October 7, 2021

NPR reports that workplaces with vaccine mandates are hitting vaccination rates of 90 percent or higher, and frames the lesson plainly: faced with losing their jobs, even the most hesitant are getting the shot. Whether that counts as persuasion or coercion is left for the reader to decide. The same day the N.B.A. denies Andrew Wiggins a religious exemption, and Florida’s Board of Education votes to sanction eight school districts that kept mask mandates with no opt-out.

Finland joins Sweden and Denmark in limiting the Moderna vaccine for young men over the myocarditis signal, a caution from national health authorities that sits awkwardly beside the campaign to boost and expand shots elsewhere. CNN, citing new studies, confirms that protection from Pfizer’s vaccine wanes after several months, complicating the message that two doses were the finish line.

In Alaska, hospitals begin rationing care as Delta cases overwhelm short-staffed medical centers, with doctors forced to choose which patients to treat. Peter Navarro, a former Trump adviser, tells the press he twice urged the president to fire Anthony Fauci, claiming Fauci financed gain-of-function work at the Wuhan lab, an accusation that keeps circulating as the origins fight drags on.