worst case, we were not going to experience again a huge wave, and the vaccine that was acting as a wall against B.1.1.7,” he said, referring to the coronavirus variant dominant now in the U.S.

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  • US could experience ‘sharp decline’ in COVID-19 cases by July, CDC projects

    Today -- 05/05/2021

    Alessandro Vespignani, a computational epidemiologist at Northeastern University, was on one of the modeling teams. “On one side, it was encouraging because we were observing that even in the worst case, we were not going to experience again a huge wave, and the vaccine that was acting as a wall against B.1.1.7,” he said, referring to the coronavirus variant dominant now in the U.S.

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  • The News About COVID Is Good And Getting Better. It’s Time To Celebrate.

    GBH -- 05/05/2021

    This weekend, I’ll put on a cap and gown for the first time in two years and attend Northeastern University’s commencement activities at Fenway Park. Everyone will be masked and socially distanced, regardless of whether we’ve been vaccinated. But we’ll be together, in person, celebrating the success of our students as their families — well, OK, one guest per graduate — cheer from the stands.

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  • Cryptocurrency begins moving into the mainstream, presents risks and rewards

    Boston 25 -- 05/05/2021

    “It’s incredibly volatile,” said Northeastern University professor Ravi Sarathy. Sarathy specializes in international business and strategy and is currently writing a book on cryptocurrency. He said this type of asset should play a role in a sophisticated investor’s portfolio. He cautioned that many people appear to be getting swept up in the hype.

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  • Charts: See how vaccinations are protecting older people and driving down Mass. coronavirus numbers

    Boston Globe -- 05/05/2021

    Samuel Scarpino, an epidemiologist at Northeastern University, said the lack of that bump among the oldest groups, who were prioritized early to get the vaccines, showed the vaccines had kicked in — and warded off a surge caused by the arrival of the B.1.1.7 variant.

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