US – BioQuakes

In the pandemic’s early days, countries reported their COVID-19 levels daily. However, that isn’t the case now. In 2022, countries most often report their COVID-19 infection and vaccination levels only five days a week. Despite this, there are still outbreaks of the virus. China, however, has a strict zero COVID-19 policy which results in lockdowns when too many cases are reported. This means that Chinese citizens often find daily life disrupted by the presence of COVID, an experience that we Americans have left more or less in the past.

This begs the question, which course of action should be adopted by countries worldwide? Of course, a middle ground would be ideal, however, that may be unrealistic as governments are trying to find a “new normal” (as the UK put it). Despite this hope to live with COVID, many people are outraged at what seems to be complacency coming from international governments, as citizens say that more needs to be done. What more is there to be done, though? Besides going back to the early ways of the pandemic, reporting cases and deaths daily, governments worldwide are doing everything possible to keep people informed on both COVID and its effects.

China’s lockdowns, while effective, are very extreme by international standards. There is a call from citizens in China asking for the COVID-19 protocols to be lessened, as the lockdowns are affecting people’s livelihoods. There are small wins, as the Chinese government has slightly repealed COVID-19 protocols, as citizens no longer need to show a negative covid test to use public transport. A study showed that when intrusive protocols are introduced, people overall show “non-compliance in applying health protocols” meaning that while China’s health practices may be effective for now, they may mean trouble in the long run as people stop following them. This supports the idea of a happy middle ground between the United States’ and China’s current protocols.

Many people talk about the teens on 16 and Pregnant and how we as a nation have increased our teen pregnancy rates, but according to News Day teen pregnancies are at an all time low. “There has been a phenomenal drop [of 9 percent] in the last two years,” said Brady Hamilton. Many people frown upon the the fact that now more than ever we have been hearing about teen pregnancies but according to this article there has been a 44% drop in teenage pregnancies since 1991.

“The U.S. teen birthrate is still among the highest for industrialized countries, however.” This makes me wonder because we may have the most teenage mothers recorded but what about all of the other industrialized countries that don’t always record every teenage birth. Also in the US we consider 19 year olds teenagers but in many other countries any age above 18 is considered an adult.

The largest concern that I have with this article is that many teenage pregnancies are not considered pregnancies if they are aborted. While I do think that the rates have dropped due to education in schools I still believe that our rates of pregnancies are very high but we just have ways to invalidate it, thus causing less teenage moms. What do you think? Do you think this article is wrong or right?

To read more: http://www.newsday.com/news/health/number-of-u-s-teens-giving-birth-at-a-low-1.3653711

BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Tag: US

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