{"id":815,"date":"2021-08-17T16:09:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-17T21:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/publichealth\/?p=815"},"modified":"2021-10-12T08:58:02","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T13:58:02","slug":"vaccines-are-like-sunscreen-no-wait-airbags-no-wait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/publichealth\/vaccines-are-like-sunscreen-no-wait-airbags-no-wait\/","title":{"rendered":"Vaccines Are Like Sunscreen \u2026 No, Wait, Airbags \u2026 No, Wait \u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Everyone is bad at describing the vaccines, including me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Katherine J. Wu
The Atlantic
August 12, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past year or so, I\u2019ve been reporting on the COVID-19 vaccines, a job that\u2019s required me to convey, again and again, how inoculations work to boost immunity and why. The shots are new, and immunology is complex<\/a>. So I, like so many others in journalism and science, turned to analogies to help make the ideas of disease prevention and public health tangible. Vaccines, as I\u2019ve written, protect us a lot like umbrellas block out the rain<\/a>, sunscreens shield us from burns and cancers<\/a>, and castle guards fend off raids<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analogies, metaphors, similes, and the like are evocative and memorable. They transform the abstract into the concrete. And they very often work<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>especially when used to depict a virus or an infection, which are almost entirely unseen. <\/em>But a lot of the ideas we link to COVID-19 vaccines\u2014including plenty I\u2019ve used\u2014don\u2019t totally hit the mark. Too many focus on vaccines\u2019 individual perks. And they end up skating over one of the greatest benefits of immunization: a boost in wellness at the community <\/em>level, by cutting down on transmission and, by extension, illness for everyone else. For immunization to truly pack a punch, Amanda Simanek, a social epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, told me, \u201cwe all have to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the full article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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