In Other News: Not Real News: A look at what didn’t happen last week; Explainer: Allergic reactions to vaccines rare, short-lived

Published 2:17 pm Monday, December 14, 2020

Editor’s note: “In Other News” is a list of state, national and global headlines compiled by Daily Citizen-News staff from Associated Press-provided stories. Click on the headlines below to read the full stories.

Not Real News: A look at what didn’t happen last week

Included: Claim: Forensic tests completed on Dominion Voting Systems equipment show that dozens of votes cast for President Donald Trump in Ware County, Georgia, were “switched” or “flipped” to count for Joe Biden, who has been declared the winner in the presidential election. The facts: Social media users are misrepresenting a minor error in Ware County’s initial vote tally as evidence of election fraud, even as local elections officials confirm nothing is awry. An election worker made a small tabulation error on Election Night involving 37 votes out of about 14,000 cast for president, according to Ware County Elections Supervisor Carlos Nelson. Election officials caught the error during an internal audit and corrected it during a full hand recount of paper ballots, Nelson said. A machine recount requested by Trump resulted in the same numbers as the hand recount, giving officials confidence in those results.

‘Relieved’: US health workers start getting COVID-19 vaccine

The biggest vaccination campaign in U.S. history kicked off Monday as health workers rolled up their sleeves for shots to protect them from COVID-19 and start beating back the pandemic — a day of optimism even as the nation’s death toll closed in on 300,000. “I feel hopeful today. Relieved,” critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay said after getting a shot in the arm at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York. “I feel like healing is coming.” With a countdown of “3-2-1,” workers at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center gave the first injections to applause.

Explainer: Allergic reactions to vaccines rare, short-lived

Vaccines can sometimes cause allergic reactions, but they are usually rare and short-lived. British regulators are looking into reports of allergic reactions in two people who received the new Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine Tuesday, the first day of a vaccination program. In the meantime, they’re telling people to skip the vaccine if they’ve had a history of serious allergic reactions.

In a year dominated by pandemic, many other dramas unfolded

Not since World War II has a single phenomenon dominated the news worldwide as the COVID-19 pandemic has in 2020. In the United States, a tumultuous presidential election and a wave of protests over racial injustice also drew relentless coverage. Overshadowed, to an extent, were other dramatic developments. Among them: China’s crackdown on Hong Kong’s democracy; an apocalyptic explosion in Beirut; the shocking helicopter-crash death of basketball icon Kobe Bryant and his daughter.