Pfizer for the future

Pfizer expands COVID booster eligibility to 16-year olds

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday strongly encouraged older teenagers to get a Pfizer vaccine booster shot at least six months after completing their first two Covid-19 doses.

The CDC’s recommendation for 16- and 17-year-olds comes just hours after the Food and Drug Administration expanded eligibility for Pfizer and BioNTech’s third shot to that age group.

The CDC’s strong recommendation and the FDA’s emergency authorization come only a day after Pfizer and BioNTech released initial lab data indicating that booster shots provide high levels of protection against the highly mutated omicron variant of the virus that causes Covid-19.

The preliminary data found that omicron significantly reduces the protection provided by the initial two-dose series. Boosters, on the other hand, fight the variant at levels comparable to the 95% protection provided by the two-dose series against the original strain of the virus, the lab results showed.

Here’s what you can do:

With 16- and 17-year olds eligible for the booster, high schoolers across the country will be getting in line for another jab. Find where your classmates will be going to get theirs and try to tag along to ask people why they are getting a booster.

How is the new COVID variant affecting your community and are the students at your school concerned? This is great opportunity to find statistics about vaccine booster efficacy and how many people in your city are vaccinated.

Get the full picture by asking fellow students who are in favor of and against the vaccine.

The International Federation of Journalism says that with the wave of misinformation about vaccines, reporting on them is that much more important. Here are their tips:

• Don’t trust data automatically, check for their context.
• Use trusted and reliable sources — experts in the field.
• Understand what’s known and what’s not about the vaccine.
• Explain in detail scientific vocabulary.
• Avoid sensationalism and click-baiting.

Going for the gold

Facebook puts pause on development of kid-oriented Instagram app

Poynter Institute asked high school and college journalists to submit work from their newspapers that they are most proud of. Five high schools were featured on this list:

• Palo Alto High School in California for their investigative piece on TA grading privileges, and features about gender-fluid fashion and student athletes,;
• Huron High School in Michigan with coronavirus coverage about the costs of going back to school in person and a feature about bipartisanship;
• Wastenaw International High School in Michigan for features about National Diabetes Awareness Month, Michigan’s menstrual equity and Gay-Straight alliance leaders;
• Lakewood High School in Florida with breaking news coverage about an LGBTQ+ book being removed from their library; and
• Dougherty Valley High School in California with an investigative piece about dress codes.

For the full list of selections, check it out here.

Here’s what you can do:

Contests are a great way to excite and invigorate a newsroom. With so many opportunities for student journalists to be recognized for their work (including Quill and Scroll’s contests) awards are just around the corner for every type of story.

The Journalism Education Association has a database of contests open for high school newspapers and writers. Check that out here. 

Keep your eyes for contests your newspaper can enter and maybe add your newspaper to the list of winners in 2022.

One latte with extra labor rights, please!

Starbucks workers form their 1st union in the U.S. in a big win for labor

Starbucks workers have voted to form their first U.S. union. Workers from one store in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize, in a watershed moment for Starbucks, which operates 8,953 stores in the United States.

Three Buffalo-area stores held separate union elections. Baristas and shift supervisors from one store voted 19-8 to unionize, while workers from the second store rejected unionization 12-8. The third store failed to reach a verdict and faces a legal battle. There, 15 votes were cast for unionization and nine against, while seven votes were challenged. Most of the challenges came from the union, which argued that some workers who voted weren’t regular employees at the location.

The election marks one of the highest-profile union wins for U.S. restaurant workers, who are among the least unionized in the country. Starbucks workers who voted to unionize will join Workers United, affiliated with the massive Service Employees International Union.

Here’s what you can do:

With a labor victory like this one it is good to study up on how unions work and the history of labor unions in the United States.

A labor union or trade union is an organized group of workers who unite to make decisions about conditions affecting their work. Labor unions strive to bring economic justice to the workplace and social justice to our nation. If you’re in a public schools, it’s likely that many or even most of your teachers are in a union.

Unions work like a democracy. They hold elections for officers who make decisions on behalf of members, giving workers more power on the job.

In the United States history of unions, early workers and trade unions played an important part in the role for independence. Although their physical efforts for the cause of independence were ineffective, the ideas they introduced, such as protection for workers, became part of our American culture.

Details about unionizing is key to writing a story about well, unionizing, as readers may not full grasp what it really means.