Olivia Rodrigo Visits White House to Promote Vaccine
On Wednesday pop star Olivia Rodrigo,18 visited the White House to join the Biden administration’s efforts to use the young and influential to reach the young and unvaccinated.
The administration hopes that the 18-year-old singer who has over 28 million followers on social media and is part of a growing list of creators, celebrities, and influential people who are interested in working with the White House to deliver formulate a pro-vaccine message to their respective audiences.
In recent weeks, the White House has recruited YouTube stars, influencers, and celebrities who can send their message to their followers.
Young adults are a particularly difficult demographic to reach. Commonly referred to as “young invincibles”, for being stubborn in thinking that nothing can harm them.
Currently, young adults under the age of 27 are vaccinated at a lower rate than older people. The administration claims that they are a large part of why the U.S. fell short of reaching President Biden’s goal of partly vaccinating 70 percent of American adults by July 4.
“According to the centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 48 percent of the US population has been fully vaccinated and 55.5 percent have received at least one dose”
As of Wednesday, about an 84 percent decrease from the peak which was 3.38 million, reported on April 13.
With the Delta variant sweeping the U.S at alarming rates, convincing young people to get vaccinated is now more pertinent than ever.
In places like New York City, there has been a dramatic increase in COVID cases. Only a few weeks ago there were only about 200 new cases a day, the lowest level since the early days of the pandemic. But in the past week, the city had a stretch of several days of 400 or more cases.
As well as positive test results jumping from below 0.6 percent on average to about 1.3 percent.
Rodrigo closed her remarks by requesting people to have conversations about getting vaccinated with friends and family, urging them to get to a vaccination site, which can be done easier than ever before.