persuasive essay pandemic

Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Covid19

How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

11 min read

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Here are the steps to help you write a persuasive essay on this topic, along with an example essay:

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should clearly state your position on a specific aspect of COVID-19. It should be debatable and clear. For example:

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Collect reliable and up-to-date information from reputable sources to support your thesis statement. This may include statistics, expert opinions, and scientific studies. For instance:

COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness data
Information on vaccine mandates in different countries
Expert statements from health organizations like the WHO or CDC

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a clear and organized outline to structure your essay. A persuasive essay typically follows this structure:

Introduction
Background Information
Body Paragraphs (with supporting evidence)
Counterarguments (addressing opposing views)

Step 4: Write the Introduction

In the introduction, grab your reader's attention and present your thesis statement. For example:

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Offer context and background information to help your readers understand the issue better. For instance:

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should present a single point or piece of evidence that supports your thesis statement. Use clear topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. Here's an example:

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and refute them with strong counterarguments. This demonstrates that you've considered different perspectives. For example:

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement in the conclusion. End with a strong call to action or thought-provoking statement. For instance:

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your argument flows logically.

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

Include proper citations and a bibliography page to give credit to your sources.

Remember to adjust your approach and arguments based on your target audience and the specific angle you want to take in your persuasive essay about COVID-19.

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19

When writing a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read:

Check out some more PDF examples below:

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine

Covid19 vaccines are one of the ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but they have been a source of controversy. Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others.

A persuasive essay about the Covid-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.

Below are some examples of persuasive essays on getting vaccinated for Covid-19.

Covid19 Vaccine Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay on Covid Vaccines

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Covid19 has drastically changed the way people interact in schools, markets, and workplaces. In short, it has affected all aspects of life. However, people have started to learn to live with Covid19.

Writing a persuasive essay about it shouldn't be stressful. Read the sample essay below to get idea for your own essay about Covid19 integration.

Persuasive Essay About Working From Home During Covid19

Searching for the topic of Online Education? Our persuasive essay about online education is a must-read.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19

Covid-19 has been an ever-evolving issue, with new developments and discoveries being made on a daily basis.

Writing an argumentative essay about such an issue is both interesting and challenging. It allows you to evaluate different aspects of the pandemic, as well as consider potential solutions.

Here are some examples of argumentative essays on Covid19.

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 Sample

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 With Introduction Body and Conclusion

Looking for a persuasive take on the topic of smoking? You'll find it all related arguments in out Persuasive Essay About Smoking blog!

Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Do you need to prepare a speech about Covid19 and need examples? We have them for you!

Persuasive speeches about Covid-19 can provide the audience with valuable insights on how to best handle the pandemic. They can be used to advocate for specific changes in policies or simply raise awareness about the virus.

Check out some examples of persuasive speeches on Covid-19:

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Persuasive Speech About Vaccine For Covid-19

You can also read persuasive essay examples on other topics to master your persuasive techniques!

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19 requires a thoughtful approach to present your arguments effectively.

Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling persuasive essay on this topic:

Choose a Specific Angle

Start by narrowing down your focus. COVID-19 is a broad topic, so selecting a specific aspect or issue related to it will make your essay more persuasive and manageable. For example, you could focus on vaccination, public health measures, the economic impact, or misinformation.

Provide Credible Sources

Support your arguments with credible sources such as scientific studies, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Reliable sources enhance the credibility of your essay.

Use Persuasive Language

Employ persuasive techniques, such as ethos (establishing credibility), pathos (appealing to emotions), and logos (using logic and evidence). Use vivid examples and anecdotes to make your points relatable.

Organize Your Essay

Structure your essay involves creating a persuasive essay outline and establishing a logical flow from one point to the next. Each paragraph should focus on a single point, and transitions between paragraphs should be smooth and logical.

Emphasize Benefits

Highlight the benefits of your proposed actions or viewpoints. Explain how your suggestions can improve public health, safety, or well-being. Make it clear why your audience should support your position.

Use Visuals -H3

Incorporate graphs, charts, and statistics when applicable. Visual aids can reinforce your arguments and make complex data more accessible to your readers.

Call to Action

End your essay with a strong call to action. Encourage your readers to take a specific step or consider your viewpoint. Make it clear what you want them to do or think after reading your essay.

Revise and Edit

Proofread your essay for grammar, spelling, and clarity. Make sure your arguments are well-structured and that your writing flows smoothly.

Seek Feedback

Have someone else read your essay to get feedback. They may offer valuable insights and help you identify areas where your persuasive techniques can be improved.

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Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19

Here are some persuasive essay topics on COVID-19:

The Importance of Vaccination Mandates for COVID-19 Control
Balancing Public Health and Personal Freedom During a Pandemic
The Economic Impact of Lockdowns vs. Public Health Benefits
The Role of Misinformation in Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
Remote Learning vs. In-Person Education: What's Best for Students?
The Ethics of Vaccine Distribution: Prioritizing Vulnerable Populations
The Mental Health Crisis Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Healthcare Systems
Global Cooperation vs. Vaccine Nationalism in Fighting the Pandemic
The Future of Telemedicine: Expanding Healthcare Access Post-COVID-19

In search of more inspiring topics for your next persuasive essay? Our persuasive essay topics blog has plenty of ideas!

To sum it up,

You have read good sample essays and got some helpful tips. You now have the tools you needed to write a persuasive essay about Covid-19. So don't let the doubts stop you, start writing!

If you need professional writing help, don't worry! We've got that for you as well.

MyPerfectWords.com is a professional persuasive essay writing service that can help you craft an excellent persuasive essay on Covid-19. Our experienced essay writer will create a well-structured, insightful paper in no time!

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Frequently Asked Questions

Are there any ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about covid-19.

Yes, there are ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19. It's essential to ensure the information is accurate, not contribute to misinformation, and be sensitive to the pandemic's impact on individuals and communities. Additionally, respecting diverse viewpoints and emphasizing public health benefits can promote ethical communication.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The impact of COVID-19 on society is far-reaching. It has led to job and economic losses, an increase in stress and mental health disorders, and changes in education systems. It has also had a negative effect on social interactions, as people have been asked to limit their contact with others.

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Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

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The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

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How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

Serious disabled woman concentrating on her work she sitting at her workplace and working on computer at office

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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Persuasive Essay Writing

Persuasive Essay About Covid 19

Top Examples of Persuasive Essay about Covid-19

Published on: Jan 10, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 29, 2024

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

The coronavirus pandemic has everyone on edge. You can expect your teachers to give you an essay about covid-19. You might be overwhelmed about what to write in an essay.

Worry no more!

Here are a few examples to help get you started.

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

Check out some more persuasive essay examples to get more inspiration and guidance.

Examples of Persuasive Essay About the Covid-19 Vaccine

With so much uncertainty surrounding the Covid-19 vaccine, it can be challenging for students to write a persuasive essay about getting vaccinated.

Here are a few examples of persuasive essays about vaccination against covid-19.

Check these out to learn more.

Persuasive essay on the covid-19 vaccine

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Writing a persuasive essay on Covid-19 integration doesn't have to be stressful or overwhelming.

With the right approach and preparation, you can write an essay that will get them top marks!

Here are a few samples of compelling persuasive essays. Give them a look and get inspiration for your next essay.

Integration of Covid-19 Persuasive essay

Integration of Covid-19 Persuasive essay sample

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid-19

Writing an argumentative essay can be a daunting task, especially when the topic is as broad as the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Read the following examples of how to make a compelling argument on covid-19.

Argumentative essay on Covid-19

Argumentative Essay On Covid-19

Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive speech about anything can seem daunting. However, writing a persuasive speech about something as important as the Covid-19 pandemic doesnât have to be difficult.

So let's explore some examples of perfectly written persuasive essays.

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay

Here are seven tips that can help you create a strong argument on the topic of covid-19.

Check out this informative video to learn more about effective tips and tricks for writing persuasive essays.

1. Start with an attention-grabbing hook:

Use a quote, statistic, or interesting fact related to your argument at the beginning of your essay to draw the reader in.

2. Make sure you have a clear thesis statement:

A thesis statement is one sentence that expresses the main idea of your essay. It should clearly state your stance on the topic and provide a strong foundation for the rest of your content.

3. Support each point with evidence:

To make an effective argument, you must back up each point with credible evidence from reputable sources. This will help build credibility and validate your claims throughout your paper.

4. Use emotional language and tone:

Emotional appeals are powerful tools to help make your argument more convincing. Use appropriate language for the audience and evokes emotion to draw them in and get them on board with your claims.

5. Anticipate counterarguments:

Use proper counterarguments to effectively address all point of views.

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and address them directly by providing evidence or reasoning why they are wrong.

6. Stay focused:

Keep your main idea in mind throughout the essay, making sure all of your arguments support it. Donât stray off-topic or introduce unnecessary information that will distract from the purpose of your paper.

7. Conclude strongly:

Make sure you end on a strong note. Reemphasize your main points, restate your thesis statement, and challenge the reader to respond or take action in some way. This will leave a lasting impression in their minds and make them more likely to agree with you.

Writing an effective persuasive essay is a piece of cake with our guide and examples. Check them out to learn more!

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do you begin a persuasive essay.

To begin a persuasive essay, you must choose a topic you feel strongly about and formulate an argument or position. Start by researching your topic thoroughly and then formulating your thesis statement.

What are good topics for persuasive essays?

Good topics for persuasive essays include healthcare reform, gender issues, racial inequalities, animal rights, environmental protection, and political change. Other popular topics are social media addiction, internet censorship, gun control legislation, and education reform.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on society worldwide. It has changed the way we interact with one another. The pandemic has also caused economic disruption, forcing many businesses to close or downsize their operations.

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Elsevier - PMC COVID-19 Collection

Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions

Erin k. james.

a Yale Institute for Global Health, New Haven, CT, USA

b Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

Scott E. Bokemper

c Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

d Center for the Study of American Politics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Alan S. Gerber

e Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Saad B. Omer

f Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA

g Yale School of Nursing, West Haven, CT, USA

Gregory A. Huber

Associated data.

Widespread vaccination remains the best option for controlling the spread of COVID-19 and ending the pandemic. Despite the considerable disruption the virus has caused to people’s lives, many people are still hesitant to receive a vaccine. Without high rates of uptake, however, the pandemic is likely to be prolonged. Here we use two survey experiments to study how persuasive messaging affects COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions. In the first experiment, we test a large number of treatment messages. One subgroup of messages draws on the idea that mass vaccination is a collective action problem and highlighting the prosocial benefit of vaccination or the reputational costs that one might incur if one chooses not to vaccinate. Another subgroup of messages built on contemporary concerns about the pandemic, like issues of restricting personal freedom or economic security. We find that persuasive messaging that invokes prosocial vaccination and social image concerns is effective at increasing intended uptake and also the willingness to persuade others and judgments of non-vaccinators. We replicate this result on a nationally representative sample of Americans and observe that prosocial messaging is robust across subgroups, including those who are most hesitant about vaccines generally. The experiments demonstrate how persuasive messaging can induce individuals to be more likely to vaccinate and also create spillover effects to persuade others to do so as well.

The first experiment in this study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov and can be found under the ID number {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT04460703","term_id":"NCT04460703"}} NCT04460703 . This study was registered at Open Science Framework (OSF) at: https://osf.io/qu8nb/?view_only=82f06ecad77f4e54b02e8581a65047d7.

1. Introduction

The global spread of COVID-19 created an urgent need for safe and effective vaccines against the disease. However, even though several successful vaccines have become available, vaccine hesitancy in the general population has the potential to limit the efficacy of vaccines as a tool for ending the pandemic. For instance, in the United States, the public’s willingness to receive a vaccine has declined from 72 % saying they would be likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine in May 2020 to 60 % of people reporting that they would receive a vaccine as of November 2020 [ 1 ]. Given the considerable amount of skepticism about the safety and efficacy of a COVID-19 vaccine, it has become increasingly important to understand how public health communication can play a role in increasing COVID-19 vaccine uptake.

Vaccination is both a self-interested and a prosocial action [ [2] , [3] , [4] , [5] , [6] , [7] , [8] , [9] ]. By getting vaccinated, people protect themselves from a disease, but they also reduce the chance that they become a vector through which the disease spreads to others. If enough people receive a vaccine, the population gains protection through herd immunity, but this also creates an incentive for an individual to not get vaccinated because they can forgo vaccination and receive protection from others who do vaccinate. Recent research on vaccination in general has demonstrated that people view vaccination as a social contract and are less willing to cooperate with those who choose not to get inoculated [ 10 ]. This work also implies that highlighting the reputational costs of choosing not to vaccinate could be an effective strategy for increasing uptake. Further, appeals to herd immunity and the prosocial aspect of vaccination have been shown to increase uptake intentions [ [11] , [12] , [13] ], but emphasizing the possibility of free riding on other’s immunity reduces the willingness to get vaccinated [ 14 ].

Focusing specifically on vaccination against COVID-19, recent studies have found that messages that explain herd immunity increase willingness to receive a vaccine [ 15 ] and reduces the time that people would wait to get vaccinated when a vaccine becomes available to them [ 16 ]. However, other work has found that prosocial appeals did not increase average COVID-19 vaccination intentions [ 17 ] and the effect of prosocial concerns was present in sparsely populated places, but absent in more densely populated ones [ 18 ]. Given the current state of evidence, it is unclear whether appealing to getting a COVID-19 vaccine as a way to protect others will increase willingness to vaccinate.

Viewing vaccination through the lens of a collective action problem suggests that in addition to increasing individuals’ intentions to receive a vaccine, effective public health messages would also increase people’s willingness to encourage those close to them to vaccinate and to hold negative judgments of those who do not vaccinate. By encouraging those close to them to vaccinate, people are both promoting compliance with social norms and increasing their own level of protection against the disease. Also, by judging those who do not vaccinate more negatively, they apply social pressure to others to promote cooperative behavior. This would be consistent with theories of cooperation, like indirect reciprocity or partner choice, that rely on free riders being punished or ostracized for their past actions to encourage prosocial outcomes [ [19] , [20] , [21] , [22] , [23] ]. Thus, effective messaging could have outsized effects on promoting vaccination if it both causes people to vaccinate themselves and to encourage those around them to do so.

We conducted two pre-registered experiments to study how different persuasive messages affect intentions to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, willingness to persuade friends and relatives to receive one, and negative judgments of people who choose not to vaccinate. In the first experiment, we tested the efficacy of a large number of messages against an untreated control condition (see Table 1 for full text of messages). A subgroup of the messages in Experiment 1 drew on this collective action framework of vaccination and emphasized who benefits from vaccination or how choosing not to vaccinate hurts one’s social image. A second subgroup drew on contemporary arguments about restrictions on liberty and economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Experiment 2, we retested the most effective messages from Experiment 1 on a nationally representative sample of American adults. By utilizing this test and re-test design, we guard against false positive results that are observed by chance among the large number of messages tested in Experiment 1. In our analysis of both experiments, we examined whether specific messages were more effective among certain subgroups of the population.

Experimental treatment messages for Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. All messages add the prose in the table to the content of the Baseline informational control. All of the messages in the table were tested in Experiment 1. The messages that are bolded were retested in Experiment 2.

Experiment 1 was fielded in early July 2020. Participants were randomly assigned to either a placebo control condition in which they read a story about the effectiveness of bird feeders or one of eleven treatment messages. The first message is a Baseline informational control condition that describes how it is important to receive a vaccine to reduce your risk of contracting COVID-19 or spreading it to others. Informational messages have been shown to be effective at increasing COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions [ 24 ]. This message also emphasized that vaccines are safe and estimated to save millions of lives per year. The other messages add additional content to this baseline message.

The subgroup of messages that emphasized collective action varied who would benefit from vaccination or what other people might think of someone who chooses to be a free rider by not vaccinating. Focusing on who benefits from vaccination, the second message invoked Self Interest and reinforced the idea that vaccination is a self-protecting action (“Remember, getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is the single best way to protect yourself from getting sick.”). The third message, Community Interest, instead argued that vaccination is a cooperative action to protect other people (“Stopping COVID-19 is important because it reduces the risk that members of your family and community could get sick and die.”). This message also invoked reciprocity by emphasizing the importance of every-one working together to protect others.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth messages added an invocation of an emotion, Guilt, Embarrassment, or Anger, to the Community Interest message. These messages prompted people to think about how they would feel if they chose not to get vaccinated and spread COVID-19 to someone else in the future. Emotions are thought to play a role in cooperation, either by motivating an individual to take an action because of a feeling that they experience or restraining them from taking an action because of the emotional response it would provoke in others [ [25] , [26] , [27] ]. Further, anticipated emotional states have been shown to promote various health behaviors, like vaccination [ [28] , [29] ].

The seventh and eighth messages evoked concerns about one’s reputation and social image, which influences their attractiveness as a cooperative partner to others. The seventh, a Not Bravery message, reframed the idea that being unafraid of the virus is not a brave action, but instead selfish, and that the way to demonstrate bravery is by getting vaccinated because it shows strength and concern for others (“To show strength get the vaccine so you don’t get sick and take resources from other people who need them more”). The eighth message was a Trust in Science message that highlights that scientists believe a vaccine will be an effective way of limiting the spread of COVID-19. This message suggests that those who do not get vaccinated do not understand science and signal this ignorance to others (“Not getting vaccinated will show people that you are probably the sort of person who doesn’t understand how infection spreads and who ignores or are confused about science.”).

The final three messages drew on concerns about restrictions on freedom and economic activity that were widespread during the COVID-19 pandemic. A pair of messages focused on how vaccination would allow for a restoration of Personal Freedom (“Government policies to prevent the spread of COVID-19 limit our freedom of association and movement”) or Economic Freedom (“Government policies to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have stopped businesses from opening up”). These messages take a value that is commonly invoked in individuals’ decision to not vaccinate [ [30] , [31] ] and reframed vaccination as something that would actually restore freedoms that had been taken away. The final message, Community Economic Benefit, argues that a vaccine will help return people’s financial security and strengthen the economy This message is similar to the Community Interest messages that are described above, but instead focuses on cooperating to restore the economy (“We can all end this outbreak and strengthen the national economy by working together and getting vaccinated”).

2.1. Experiment 1 results

Panel A of Fig. 1 plots the effect of each vaccine message relative to the untreated control group on intention to vaccinate. The intention to vaccinate measure was formed by combining responses to a question about the likelihood of getting a COVID-19 vaccine within the first 3 months that one is available with a question about getting a vaccine within the first year that one is available. Specifically, for respondents who did not answer that they were very likely to vaccinate within the first three months that a vaccine is available to them, we asked how likely they would be to vaccinate within a year. This measure coded those who are very likely in the first three months at the highest value on the scale followed by very likely within a year descending down to very unlikely within the first year. Analyzing the vaccination item separately does not substantively change the results. All outcome variables were scored 0 to 1, with higher values indicating greater willingness to endorse the pro-vaccine action or belief (Underlying regressions appear in Table S1 and unless otherwise noted, all analyses were pre-registered).

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Experiment 1. Messages that frame vaccination as a cooperative action to protect others or emphasize how non-vaccination might negatively affect one’s social image increase reported willingness to advise a friend, and judgment of non-vaccinators. Panel A displays treatment effects for the combined measure of intention to vaccinate, Panel B displays the advise a friend outcome, and Panel C displays the judging a non-vaccinator outcome. Treatment effects for both panels were estimated using OLS regression that included covariates. The effects displayed are a comparison against the placebo control baseline and are presented with 95% confidence intervals. The dashed vertical line is the effect of the Baseline informational control for each outcome.

Compared to the untreated control, the Baseline informational message was associated with modest increases in intention to vaccinate by 0.034 units (95 % CI:0.002, 0.065; p < .05). This effect represents an increase of approximately 6 % in the scale score compared to the outcome in the control condition.

By comparison, the Community Interest, Community Interest + Guilt, Embarrassment, or Anger, Not Bravery, Trust in Science and Personal Freedom messages all produce larger effects, at least qualitatively, than the Baseline informational message on the intention to vaccinate outcome. Effects for the Self-Interest, Economic Freedom, and Community Economic benefit messages were not consistently distinguishable from the untreated control group outcomes, and their effects were indistinguishable from the effects of the Baseline informational message.

The most promising messages were the Not Bravery, Community Interest, and Community Interest + Embarrassment messages. These messages were associated with effects that were statistically distinguishable from the untreated control group (Not Bravery: 0.077 units, 95 % CI: 0.035, 0.119; p < .01, Community Interest: 0.090 units, 95 % CI: 0.050, 0.129; p < .01, Community Interest + Embarrassment: 0.094 units, 95 % CI: 0.054, 0.134; p < .01) at p < .01. Moreover, their effects were always more than twice as large as the Baseline informational treatment and these differences were significant at p < .05 (two-tailed tests). The effects of the Trust in Science message and the Personal Freedom message were not statistically significant when compared to the Baseline informational message.

To put the magnitudes of the effects into context, we re-estimated our analysis after dichotomizing the intended vaccine uptake measure such that those who report they were “somewhat” or “very” likely to get the vaccine, either with three months or a year, are coded as 1 and those who do not are coded 0 (this analysis was not pre-registered). This produced a predicted rate of intended vaccination in the control group of 58.2 %. Respondents who read the Baseline informational message were 7.4 percentage points (95 % CI: 2.9 pp, 12.0 pp; p < .01) more likely to receive a vaccine. Among those assigned to the Not Bravery or Community Interest messages it was predicted to increase by 10.4 percentage points and 12.7 percentage points (Not Bravery: 95 % CI: 4.3 pp, 16.4 pp; p < .01, Community Interest: 95 % CI: 6.7 pp, 18.7 pp; p < .01) respectively, while among those assigned to the Community Interest + Embarrassment message it was predicted to increases by 15.9 percentage points (95 % CI: 10.2 pp, 21.6 pp; p < .01). This last difference was substantively large, representing a proportional increase of 27 % (0.159/0.582) compared to the control condition and a 13 % increase compared to the Baseline informational condition (0.159-0.074)/(0.582 + 0.074).

Turning to the other regarding outcomes that focused on spurring action by others, Panel B plots the effects of each vaccine message relative to the untreated control for advising a friend to receive a vaccine and Panel C plots the effects for negatively judging someone who refuses to receive one. Here, the effect of the Baseline informational intervention was modest and statistically insignificant. However, the Not Bravery, Trust in Science, Personal Freedom, Community Interest, Community Interest + Guilt, and Community Interest + Embarrassment messages had larger effects on both outcomes that were statistically distinguishable from the control outcome.

The most promising message was the Community Interest + Embarrassment message for the advise a friend outcome, which was associated with a 0.09 unit increase in the scale outcome (95 % CI: 0.049, 0.132; p < .01 two-tailed test), an effect that represents an increase of 27 % compared to the mean scale score in the control group. The effect was 0.067 units compared to the Baseline informational message (95 % CI: 0.027, 0.105; p = .001, two-tailed test). We conducted a similar exercise to the one describe above to gauge the relative magnitude of these treatment effects. For the Community Interest + Embarrassment message we estimated a 15 percentage point increase (95 % CI: 0.088, 0.209; p < .01, two tailed test,) in a binary intention to advise others to vaccinate outcome, a proportional increase of 27 % compared to the control group baseline of 53 % (0.15/0.53). This effect was also 6 percentage points larger than the effect of the baseline message (95 % CI: 0.008, 0.121; p = .03, two-tailed test).

The most promising outcome for the negative judgment of non-vaccinators was the Not Bravery message, which had an effect of 0.09 scale points (95 % CI: 0.052, 0.126; p < .01, two-tailed test) compared to the untreated control and 0.072 scale points versus the Baseline information (95 % CI: 0.037, 0.106; p < .01 Baseline message, two-tailed tests). This corresponded to a 21 % increase compared to the scale outcome in the control group (0.09/0.43). These are both substantively and statistically meaningful effects. The Community Interest, Community Interest + Guilt, Community Interest + Embarrassment, Trust in Science, and Personal Freedom messages all produced effects that were statistically distinguishable from the control condition.

We also investigated the robustness of these findings to sample restrictions and whether certain subgroups were more responsive to specific treatment messages (reported in Figures S2-S12 ). Results were generally robust to restricting the sample to those who were over the 10th percentile and under the 90th percentile for completion time. For subgroup analyses, those scoring low in liberty endorsement appeared more responsive to the Baseline treatment and to the Not Bravery message than are those who scored high in liberty endorsement. Those who report being less likely to take risks appeared robustly more responsive to the Not Bravery message than those who were high in risk taking. Those who were high in risk taking appear more responsive to the Personal Freedom message with regard to their own behavioral intentions. Certain groups appeared generically easier to persuade (Democrats rather than Republicans, an important divide that has emerged during the pandemic [ 32 ], and Women rather than Men), but there were no clear differences in which treatments appeared most effective across these groups. We explored the robustness of these subgroup differences in Experiment 2.

Taken together, the most successful messages in Experiment 1 were those that were theoretically motivated by viewing vaccination as a collective action problem. Consistent with previous work that demonstrates that prosocial appeals are effective in promoting vaccination, the Community Interest message and Community Interest + Guilt, Embarrassment, or Anger messages increased COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions. Moving beyond who benefits from vaccination, the Not Bravery and Trust in Science messages that invoked concerns about one’s social image if they choose not to vaccinate also increased uptake intentions. All of the collective action oriented messages increased intentions to advise a friend to vaccinate and negative judgments of those who do not, potentially creating spillover effects that induce others to vaccinate. In addition to this subgroup of messages, we found that reframing vaccination as a way to restore freedom was also effective, though the other messages motivated by contemporary debates about the pandemic were generally no more effective than the Baseline condition.

2.2. Experiment 2 results

Experiment 2 tested the subset of the best performing messages from Experiment 1 on a nationally representative sample in September 2020. Notably, in the several month period between Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, the public had grown increasingly skeptical of a potential COVID-19 vaccine [ 1 ]. Panel A of Fig. 2 plots the effect of each vaccine message, relative to the untreated control group, on the same measure of intention to vaccinate used in Experiment 1. (The model specifications shown in the figure were from our pre-registered specifications, underlying regression appear in Table S2.). Given that we observed the messages from Experiment 1 were effective at increasing vaccine uptake, we pre-registered directional hypotheses for Experiment 2 that tested whether the effects could be replicated on a nationally representative sample. Accordingly, we report one-tailed hypothesis tests and 90 % confidence intervals in the results presented below. Results largely confirmed the patterns observed in Experiment 1.

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Experiment 2. The Not Bravery, Community Interest, and Community Interest + Embarrassment messages increase both intentions to vaccinate and other-regarding outcomes. Panel A displays treatment effects for intentions to vaccinate, Panel B displays the advise a friend, and Panel C displays the judging a non-vaccinator outcomes. Treatment effects for both panels were estimated using OLS regression that included covariates. The effects displayed are a comparison against the placebo control baseline and are presented with 90 % confidence intervals. The dashed vertical line is the effect of the Baseline informational control for each outcome.

The Baseline informational treatment was associated with a modest increase, 0.029 units, in intention to vaccinate (90 % CI: 0.011, 0.046; p < .01, one-tailed test). This effect was a 6 % increase of the observed scale outcome in the untreated control group.

The Community Interest and Community Interest + Embarrassment messages were associated with qualitatively larger effects on intended vaccine uptake. These messages were associated with increases of 0.045 units (90 % CI: 0.021, 0.070; p < .01, one-tailed test) and 0.043 units (90 % CI: 0.019, 0.067; p < .01, one-tailed test), respectively. As with Experiment 1, we recoded those who stated they were “somewhat” or “very” likely to receive the vaccine as 1 and those who did not report that they were likely to receive it as 0 (this analysis was not pre-registered: for consistency we report 90 % confidence intervals). This binary measure produced a predicted rate of intended vaccination in the control group of 51.4 %. Intended uptake was 3.3 percentage points higher in the Baseline information condition (90 % CI: 0.5 pp, 6.0 pp; p < .05, one-tailed test), 3.5 percentage points higher in the Community Interest + Embarrassment condition (90 % CI: −0.1 pp, 7.0 pp; p = .06, one-tailed test), and 5 percentage points higher in the Community Interest condition (90 % CI: 1.3 pp, 0.8.7 pp; p < .05, one-tailed test). The latter effect was proportionally large—10 % compared to the baseline predict rate in the control group (0.050/0.514).

On average, the Not Bravery, Trust in Science, and Personal Freedom messages were approximately as effective as the informational content to which they were added in increasing intention to vaccinate, which differs from Experiment 1 where they modestly outperformed the Baseline informational condition.

Turning to other regarding outcomes, Panel B of Fig. 2 plots effects for advice given to others and Panel C does so for negative judgments of non-vaccinators. The Baseline informational treatment was again associated with statistically significant increases in each outcome. For these outcomes, the Not Bravery, Trust in Science, and both Community Interest messages produced effects that were at least descriptively larger than the Baseline treatment. The effects for the Personal Freedom message were smaller than the Baseline informational treatment, a result that again diverged from Experiment 1.

In terms of advising others to vaccinate, the most effective message was the Community Interest + Embarrassment message, which was also the most effective message in Experiment 1. This effect was 0.07 scale points (90 % CI: 0.043, 0.095; p < .01, one-tailed test), an increase of 14 % compared to the control group average scale score of 0.51 (0.07/0.51). This effect was also statistically distinguishable from the effect of the Baseline informational treatment (difference = 0.045; 90 % CI: 0.020, 0.069; p < .01, one-tailed test). When dichotomizing the advise a friend outcome to better describe the magnitude of the effect, we estimated that the Community interest + Embarrassment message was associated with a 10 percentage point increase (90 % CI: 0.064, 0.140; p < .01, one-tailed test) in intention to advise others to vaccinate compared to the control group, a proportional increase of 27 % compared to the control group baseline of 38 % (0.10/0.38). This effect was approximately 6 points larger than the effect of the Baseline message (90 % CI: 0.026, 0.099; p < .01, one-tailed test).

In terms of judging non-vaccinators, the largest effects were for the Not Bravery and Trust in Science messages, with each effect also statistically distinguishable from the Baseline message. Notably, in this sample the Trust in Science message had large effects on beliefs and actions toward others but appeared ineffective in changing an individual’s own intended vaccination behavior. The Not Bravery message was also the most effective message in this regard in Experiment 1.

We examined three pre-registered differences in subgroup treatment effects to test the patterns observed in Experiment 1. First, confirming Experiment 1 we found that those who did not endorse liberty values were more responsive to the Not Bravery message (compared to the baseline message) than those who endorsed liberty values for the three outcome measures. Second, we did not confirm either preregistered prediction with regard to differences in treatment effects by risk taking that were observed in Experiment 1.

The remaining subgroup comparisons were not pre-registered. Beginning with gender, in comparison to the untreated control, women responded more to the Trust in Science and Community Interest + Embarrassment message than did men (all five outcomes), while men responded more to the Not Bravery and Community Interest (without embarrassment) messages. Democrats were more responsive than Republicans across the board to the different treatment messages, while Republicans appeared to react only to the Community Interest and Community Interest + Embarrassment messages (magnitudes similar to those of Democrats). We observed a similar pattern for differences by baseline vaccine confidence, measured pre-treatment with a multi-item battery of questions [ 33 ]. Those high in vaccine confidence responded to all messages, while those low in confidence responded reliably only to the Community Interest messages.

3. Discussion

Overall, the results point both to a set of effective messages and the potential efficacy of specific messages for some particular subgroups. On average, a simple informational intervention is effective, but it is even more effective to add language framing vaccine uptake as protecting others and as a cooperative action. Not only does emphasizing that vaccination is a prosocial action increase uptake, but it also increases people’s willingness to pressure others to do so, both by direct persuasion and negative judgment of non-vaccinators. The latter social pressure effects may be enhanced by highlighting how embarrassing it would be to infect someone else after failing to vaccinate. The Not Bravery and Trust in Science messages had substantial effects on other regarding outcomes and for some subgroups, but do not appear to be as effective as the Community Interest messages in promoting own vaccination behavior. Importantly, in distinct samples fielded several months apart, the Community Interest, Community Interest + Embarrassment, and the Not Bravery messages produced substantively meaningful increases for all outcomes measures relative to the untreated control, and in some instances did so in comparison to the Baseline information condition.

Our findings are consistent with the idea that vaccination is often treated as a social contract in which people are expected to vaccinate and those who do not are sanctioned [ 10 ]. In addition to messages emphasizing the prosocial element of vaccination, we observed that messages that invoked reputational concerns were successful at altering judgment of those who would free ride on the contributions of others. This work could also help explain why social norm effects appear to overwhelm the incentive to free ride when vaccination rates are higher [ [34] , [35] ]. That is, messages that increased intentions to vaccinate also increased the moralization of non-vaccinators suggesting that they are fundamentally linked to one another. These messages will need to be adapted in specific cultural contexts with relevant partners, such as community leaders.

The robust effect of the Community Interest message advances our current understanding of whether public health messaging that deploys prosocial concerns could be effective at increasing COVID-19 vaccine uptake. The results of both experiments presented here support prior work that demonstrated the effectiveness of communication that explains herd immunity on promoting vaccination [ [15] , [16] ]. It also suggests that a detailed explanation of herd immunity may not be necessary to induce prosocial behavior.

Beyond the theoretical contribution, the results have practical implications for vaccine communication strategies for increasing COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. We identified multiple effective messages that provide several evidence-based options to immunization programs as they develop their vaccine communication strategies. Importantly, the insights into differential effectiveness of various messages by subgroup (e.g. men vs women) could inform messaging targeted to specific groups. Understanding heterogeneous treatment effects and the mechanisms that cause differential responses to persuasive messaging strategies requires additional testing and theoretical development. We view this as a promising avenue for future work.

The experiments presented here are not without limitations. First, we measured intentions to vaccinate at a time when a vaccine was not currently available and the effectiveness and side effects of potential vaccines were not known. This also meant that we could not observe actual vaccination behavior, which is ultimately the outcome of interest. While intentions predict behavior in many contexts [ [36] , [37] ] including vaccination [ [38] , [39] , [40] ], past research examining the effect of behavioral nudges on COVID-19 vaccine uptake has produced divergent evidence when testing the effect of the same treatments in the field on behavior and in a survey experiment on a behavioral intention [ 41 ]. This observation highlights the need for field testing messages that have shown to be successful on increasing uptake intentions in survey experiments to ascertain whether they also increase vaccine uptake. It may be that field tests reveal certain messages are particularly less effective than in the survey context, or that messages are uniformly less effective. Second, given the rapidly evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, attitudes about vaccines may have changed since the experiments were fielded which could also change the efficacy of the messages that we tested. Third, we cannot be sure whether, or how long, the effects we observe here persist. Finally, we only tested text-based messages, but public health messaging is delivered through many mediums, like public service announcements, videos, and images. Future work can adapt the successful messaging strategies found here and test their efficacy when delivered in alternative formats.

Efforts to vaccinate individuals against COVID-19 are currently underway in the United States and it remains important to convince the mass public of the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines to ensure that the threshold for herd immunity is reached. Our experiments provide robust evidence that appealing to protecting others has effects on intentions to get vaccinated and to apply social pressure to others to do so as well.

4. Materials and methods

4.1. ethics statement.

The experiments reported here were fielded under an exemption granted by the Yale University IRB. Informed consent was obtained from participants and they were informed that they could stop the study at any time. Data was collected anonymously and contained no personally identifiable information.

4.2. Experiment 1

Participants and Procedure. Participants were recruited by the vendor Luc.id to take a survey. Of those who were recruited, 4,361 participants completed the survey. An examination of attrition during the survey reveals that attrition was balanced across groups which minimizes concerns that the treatment effects estimated in the main manuscript are affected by attrition. The survey was programmed using the survey software Qualtrics. The survey was fielded between July 3, 2020 and July 8, 2020.

Experimental Design. Participants first completed basic demographic and pre-treatment attitudinal questions and were asked about their experience with COVID-19. After this, participants read a treatment message. They were required to spend at least 20 s on the survey page that contained the message to given them an adequate amount of time to read it. We allocated 2/15 of the sample to the untreated control condition and 1/5 of the sample to the Information baseline condition due to the number of comparisons that would utilize these conditions. Each of the remaining conditions received 1/15 of the sample. The design and analysis were pre-registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (protocol ID: 2000027983).

Outcome Measures. For COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions, participants were asked “How likely are you to get a COVID-19 vaccine within the first 3 months that it is available to you?” and “How likely are you to get a COVID-19 vaccine in the first year that it is available to you?” Respondents answered this question on a five-point scale with end points of “Extremely unlikely” and “Extremely likely.” The main text describes how these items were combined for analysis. Turning to the likelihood of advising someone to vaccinate, respondents were asked “How likely are you to advise a close friend or relative to get vaccinated against COVID-19 once a vaccine becomes available?” Respondents also answered this question on a five-point scale with end points of “Extremely unlikely” and “Extremely likely.” Finally, for judging someone who chooses not to vaccinate, respondents read “we would like you to think about a friend or relative who chose not to receive a COVID-19 vaccine when it is available. What would you think about this person? Are they…”. This prompt was followed by four traits: trustworthy, selfish, likeable, and competent. The response options were “not at all”, “slightly”, “somewhat”, “mostly”, and “very.”

Analysis. We used OLS regression with robust Huber-White standard errors and indicators for assigned treatment to estimate treatment effects. We use robust standard errors to address the heteroscedasticity observed when estimating our primary analysis models without them. We included covariates as described in the Supplementary Materials . Comparisons across treatments are from linear combination of coefficients tests. For the subgroup analyses, we restricted the sample to the stated criteria and estimate the model specified here on the subsample. For liberty endorsement and risk taking, we determined who was high and low by splitting the sample at the mean.

4.3. Experiment 2

Participants and Procedure. Participants ( n = 5,014) were recruited by the vendor YouGov/Polimetrix. YouGov provides subjects using a sampling procedure that is designed to match a number of Census demographics. To determine the sample size, we conducted a power analysis to detect effects that were 80 % as large as those observed in Experiment 1. The experiment was fielded between September 9, 2020 and September 22, 2020.

Experimental Design. Participants first completed basic demographic and pre-treatment attitudinal questions and were asked about their experience with COVID-19. Participants were randomly assigned to one of seven conditions: the untreated control, the Information baseline control, Community Interest, Community Interest + Anticipated Embarrassment, Not Bravery, Trust in Science, or Personal Freedom. As in Experiment 1, more participants were assigned to the untreated control condition and the Baseline information control condition, 1/5 and 3/10 of the sample respectively. The remaining five conditions each received 1/10 of the sample. Participants were required to spend at least 30 s on the survey page that had the treatment message. The design and analysis were pre-registered at Open Science Framework.

Outcome Measures. The outcome measurement was the same as described in Experiment 1 with the exception of intelligent being added to the judgment of a non-vaccinator scale.

Analysis. We used the same modeling approach described above to produce the results displayed in Fig. 2 . We included covariates as described in the Supplementary Materials . For subgroup analyses, we estimated OLS regression models with an indicator variable if a person was a member of a subgroup (e.g. high endorsement of liberty) and zero otherwise.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Erin K. James: Conceptualization, Writing- original draft, Writing- review and editing. Scott E. Bokemper: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analyses. Alan S. Gerber: Conceptualization, Writing- review and editing. Saad B. Omer: Conceptualization, Writing- review and editing. Gregory A. Huber: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analyses, Writing- original draft, Writing- review and editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge support for the Tobin Center for Economic Policy at Yale University. EKJ and SBO were supported by the Yale Institute for Global Health.

SEB, ASG, and GAH received support from the Institution for Social and Policy Studies and the Center for the Study of American Politics at Yale University.

Appendix A Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2021.10.039 .

Appendix A. Supplementary material

The following are the Supplementary data to this article:

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Published: 01 February 2022

Persuasive narrative during the COVID-19 pandemic: Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s posts on Facebook

Sanjana Arora ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0107-7061 1 ,
Jonas Debesay 2 &
Hande Eslen-Ziya ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7113-6771 1

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 9 , Article number: 35 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Cultural and media studies
Politics and international relations

This article explores the Facebook posts of Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg to highlight the key features of her crisis communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws on data from Solberg’s Facebook posts from February 27, 2020 to February 9, 2021 (i.e., starting from the day when the first case of COVID-19 was recorded in Norway until the time of data collection for this study). Out of her 271 posts, 157 of them were about COVID-19 and were chosen for analysis. The analyses identified five major themes: (1) Promoting responsibility and togetherness (2) Coping (3) Being in control amidst uncertainty (4) Fostering hope and (5) Relating with the followers. Drawing inspiration from Boin, Stern and Sundelius’, work on persuasive narratives, this study shows the ways that Solberg’s posts about COVID-19 exhibit all five identified frame functions. In addition, the findings add contextual nuances to the frame functions through the theme of ‘Responsibilization and togetherness’, which are reflected through references to Norwegianness and the cultural concept and practice of dugnad . This study adds to our knowledge about how persuasive narratives are incorporated into the social media communication strategies of leaders and highlights the usefulness of this framework for studying ongoing and future crises.

Anger is eliminated with the disposal of a paper written because of provocation

Interviews in the social sciences

Persistent interaction patterns across social media platforms and over time

Introduction.

The economic and social disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is having major impacts on people’s livelihoods and their health. As of 18 April 2021, there have been 140,322,903 confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections and 3,003,794 deaths (WHO, 2021 ), making the COVID-19 pandemic an unprecedented global health crisis of the century. As countries across the world grapple with mitigating the risks associated with the pandemic, communication—an essential component of planning, response, and recovery during crisis (Houston et al., 2014 )—has been one of the integral parts of the crisis management (Reddy and Gupta, 2020 ). Crisis communication highlights legitimation strategies, but also indicates how government institutions themselves make sense of crises (Brandt and Wörlein, 2020 ). Moreover, crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic can disrupt the socio-political order of societies, leaving a cognitive void in the minds of the public that can be filled with fear and uncertainty (Boin et al., 2016 ). In Norway, COVID-19 has been called a fear-driven pandemic that is based on alarming information of long-term illness and disability that is out of politicians control (Vogt and Pahle, 2020 ). Having control over the dramaturgy of political communication is thus central to effective leadership and crisis management (Boin et al., 2016 ). Effective communication can help societies handle uncertainty and promote adherence to behaviour change while fostering hope among the citizens (Finset et al., 2020 ).

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to rapidly evolve, and social media plays a pivotal role in meeting the communication needs of the public during such crisis (Van Dijck, 2013 ). As social media use increases during crises, leaders and public officials may utilise this platform to communicate, which in return helps reduce public panic and builds trust (Kavanaugh et al., 2012 ). As a result of the cultural and symbolic value of social media in contemporary times (Jenzen et al., 2021 ), the communication of public leaders in the midst of uncertainty and fear facilitates interpersonal and group interaction. Research has shown that, when compared to the traditional media platforms, social media platforms are used by leaders and elected officials to communicate, inform, and engage with their citizens (Golbeck et al., 2010 ). They use social media to spread messages farther and faster than it would be possible with traditional media (Sutton et al., 2013 ). What leaders post on social media can give insights into their communication and leadership strategies during crises. Understanding how leaders communicate with the public during crises will not only provide us with the knowledge about their governance styles but will also guide us to their meaning-making in times of uncertainty. Based on this assumption we will be studying the Facebook posts of Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, with the aim to highlight the key features of her communication. In doing so, we will take an exploratory rather than confirmatory perspective (Boudreau et al., 2001 ).

Solberg, member of the Conservative Party and in power since 2013, was defeated by the centre-left as this paper was being revised. Solberg has had a long career in politics, becoming a deputy representative to the Bergen City Council in 1979 when she was 18 years old. She was elected to the Parliament in 1989 where she was the youngest member of her party group (Notaker and Tvedt, 2021 ). Solberg’s tough stance on issues such as immigration earned her the nickname of ‘Jern-Erna’ [Iron Erna] (Reuters, 2013 ). However, upon her appointment as Prime Minister, Solberg displayed a ‘softer side’ by caring about voters’ jobs, health, and schools (Notaker and Tvedt, 2021 ).

The first Norwegian COVID-19 patient was diagnosed on February 26, 2020. While the initial spread of infection was relatively slow, cases increased quickly by March 12 th , after winter break for schools ended and many Norwegians returned from skiing holidays in Northern Italy (Dagsavisen, 2020 ). On March 12, the Norwegian Directorate of Health (NDH) adopted comprehensive measures to prevent the spread, which included closing day care centres, schools, and educational institutions. The measures also included a ban on cultural events, closed swimming gyms and pools, a halt to all service provisions that involved being less than one meter away from another person, and prohibiting visits to recreational cabins Footnote 1 , among others. Behavioural measures such as recommendations to keep physical distance, encourage handwashing, quarantine, stay home when ill, work from home, and avoid public transportation were also included. Following the lockdown, Norway became the first European country to announce that the situation was under control due to low levels of hospitalizations and mortalities (Christensen and Lægreid, 2020 ). In Norway, as of March 22, 2021, there have been over eighty thousand confirmed cases of coronavirus infection and more than six hundred deaths due to COVID-19. Norway has had far fewer COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospitalizations per capita than most other countries in Western Europe or the United States (Christensen and Lægreid, 2020 ). Compared to its Scandinavian neighbours Denmark and Sweden, the proportion of cases of infections and deaths have been much lower (WHO, 2021 ), despite the three countries sharing similar social welfare and healthcare systems. Recently, a report submitted by the Corona Committee in Norway also concluded that the overall handling of the crisis by the government has been good. Not only has the number of infections and deaths in Norway been much lower than most countries in Europe, but the healthcare services have also remained stable, and society has remained relatively open (Lund, 2021 ). It is probable that good governance and responsible leadership demonstrated by the Norwegian cabinet and Prime Minister Erna Solberg contributed to this success.

In Norway, there is considerably less focus on individualization of candidates in political parties as compared to for instance the US, since the electoral system in Norway is based on proportional representation (Karlsen and Enjolras, 2016 ). Despite this, with the presence of digital and social media, there has been increasing focus on the individual candidates, leading to ‘decentralising personalisation’ (Karlsen and Enjolras, 2016 ; Balmas et al., 2014 ). Given this context, Erna Solberg’s Facebook account during the COVID-19 pandemic serves as an intermediary platform between the government’s role and her own personal profile as the Prime Minister who has been handling the COVID-19 crisis. Solberg has used Facebook more actively than other outlets like Twitter and has more followers on Facebook than any other platform. The proportion of Facebook users in Norway vis-a-vis other social media platform is also the highest (for example, 84% of people use Facebook compared to 22% who use Twitter who use Twitter) (Werliin and Kokholm, 2016 ). Facebook thus serves as an important platform for public leaders in Norway during crises, and therefore, by analysing Solberg’s Facebook posts, we aim to demonstrate the key features of her communication strategy during the COVID-19 crisis.

Background on crisis and crisis communication

Crisis is defined as a rare, and significant public situation creating undesirable consequences (Coombs, 2015 ; Gruber et al., 2015 ). In most cases it is ‘an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes’ (Coombs, 2015 : p. 3). Crisis communication on the other hand is referred as the strategies used to lessen the uncertainties during crisis via the dissemination and exchange of information (Collins et al., 2016 ). Effective crisis communication establishes reliability and maintains public trust. It should be frequent, consistent and involve compassionate messages conveyed in an inspired and transformational communication style. It is essential that public officials and leaders when communicating crisis relevant information be efficient and informative. Past research has shown the importance of repetition of the consistent interaction to help the message reach the recipients clearly and increase compliance behaviour in cases of crisis (Stephens et al., 2013 ). Inconsistent messages on the other hand were found to cause misperception and confusion, leading to a non-compliant behaviour by the recipients. The content of the message as well as its tone is also an important indicator of whether the recipients will comply or not (Sutton et al., 2013 ). Sources of crisis communication, such as leaders and public health officials, are perceived to be reliable and trustworthy when they exhibit concern and care (Heath and O’ Hair, 2010 ). In addition, they can be more effective in building relationship with the public, if they consider the cultural factors that play a role in their communicating about risks (Aldoory, 2010 ).

Boin et al. ( 2016 ) argue that crisis communication is one of the key challenges, which leaders face during a crisis situation. During crisis communication, leaders are required to frame ‘meaning’ of the crisis in order to shape how public perceives the risks, consequences and how they respond to the measures being taken. Developing a persuasive narrative in communication is thus integral to succesful framing of the crisis and for a strategic leadership. The construction of a successful persuasive narrative requires five frame functions: namely that the narrative will offer a credible explanation of what happened, it will provide guidance, instil hope, show empathy, and suggest that leaders are in control (Boin et al., 2016 ). In doing so, leaders aid the public’s understanding of the facts associated with crisis while sumltaneously acknolwedging and appealing to collective emotions. In incorporating these frame functions, leaders are posed with various choices and decision-making such as how they choose to or not choose to dramatise the situation, the language that they use and how they appeal to the colleactive emotions and stress.

As digital media technologies became popular resources for getting and spreading information, public officials and leaders also increasingly started using them as domains during the crises. In fact, for some scholars the use of social media while enabling mutual interaction between the leaders and recipients has altered the field of crisis communication altogether. For instance, it was found that as social media enables constant and effective communication, it was used more regularly than traditional media outlets during crisis (Kim and Liu, 2012 ). Similarly, Utz et al. ( 2013 ) discussed how for effective crisis communication strategy, the use of media channels, social media—Twitter, and Facebook—versus traditional— newspapers—was more critical than the type of the crisis. Moreover, Schultz et al. ( 2011 ) concluded that when compared to traditional media networks, crisis communication received less negative response when social media was used. Hence, it is not to our surprise that public officials nowadays are turning to social media platforms for communicating with the masses during crisis. They not only use these tools to communicate about crisis but also request information from the public. This was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis where social media was employed by political leaders across the globe to mediate the communication of information about the pandemic as well as for reaching out to their citizens. This paper by focusing on the Norwegian case and more specifically on the Norwegian Prime Minister’s Facebook use during the time of COVID-19 pandemic aims to explore the use of social media platforms by political leaders during crisis. Our goal is to better understand how political leaders adapt social media technologies in their communication strategies during crises.

Our data that covers Erna Solberg’s Facebook posts between February 27, 2020, and February 10, 2021 (a total of 271 posts) were extracted from Footnote 2 into an Excel sheet. A total of 114 posts were removed as they were not related to COVID-19 leaving us 157 posts for further analysis. To aid the coding process, we noted the variables presented in Table 1 . These are: date, number of interactions, number, and type of reactions (e.g., angry, sad, like, etc.), URLs of links shared, and a description of the content of the posts that was later used in the qualitative analysis. We also noted if the posts were made during any particularly critical period (e.g., before, during or after new restrictive measures were introduced). The content of the posts and the number of likes and other reactions derived from this data should be considered a ‘snapshot’ of Solberg’s posts as they appeared at the time of data collection (Brügger, 2013 ), as it is possible that some posts have been subsequently removed, or that the numbers and types of reactions to the posts have changed by the publication date

The data was analysed through thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006 ): in the first step, we read all posts and generated the first set of codes. Next, we combined all the similar codes while labelling them in clusters and organised them into analytical themes/categories (see Fig. 1 ). The authors then discussed and reviewed these analytical themes and merged them into aggregate/conceptual themes. Lastly, we reviewed the aggregate themes through the lens of the five frame functions of persuasive narrative and identified commonalities and differences. We have included some posts under each theme to illustrate our analytical process and illuminate the themes (Sandelowski, 1994 ). All posts presented here were translated from Norwegian to English by the authors.

Schematic formulation of a theme from the categories captured in posts.

Our analysis resulted in five themes: (1) Promoting responsibility and togetherness (2) Coping (3) Being in control amidst uncertainty (4) Fostering hope and (5) Relating with the followers. In reviewing our findings from the framework of Boin et al. ( 2016 ), we found that all five frame functions of persuasive narrative were embedded in Solberg’s posts and aligned with our themes. Below we discuss our themes with reference to frame functions of Boin et al. ( 2016 ) for a persuasive narrative and in doing so, add contextual nuances to each theme.

Promoting responsibility and togetherness: we are in this together

Analysis of Solberg’s posts revealed a strong message of responsibility and togetherness. In almost all shares, she not only emphasized solidarity but also called for courage and responsibility. This Facebook post, shared soon after comprehensive shut-down measures were introduced, shows how important, for Solberg, was Norwegian solidarity expressed as ‘we’ (March 12, 2020):

Dear everyone. In times of crisis, we understand how dependent we are on each other. What unites us is more important than what separates us. This is not the time for ‘I’. This is the time for ‘we’.

Lunn et al. ( 2020 ) note that citizens are isolated during government induced or self-imposed quarantines: appeals to collective action and a spirit of ‘we-are-in-it-together’ are important ways to ensure compliance with quarantine and hence curb the rate of infection. Leaders in countries such New Zealand, UK, Brazil have also been found to have used a similar narrative emphasizing patriotic duty, love of country, and coming together as one, to mobilise community action (Dada et al., 2021 ).

Her posts were also imbued with appreciation and expression of gratitude towards healthcare workers and those who follow rules. For example, after introduction of the ban to travel to cabins and after the government’s decision to extend regulations until after Easter, Solberg posted the following on April 4, 2020, receiving a high number of likes:

I feel proud when I see how we handle this together. Many thanks to everyone who follows the advice from the health authorities. Many thanks to everyone in the health service who works hard and perseveres. Many thanks to all Norwegians for the patience, love and solidarity we now show each other

The use of the word ‘I’ and how it was being used in reference to ‘feel[ing] proud’, we argue, highlights the ‘positioning of self’ by Solberg. Davies and Harré ( 1990 ) claim that development of the notion of ‘positioning’ is a contribution to the understanding of personhood, and how speakers choose to position their personal identity vis-a-vis their discontinuous personal diversity (such as being the Prime Minister, politician, Norwegian citizen, etc.). In such posts, whether intentionally or unintentionally, we also see the discursive practices through which Solberg allocates meaning to her position as a Prime Minister by emphasising that she feels proud upon seeing those who follow advice. At the same time, her emphasis on ‘we’, as in how ‘ we handle this together’, places her as a member of the Norwegian masses.

Moreover, such references to togetherness and solidarity also reflect attempts to utilise the existing nationalistic cultural repertoire of the Norwegian concept of dugnad . For example, on New Year’s Day following the Gjerdrum community disaster (a sudden and unexpected mudslide that destroyed several residential houses) and rise in the number of infections during the holiday period (2125 reported cases on December 29, 2020), Solberg posted the following post:

[…] During the year we have put behind us, Norway has lined up for the big dugnad . People have put their interests and dreams on hold to protect the elderly and the risk groups. It has saved lives. I am deeply grateful, proud and touched, for the way the Norwegian people have handled the biggest challenge for our society since World War II. We lined up for each other when it mattered most…

Dugnad in Norwegian is voluntary work that is performed as a collective effort (Moss and Sandbakken, 2021 ). Nilsen and Skarpenes ( 2020 ) discuss how the concept of dugnad is embedded in a moral repertoire of the socially responsible citizen that is indicative of a specifically Norwegian welfare mentality and conclude that dugnad is imperative for the sustainability and resilience of the Norwegian welfare model. Before the pandemic, Simon and Mobekk ( 2019 ) argued that the concept of dugnad is central to Norwegian culture, inculcating prosocial and cooperative behaviour, and thereby plays a role in Norway being one of the most egalitarian democracies and having high levels of equality and reciprocity. In the context of COVID-19, social anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen ( 2020 ) pointed out that one reason for the success of the Norwegian approach was the mobilisation of broader society to fight COVID-19, driven by the notion of dugnad . Similarly, Moss and Sandbakken ( 2021 ) analysed data from press conferences and interviews with members of the public and found that many participants mentioned liking how the government talked of ‘a spirit of dugnad ’ ( dugnadsånd ), appealing to shared voluntary work rather than strict rules. The authors posit that in a pandemic it is crucial to create and use meta-narratives that are a good fit with the context in order to aid meaning-making and increase compliance. The use of dugnad as a cultural repertoire has, however, met with criticism from some scholars, who argue that ‘a word associated with solidarity, unity, and voluntary work obscures the forced nature of the measures’ (Tjora, 2020 ) and shifts the onus for finding solutions onto individual citizens or groups (Nilsen and Skarpenes, 2020 ; Hungnes, 2016 ).

Despite the criticism of imbibing such cultural repertoire, the alignment of the key values of Norwegian society with the core message of encouraging collective action is essential for a crisis narrative to be politically effective (Boin et al., 2016 ). Furthermore, the theme of ‘Promoting responsibility and togetherness’ shows the context specific nature of crisis communication narrative in the case of COVID-19 in Norway and therefore adds to the components for a persuasive narrative.

Coping: everything will be fine

Solberg’s Footnote 3 posts also carried messages that address the consequences of coping with COVID-19, namely self-isolation, and loneliness. For instance, her posts guided followers in dealing with loneliness and maintaining general physical and mental health. The Norwegian government, like that of many other countries, had introduced measures such as mandatory quarantine and social distancing rules to manage the spread of the virus. Studies have shown that home confinement during COVID-19 has negatively affected the emotional state of individuals due to depression and anxiety and has led to or increased a sedentary lifestyle (Sang et al., 2020 ). Thus, emphasis on the well-being of the population during COVID-19 is important for effective crisis management (WHO, 2020a ) because increased well-being would reinforce its coping abilities during illness and hardships. As these are not the direct effects of the COVID-19 infection, but a result of the contagion containment measures imposed on citizens by the government, we observe Solberg taking responsibility and providing solutions to help. In doing so, she appears sensitive and caring towards the public.

Christensen and Lægreid ( 2020 ) attribute the ‘high-performing’ handling of the pandemic in Norway to the initial focus on suppression, followed by a control strategy. The authors further examine the ideas that having successful communication with the public, a collaborative and pragmatic decision-making style, the country’s resourcefulness, and high trust of government all contributed to the relative success in Norway. Adopting the correct and effective strategy indeed heavily influences the outcomes of crises. However, to fill the ‘cognitive void’ that the public might be experiencing, leaders need to manage the meaning-making process and ensure legitimacy of their actions (Boin et al., 2016 ). Solberg and the other ministers played an important role in communicating with citizens and the media through daily media briefings together with the NDH (Norwegian Directorate of Health) and NIPH (Norwegian Institute of Public Health) (Christensen and Lægreid, 2020 )

Solberg emphasized the impact of loneliness, for example, during one of the first holiday periods during the pandemic when comprehensive shut-down measures were introduced, she wrote:

Many people may feel lonely during holidays such as Easter, and the corona crisis exacerbates this. Therefore, I would like to encourage everyone to call someone you know is alone at Easter. The little things can mean a lot. Happy Easter!

A study by Blix et al. ( 2021 ) on the topic of mental health in the Norwegian population during the COVID-19 pandemic found that a substantial proportion of the population experienced significant psychological distress in the early phases. More than one out of four reported ongoing psychological distress over the threshold for clinically significant symptoms. Two other categories of individuals (those recently exposed to violence and those with pre-existing mental health problems) were found to be at special risk but worrying about the consequences of the pandemic was also found to contribute negatively to mental health. In this regard, Shah et al. ( 2020 ) argued that several nations have failed to address the mental health aspect among the public, as far more effort is being focused on understanding the epidemiology, clinical features, transmission patterns, and management of COVID-19. Solberg’s open discussion about mental health during the pandemic implies a situation-specific and data-driven strategy of managing the less visible effects of the pandemic and show insight in anticipating future needs (Han et al., 2020 ).

Moreover, Solberg’s posts also subtly utilised the Norwegian concept of friluftsliv , which translates as ‘free air life,’ a philosophy of outdoor living and connection with nature (Henderson and Vikander 2007 ). Friluftsliv is associated with grand narratives of Norwegian national identity depicting outdoor adventures, foraging, and a deep connection to nature (Jørgensen-Vittersø, 2021 ). For example, with the re-opening of DNT [Den Norske Turistforening] cabins in mid-2020, Solberg in her post on June 11 emphasized the importance of being outdoors in fresh air:

We need to use our bodies and get out into the light and fresh air. It is important for both physical and mental health! I hope many have a good and active Norwegian holiday this year!

In these posts, Solberg also shared pictures of herself being outdoors. In such ways, Solberg appeared to be offering not only guidance for coping with the challenges and consequences of living during the pandemic, but also emphasizing one characteristic of the Norwegian culture, which they are proud of—spending time in nature. Be it advice to spend time in nature, or to keep social distance or self-isolation, we consider that Solberg’s approach to coping aligns with the frame function of ‘offering guidance’. During a crisis, leaders have a window of opportunity during which they can communicate a frame to not only make sense of the crisis but also to provide guidance and to portray themselves as attentive and concerned about the challenging circumstances faced by the public (Boin et al., 2016 ). By depicting herself as attuned to the emotions experienced by her followers during the pandemic and by utilising the moment to suggest ways of coping, Solberg’s communication encapsulates the frame function of offering guidance for a persuasive narrative.

Being in control amidst uncertainty

In her posts, Solberg presented a narrative of being in control amidst uncertainty, which aligns with two of the frame functions of Boin et al. ( 2016 ), namely offering a credible explanation and suggesting that leaders are in control. In times of a crisis, it is important that leaders do not downplay the gravity of the situation or claim unrealistically optimistic scenarios (Boin et al., 2016 ). We see that Solberg maintained a balance by providing a detailed explanation of her actions and the reasons behind the restrictive measures taken. At the same time, she acknowledged the uncertainty inherent in the ever-changing crisis and demonstrated her concern. According to Lunn et al. ( 2020 ), in situations characterised by uncertainty and fear, responsible leaders need to signal that they are in control of the situation, which can be demonstrated by making decisions with confidence and honesty. Moreover, it is also essential that leaders do not make promises that are impossible or unrealistic, because doing that can impede the persuasiveness of their narrative by affecting their credibility later (Boin et al., 2016 ). In Solberg’s posts, we see that she displays confidence but also the reality of uncertainty and concern, which is a sign of effective leadership and shows ‘bounded optimism’ (Brassey and Kruyt, 2020 ). The following post where she writes about her worries and concerns followed by advice is a good example of credibility and control:

I am worried. Right now, we have ongoing outbreaks in Bergen, Oslo, Trondheim and Hammerfest… We know that vigorous work is being done intensively in these municipalities with infection detection and other measures. Although Norway has relatively low infection rates, we also register here at home that the number of hospital admissions and the number of infected have increased recently. We now have the highest number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 since May… We also see that the infection has begun to spread to older age groups. And there is a significant risk that the numbers will continue to rise as we see in Europe. That is why we have today announced new national austerity measures next week. We can still reverse the trend here at home…

A demonstration of concern from role models has been shown to have a role in persuading the public to adhere to recommendations (Simon and Mobekk, 2019 ). Tannenbaum et al. ( 2015 ) note that fear is easier to handle when it is acknowledged, which relates to the idea of ‘citizens being anxious enough to take the advice from the authorities to heart and optimistic enough as to feel that their actions make a difference’ (Petersen, 2020 ). Inculcating ‘optimistic anxiety’ (Tannenbaum et al., 2015 ) is therefore an important feature of crisis communication narratives.

Another important nuance that emerges from Solberg’s posts is her comparisons to other countries to draw attention to the seriousness of the situation. For example, on November 5, 2020, Solberg made the following post announcing new national measures, which received over 5000 likes:

My message to the Norwegian people is: Stay at home as much as possible. Have the least possible social contact with others. It is absolutely necessary to avoid a new shutdown. Norway is at the beginning of the second wave of infection… The virus is spreading rapidly and all counties now have outbreaks. The government is therefore introducing new national infection control measures… If the current rate of infection continues, the number of inpatients in intensive care units will increase sharply in the coming weeks. This will lead to less intensive capacity for other seriously ill people. We are now where the Netherlands was at the beginning of September. A very rapid increase in infection in the Netherlands quickly led to more patients in the intensive care unit… Other European countries have similar experiences. There is therefore a heavy seriousness about the situation. And we must take responsibility together

By giving detailed reasoning behind measures being taken amidst uncertainty, Solberg exhibits both confidence and honesty in her narratives (Lunn et al., 2020 ). Another key feature that emerges from the post above is the emphasis on the risks of an increase in infection, and the possibility of a new lockdown and overburdening of intensive care capacity, thereby reflecting a more strongly persuasive intent. Such emphasis on the risks is different from other posts where Solberg exhibits control and optimism much more strongly. This adaption from a communicative stance to a more persuasive one could result from not only the perceived severity of the situation, but also the perceived risks of pandemic fatigue. Pandemic fatigue has been defined by the WHO as a lack of motivation to adhere to recommended protective behaviours (WHO, 2020b ). According to surveys conducted in different countries, most people have been shown to possess adequate knowledge of COVID-19 and the precautions required to keep safe, yet factors like emotions and context have been found to have greater impact on behaviours than knowledge (Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, 2020 ). A study of different ways of communicating healthcare messages suggested that believability of the messages and the recipients’ reactions to them can be influenced by the persuasive intent (Wang and Shen, 2019 ). Koh et al. ( 2020 ) also discuss the importance of devising effective and successful communications for a sustained period without message fatigue setting in, which includes concern for the way the communication is framed. Overall, we see that Solberg’s posts provide a rationale with portrayal of the government being in control of managing the crisis.

Fostering hope and return to normalcy

Solberg’s posts also emphasized the hopeful aspects of the crisis by appealing to followers to look forward to a return to everyday life, and new educational and economic prospects, despite the difficult current circumstances. This theme aligns with the frame of ‘instilling hope’ as per frame functions for a persuasive narrative by Boin et al. ( 2016 ). During a crisis, more than ever, effective leaders embody the hopes and fears of the society under threat, and therefore they should strive to inculcate optimism of a better future (Boin et al., 2016 ). Previous research has documented that in times of turmoil, followers especially look up to leadership that serves as a beacon of hope for and faith in a positive future, more than they do in times of prosperity (Stam et al., 2018 ; Shamir et al., 1993 ). According to Boin et al., leadership during crisis always has a moral dimension. On January 10, 2021, by which time Norway had witnessed over 50000 cases of infection and over 400 deaths as well as the Gjerdrum disaster, Solberg made the following post:

Dear everyone. This year I hope we can take our dreams back. After a year of pandemic and fear. Then I look forward to seeing creativity unleashed…

Another post that emphasized the optimism for educational prospects was made on April 15, 2020, and drew over 5000 likes:

Today is the last deadline to apply to a vocational school, college or university. I understand that it can feel strange to apply for an education this autumn while the educational institutions keep their campuses closed. Maybe someone also thinks the idea of moving from home to a new city seems extra scary these days. To you I want to say that everyday life will return. Therefore, my appeal to you who want to study: do not put your life on hold, but apply for education this year!

Lessons from previous crises tell us that leaders need to pay attention to the fear of the ongoing threat, as well as sadness and grief, and to provide hope to mitigate social disruption (Maak et al., 2021 ). Here, we see that Solberg’s is attempting to convey hope while also acknowledging the challenges and impact of COVID-19. In doing so, the messages also emphasise self-efficacy and trust in the government. Hope and resilience are closely aligned constructs, as they both include a tendency towards maintaining an optimistic outlook in the face of adversity (Duggal et al., 2016 ). Thus, fostering hope during crisis can help the community cope with the consequences of the crisis. Moreover, by using emotional appeals, leaders can influence attitudes and behaviours as well as induce compassion (Ghio et al., 2020 ).

The theme of fostering hope in Solberg’s posts was found to be particularly emphasized during and before national holidays or important events. Her posts often utilised humour to foster positivity, particularly during critical periods such as during or after implementation of stricter COVID-19 measures. For example, a day after it was announced that infection-reduction measures would continue throughout Christmas, Solberg shared a snipped of her response to a question asked in a press conference and posted:

Can Santa actually come to visit this year?

Creating human moments and hope is a sign of compassionate leadership and helps to establish the relational foundation for widespread support for pandemic control measures (Maak et al., 2021 ). Also, by utilising humour, Solberg adapts the tone of her messages, a tactic that has been found to significantly affect audiences’ attitudes and behaviours, help people manage their emotions, and strengthen support for pandemic measures (Lee and Basnyat, 2013 )

Relating with followers

The last theme is about the posts in which Solberg relates to the public by providing personal information, acknowledging, and relating with the difficult circumstances, and using humour or a private tone in her posts. For example, the post below was made just before Easter and it received more than 13000 likes, making it to be the third-most liked post of Solberg related to COVID-19 during this period.

It will be a different Easter this year. Let’s make the best of it. We can play fun board games with our loved ones, read the book we never have time to read, listen to an audiobook or explore the local area. The last few weeks have been challenging for all of us, but we want to get through this… Sindre and I have recharged with board games and wish you all a very happy Easter!

Empathy is an important component of the persuasive narrative, especially during crises when the decisions made by authorities to mitigate, and control can also have consequences for people’s lives. For crisis communication to be effective, the information provided to the public should not be too factual or portray leaders as distant from the citizens (Shen, 2010 ; Lunn et al., 2020 ). By demonstrating concern and acknowledging the impact of crises, leaders can empathise with the public (Shen, 2010 ; Lunn et al., 2020 ). We see Solberg personifying the challenges of COVID-19 by referring to how the times have been challenging for ‘all of us’. According to Boin et al. ( 2016 ), a leader’s personification of suffering is instrumental in showing empathy because the public is then able to relate to them.

Further, previously in a study by Larsson ( 2015 ) about Norwegian party leaders on Facebook during the 2013 ‘short campaign’, it was found that personal content referencing private life is increasingly employed by Norwegian party leaders. Enli and Rosenberg ( 2018 ) investigated voters’ evaluations of politicians as authentic or ‘real,’ and Solberg was found to be one of the most perceived authentic politicians. Enli ( 2014 ) had earlier suggested that Erna Solberg’s public profile as predictable, anti-elitist and imperfect constructs her authenticity.

A similar example of relatability with followers during the pandemic was the instance when she forgot the rule of not shaking hands during public meetups and press conferences. After the event, she wrote:

It is important that we can have some humour in a difficult time Even a prime minister can forget, but now it is important that we all remember to follow the advice of the health authorities…

She also used an engaging communicative style when interacting with her followers:

Then the holiday is over… a different summer, a little cold, weekly meetings in the Government’s Corona Committee on video, beautiful nature experiences from Norway and a lot of rain. Let me share a wonderful little meeting with a lynx on the lawn on Varaldsøy… Have you had a nice summer?

Thus, Solberg embeds references to her private life, which also helps to personify the messages in her posts and thus relate with the public. In addition, by relating with the public on an everyday basis and through the acknowledgment of shared challenges during crisis, Solberg’s narrative also appears empathetic. Our theme of ‘Relating to the public’ thus encapsulates frame function of ‘showing empathy’ for developing a persuasive narrative, as per Boin et al. ( 2016 ).

Concluding remarks

This paper was an attempt to explore the Facebook posts of Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg to highlight the key features of her crisis communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. By drawing on data from Solberg’s Facebook posts during the pandemic our analyses identified five major themes, (1) Promoting responsibility and togetherness (2) Coping (3) Being in control amidst uncertainty (4) Fostering hope and (5) Relating with the followers, where we went in detail explanation by using frame functions of a persuasive narrative by Boin et al. ( 2016 ). We furthermore discussed the specific Norwegian contextual nuances to the frame functions. These were the theme ‘Responsibilization and togetherness’, presented via the references to Norwegianness and the cultural concept and practice of dugnad . Hence, our paper showed how during crisis persuasive narratives are incorporated into the social media communication strategies of political leaders.

The paper also showed how persuasive narratives are delivered through praising the public’s efforts, promoting togetherness, caring about the public’s well-being, displaying optimism and confidence in the government’s measures. It elaborated on how crisis management on social media was done via the use of humour and personal information. Humour was used as a tool to engage with the public and help them relate and comply to the COVID-19 restrictions. Hence, Solberg used Facebook to capitalise on a wide-reaching social medium (Hallahan, 2010 ). While the communication of leaders during crises helps to fill the cognitive void, the use of social media helps build societal resilience by improving awareness and encouraging preparedness (Boin et al., 2016 )

Even so, the success of a persuasive narrative is to a great extent dependant on the credibility of its proponents (Boin et al., 2016 ). The reputation of the leader and the organisation that they represent plays a key role in framing a successful persuasive narrative. In general, Norwegians have more trust in each other and their institutions than most other countries (Skirbekk and Grimen, 2012 ). A survey conducted by the Norwegian Citizen’s Panel [Norsk Medborgerpanel] in March 2020 found that trust in government, in the health authorities, in parliament, and in national and local politicians had increased, as did trust in the Prime Minister during the pandemic (Dahl, 2020 ). Clearly, Solberg seems to have benefitted from the trust capital in Norwegian society with her Facebook communications during a crisis. More recently, Erna Solberg has received heavy criticism for breach of COVID-19 restrictions during a family trip to Geilo for her 60th birthday (The Guardian, 2021a ). Following which, Erna Solberg, has been investigated by police and fined (The Guardian, 2021b ). Thus, while her Facebook posts exhibiting components of a persuasive narrative received popularity, her actions have nevertheless been subjected to scrutiny and criticisms in mainstream media (Larsen, 2021 ). According to Boin et al. ( 2016 : p. 72), the retainment of confidence of the public is essential for the communication strategies to be effective. Therefore, such media criticism might undermine the credibility of Solberg and her cabinet, leading to less credible and politically ineffective narratives. On the other hand, past performances, and reputation also play an important role in increasing leaders’ personal credibility in the face of crisis (Boin et al., 2016 ). Consequently, Solberg’s long career in politics and her reputation of caring about the citizens as previously discussed, could buffer the recent impact on her credibility. Moreover, communication during and after a crisis affects long-term impressions (Coombs, 2007 ). With the personification of politics in Norway or ‘decentralising personalization’ (Balmas et al., 2014 ), the criticisms paved at Erna, however, reflect more of a personal crisis than a national crisis. And while we do not analyse Solberg’s posts beyond 9 th Feb. 2021 i.e., after Solberg spoke about the Geilo trip incident on her Facebook account, we see that she follows similar strategy in handling this personal crisis as the national crisis of COVID-19, through use of a persuasive narrative. Future studies can therefore focus on how Solberg and other political leaders utilise the strategy of persuasive narrative in management of personal crisis in nexus with national crisis such as that of COVID-19.

Further, we concur with Christensen and Lægreid ( 2020 ) who write that the ‘political leadership has succeeded well in connecting governance capacity and legitimacy using the argument that Norway had sufficient resources to deal with the crisis. While the health resource capacity and preparedness of Norway inarguably contributes to the outcomes of the crisis, communicating a successful persuasive narrative with credibility is integral to gaining legitimacy and filling the cognitive void (Boin et al., 2016 ). Erna Solberg’s use of persuasive narrative in Facebook posts, seems therefore to have been effective in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, but her latest unfortunate incident goes to show how politicians’ management of crises is tenuous and highly dependent on public trust.

Our study adds to the significance and knowledge of how persuasive narratives are incorporated into the communication strategy of leaders on a social media platform and highlights the usefulness of this framework for studies about ongoing and future crises. By using data from social media, our findings also add to the understanding of the increased personification of politics and how leaders utilise this personification to communicate government measures and engage with the public during a crisis. Future research can further explore how public leaders and health authorities’ frame crises situations, actions, issues, and responsibility to dramatise and reinforce key ideas (Hallahan, 1999 ). Such insights can pave way for understanding public’s shaping of risk perceptions and compliance to behavioural measures during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data availability

The dataset analysed during the current study is available through the public profile of Erna Solberg on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ernasolberg/ . This dataset was derived from Crowd Tangle which can be accessed through request at https://www.crowdtangle.com/ .

Known as ‘hyttetur’, cabin trips are deeply rooted in Norwegian culture and way of life

Crowdtangle extracts both historical and current data of post contents and metadata such as the date the post was made, number of likes, other reactions and shares. Information about how to access raw material included in this study can be found in the data availability statement at the end of the article.

‘Everything will be fine’ [ Alt blir bra ] was one of the campaigns that spread because of the COVID-19 crisis in Norway depicting pictures of a rainbow.

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Acknowledgements

This article is published as part of the research project ‘Fighting Pandemics with Enhanced Risk Communication: Messages, Compliance and Vulnerability During the COVID-19 Outbreak (PAN-FIGHT)’, which is financed by the Norwegian Research Council (Project number: 312767).

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Arora, S., Debesay, J. & Eslen-Ziya, H. Persuasive narrative during the COVID-19 pandemic: Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s posts on Facebook. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 9 , 35 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01051-5

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Persuasion key in encouraging people to stay home during Covid-19

13 April 2021

Read: Telegraph (£)

COVID-19 pandemic impacts how we view, access mental health care

We have all felt the devastating effects of the coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19) on our families and communities.

It is unequivocal that this pandemic has led to a near total disruption of our social fabric. Global economics have been all but paralyzed. Under these circumstances, one can imagine the psychological toll is significant.

While there is no doubt that COVID-19 is causing significant stress, we won’t grasp the long-term mental health effects until we conduct future research. At the same time, and because of this pandemic, we see a positive impact on the way we consider mental health and how the healthcare system operates.

Removing barriers and improving access to care. Since the COVID pandemic, the mental health field has shifted almost completely to telehealth encounters with visits through video or phone. This shift, together with the response from insurers to expand payment for telehealth have resulted in better integration of care and improved access.

Reducing the stigma of experiencing emotional distress and mental illness. As we face this crisis together, and as the issues of mental health and wellness continue to be in the forefront of daily news coverage, the importance of physical safety as well as emotional well-being are normalized and becoming household concerns.

Better appreciation for our healthcare workers and their well-being . One of the major positive outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic is the worldwide appreciation for all healthcare workers who continue to place themselves in harm’s way to relieve the suffering of others.

A renewed value of taking care of each other. Even as we have become physically isolated and forced to cancel important celebrations and rites of passage, we also have found new ways to be connected through this shared experience. Communities are reaching out to their elders and other at-risk groups, sharing strategies for staying connected and coping. People are donating their resources and their time, using creativity and humor, as well as creating inspirational and beautiful art.

Maintaining this culture of caring and community moving forward will make us all the more resilient and connected. The COVID pandemic has devastated so many and so much. At the same time, the transformative effect on mental health access, as well as an expanded value placed on our community’s health can have a long-lasting positive effect on our healthcare system, if we chose to learn from this experience.

Catherine Cerulli, JD, Phd, is Director of the Susan B. Anthony Center & Laboratory of Interpersonal Violence and Victimization, University of Rochester; Dr. George S. Nasra is Chief of the Division of Collaborative Care and Wellness at URMC Department of Psychiatry and Medical Director of Behavioral Health at Accountable Health Partners. Ellen Poleshuck, PhD, is Director of Collaborative Care Services in the Departments of Psychiatry and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine.

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The Science of Persuasion Offers Lessons for COVID-19 Prevention

Hand washing, mask wearing, social distancing—experts agree these protective behaviors are key to stemming coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). But how should leaders encourage their uptake?

Look to the science of persuasion, says communications professor Dominique Brossard, PhD. Brossard is part of a new National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine group called the Societal Experts Action Network, or SEAN, whose recent report lays out research-based strategies to encourage COVID-19–mitigating behaviors.

Brossard says the changes must feel easy to do—and to repeat, which helps to form habits. Past public health campaigns also suggest it’s wise to know and understand one’s target audience, and to tailor messages and messengers accordingly.

“It’s difficult to change people’s behavior at the massive level,” Brossard, chair of the life sciences communications department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a recent interview with JAMA. The following is an edited version of that conversation.

JAMA: You and your coauthors write that simply explaining the science of COVID-19 and its risks will rarely translate to a change in attitudes and behaviors, even if people understand and accept the facts. Why isn’t it enough to explain the science if you want to change health behaviors?

Dr Brossard: Because human beings rely more on the psychological dimensions of the risk than the quantitative aspect of the risk. If experts measure risk in numbers, such as the probability of getting harmed by something, human beings in general—you and me included—look at what we call the qualitative aspect of that risk: the potential magnitude of the effect, the potential dread, how much it may impact people [close] to us, and so on. So, psychological dimensions.

JAMA: How does that translate to people’s unwillingness to change their attitudes and behaviors?

Dr Brossard: If we’re asked to do something new, that will impact our willingness to do it for a variety of reasons. It might be because people around us, our social network, the norms around us tell us that this is something that’s not acceptable. It might be because it’s a little inconvenient. It might be because we forget about it. At the end of the day, when we perform certain behaviors, rarely do we think about the science that tells us why we shouldn’t do it and why this might be dangerous. We do it because, as social animals, we pay attention to cues that our minds tell us to pay attention to and our community and people around us tell us to pay attention to. Therefore, our behavior is really based on the psychological components rather than more quantifiable aspects.

JAMA: Your report recommends 5 habit-promoting strategies: make the behavior easy to start and repeat; make the behavior rewarding to repeat; tie the behavior to an existing habit; alert people to behaviors that conflict with existing habits and provide alternative behaviors; and provide specific descriptions of desired behaviors. How can these strategies be applied today?

Dr Brossard: People are more likely to act in healthy ways when it’s easy for them to perform that behavior. So let’s think in terms of hand washing, for example. It will be very important to have hand washing stations and hand sanitizer easily accessible to people. Making the behavior very easy to start and to repeat is very important. If you put a mask next to your front door, and it’s easy to grab when you go out the door, that’s going to be easy to implement and you may be more likely to actually do it again. If you want to encourage people to physically distance from other people around them, having signs on the floor is actually something that works. They don’t have to calculate in their mind: what does it mean to be physically distanced? How far am I from other people? They simply stand where the mark tells them. It makes the behavior easy to repeat and easy to perform.

JAMA: So you’re trying to take away any barriers to the behaviors?

Dr Brossard: Exactly. The idea is if you take away as many barriers as possible, you encourage people to repeat the behavior. And then you end up creating a habit.

JAMA: In your report you mentioned that having many hand sanitizer stations sets the norm—that it’s normal to hand sanitize.

Dr Brossard: Mask wearing and physically distancing are new habits we’re creating from scratch. As social animals, that’s not something we do, in general. However, hand washing is a habit that we would have hoped the population already had. The problem is it hasn’t been really implemented. People do it very inconsistently. If you have hand sanitizers everywhere, it’s very easy. As a matter of fact, in supermarkets, when you have the hand sanitizer at the door, people line up and do it. So it’s that idea of the social norm and making it sound like, this is something you do, it’s widely available, other people do it as well, and therefore, this is socially acceptable and highly encouraged, and we should just all do it.

JAMA: The report also discusses 10 strategies for communicating risk, like using clear, consistent, and transparent messaging. It feels like that’s the opposite of what we’ve had. What’s your take on the federal government’s messaging around COVID-19 mitigation?

Dr Brossard: I think that in this case what’s really crucial is the messaging at the local level. At the state level vs county level vs town level, having a consistent strategy, consistent messages, is very important. It’s clear that for public health–related issues, really what makes a difference is the action of local leaders. It’s really the community-based action that can change people’s behavior. At the local level people trust the doctors, the public health officials.

JAMA: Masks unfortunately have become politicized. Is it too late for universal masking to be accepted or do you think minds can still be changed?

Dr Brossard: You will always have extremes on both ends. The vast majority of the population will be somewhere in between. People that are extremely set on the attitude not to wear a mask, which is, by the way, a very, very small minority, are unlikely to change their views. However, all the others can change their views. People are reasonable in the sense that they want to protect their own, they want to protect the community, they want to have the economy reopen, and so on. So I would say, yes, there’s still hope. And we see it. Every week, our group at the SEAN Network publishes a summary of all the polls that address [COVID-19–related] behaviors. We see that mask wearing is increasing. It’s not yet at the level that we would like to make sure that we are protected, but it’s indeed increasing.

JAMA: You reported that highlighting crowded beaches or people who aren’t wearing masks can be counterproductive. Why? And what’s a better approach?

Dr Brossard: They end up thinking that it’s a more prevalent behavior than it actually is. Or it may actually prompt them to think, “Oh, I wish I was on the beach.” You want to highlight good behavior and make it sound like this is socially acceptable rather than highlighting undesirable behavior and making it sound like it’s more frequent than it actually is.

JAMA: So local leaders should emphasize that mask wearing is increasing, for example?

Dr Brossard: Exactly. The research on social norms is extremely, extremely important here. We tend to get cues based on the people around us. Human beings have something that we call fear of isolation. We don’t like to be the lonely person that is the only one doing a certain thing when the vast majority around us are doing another thing. So it’s very important to actually show, “Look, this is going in this direction. Political leaders from both sides of the spectrum are doing it.” To show that the desirable behavior is something that’s becoming prevalent and that this is the direction society is taking.

JAMA: One lesson in your report is that it’s important to concede uncertainty. Why should leaders say things like, “Based on what we know today…”?

Dr Brossard: This is a really key message of risk communication. If you highlight something as being certain and then the science changes and suddenly you say, “Well, wait a minute, actually this was wrong, and now it is this,” you destroy trust. Science evolves, particularly in the context of COVID-19. We are all discovering this virus. The social sciences have shown that acknowledging uncertainty will actually increase trust, much more than painting things as certain. So it’s very important to say, “Based on the science of today, this is what we should do.” It’s very important to show that it’s a work in progress.

JAMA: What about the messengers themselves? Have we tapped into social media influencers enough? And who are community influencers that have the power to change our collective behaviors?

Dr Brossard: It makes us think of the AIDS community, where the leaders of the communities were messengers in helping promote protective behaviors. Using messengers that are trusted by the target audiences and relying on social media is extremely important. And as far as influencers in the communities, this will depend from one community to the other. Let’s take Wisconsin, for example. Football is a sport that people enjoy regardless of their political ideology, age, and so on. So the [Green Bay] Packers are messengers that transcend potential barriers there. It’s important to find trusted messengers that can connect with the audience on social media but also face-to-face. That can be a trusted local business leader, for example.

JAMA: What have we learned from past public health campaigns, like antismoking and wearing seatbelts, that can be applied now?

Dr Brossard: In the ’70s, we had social marketing approaches that suggested that we needed to stop trying to educate people and actually adapt a marketing technique to social issues. The antismoking Truth campaign, as it was called, was a successful application of social marketing techniques. The idea that you need to segment your audience and tailor the message specifically to that audience is something that the Truth campaign very well illustrated. A specific audience that needed to be targeted was adolescents and teenagers, and one thing that adolescents do is rebel against authority. They don’t like people to force them to do things. So the Truth campaign tried to appeal to their drive for autonomy by showing them that the tobacco industry was taking advantage of the adolescent population. That was extremely powerful. The problem is that a mass media campaign like that can be extremely, extremely expensive. That’s why it’s very important also to rely on what we think of as organic dissemination of messaging through social media, which we couldn’t do when the Truth campaign was put together.

JAMA: How can physicians apply these strategies of persuasion with patients, in their communities, or on social networks?

Dr Brossard: We are all tempted to correct misinformation. And right now, we see it everywhere, right? However, we need to be careful because by repeating the misinformation itself, we make it more prevalent. When physicians want to communicate about COVID-19, it’s better to actually communicate the right information without repeating the misinformation itself. I think it’s very important to remember that all of us are part of the solution by making sure that those right behaviors get communicated to as many people as we can. I think physicians have a really, really big part to play in this organic dissemination.

JAMA: How will these strategies apply once we have a COVID-19 vaccine?

Dr Brossard: It goes back to that idea of targeting and audience segmentation to understand who has issues with the vaccine—in this case potentially COVID-19—and why. We actually do not know why people think the way they do. What we do know is that there’s no wrong concern. If people are concerned, they’re concerned. We need to listen and try to understand why and then address that.

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How to persuade people to stay home: A century of social science research offers clues on human behavior

With social distancing and shelter-in-place mandates in effect worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic is necessitating large-scale behavior change and taking a significant psychological toll. How can leaders and the media promote cooperative behavior? What kind of messages work best? Northwestern University professor of political science Dr. Jamie Druckman and University of Cambridge social psychology professor Dr. Sander van der Linden addressed these questions and more in a Northwestern Buffett webinar this week, drawing on a century of social science research that sheds light on how to better align human behavior with public health officials’ recommendations. Here are six key takeaways:

Quite a bit has changed since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, but human behavior has not. A paper published in Science magazine in 1919 illuminated the factors that stood in the way of preventing the spread of the Spanish flu of 1918, and these remain critical challenges today, Dr. Druckman said. “People do not appreciate the risks they run,” he said. “It goes against human nature for people to shut themselves up in rigid isolation as a means of protecting others, and people often unconsciously act as a continuing danger to themselves and others.”

“Loose” cultures have seen steeper COVID-19 curves than “tight” ones: Efficient governments and “tight cultures” can help mitigate the risk of people acting against their best interests, Druckman said. Countries with stronger stay-at-home orders and less heterogeneity in terms of their response to COVID-19 have seen their curves flatten faster. Yet what a “tight culture” looks like can vary significantly across the globe. Countries like Sweden that appear laissez faire in their response to COVID-19 have relatively small populations and health care systems that are considered well-equipped to deal with the projected number of COVID-19 cases, Dr. van der Linden noted.

Data also suggests a correlation between strong public understanding of a government’s response to COVID-19 and fewer COVID-19 cases, Druckman said. Germany is one example: “The German public has a stronger understanding of its government’s response to COVID-19, and we see a lower rate of infection and lower death toll there,” he noted.

Unfortunately, the American public doesn’t have as strong an understanding of the U.S. government’s response to COVID-19 and this, coupled with a “looser” culture, has contributed to a steeper rise in COVID-19 cases, Druckman noted. “The U.S. was uniquely bad in terms of the rate at which it surpassed 500 confirmed cases of COVID-19. The government didn’t act quickly enough to flatten the curve,” he said. In the absence of tightly coordinated U.S. federal government measures, the private sector has stepped in and far outside of its comfort zone: New Balance is producing hypebeast grade masks , General Motors and other auto manufacturers are producing ventilators, and the New England Patriots are flying N95 masks in on their private planes, to name a few examples.

Compliance largely depends on unity and credibility: Persuading the public to comply with stay-at-home orders and other social distancing recommendations depends, in large part, on cohesion: “Bipartisan messages are crucial in the U.S.,” Druckman said. “This is clear from the research not only on COVID-19 but a whole host of other issues. Bipartisan messages are much more persuasive.” It can be difficult to see common ground, however, amid the abundance of headlines claiming wild variation in compliance with public health recommendations among Democrats and Republicans. Druckman urges people to view these headlines with skepticism: It can be easy, yet misleading, to paint a picture of COVID-19 along partisan lines, he said. Counties with a more republican vote have exhibited less social distancing behavior, but many of these counties are in rural areas that require less extreme social distancing measures to begin with.

In terms of specific messages, evidence suggests those that have been most effective in persuading people to adhere to social distancing guidelines are those that “urge people to act for the common good, highlight the story of a specific—and young—victim, and explain the dynamics of virality,” Druckman said, pointing to this example: “On average, each person passes the coronavirus on to two to three people. If you break a chain of transmission, you can single-handedly prevent the suffering of potentially dozens of people.” The source of the message is also important, Druckman added, noting messages from local officials can be more effective, given “you can imagine they’re experiencing exactly what you’re experiencing, and that enhances the credibility of the message.”

The words we use matter: “Social distancing” needs to be distinguished from physical distancing as we are in the midst of “a perfect storm for a mental health crisis,” an uptick in domestic violence and ethnic scapegoating that makes strong social support networks critical, even if activated at a distance, Druckman said. “There is also an optimal level of fear,” he noted. Inducing too much of it can have a paralyzing effect. “Worry” tends to motivate more productive responses in times of crisis over “fear.” Collective terms, such as “us,” also tend to bring out the best in us, Druckman said. “It builds a shared sense of identity” and encourages people to act for the common good.

Preventing the spread of fake news means becoming more attuned to it: Druckman talked about the importance of separating science from science fiction, pointing to a recently published article recommending people stay at least six feet away from each other when biking, walking, or running outside. The article , published on Medium, has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal and, as New York Times reporter Gretchen Reynolds pointed out, “ the study did not look at coronavirus particles specifically or how they are carried in respiratory droplets in real-life conditions. Nor does it prove or even suggest that infection risks rise if you do wind up temporarily strolling behind a panting runner.” Medium posted a disclaimer at the top of this article—“Anyone can publish on Medium per our Policies , but we don’t fact-check every story. For more info about the coronavirus, see cdc.gov .” Likewise, YouTube includes a note under COVID-19 related video posts like this one from Osmosis.org , encouraging users to “get the latest information from the CDC about COVID-19,” van der Linden noted. “However this may suggest the video is, in fact, from the CDC,” he added. Our eyes often miss or misinterpret disclaimers like this and “we need to test these things.”

Research suggests a promising path toward inoculation against misinformation: Drawing from Inoculation Theory , van der Linden and other scholars are developing techniques and interventions designed to strengthen citizens’ immunity to fake news. “Injecting people with weakened doses of fake news can help to build up their mental antibodies and resistance to future misinformation,” van der Linden said. The good news is data shows people gravitating back toward major news networks, such as ABC, NBC, and CBS in the U.S., that tend to present more balanced and credible information compared to what people find in social media “echo chambers,” Druckman added.

Ultimately, there are some simple things we can all do to build up our own immunity to and curb the spread of misinformation, including looking for warnings on questionable content and pausing to confirm questionable content before sharing it. Time is certainly of the essence in times of crisis, Druckman said, but cautioned, “If you hurry too much, you might not be taking the right actions.”

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11 Meaningful Writing Assignments Connected to the Pandemic

Writing gives students an outlet to express their feelings and connect with others during this unsettling time in their lives.

With students currently at home because of the pandemic, it’s helpful to provide learning opportunities that get them talking about what’s happening in the world with trusted adults and peers.

These ideas for home assignments build connection and help our young people process this difficult experience while developing their writing skills.

11 Writing Assignments for the Current Moment

1. Interview senior members of the community: With our older community members at higher risk, hearing their stories has increasing significance. Generate interview questions with your students, and conduct a sample interview as a model.

Students can interview family members, senior members of the school staff, or others through handwritten letters, phone calls, or video chats. When students write up and share their interviews with the class, they will get a broader, more nuanced view of older generations’ experiences.

2. Folding stories: In the traditional version of this activity, one person writes a sentence or two on a piece of paper and then folds the paper so that only the last word or phrase can be seen. The next person continues the story for a few sentences before again hiding all but the last word or phrase and then passing the paper on.

To do this remotely, set up a randomized list of all of your students. The first student sends you their contribution, and you send the last phrase of that to the next name on the list. Compile all the contributions in order in a Google Doc to create a single story. Once everyone has contributed, share the whole story with the class.

The format may allow students an imaginative outlet for anxious thoughts and predictions about the future, and the result is almost guaranteed to be hilarious and inspiring to both eager and reluctant writers.

3. Dialogue journals: A journal in which a teacher and student write back and forth to each other is an ongoing communication that helps teachers build relationships with each student while they model writing and observe students’ progressing skills. Start this off by writing a first short entry for each of your students in separate Google Docs, choosing topics you already know they’re interested in and offering personal details about yourself.

You can ask each student to write something once a week—and you’ll respond to each entry, so this does entail a time commitment on your part. The benefit in relationship-building, so difficult to do in distance learning, makes this worth the work.

4. Student-to-student letters: Organize pen pals or small letter-writing groups. Ask students to write back and forth to one or more peers using provided prompts and sample questions. Teach students to consider their audience and to keep a written dialogue going over several letters as they write to different peers. Encourage students to include self-created activities in their letters to peers: They might make a crossword puzzle using the class vocabulary words, create a maze, or share a recipe or a silly joke.

5. Write to an author: A professional writer may be a great correspondent for a young fan, offering insight into key aspects of a favorite book. Follow #WriteToAnAuthor on Twitter for access to mailing addresses of authors who are standing by for letters from young readers. Provide your students with prompts, templates, samples, and feedback to support them in writing thoughtful letters.

6. Adapt a text to reflect current conditions: Lately any story we read or watch can be a painful reminder of how much is changing. Characters are dancing, hugging or shaking hands, and talking to each other in public places. Some students find it comforting to be immersed in that world, but others find these moments upsetting. Assign students the task of rewriting a scene from a story, show, or movie, considering what needs to change for it to be realistic in our current situation but still retain the original essential themes and meaning.

7. Letters to the editor: What do students think about our leaders, policies, and proposed solutions to this pandemic? Guide them through the art of writing a well-crafted letter to the editor, and post submissions on your district, school, or class website, if privacy policies permit that. Give your students guidelines that specify word count, style, and topics, just as official publications do.

8. Student-created blog: Begin by sharing strong examples of student journalism as mentor texts. Invite students to brainstorm ideas for articles and columns. Some students can assume the role of section editors—News, Features, Arts—and others can write articles, take photos, and work on the design and marketing of the website, which students can build using Edublogs .

9. “Slow looking” documentation: Shari Tishman describes “slow looking” as prolonged observation that occurs through all the senses. Students can use a variety of slow looking strategies to observe their setting and sketch or write about their observations. There are seasonal changes to observe, among other things. By practicing slow looking, students may learn to see things they never noticed before. When they share their observations with the class, everyone gains a broader perspective of how the larger environment is changing.

10. Covid-19 comics: The genre of graphic medicine —which uses comics to explore the physical and emotional impacts of medical conditions—shows that comics can be a good way for students to explore troubling experiences. Share comics related to Covid-19 that engage with the wider implications of the pandemic, such as feeling increased isolation, processing conflicting news, and coping with social distancing or unemployment.

Invite students to explore their experiences through an intentional combination of words and pictures. Make it collaborative by having students write text for a peer’s drawings. Students can use Canva to make comics , or draw them on paper and then take photos to upload to the class learning management system.

11. Pandemic journals: A pandemic journal invites students to process their feelings and document their experience for future generations. To structure the assignment, provide prompts and templates. Suggest to students that they layer in artifacts such as news reports, a note received from a friend or neighbor, a copy of an online school schedule for a day, a snippet of an overheard conversation, or a sketch of a parent hunched over a laptop.

Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic

As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease. When you have the flu or a viral infection, the most common symptoms include fever, cold, coughing up bone fragments, and difficulty breathing, which may progress to pneumonia. It’s important to take major steps like keeping a strict cleaning routine, keeping social distance, and wearing masks, among other things. This virus’s geographic spread is accelerating (Daniel Pg 93). Governments restricted public meetings during the start of the pandemic to prevent the disease from spreading and breaking the exponential distribution curve. In order to avoid the damage caused by this extremely contagious disease, several countries quarantined their citizens. However, this scenario had drastically altered with the discovery of the vaccinations. The research aims to investigate the effect of the Covid-19 epidemic and its impact on the population’s well-being.

There is growing interest in the relationship between social determinants of health and health outcomes. Still, many health care providers and academics have been hesitant to recognize racism as a contributing factor to racial health disparities. Only a few research have examined the health effects of institutional racism, with the majority focusing on interpersonal racial and ethnic prejudice Ciotti et al., Pg 370. The latter comprises historically and culturally connected institutions that are interconnected. Prejudice is being practiced in a variety of contexts as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. In some ways, the outbreak has exposed pre-existing bias and inequity.

Thousands of businesses are in danger of failure. Around 2.3 billion of the world’s 3.3 billion employees are out of work. These workers are especially susceptible since they lack access to social security and adequate health care, and they’ve also given up ownership of productive assets, which makes them highly vulnerable. Many individuals lose their employment as a result of lockdowns, leaving them unable to support their families. People strapped for cash are often forced to reduce their caloric intake while also eating less nutritiously (Fraser et al, Pg 3). The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have not gathered crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods. As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, become sick, or die, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

Infectious illness outbreaks and epidemics have become worldwide threats due to globalization, urbanization, and environmental change. In developed countries like Europe and North America, surveillance and health systems monitor and manage the spread of infectious illnesses in real-time. Both low- and high-income countries need to improve their public health capacities (Omer et al., Pg 1767). These improvements should be financed using a mix of national and foreign donor money. In order to speed up research and reaction for new illnesses with pandemic potential, a global collaborative effort including governments and commercial companies has been proposed. When working on a vaccine-like COVID-19, cooperation is critical.

The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have been unable to gather crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods (Daniel et al.,Pg 95) . As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

While helping to feed the world’s population, millions of paid and unpaid agricultural laborers suffer from high levels of poverty, hunger, and bad health, as well as a lack of safety and labor safeguards, as well as other kinds of abuse at work. Poor people, who have no recourse to social assistance, must work longer and harder, sometimes in hazardous occupations, endangering their families in the process (Daniel Pg 96). When faced with a lack of income, people may turn to hazardous financial activities, including asset liquidation, predatory lending, or child labor, to make ends meet. Because of the dangers they encounter while traveling, working, and living abroad; migrant agricultural laborers are especially vulnerable. They also have a difficult time taking advantage of government assistance programs.

The pandemic also has a significant impact on education. Although many educational institutions across the globe have already made the switch to online learning, the extent to which technology is utilized to improve the quality of distance or online learning varies. This level is dependent on several variables, including the different parties engaged in the execution of this learning format and the incorporation of technology into educational institutions before the time of school closure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many years, researchers from all around the globe have worked to determine what variables contribute to effective technology integration in the classroom Ciotti et al., Pg 371. The amount of technology usage and the quality of learning when moving from a classroom to a distant or online format are presumed to be influenced by the same set of variables. Findings from previous research, which sought to determine what affects educational systems ability to integrate technology into teaching, suggest understanding how teachers, students, and technology interact positively in order to achieve positive results in the integration of teaching technology (Honey et al., 2000). Teachers’ views on teaching may affect the chances of successfully incorporating technology into the classroom and making it a part of the learning process.

In conclusion, indeed, Covid 19 pandemic have affected the well being of the people in a significant manner. The economy operation across the globe have been destabilized as most of the people have been rendered jobless while the job operation has been stopped. As most of the people have been rendered jobless the living conditions of the people have also been significantly affected. Besides, the education sector has also been affected as most of the learning institutions prefer the use of online learning which is not effective as compared to the traditional method. With the invention of the vaccines, most of the developed countries have been noted to stabilize slowly, while the developing countries have not been able to vaccinate most of its citizens. However, despite the challenge caused by the pandemic, organizations have been able to adapt the new mode of online trading to be promoted.

Ciotti, Marco, et al. “The COVID-19 pandemic.” Critical reviews in clinical laboratory sciences 57.6 (2020): 365-388.

Daniel, John. “Education and the COVID-19 pandemic.” Prospects 49.1 (2020): 91-96.

Fraser, Nicholas, et al. “Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic.” BioRxiv (2021): 2020-05.

Omer, Saad B., Preeti Malani, and Carlos Del Rio. “The COVID-19 pandemic in the US: a clinical update.” Jama 323.18 (2020): 1767-1768.

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Essays reveal experiences during pandemic, unrest.

Field study students share their thoughts

Members of Advanced Field Study, a select group of Social Ecology students who are chosen from a pool of applicants to participate in a year-long field study experience and course, had their internships and traditional college experience cut short this year. During our final quarter of the year together, during which we met weekly for two hours via Zoom, we discussed their reactions as the world fell apart around them. First came the pandemic and social distancing, then came the death of George Floyd and the response of the Black Lives Matter movement, both of which were imprinted on the lives of these students. This year was anything but dull, instead full of raw emotion and painful realizations of the fragility of the human condition and the extent to which we need one another. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for our students to chronicle their experiences — the good and the bad, the lessons learned, and ways in which they were forever changed by the events of the past four months. I invited all of my students to write an essay describing the ways in which these times had impacted their learning and their lives during or after their time at UCI. These are their voices. — Jessica Borelli , associate professor of psychological science

Becoming Socially Distant Through Technology: The Tech Contagion

The current state of affairs put the world on pause, but this pause gave me time to reflect on troubling matters. Time that so many others like me probably also desperately needed to heal without even knowing it. Sometimes it takes one’s world falling apart for the most beautiful mosaic to be built up from the broken pieces of wreckage.

As the school year was coming to a close and summer was edging around the corner, I began reflecting on how people will spend their summer breaks if the country remains in its current state throughout the sunny season. Aside from living in the sunny beach state of California where people love their vitamin D and social festivities, I think some of the most damaging effects Covid-19 will have on us all has more to do with social distancing policies than with any inconveniences we now face due to the added precautions, despite how devastating it may feel that Disneyland is closed to all the local annual passholders or that the beaches may not be filled with sun-kissed California girls this summer. During this unprecedented time, I don’t think we should allow the rare opportunity we now have to be able to watch in real time how the effects of social distancing can impact our mental health. Before the pandemic, many of us were already engaging in a form of social distancing. Perhaps not the exact same way we are now practicing, but the technology that we have developed over recent years has led to a dramatic decline in our social contact and skills in general.

The debate over whether we should remain quarantined during this time is not an argument I am trying to pursue. Instead, I am trying to encourage us to view this event as a unique time to study how social distancing can affect people’s mental health over a long period of time and with dramatic results due to the magnitude of the current issue. Although Covid-19 is new and unfamiliar to everyone, the isolation and separation we now face is not. For many, this type of behavior has already been a lifestyle choice for a long time. However, the current situation we all now face has allowed us to gain a more personal insight on how that experience feels due to the current circumstances. Mental illness continues to remain a prevalent problem throughout the world and for that reason could be considered a pandemic of a sort in and of itself long before the Covid-19 outbreak.

One parallel that can be made between our current restrictions and mental illness reminds me in particular of hikikomori culture. Hikikomori is a phenomenon that originated in Japan but that has since spread internationally, now prevalent in many parts of the world, including the United States. Hikikomori is not a mental disorder but rather can appear as a symptom of a disorder. People engaging in hikikomori remain confined in their houses and often their rooms for an extended period of time, often over the course of many years. This action of voluntary confinement is an extreme form of withdrawal from society and self-isolation. Hikikomori affects a large percent of people in Japan yearly and the problem continues to become more widespread with increasing occurrences being reported around the world each year. While we know this problem has continued to increase, the exact number of people practicing hikikomori is unknown because there is a large amount of stigma surrounding the phenomenon that inhibits people from seeking help. This phenomenon cannot be written off as culturally defined because it is spreading to many parts of the world. With the technology we now have, and mental health issues on the rise and expected to increase even more so after feeling the effects of the current pandemic, I think we will definitely see a rise in the number of people engaging in this social isolation, especially with the increase in legitimate fears we now face that appear to justify the previously considered irrational fears many have associated with social gatherings. We now have the perfect sample of people to provide answers about how this form of isolation can affect people over time.

Likewise, with the advancements we have made to technology not only is it now possible to survive without ever leaving the confines of your own home, but it also makes it possible for us to “fulfill” many of our social interaction needs. It’s very unfortunate, but in addition to the success we have gained through our advancements we have also experienced a great loss. With new technology, I am afraid that we no longer engage with others the way we once did. Although some may say the advancements are for the best, I wonder, at what cost? It is now commonplace to see a phone on the table during a business meeting or first date. Even worse is how many will feel inclined to check their phone during important or meaningful interactions they are having with people face to face. While our technology has become smarter, we have become dumber when it comes to social etiquette. As we all now constantly carry a mini computer with us everywhere we go, we have in essence replaced our best friends. We push others away subconsciously as we reach for our phones during conversations. We no longer remember phone numbers because we have them all saved in our phones. We find comfort in looking down at our phones during those moments of free time we have in public places before our meetings begin. These same moments were once the perfect time to make friends, filled with interactive banter. We now prefer to stare at other people on our phones for hours on end, and often live a sedentary lifestyle instead of going out and interacting with others ourselves.

These are just a few among many issues the advances to technology led to long ago. We have forgotten how to practice proper tech-etiquette and we have been inadvertently practicing social distancing long before it was ever required. Now is a perfect time for us to look at the society we have become and how we incurred a different kind of pandemic long before the one we currently face. With time, as the social distancing regulations begin to lift, people may possibly begin to appreciate life and connecting with others more than they did before as a result of the unique experience we have shared in together while apart.

Maybe the world needed a time-out to remember how to appreciate what it had but forgot to experience. Life is to be lived through experience, not to be used as a pastime to observe and compare oneself with others. I’ll leave you with a simple reminder: never forget to take care and love more because in a world where life is often unpredictable and ever changing, one cannot risk taking time or loved ones for granted. With that, I bid you farewell, fellow comrades, like all else, this too shall pass, now go live your best life!

Privilege in a Pandemic

Covid-19 has impacted millions of Americans who have been out of work for weeks, thus creating a financial burden. Without a job and the certainty of knowing when one will return to work, paying rent and utilities has been a problem for many. With unemployment on the rise, relying on unemployment benefits has become a necessity for millions of people. According to the Washington Post , unemployment rose to 14.7% in April which is considered to be the worst since the Great Depression.

Those who are not worried about the financial aspect or the thought never crossed their minds have privilege. Merriam Webster defines privilege as “a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor.” Privilege can have a negative connotation. What you choose to do with your privilege is what matters. Talking about privilege can bring discomfort, but the discomfort it brings can also carry the benefit of drawing awareness to one’s privilege, which can lead the person to take steps to help others.

I am a first-generation college student who recently transferred to a four-year university. When schools began to close, and students had to leave their on-campus housing, many lost their jobs.I was able to stay on campus because I live in an apartment. I am fortunate to still have a job, although the hours are minimal. My parents help pay for school expenses, including housing, tuition, and food. I do not have to worry about paying rent or how to pay for food because my parents are financially stable to help me. However, there are millions of college students who are not financially stable or do not have the support system I have. Here, I have the privilege and, thus, I am the one who can offer help to others. I may not have millions in funding, but volunteering for centers who need help is where I am able to help. Those who live in California can volunteer through Californians For All or at food banks, shelter facilities, making calls to seniors, etc.

I was not aware of my privilege during these times until I started reading more articles about how millions of people cannot afford to pay their rent, and landlords are starting to send notices of violations. Rather than feel guilty and be passive about it, I chose to put my privilege into a sense of purpose: Donating to nonprofits helping those affected by COVID-19, continuing to support local businesses, and supporting businesses who are donating profits to those affected by COVID-19.

My World is Burning

As I write this, my friends are double checking our medical supplies and making plans to buy water and snacks to pass out at the next protest we are attending. We write down the number for the local bailout fund on our arms and pray that we’re lucky enough not to have to use it should things get ugly. We are part of a pivotal event, the kind of movement that will forever have a place in history. Yet, during this revolution, I have papers to write and grades to worry about, as I’m in the midst of finals.

My professors have offered empty platitudes. They condemn the violence and acknowledge the stress and pain that so many of us are feeling, especially the additional weight that this carries for students of color. I appreciate their show of solidarity, but it feels meaningless when it is accompanied by requests to complete research reports and finalize presentations. Our world is on fire. Literally. On my social media feeds, I scroll through image after image of burning buildings and police cars in flames. How can I be asked to focus on school when my community is under siege? When police are continuing to murder black people, adding additional names to the ever growing list of their victims. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. George Floyd. David Mcatee. And, now, Rayshard Brooks.

It already felt like the world was being asked of us when the pandemic started and classes continued. High academic expectations were maintained even when students now faced the challenges of being locked down, often trapped in small spaces with family or roommates. Now we are faced with another public health crisis in the form of police violence and once again it seems like educational faculty are turning a blind eye to the impact that this has on the students. I cannot study for exams when I am busy brushing up on my basic first-aid training, taking notes on the best techniques to stop heavy bleeding and treat chemical burns because at the end of the day, if these protests turn south, I will be entering a warzone. Even when things remain peaceful, there is an ugliness that bubbles just below the surface. When beginning the trek home, I have had armed members of the National Guard follow me and my friends. While kneeling in silence, I have watched police officers cock their weapons and laugh, pointing out targets in the crowd. I have been emailing my professors asking for extensions, trying to explain that if something is turned in late, it could be the result of me being detained or injured. I don’t want to be penalized for trying to do what I wholeheartedly believe is right.

I have spent my life studying and will continue to study these institutions that have been so instrumental in the oppression and marginalization of black and indigenous communities. Yet, now that I have the opportunity to be on the frontlines actively fighting for the change our country so desperately needs, I feel that this study is more of a hindrance than a help to the cause. Writing papers and reading books can only take me so far and I implore that professors everywhere recognize that requesting their students split their time and energy between finals and justice is an impossible ask.

Opportunity to Serve

Since the start of the most drastic change of our lives, I have had the privilege of helping feed more than 200 different families in the Santa Ana area and even some neighboring cities. It has been an immense pleasure seeing the sheer joy and happiness of families as they come to pick up their box of food from our site, as well as a $50 gift card to Northgate, a grocery store in Santa Ana. Along with donating food and helping feed families, the team at the office, including myself, have dedicated this time to offering psychosocial and mental health check-ups for the families we serve.

Every day I go into the office I start my day by gathering files of our families we served between the months of January, February, and March and calling them to check on how they are doing financially, mentally, and how they have been affected by COVID-19. As a side project, I have been putting together Excel spreadsheets of all these families’ struggles and finding a way to turn their situation into a success story to share with our board at PY-OCBF and to the community partners who make all of our efforts possible. One of the things that has really touched me while working with these families is how much of an impact this nonprofit organization truly has on family’s lives. I have spoken with many families who I just call to check up on and it turns into an hour call sharing about how much of a change they have seen in their child who went through our program. Further, they go on to discuss that because of our program, their children have a different perspective on the drugs they were using before and the group of friends they were hanging out with. Of course, the situation is different right now as everyone is being told to stay at home; however, there are those handful of kids who still go out without asking for permission, increasing the likelihood they might contract this disease and pass it to the rest of the family. We are working diligently to provide support for these parents and offering advice to talk to their kids in order to have a serious conversation with their kids so that they feel heard and validated.

Although the novel Coronavirus has impacted the lives of millions of people not just on a national level, but on a global level, I feel that in my current position, it has opened doors for me that would have otherwise not presented themselves. Fortunately, I have been offered a full-time position at the Project Youth Orange County Bar Foundation post-graduation that I have committed to already. This invitation came to me because the organization received a huge grant for COVID-19 relief to offer to their staff and since I was already part-time, they thought I would be a good fit to join the team once mid-June comes around. I was very excited and pleased to be recognized for the work I have done at the office in front of all staff. I am immensely grateful for this opportunity. I will work even harder to provide for the community and to continue changing the lives of adolescents, who have steered off the path of success. I will use my time as a full-time employee to polish my resume, not forgetting that the main purpose of my moving to Irvine was to become a scholar and continue the education that my parents couldn’t attain. I will still be looking for ways to get internships with other fields within criminology. One specific interest that I have had since being an intern and a part-time employee in this organization is the work of the Orange County Coroner’s Office. I don’t exactly know what enticed me to find it appealing as many would say that it is an awful job in nature since it relates to death and seeing people in their worst state possible. However, I feel that the only way for me to truly know if I want to pursue such a career in forensic science will be to just dive into it and see where it takes me.

I can, without a doubt, say that the Coronavirus has impacted me in a way unlike many others, and for that I am extremely grateful. As I continue working, I can also state that many people are becoming more and more hopeful as time progresses. With people now beginning to say Stage Two of this stay-at-home order is about to allow retailers and other companies to begin doing curbside delivery, many families can now see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Let’s Do Better

This time of the year is meant to be a time of celebration; however, it has been difficult to feel proud or excited for many of us when it has become a time of collective mourning and sorrow, especially for the Black community. There has been an endless amount of pain, rage, and helplessness that has been felt throughout our nation because of the growing list of Black lives we have lost to violence and brutality.

To honor the lives that we have lost, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, Trayon Martin, and all of the other Black lives that have been taken away, may they Rest in Power.

Throughout my college experience, I have become more exposed to the various identities and the upbringings of others, which led to my own self-reflection on my own privileged and marginalized identities. I identify as Colombian, German, and Mexican; however navigating life as a mixed race, I have never been able to identify or have one culture more salient than the other. I am visibly white-passing and do not hold any strong ties with any of my ethnic identities, which used to bring me feelings of guilt and frustration, for I would question whether or not I could be an advocate for certain communities, and whether or not I could claim the identity of a woman of color. In the process of understanding my positionality, I began to wonder what space I belonged in, where I could speak up, and where I should take a step back for others to speak. I found myself in a constant theme of questioning what is my narrative and slowly began to realize that I could not base it off lone identities and that I have had the privilege to move through life without my identities defining who I am. Those initial feelings of guilt and confusion transformed into growth, acceptance, and empowerment.

This journey has driven me to educate myself more about the social inequalities and injustices that people face and to focus on what I can do for those around me. It has motivated me to be more culturally responsive and competent, so that I am able to best advocate for those around me. Through the various roles I have worked in, I have been able to listen to a variety of communities’ narratives and experiences, which has allowed me to extend my empathy to these communities while also pushing me to continue educating myself on how I can best serve and empower them. By immersing myself amongst different communities, I have been given the honor of hearing others’ stories and experiences, which has inspired me to commit myself to support and empower others.

I share my story of navigating through my privileged and marginalized identities in hopes that it encourages others to explore their own identities. This journey is not an easy one, and it is an ongoing learning process that will come with various mistakes. I have learned that with facing our privileges comes feelings of guilt, discomfort, and at times, complacency. It is very easy to become ignorant when we are not affected by different issues, but I challenge those who read this to embrace the discomfort. With these emotions, I have found it important to reflect on the source of discomfort and guilt, for although they are a part of the process, in taking the steps to become more aware of the systemic inequalities around us, understanding the source of discomfort can better inform us on how we perpetuate these systemic inequalities. If we choose to embrace ignorance, we refuse to acknowledge the systems that impact marginalized communities and refuse to honestly and openly hear cries for help. If we choose our own comfort over the lives of those being affected every day, we can never truly honor, serve, or support these communities.

I challenge any non-Black person, including myself, to stop remaining complacent when injustices are committed. We need to consistently recognize and acknowledge how the Black community is disproportionately affected in every injustice experienced and call out anti-Blackness in every role, community, and space we share. We need to keep ourselves and others accountable when we make mistakes or fall back into patterns of complacency or ignorance. We need to continue educating ourselves instead of relying on the emotional labor of the Black community to continuously educate us on the history of their oppressions. We need to collectively uplift and empower one another to heal and rise against injustice. We need to remember that allyship ends when action ends.

To the Black community, you are strong. You deserve to be here. The recent events are emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting, and the need for rest to take care of your mental, physical, and emotional well-being are at an all time high. If you are able, take the time to regain your energy, feel every emotion, and remind yourself of the power you have inside of you. You are not alone.

The Virus That Makes You Forget

Following Jan. 1 of 2020 many of my classmates and I continued to like, share, and forward the same meme. The meme included any image but held the same phrase: I can see 2020. For many of us, 2020 was a beacon of hope. For the Class of 2020, this meant walking on stage in front of our families. Graduation meant becoming an adult, finding a job, or going to graduate school. No matter what we were doing in our post-grad life, we were the new rising stars ready to take on the world with a positive outlook no matter what the future held. We felt that we had a deal with the universe that we were about to be noticed for our hard work, our hardships, and our perseverance.

Then March 17 of 2020 came to pass with California Gov. Newman ordering us to stay at home, which we all did. However, little did we all know that the world we once had open to us would only be forgotten when we closed our front doors.

Life became immediately uncertain and for many of us, that meant graduation and our post-graduation plans including housing, careers, education, food, and basic standards of living were revoked! We became the forgotten — a place from which many of us had attempted to rise by attending university. The goals that we were told we could set and the plans that we were allowed to make — these were crushed before our eyes.

Eighty days before graduation, in the first several weeks of quarantine, I fell extremely ill; both unfortunately and luckily, I was isolated. All of my roommates had moved out of the student apartments leaving me with limited resources, unable to go to the stores to pick up medicine or food, and with insufficient health coverage to afford a doctor until my throat was too swollen to drink water. For nearly three weeks, I was stuck in bed, I was unable to apply to job deadlines, reach out to family, and have contact with the outside world. I was forgotten.

Forty-five days before graduation, I had clawed my way out of illness and was catching up on an honors thesis about media depictions of sexual exploitation within the American political system, when I was relayed the news that democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was accused of sexual assault. However, when reporting this news to close friends who had been devastated and upset by similar claims against past politicians, they all were too tired and numb from the quarantine to care. Just as I had written hours before reading the initial story, history was repeating, and it was not only I who COVID-19 had forgotten, but now survivors of violence.

After this revelation, I realize the silencing factor that COVID-19 has. Not only does it have the power to terminate the voices of our older generations, but it has the power to silence and make us forget the voices of every generation. Maybe this is why social media usage has gone up, why we see people creating new social media accounts, posting more, attempting to reach out to long lost friends. We do not want to be silenced, moreover, we cannot be silenced. Silence means that we have been forgotten and being forgotten is where injustice and uncertainty occurs. By using social media, pressing like on a post, or even sending a hate message, means that someone cares and is watching what you are doing. If there is no interaction, I am stuck in the land of indifference.

This is a place that I, and many others, now reside, captured and uncertain. In 2020, my plan was to graduate Cum Laude, dean's honor list, with three honors programs, three majors, and with research and job experience that stretched over six years. I would then go into my first year of graduate school, attempting a dual Juris Doctorate. I would be spending my time experimenting with new concepts, new experiences, and new relationships. My life would then be spent giving a microphone to survivors of domestic violence and sex crimes. However, now the plan is wiped clean, instead I sit still bound to graduate in 30 days with no home to stay, no place to work, and no future education to come back to. I would say I am overly qualified, but pandemic makes me lost in a series of names and masked faces.

Welcome to My Cage: The Pandemic and PTSD

When I read the campuswide email notifying students of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the coronavirus pandemic, I was sitting on my couch practicing a research presentation I was going to give a few hours later. For a few minutes, I sat there motionless, trying to digest the meaning of the words as though they were from a language other than my own, familiar sounds strung together in way that was wholly unintelligible to me. I tried but failed to make sense of how this could affect my life. After the initial shock had worn off, I mobilized quickly, snapping into an autopilot mode of being I knew all too well. I began making mental checklists, sharing the email with my friends and family, half of my brain wondering if I should make a trip to the grocery store to stockpile supplies and the other half wondering how I was supposed take final exams in the midst of so much uncertainty. The most chilling realization was knowing I had to wait powerlessly as the fate of the world unfolded, frozen with anxiety as I figured out my place in it all.

These feelings of powerlessness and isolation are familiar bedfellows for me. Early October of 2015, shortly after beginning my first year at UCI, I was diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Despite having had years of psychological treatment for my condition, including Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Retraining, the flashbacks, paranoia, and nightmares still emerge unwarranted. People have referred to the pandemic as a collective trauma. For me, the pandemic has not only been a collective trauma, it has also been the reemergence of a personal trauma. The news of the pandemic and the implications it has for daily life triggered a reemergence of symptoms that were ultimately ignited by the overwhelming sense of helplessness that lies in waiting, as I suddenly find myself navigating yet another situation beyond my control. Food security, safety, and my sense of self have all been shaken by COVID-19.

The first few weeks after UCI transitioned into remote learning and the governor issued the stay-at-home order, I hardly got any sleep. My body was cycling through hypervigilance and derealization, and my sleep was interrupted by intrusive nightmares oscillating between flashbacks and frightening snippets from current events. Any coping methods I had developed through hard-won efforts over the past few years — leaving my apartment for a change of scenery, hanging out with friends, going to the gym — were suddenly made inaccessible to me due to the stay-at-home orders, closures of non-essential businesses, and many of my friends breaking their campus leases to move back to their family homes. So for me, learning to cope during COVID-19 quarantine means learning to function with my re-emerging PTSD symptoms and without my go-to tools. I must navigate my illness in a rapidly evolving world, one where some of my internalized fears, such as running out of food and living in an unsafe world, are made progressively more external by the minute and broadcasted on every news platform; fears that I could no longer escape, being confined in the tight constraints of my studio apartment’s walls. I cannot shake the devastating effects of sacrifice that I experience as all sense of control has been stripped away from me.

However, amidst my mental anguish, I have realized something important—experiencing these same PTSD symptoms during a global pandemic feels markedly different than it did years ago. Part of it might be the passage of time and the growth in my mindset, but there is something else that feels very different. Currently, there is widespread solidarity and support for all of us facing the chaos of COVID-19, whether they are on the frontlines of the fight against the illness or they are self-isolating due to new rules, restrictions, and risks. This was in stark contrast to what it was like to have a mental disorder. The unity we all experience as a result of COVID-19 is one I could not have predicted. I am not the only student heartbroken over a cancelled graduation, I am not the only student who is struggling to adapt to remote learning, and I am not the only person in this world who has to make sacrifices.

Between observations I’ve made on social media and conversations with my friends and classmates, this time we are all enduring great pain and stress as we attempt to adapt to life’s challenges. As a Peer Assistant for an Education class, I have heard from many students of their heartache over the remote learning model, how difficult it is to study in a non-academic environment, and how unmotivated they have become this quarter. This is definitely something I can relate to; as of late, it has been exceptionally difficult to find motivation and put forth the effort for even simple activities as a lack of energy compounds the issue and hinders basic needs. However, the willingness of people to open up about their distress during the pandemic is unlike the self-imposed social isolation of many people who experience mental illness regularly. Something this pandemic has taught me is that I want to live in a world where mental illness receives more support and isn’t so taboo and controversial. Why is it that we are able to talk about our pain, stress, and mental illness now, but aren’t able to talk about it outside of a global pandemic? People should be able to talk about these hardships and ask for help, much like during these circumstances.

It has been nearly three months since the coronavirus crisis was declared a pandemic. I still have many bad days that I endure where my symptoms can be overwhelming. But somehow, during my good days — and some days, merely good moments — I can appreciate the resilience I have acquired over the years and the common ground I share with others who live through similar circumstances. For veterans of trauma and mental illness, this isn’t the first time we are experiencing pain in an extreme and disastrous way. This is, however, the first time we are experiencing it with the rest of the world. This strange new feeling of solidarity as I read and hear about the experiences of other people provides some small comfort as I fight my way out of bed each day. As we fight to survive this pandemic, I hope to hold onto this feeling of togetherness and acceptance of pain, so that it will always be okay for people to share their struggles. We don’t know what the world will look like days, months, or years from now, but I hope that we can cultivate such a culture to make life much easier for people coping with mental illness.

A Somatic Pandemonium in Quarantine

I remember hearing that our brains create the color magenta all on their own.

When I was younger I used to run out of my third-grade class because my teacher was allergic to the mold and sometimes would vomit in the trash can. My dad used to tell me that I used to always have to have something in my hands, later translating itself into the form of a hair tie around my wrist.

Sometimes, I think about the girl who used to walk on her tippy toes. medial and lateral nerves never planted, never grounded. We were the same in this way. My ability to be firmly planted anywhere was also withered.

Was it from all the times I panicked? Or from the time I ran away and I blistered the soles of my feet 'til they were black from the summer pavement? Emetophobia.

I felt it in the shower, dressing itself from the crown of my head down to the soles of my feet, noting the feeling onto my white board in an attempt to solidify it’s permanence.

As I breathed in the chemical blue transpiring from the Expo marker, everything was more defined. I laid down and when I looked up at the starlet lamp I had finally felt centered. Still. No longer fleeting. The grooves in the lamps glass forming a spiral of what felt to me like an artificial landscape of transcendental sparks.

She’s back now, magenta, though I never knew she left or even ever was. Somehow still subconsciously always known. I had been searching for her in the tremors.

I can see her now in the daphnes, the golden rays from the sun reflecting off of the bark on the trees and the red light that glowed brighter, suddenly the town around me was warmer. A melting of hues and sharpened saturation that was apparent and reminded of the smell of oranges.

I threw up all of the carrots I ate just before. The trauma that my body kept as a memory of things that may or may not go wrong and the times that I couldn't keep my legs from running. Revelations bring memories bringing anxieties from fear and panic released from my body as if to say “NO LONGER!”

I close my eyes now and my mind's eye is, too, more vivid than ever before. My inner eyelids lit up with orange undertones no longer a solid black, neurons firing, fire. Not the kind that burns you but the kind that can light up a dull space. Like the wick of a tea-lit candle. Magenta doesn’t exist. It is perception. A construct made of light waves, blue and red.

Demolition. Reconstruction. I walk down the street into this new world wearing my new mask, somatic senses tingling and I think to myself “Houston, I think we’ve just hit equilibrium.”

How COVID-19 Changed My Senior Year

During the last two weeks of Winter quarter, I watched the emails pour in. Spring quarter would be online, facilities were closing, and everyone was recommended to return home to their families, if possible. I resolved to myself that I would not move back home; I wanted to stay in my apartment, near my boyfriend, near my friends, and in the one place I had my own space. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened, things continued to change quickly. Soon I learned my roommate/best friend would be cancelling her lease and moving back up to Northern California. We had made plans for my final quarter at UCI, as I would be graduating in June while she had another year, but all of the sudden, that dream was gone. In one whirlwind of a day, we tried to cram in as much of our plans as we could before she left the next day for good. There are still so many things – like hiking, going to museums, and showing her around my hometown – we never got to cross off our list.

Then, my boyfriend decided he would also be moving home, three hours away. Most of my sorority sisters were moving home, too. I realized if I stayed at school, I would be completely alone. My mom had been encouraging me to move home anyway, but I was reluctant to return to a house I wasn’t completely comfortable in. As the pandemic became more serious, gentle encouragement quickly turned into demands. I had to cancel my lease and move home.

I moved back in with my parents at the end of Spring Break; I never got to say goodbye to most of my friends, many of whom I’ll likely never see again – as long as the virus doesn’t change things, I’m supposed to move to New York over the summer to begin a PhD program in Criminal Justice. Just like that, my time at UCI had come to a close. No lasts to savor; instead I had piles of things to regret. In place of a final quarter filled with memorable lasts, such as the senior banquet or my sorority’s senior preference night, I’m left with a laundry list of things I missed out on. I didn’t get to look around the campus one last time like I had planned; I never got to take my graduation pictures in front of the UC Irvine sign. Commencement had already been cancelled. The lights had turned off in the theatre before the movie was over. I never got to find out how the movie ended.

Transitioning to a remote learning system wasn’t too bad, but I found that some professors weren’t adjusting their courses to the difficulties many students were facing. It turned out to be difficult to stay motivated, especially for classes that are pre-recorded and don’t have any face-to-face interaction. It’s hard to make myself care; I’m in my last few weeks ever at UCI, but it feels like I’m already in summer. School isn’t real, my classes aren’t real. I still put in the effort, but I feel like I’m not getting much out of my classes.

The things I had been looking forward to this quarter are gone; there will be no Undergraduate Research Symposium, where I was supposed to present two projects. My amazing internship with the US Postal Inspection Service is over prematurely and I never got to properly say goodbye to anyone I met there. I won’t receive recognition for the various awards and honors I worked so hard to achieve.

And I’m one of the lucky ones! I feel guilty for feeling bad about my situation, when I know there are others who have it much, much worse. I am like that quintessential spoiled child, complaining while there are essential workers working tirelessly, people with health concerns constantly fearing for their safety, and people dying every day. Yet knowing that doesn't help me from feeling I was robbed of my senior experience, something I worked very hard to achieve. I know it’s not nearly as important as what many others are going through. But nevertheless, this is my situation. I was supposed to be enjoying this final quarter with my friends and preparing to move on, not be stuck at home, grappling with my mental health and hiding out in my room to get some alone time from a family I don’t always get along with. And while I know it’s more difficult out there for many others, it’s still difficult for me.

The thing that stresses me out most is the uncertainty. Uncertainty for the future – how long will this pandemic last? How many more people have to suffer before things go back to “normal” – whatever that is? How long until I can see my friends and family again? And what does this mean for my academic future? Who knows what will happen between now and then? All that’s left to do is wait and hope that everything will work out for the best.

Looking back over my last few months at UCI, I wish I knew at the time that I was experiencing my lasts; it feels like I took so much for granted. If there is one thing this has all made me realize, it’s that nothing is certain. Everything we expect, everything we take for granted – none of it is a given. Hold on to what you have while you have it, and take the time to appreciate the wonderful things in life, because you never know when it will be gone.

Physical Distancing

Thirty days have never felt so long. April has been the longest month of the year. I have been through more in these past three months than in the past three years. The COVID-19 outbreak has had a huge impact on both physical and social well-being of a lot of Americans, including me. Stress has been governing the lives of so many civilians, in particular students and workers. In addition to causing a lack of motivation in my life, quarantine has also brought a wave of anxiety.

My life changed the moment the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and the government announced social distancing. My busy daily schedule, running from class to class and meeting to meeting, morphed into identical days, consisting of hour after hour behind a cold computer monitor. Human interaction and touch improve trust, reduce fear and increases physical well-being. Imagine the effects of removing the human touch and interaction from midst of society. Humans are profoundly social creatures. I cannot function without interacting and connecting with other people. Even daily acquaintances have an impact on me that is only noticeable once removed. As a result, the COVID-19 outbreak has had an extreme impact on me beyond direct symptoms and consequences of contracting the virus itself.

It was not until later that month, when out of sheer boredom I was scrolling through my call logs and I realized that I had called my grandmother more than ever. This made me realize that quarantine had created some positive impacts on my social interactions as well. This period of time has created an opportunity to check up on and connect with family and peers more often than we were able to. Even though we might be connecting solely through a screen, we are not missing out on being socially connected. Quarantine has taught me to value and prioritize social connection, and to recognize that we can find this type of connection not only through in-person gatherings, but also through deep heart to heart connections. Right now, my weekly Zoom meetings with my long-time friends are the most important events in my week. In fact, I have taken advantage of the opportunity to reconnect with many of my old friends and have actually had more meaningful conversations with them than before the isolation.

This situation is far from ideal. From my perspective, touch and in-person interaction is essential; however, we must overcome all difficulties that life throws at us with the best we are provided with. Therefore, perhaps we should take this time to re-align our motives by engaging in things that are of importance to us. I learned how to dig deep and find appreciation for all the small talks, gatherings, and face-to-face interactions. I have also realized that friendships are not only built on the foundation of physical presence but rather on meaningful conversations you get to have, even if they are through a cold computer monitor. My realization came from having more time on my hands and noticing the shift in conversations I was having with those around me. After all, maybe this isolation isn’t “social distancing”, but rather “physical distancing” until we meet again.

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David Wallace-Wells

The new age of d.i.y. medicine.

By David Wallace-Wells

Opinion Writer

“Cavities are a communicable disease, and if you’re among the 90 percent of Americans who’s ever had one, you probably got them from your mother.”

So begins “The Rise and Impending Fall of the Dental Cavity,” a remarkably engrossing and, for me, genuinely eye-opening survey of the history and science of tooth decay, published last week by the pseudonymous Cremieux Recueil in a Substack newsletter. The bacterium Streptococcus mutans might not seem like the likeliest subject for a 7,600-word general-interest deep dive, but Recueil takes detours into the immaculate teeth of dinosaurs, the practice of Neolithic dentistry, the agricultural and industrial revolutions and their effect on our diets and the dental agony of America’s founding fathers.

His essay is a kind of masterpiece of an emergent form of internet argumentation — one that has roots in the blogosphere and the message-board culture of an earlier era but really flowered in the pandemic years: extremely long, exhaustively researched, often compiled by obsessive nonexperts and aimed at a contrarian lesson about public health, say, or educational achievement or the origins of the pandemic. For me, the archetypal example is probably the 10-part investigation , with nine “interludes,” into the causes of American obesity published in 2021 by a pair of anonymous researchers, calling themselves Slime Mold Time Mold, who proposed environmental contamination of our water table by the runoff of the mood stabilizer lithium as the driver of the country’s skyrocketing body mass index and have since undertaken the staging of a large-scale, self-supervised community trial of what they call the “potato diet.”

In this case, the lesson was about what is going on in the bacteria pools we call mouths and what we could do to clean them up. Probably, you remember admonitions from childhood that eating candy will rot your teeth, but that story turns out to be a bit simplistic: The problem isn’t that your teeth hate sugar but that Streptococcus mutans loves it. And when it consumes sugar, the byproduct is lactic acid, which is what really starts to eat away at your dental enamel. Not everyone has an oral microbiome dominated by Streptococcus mutans, but chances are if you do, it was passed to you by your parents, very early on — and if you eat any sugar, you’re very likely to suffer tooth decay.

In places like the United States — where drugs are advertised directly to consumers, pharmacies are lined with whitening toothpaste and yuppie dentists hawk Invisalign between fillings — you might have come to see oral health as primarily a cosmetic matter. (Perhaps, given the costs, even a scam.) But probably a quarter of Americans and more than a third of the world have untreated cavities or tooth decay, and there is an awful lot of science linking oral hygiene with overall health and well-being. The connections are both direct (untreated cavities can host infections, which can spread elsewhere in the body, causing cellulitis and osteomyelitis, among other infections, and other forms of oral bacteria have been linked to colon and colorectal cancers) and indirect (tooth loss is correlated with higher all-cause mortality, with studies of large-scale tooth loss finding large increases in all-cause mortality risk). That’s one reason, over the past few decades, there have been periodic efforts to develop a vaccine for tooth decay, focused on Streptococcus mutans.

But “Impending Fall” was not prompted by an F.D.A. approval of such a vaccine, a successful large-scale clinical trial or even news of such a trial getting underway. It wasn’t even occasioned by the publication of new academic research or a new book. Instead, it referred to the rollout of a new product called Lumina, conceived by the start-up Lantern Bioworks and sold to customers directly as a probiotic supplement — and an opportunity to participate in something more like a health-care version of a beta-test soft launch.

“Lumina does not have F.D.A. approval, the endorsement of major scientific organizations or any of the other trappings that sound medicine is supposed to have,” acknowledged Richard Hanania — a prominent anti-woke, pro-vaccine Substack provocateur whose views on race my colleague Jamelle Bouie called “rancid” and whose furious history of social justice was endorsed by Peter Thiel, Tyler Cowen and Vivek Ramaswamy, among others — reflecting on his decision to “let some genetically engineered bacteria colonize my mouth.” So why had he done this?

He wasn’t motivated by the science or even the reputation of the company’s scientists. “The real reason I brushed my teeth with Lumina,” he writes, “was Scott Alexander told me to.”

Alexander, if you don’t know, is the nom de plume of one of the tech world’s most prominent public intellectuals — a Bay Area psychiatrist who used to publish a website of Rationalist musings and investigations called Slate Star Codex and now publishes one called Astral Codex Ten — including, recently, a 15,000-word summary of a 15-hour debate about the origins of the pandemic and a persuasive defense of the utilitarian-philanthropic movement effective altruism . Like Hanania, Alexander was supportive of vaccines and was cautious about Covid, though he has been critical of the F.D.A., which he believes could’ve brought us those vaccines much more quickly. In other words, though his worldview can skew right, he is not exactly the conventional liberal stereotype of the anti-science crusader but much closer to its sociological opposite. And in December he published a long FAQ-style interview with the founder of Lantern Bioworks, which amounted to a kind of endorsement, though Alexander was typically careful to avoid making claims about Lumina’s efficacy, given that it has not endured conventional clinical trials, and to disclose his conflicts of interests (his friends at the company and the consulting work his wife did for it).

To a lay reader like me, the idea appears promising: a $250 one-time treatment to crowd out the bacteria that are in my mouth now, producing lactic acid anytime I eat sugar, with an engineered variety that will not. (The process is a bit like gene drive proposals to outbreed disease-carrying mosquitoes with varieties that can’t harbor malaria or dengue or other diseases menacing to humans.) But it is nevertheless disorienting to find myself, reading about Lumina, in the position to decide, on my own, whether it’s worth it or safe to give a novel bacterium a permanent home in my microbiome. (“Once you use it, it’s in your mouth approximately forever,” Alexander writes.) And to thereby undertake what is essentially an unproven and untested treatment without any traditional reassuring oversight. (As Ruxandra Teslo puts it , “Most of the direct data comes from small studies in rats, and well … most humans are not rats.”)

And yet this position is an increasingly common one, at least in certain corners of the internet, especially since Covid upended an awful lot about not just our lives and our health but also the structure of our epistemic faith. Suddenly, groceries weren’t safe, and then they were; parks weren’t, either, and then they were; masks didn’t work, and then they did, and then maybe they didn’t again. Early on, especially, guidance seemed to shift almost by the week, which emboldened certain people to try to sort it all out for themselves, while others languished in sometimes fearful confusion. In 2020 there were those who placed their pandemic bets on ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, infamously, but also those hawking vitamin D as a Covid fix and those who didn’t want to wait for the conclusion of clinical trials and instead assembled their own versions of the Covid vaccines, administering them in the form of nasal sprays. The pandemic’s rise of at-home test kits was not just about Covid-19 — which, in fact, became widely available only after many months of regulatory and messaging obstacles — but also about Lyme disease, hormone levels, S.T.I.s, menopause, vitamin D, DNA sequencing, thyroid function and many other health indicators. By 2021, a majority of states had passed laws restricting public health authorities from taking actions against future pandemics. In the aftermath of the Covid emergency, the country’s biggest pharmaceutical and perhaps biomedical story has been the spectacular rise of Ozempic, which technically hasn’t even gotten F.D.A. approval for weight loss (though its semaglutide cousin Wegovy has).

Off-label use is nothing new, of course; some estimates suggest up to one-third of prescriptions for common drugs in the United States may be written for purposes other than those originally intended. And skepticism about the American medical establishment didn’t begin with the pandemic, given decades of hostility toward the authorities like the F.D.A. and an even longer national infatuation with quick fixes, “secret knowledge” and quack cures. But in part because no one was happy with how the pandemic went and because everyone wanted to believe it would have been easy to handle it better, it did help cultivate what my colleague Michelle Goldberg has called “a coalition of the distrustful” — an anarchic sort of D.I.Y. health and wellness counterestablishment, one that mixes disdain for much conventional wisdom with great faith in the ability of smart people on the internet to do better. “Substackism,” Max Read recently called it, on his own Substack.

“The anti-woke wellness corner of Substack is just one portion of a large and loose network of influencers, podcasters, gurus, scientists, pseudoscientists, quacks, dietitians and scammers,” Read wrote this month. “What links all of these diverse content producers together is less a particular level (or absence) of scientific rigor or expertise (sometimes these guys are absolutely correct!) and more an outsider attitude — a mistrust of institutions.”

To most Americans, not just on the right, this all feels not just familiar but intuitive: that the apparent stumbles of our public health establishment through the past few years would produce distrustful backlash against elite authorities. And there were missteps and mistakes: early on about testing kits and aerosol spread, in the middle of the pandemic about natural immunity and breakthrough infections and in the post-emergency phase about the universal value of Paxlovid, for instance, which, one recent study suggests, may offer little to no clinical benefit for the fully vaccinated.

But it is also the case that those elites and that establishment produced in the same period what is not just the great success of the pandemic but probably the most impressive public-health achievement in a generation: the record-time design, production, clinical testing and delivery of an entirely new kind of vaccine, which, when rolled out less than a year after the country’s first publicly identified Covid case, saved the lives of several million Americans and more than 10 million people living abroad.

How should we balance those mistakes and those contributions? Or the pandemic wisdom of the establishment against those who promised that Covid would kill only a few thousand Americans or who believe the pandemic experience was an unequivocal indictment of the scientific establishment? And how far should we take the argument that the F.D.A. could often move faster?

Not everyone who doubts the wisdom of the F.D.A. is calling for its abolition, of course, and not everyone who’s wondering about the wisdom of seasonal Covid booster shots for the young believes that it would be good if parents seeking shots for their kids were reported to children’s services. Not everyone who was skeptical of those shots at the outset believes they have already killed millions. And not everyone who thinks American schools were closed too long believes those closings were a bigger public policy failure than the Iraq war. But for many, the pandemic experience does seem to have been a kind of gateway drug, and it isn’t just among anti-vaxxers that Covid cynicism has given way to a new age of medical libertarianism. In certain corners, it has come to look almost like a second mainstream, at least as sure of itself as the first.

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How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Step 4: Write the Introduction

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

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Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Choose a Specific Angle

Provide Credible Sources

Use Persuasive Language

Organize Your Essay

Emphasize Benefits

Use Visuals -H3

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Revise and Edit

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Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions

Scott E. Bokemper

Alan S. Gerber

Saad B. Omer

Gregory A. Huber

1. Introduction

2.1. Experiment 1 results

2.2. Experiment 2 results

3. Discussion

4. Materials and methods

4.2. Experiment 1