‘Inform all of your TikTok buddies to get vaccinated’: Fauci finds a brand new solution to struggle Covid-19

“I will, I will tell all my best friends,” Sioux replied.

In the recent push by the White House and the U.S. Department of Health to increase vaccination rates among adolescents, Fauci – who has become famous during the Covid-19 pandemic for his role as the country’s leading infectious disease expert – has turned this week a number of TikTok personalities joined in a series of talks on the importance of the Covid-19 vaccine.

TikTok – the short-form video app used by many young Americans – grew in popularity in the early days of the pandemic, and influencers on the platform have garnered large audiences.

By chatting with a group of TikTokers – who had between 794,000 and 24.1 million followers – Fauci reached out directly to young Americans across the country on her phone screens to answer questions and dispel common myths about the vaccine.

“Several myths are circulating out there, from aliens taking over your body to getting magnetic to get it[ting] a chip injected into you. It’s all nonsense, so please help us debunk this stuff, ”Fauci said in a conversation with Mia Finney, who is 22 and recently graduated from the University of Southern California.

For her part, Finney – who has 6.4 million followers on TikTok – said talking to Fauci was “kind of a surreal experience.”

Finney said she wanted to speak to Fauci because she knows a lot of young people who are reluctant to get the vaccine or who don’t know whether to get vaccinated because they already have Covid-19.

“If you get Covid, recover, and then get vaccinated, your level of protection will be extremely high. The (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) still recommends that you should get vaccinated for the extra degree if you have an infection.” of protection, “Fauci told her.

“I think it was important for me to give people this information,” Finney said. “Ultimately, everyone is fine, whether or not they have the vaccine, but the fact that I was able to give them information was the biggest impact I had in my opinion.”

Kevin Munoz, a White House spokesman, said the White House, along with HHS, helped connect Fauci with influencers with large youth audiences in an effort to reach this demographic.

The push on the social media platform comes after the White House recognized last week that the US was missing President Joe Biden’s July 4th Covid-19 vaccination goals, saying the country had more to do, to vaccinate younger Americans. The president had set himself the goal of providing 70% of US adults with at least one Covid-19 vaccine by Independence Day. According to the CDC, 67% of US adults had at least one injection by the Friday before the holiday weekend.

Vaccination rates in young adults have been lower and increasing more slowly than other age groups in the United States, and intent to get vaccinated is lower in younger adults, according to studies published by the CDC last month.

If the weekly pace of vaccination continues at the same pace as the week of May 22nd, only 57.5% of adults under 30 will have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of August.

From the White House’s Covid-19 College Vaccine Challenge – an initiative to get colleges involved in vaccinating young Americans – to partnering with Snapchat and incentives like free bagels, burritos, and meditations for vaccinated people that The Biden government has one Series of steps have been taken to reach young Americans with information about the importance of the vaccine. The White House also built a Covid-19 student community corps to provide young people with tools to go into their communities and talk about vaccination.

“The goal of the student community corps is to recognize the power that young people have not only to get vaccinated, but to help their peers vaccinate. And it is also to recognize that that power resides in the fact that young People often want to hear from other young people, “said surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy last month.

Like the students involved in the Corps, TikTokers also have the opportunity to share information with their followers.

Abby Howard, who along with her husband Matt has gained prominence in couple content on TikTok, said the couple’s primary goal in posting a video with Fauci was to provide accurate information about the vaccine.

“There is so much misinformation and we just want to help share good information. People can do what they want with this information, but that was our approach. Hopefully many will see it and the information will lead to more. “Younger people getting vaccinated,” she said.

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