All things political. Coronavirus Edition. (2 Viewers)

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    Maxp

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    I fear we are really going to be in a bad place due to the obvious cuts to the federal agencies that deal with infectious disease, but also the negative effect the Affordable Care act has had on non urban hospitals. Our front line defenses are ineffectual and our ability to treat the populous is probably at an all time low. Factor in the cost of healthcare and I can see our system crashing. What do you think about the politics of this virus?
     
    Posted in EE also
    ===============

    The rise of the ivermectin cult is one of the most nonsensical storylines — in a sea of nonsensical storylines — to emerge during the pandemic. Even now, as Covid begins to become a less dominant force in our lives, the ivermectin bunkum continues.

    There have been several recent large, well-done, clinical trials, including one published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, that definitively show, according to one of the study’s authors, “there’s really no sign of any benefit.”

    But this growing body of it-doesn’t-work evidence hasn’t stopped ivermectin champions from championing. “RETRACT PAPER @NEJM NOW!!!!!” an anti-vaccine physician posted on Twitter a few days after the study was published. In her view it is a “CRIMINAL PAPER” that is “PROMOTING MURDER.” (All caps and exclamation marks in original, of course.)

    The ivermectin stories have gotten so bizarre that I increasingly need to double-check to see whether they are satire. People are advocating giving it to babies, patients are sneaking it into hospitals inside teddy bears, and a candidate in Wisconsin’s attorney general election wants to investigate potential homicides in hospitals because “loved ones were basically being murdered” because ivermectin is being “withheld from them.”

    Reality: There has never been good clinical evidence to support the use of the drug in the context of Covid. In the pandemic’s early days there were laboratory studies — that is, research done in petri dishes and not involving actual humans — that suggested the drug, which is used to treat parasites in horses, had antiviral properties. (This kind of work rarely translates into clinical application.) There were also some observational studies that seemed promising............

    Unfortunately, a large part of the ivermectin “debate” has been severely polluted by fraudulent and poorly done studies. Many of the papers that suggested a possible benefit have been retracted or found to be fundamentally flawed. But the damage has been done. These studies live on as unkillable Zombie Papers that feed the “ivermectin works!” mythology.

    And why do they live on? Because ivermectin very quickly became not about science but about ideology and in-group signaling. It was pushed by a variety of right-wing voices, Covid contrarians, QAnon backers and, even, state actors, such as China and Russia, to promote information chaos in support of many agendas, both personal (e.g., profiting from the sale of ivermectin) and ideological (e.g., fostering distrust in national political and public health institutions).

    Indeed, the degree to which ivermectin discourse and decision-making are tied to ideology, as opposed to science, borders on the absurd. A study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, for example, found that 75 percent of people who get their news from very conservative news sources would recommend ivermectin to someone exposed to Covid. Only 35 percent of those who get their news from the legacy media would do the same.

    A poll last year by YouGov found that most Republicans who have heard about ivermectin “believe it could be effective, despite FDA warnings about its danger.” And a study this year found that as a result of the misinformation and hype, ivermectin prescribing volume rose by an astounding 964 percent in 2020. Such prescribing was significantly higher in counties that voted Republican. The higher the Republican vote, the higher the ivermectin use.

    As I said, absurd.

    Believing in ivermectin has become a badge of affiliation indicating a particular worldview. It also signals that a person is most likely exposed to — and may even believe — other common misinformation tropes embraced by that community, for example, the belief that the number of Covid deaths has been exaggerated (in fact, it is likely to have been underreported), that the vaccines killed thousands (in reality they saved hundreds of thousands of lives) and that the public health measures were unnecessary and ineffective (just wrong)..............

    MSN

    www.msn.com
     
    Does anyone believe that this was an accident? It seems to me that we had a concerted effort to push sham “cures” for Covid (at least two - hydroxychloroquin and ivermectin) and at the same time a concerted effort to dissuade people from using a safe, effective vaccine that was shown to save lives. members of my family who are Fox viewers refused the vaccine, even though they have never had a problem with vaccines before. They listened to media personalities spread lies about the vaccines - often using Tucker’s disingenuous propaganda tactic of “i’m just asking questions”.

    I think the last I saw, the death toll from these two prongs of disinformation was about 150,000 people. Blood on their hands.
     
    el caliente said:
    Block people’s SWIFT access if they don’t abide by the G code.

    I honestly have no idea. There are think tanks employing janitors who have a better idea on how to make this happen than I ever could.
    Click to expand...
    Therein lies the problem. I don't think there's actually a way to fix things.
     
    so a person given a lifetime appointment by trump, who was deemed not qualified by the american bar association =


    voided a national mask mandate for airplanes and other transportation. “Wearing a mask cleans nothing,” U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle wrote in her decision on Monday. “At most, it traps virus droplets. But it neither ‘sanitizes’ the person wearing the mask nor ‘sanitizes’ the conveyance.”

    Mizelle, 35, was only eight years out of law school at University of Florida when Trump appointed her to the lifetime position in 2020
     
    I heard tonight that she has never tried a case, and made this ruling without even hearing the arguments. 🤦‍♀️

    And, I don’t think her ruling is a huge deal because the mandate was set to expire in 10 days anyway and people who need to can still wear masks. There isn’t a mask shortage any longer, it’s easy to get good masks that will be protective, in fact millions were given away.

    She is probably still a bad judge.
     
    Last edited:
    Good news on the Covid front: this is a daily email so I am quoting most of it.

    A couple of weeks ago, the news was full of stories about high-profile people contracting Covid-19. The list included Attorney General Merrick Garland, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, other members of Congress (like Joaquin Castro, Susan Collins, Adam Schiff and Raphael Warnock), New York Mayor Eric Adams and several Broadway stars (like Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick and Daniel Craig).​
    Some of these infected celebrities were not exactly young. Collins and Garland are both 69. Pelosi is 82.​
    So far, however, none of their cases appears to be severe. As David Weigel, a Washington Post reporter, noted yesterday:​
    oakImage-1650310588966-articleLarge.png
    These anecdotes are part of a trend. In several places where the number of cases has risen in recent weeks, hospitalizations have stayed flat. (In past Covid waves, by contrast, hospitalizations began rising about a week after cases did.)

    [there were several graphs posted to illustrate this which I didn’t include]

    How could this be? As is often the case with Covid, the answer is not completely clear. But at least some of it reflects the changing nature of the pandemic, many experts believe. The share of cases that turn into severe illnesses seems to be declining, for three main reasons:​
    • Vaccines and booster shots are effective and universally available to Americans who are at least 12. (Covid continues to be overwhelmingly mild among children).
    • Treatments — like Evusheld for the immunocompromised and Paxlovid for vulnerable people who get infected — are increasingly available.
    • Tens of millions of Americans have already been infected with the virus, providing them with at least some immunity.
    To be clear, these trends will not eliminate severe Covid. The number of nationwide hospitalizations will probably rise in coming weeks, especially if cases continue to rise. The official number of cases has already increased 43 percent in the past two weeks, and hospitalizations have risen in a small number of states, like Vermont. Nationally, though, hospitalizations have not yet risen, probably for the same three reasons I listed above.​
     
    Lagging on boosters
    ===================

    Eight months ago, President Biden unveiled a plan to deliver coronavirus booster shots to all vaccinated American adults.

    But today, booster shots are a significant shortcoming in the federal government’s coronavirus response — with no easy answers for why it has happened or what to do about it.

    While Biden aimed for all vaccinated adults to get a booster, only about half have gotten one thus far.

    The number of Americans overall who have received a booster has essentially flatlined at 30 percent — about half the rate in some other Western countries — with new vaccinations overall hitting post-2020 lows.

    While booster uptake surged in countries such as Germany, Canada and Britain as the omicron variant emerged, that surge never reached the United States.

    Certainly, the reasons are varied.
One is that we have lower vaccination rates, in general, than many of these countries — meaning the population eligible for boosters is smaller.

    Even so, our booster uptake has been significantly smaller as a share of eligible people.
A big factor is how partisan vaccines have become in the United States.

    Republicans make up a disproportionate share of the unvaccinated, and vaccinated Republicans are also significantly less likely to get boosted than vaccinated Democrats.

    That means the booster campaign has effectively exacerbated the partisan gap in protection from the coronavirus. It also means that most of the unboosted are unlikely to listen to the Biden administration.

    But partisanship doesn’t explain it all. These are people who were willing to get two shots and, for whatever reason, haven’t been persuaded to get a third..........



     
    Optimus Prime said:
    Lagging on boosters
    ===================

    Eight months ago, President Biden unveiled a plan to deliver coronavirus booster shots to all vaccinated American adults.

    But today, booster shots are a significant shortcoming in the federal government’s coronavirus response — with no easy answers for why it has happened or what to do about it.

    While Biden aimed for all vaccinated adults to get a booster, only about half have gotten one thus far.

    The number of Americans overall who have received a booster has essentially flatlined at 30 percent — about half the rate in some other Western countries — with new vaccinations overall hitting post-2020 lows.

    While booster uptake surged in countries such as Germany, Canada and Britain as the omicron variant emerged, that surge never reached the United States.

    Certainly, the reasons are varied.
One is that we have lower vaccination rates, in general, than many of these countries — meaning the population eligible for boosters is smaller.

    Even so, our booster uptake has been significantly smaller as a share of eligible people.
A big factor is how partisan vaccines have become in the United States.

    Republicans make up a disproportionate share of the unvaccinated, and vaccinated Republicans are also significantly less likely to get boosted than vaccinated Democrats.

    That means the booster campaign has effectively exacerbated the partisan gap in protection from the coronavirus. It also means that most of the unboosted are unlikely to listen to the Biden administration.

    But partisanship doesn’t explain it all. These are people who were willing to get two shots and, for whatever reason, haven’t been persuaded to get a third..........



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    I think it’s not surprising. We have come a long way in treating Covid, and people can see that Omicron just isn’t as deadly, especially in people who are vaccinated. Plus so many people actually got Omicron, and figured that has the same effect as a booster.

    That said - I just had my second booster because I’m considered high risk. But I understand why people who aren’t high risk just haven’t done it.
     
    Interesting read
    ============
    A few weeks after the coronavirus emerged in the United States, a grim pattern was obvious. Black Americans were dying of covid-19 at disproportionately high rates.

    Articles in early April 2020 identified that pattern in Chicago and in Michigan. ProPublica tracked a similar effect in other places.
 But soon after that, the country’s response to the pandemic changed.

    Thanks in part to President Donald Trump having argued that the virus posed little risk and was soon going to vanish from the United States, Republicans began to express far less concern about being infected. They reported being less likely to take preventive measures against contracting the disease, such as wearing a mask.

    And, over time, Republican parts of the country began seeing higher rates of mortality than places that voted for Joe Biden in November 2020.


    And, inextricably, White Americans — a demographic the vast majority of Republicans are part of — began consistently dying at higher rates than non-Whites.

    We can examine this by looking at two sets of data.


    The first is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s monthly data on death by race. This doesn’t include a demographic categorization of every covid-19 death, but it’s a robust data set that is broken out by state.

    The other is The Washington Post’s aggregated data on county-level deaths, allowing us to see with some clarity how Trump- and Biden-voting parts of the country were affected by covid-19.

    Using that data and adjusting for population — that is, not a raw number of deaths but a number of deaths per 100,000 people — we can compare rates of death by vote and by race.

    The result is striking. While in the first several months of the pandemic counties that would vote for Biden that November suffered more deaths than Trump-voting counties and Black and Hispanic Americans were dying of covid-19 at higher rates than Whites, that ended by September 2020.

    From that point on, people in Republican-voting counties and Whites were dying at higher rates month after month, almost without exception……

     
    Posted this on EE too

    Such a shameful unnecessary waste
    ===========================

    Within weeks, it’s likely that the 1,000,000th American will die of covid-19. The millionth death on record, that is — it’s likely that the number of deaths is undercounted.

    At the outset of the pandemic, after all, medical professionals didn’t know what they were looking for, and Americans were unprepared for the effects of the coronavirus and the disease it causes.

    The good news is that there now exist vaccines that largely eliminate the risk of death.

    Data from the months since vaccination was made broadly available in the United States has consistently shown that those who are vaccinated are far less likely to succumb to covid-19 than those who aren’t.

    New analysis from the Peterson Center on Healthcare and Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) quantifies the effects of vaccination.

    Since June 2021, the point at which every American adult had access to coronavirus vaccines, they estimate that just over 234,000 unvaccinated Americans died who could have lived had they been immunized against the virus…….

     
    SaulGoodmanEsq said:
    I wonder how much time has to pass before people give up the conspiracy theories that the vaccine causes crazy adverse health effects.
    Click to expand...
    Have you ever heard of a Googolplexian?

    It's a large number, it could be the number of days before people give up on their vaccine conspiracy theories.
     
    Bigdaddysaints said:
    well, i know a guy who knows a guy who has a family member who read on VAERS that the Vaccince causes health problems...
    Click to expand...
    Latest one I saw was people claiming a rise in severe hepatitis in children (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61177329) was because of 'the vaccine'. The glaring flaw in that: "there is "no link" with the Covid-19 vaccine, as none of the children involved has been vaccinated."
     

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