President Joe Biden’s White House is teaming up with Snapchat to encourage teenagers to get vaccinated, with the social media platform featuring an augmented reality lens allowing the user to “ask” one of four questions to leaders and experts, including, “Why should I get vaccinated?”
The new Snapchat filter allows users to ask four questions: “Why should I get vaccinated?”; “Where do I go to get vaccinated”; “Will this vaccine actually protect me against variants?”; and “What other scientific info should I know?”
A user who clicks the first question, “Why should I get vaccinated,” is directed to a “call” with President Biden, who says, “Hey folks. We have to get vaccinated,” warning that the new variants are “affecting young people” but providing no further details.
“Getting the vaccine can prevent you from spreading it to your friends and to your family. Let’s end the COVID crisis once and for all,” Biden pleads.
Notably, Biden failed to note that the risk factors, particularly for younger people contracting the virus, are extremely low, lower than original estimates issued over a year ago. According to Worldometer figures, last updated May 14, the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) stood at 1.4 percent, with 98.6 percent of those contracting the virus recovering.
The next question, “Where do I go to get vaccinated,” directs the Snapchat user to a “call” with Vice President Kamala Harris, who states, “90 percent of Americans live within five miles of a vaccination center.”
“If you click on the link below, go to vaccines.gov and you can get all the information about where you can get vaccinated. And also starting May 24, Uber and Lyft are going to give free rides to vaccination sites, so get vaccinated,” she adds.
The third question, which asks if the vaccine will protect against virus variants, features Dr. Anthony Fauci, who says, “A fully vaccinated person right now will be protected against the variants that are currently circulating in the country.”
The final question, “Which other scientific info should I know,” features a call from American viral immunologist Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett stating that the virus will be less likely to transmit or pick up mutations with more people vaccinated.
Data shows young people, under the age of 24 specifically, getting vaccinated at lower rates than older demographics. The Biden administration, which has continued to promote vaccination efforts nationwide with the help of Democrat counterparts in blue states, hopes to have 70 percent of the U.S. population vaccinated by the Fourth of July.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) May 26, data, 39.7 percent of the U.S. population is considered “fully vaccinated.”
The vast majority of those vaccinated are the recipients of Moderna’s and Pfizer-BioNTech’s non-traditional mRNA shots, which the CDC describes as a “new type of vaccine” that functions to “teach our cells how to make a protein—or even just a piece of a protein—that triggers an immune response inside our bodies.”
On Tuesday, Moderna announced its vaccine as completely effective in a study of those ages 12-17. It plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to expand emergency use for adolescents in the coming weeks.
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