Running Thread: New Reasons for Hope in the Fight Against COVID-19

Summer months invite us to respite and recreation. This summer has, gratefully, offered me some of both. Still, as our nation and world continue to battle this pandemic, it’s also been an unusual time of uncertainty.

COVID-19, and our collective see-sawing push to overcome it, raises big questions for all of us. I both lionize the idea of progress as steady improvement and note recurrent tragedies. We have made remarkable gains toward overcoming COVID-19, but those gains are uneven, and we have also seen the emergence of a new and highly infectious strain. We have recovered physical closeness with loved ones and friends, and we are watching COVID-19 cases soar in areas where vaccination rates are low. We catch wind of shifting mask protocols in schools and cities. We are unsure about how to best protect children who cannot be vaccinated yet. In short, there is progress and there is cyclicality.

Make no mistake, though – there is a reason for hope. Through IFYC’s polling partnership with PRRI, we can better understand changing attitudes around vaccination as it correlates with religious identity. Our joint March survey shed light on which groups had the most hesitancy and how we might persuade the persuadable through faith-based interventions.

This coming Wednesday, July 28th, with PRRI and our partners at Rush University Medical Center, we will reveal and discuss a new set of national survey insights. John Palfrey, President of Chicago’s John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is graciously hosting the conversation and all are invited to attend. It will serve as a major press release, data launch, and community connection, and we’d love to see you there.

While I can’t tease the findings, we believe you will find hope at the intersection of vaccination and the engagement of faith identity. You will come away with a better understanding of why and how we’ve made real progress, and how we can move ahead effectively in facing new challenges.

As the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. echoed Theodore Parker, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ Let’s bend it together.