Stephan: Several hundred thousand Americans have committed suicide by not getting vaccinated, If I hadn't witnessed this, if I had tried to write it in a novel, no one including me would have found it believable. Yet we all know it has happened. Each day's news and all those graves attest to this reality. Some of us may not want to admit it, but it is time we did.
An unvaccinated Covid-positive man, 83, was examined before he was taken to a Houston hospital. Credit: John Moore/Getty
America has passed another grim Covid-19 milestone, as data shows that one in 500 people living in the US have died from the virus since the pandemic began.
Almost 664,000 people had died of the virus in the US by Tuesday evening, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, following a surge of cases and hospitalizations, particularly in southern states, caused by a combination of the Delta variant and low vaccination rates.
About one in four US hospitals have intensive care units that are at least 95 percent full, according to the New York Times.
Christina Salazar, a registered nurse in an Orlando, Florida, hospital where patients have been stalled in the emergency room, was recently diagnosed with compassion fatigue. The mental health problem occurs when providers take on the stress or trauma of their patients.
She is not alone at AdventHealth Altamonte Springs hospital, which until recently did not have enough inpatient beds and canceled non-emergency surgeries because of a surge in Covid-19 cases. She said many of her colleagues […]
Stephan: Covid has become a Republican disease of the unvaccinated, as these facts make irrefutable. I don't pretend to fully understand why this is so, but the manipulation of fear through disinformation for political purposes is a big part of it and, in my opinion, a truly evil activity. That millions have made that choice in the United States is also irrefutable.
Donald Trump tears off COVID-19 mask Credit: Screen capture
Last week, the hashtag “GOPDeathCult” was trending on social media as Republican governors continued to refuse to take precautions to keep their states safe. The recent COVID-19 numbers now show that out of the 23 worst states for the virus in the country, 21 of them voted for Donald Trump in the last election.
The Washington Post revealed that of the 23 states in the country that exceed the national COVID average, all but two of those are from Republican states.
“This isn’t a game,” President Joe Biden said Friday about governors who aren’t taking the pandemic seriously.
Sadly, the same high numbers for COVID cases apply to COVID deaths. Of the 18 states that have higher death rates than the national average, 14 voted for Trump. For vaccinations, the statistic shows the 17 least-vaccinated states (except for Georgia) voted for Trump.
The chain of correlation makes it “much harder to assert that politics is not playing a role,” wrote the Post’s correspondent Philip Bump.
“Republicans have been less concerned about the virus, less […]
Stephan: People, it seems, are just seeming to become aware of a secondary crisis being created by the unvaccinated. The American hospital system, in the Republican states with low vaccination rates, is cracking. Nearly two years of Covid, has left the staffs exhausted, and the facilities worn out. People who have non-covid emergencies or a need for elective surgeries are being turned away after waiting long hours. I can't do all these states, so consider Idaho as one example of what is happening taken from a larger whole.
Covid hospital patient
In the latest blow in the state’s battle with COVID-19, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare announced Thursday that it has activated crisis standards of care for the entire state.
The request to expand crisis standards beyond North Idaho was made by St. Luke’s Health System. St. Luke’s has major hospitals in Boise and Meridian.
Crisis standards of care were created in June 2020 as a plan to strategically ration health care if hospitals become overwhelmed with the demands in front of them. When crisis standards are implemented, hospital beds may not be available to someone who needs it, or beds could be in repurposed rooms not typically used for medical treatment.
Crisis care standards mean hospitals must prioritize patients differently. Typically, a hospital prioritizes those who need medical attention most and treats them first. When crisis standards are activated, health care is given to patients who are most likely to survive.
Health and Welfare said the following in its Thursday news release: “In other words, someone who is otherwise healthy and would recover […]
Stephan: Imagine what it is like to live in a community where you are not comfortable availing yourself of something that can save your life? Read this, and imagine you live in Van Buren, Missouri.
Van Buren is situated in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri.
It felt like Covid-19 was closing in around us during the five days in August this CNN crew spent in Carter County, Missouri.In Van Buren, the county’s biggest town, we were sitting next to a 16-year-old when she got a text that masks would be mandated at school because about 20 kids had tested positive after just two days of class. One person we’d wanted to interview had to go to the hospital with a breakthrough infection. Another person found out the night before our interview she’d been exposed to coronavirus by a sick kid at church.People were gossiping about who had it and where they got it and whether there was someone in town who knew they had it but refused to isolate.”Everybody’s scared. Everybody’s coming down with it. And it’s almost like a plague,” Brandon Helvey said. Helvey had had Covid-19 three weeks earlier, but he didn’t want to get the vaccine yet, he said. He thought it […]
Stephan: This is what Trumpism has produced; our democracy hangs by a thread. If the Republicans take over either the House or the Senate in the 2022 election, you can kiss American democracy goodbye, and we will go into climate change utterly unprepared.
Most Americans feel democracy is under attack in this country (56%), according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, as 51% say it is likely that elected officials in the US will successfully overturn the results of a future election because their party did not win.Nearly all Americans feel that democracy in the US is at least being tested: 93% total say that democracy is either under attack (56%) or being tested but not under attack (37%). A scant 6% say that American democracy is in no danger.Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to say that democracy is under attack, and that view is most prevalent among those who support former President Donald Trump. All told, 75% of Republicans say democracy is under attack, compared with 46% of Democrats. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, those who say Trump ought to be the leader of the party are much likelier to see democracy as under threat: 79% in that group vs. 51% among those who say Trump should not be the party’s […]
