4 ways to refresh your ‘get vaxxed’ message for the fall COVID season

Fall fashion is the best fashion. But there’s another seasonal trend none of us wants to participate in. COVID was in the news again, as the fall transmission season started earlier than anticipated. Here’s some tips and encouragement for you when talking with people about getting vaxxed or boosted, again.

The fall COVID season arrived early! Here’s some tips and encouragement for you when talking to your patients about keeping themselves safe, including being vaxxed or boosted.

Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Anne Marie Liebel, and this is 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication, ranked #20 of Top 100 Podcasts in Social Sciences by Goodpods. Our online course, Equitable Patient Education, promotes high-quality clinical practice in patient education by helping prevent avoidable errors. Learners say, There's a lot of eye-opening information I hadn't considered before. For more information, visit healthcommunicationpartners.com. 

Yes, COVID was in the news again recently. Apparently, the fall transmission season started earlier than anticipated. That’s according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health website. “Case numbers are currently high, but hospitalizations and deaths have not reached the levels of previous surges.” Many experts are now saying about COVID that it has moved from a pandemic to an endemic phase, which generally means “a constant presence rather than a disruptive outbreak,” accorrding to William Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. And i’ll link to that article in the episode notes.

Another expert, Aron Hall, the deputy director for science at the CDC’s Coronavirus and Other Respiratory Viruses Division, told NPR in an interview, “At this point, COVID-19 can be described as endemic throughout the world.” NPR added that “The classification doesn’t change any official recommendations or guidelines for how people should respond to the virus. But the categorization does acknowledge that the SARS-CoV2 virus that causes COVID will continue to circulate and cause illness indefinitely.”

COVID is still killing hundreds of people every week in the US. NPR cites a new report from CDC that COVID is projected to kill close to 50,000 people here in the US every year. This year, and next year, and the year after, according to the new report from CDC. Just here in the US! 50,000 people is not a small number. It paints a bleak and ghastly future image, but I hold with a lot of people who say it doesn’t have to be this way! There are things we can do, and you know it because you are doing them, and you’re helping other people do them, too.

I’m going to give some encouragement for when you need to talk to people about keeping themselves safe. Because this new data underscoring the importance of people getting vaccinated and boosted taking what steps they can to reduce their risk, as NPR puts it, “for the foreseeable future.” So as you’re talking with patients about these steps, let me share some encouragement from an episode about reflecting on your vaccine communication we ran when the COVID vaccines became widely available. 

All right so let's go. Number 1. What