Stephan: As we close out 2021 I thought it would be useful to consider actual facts about Covid and American Society There is such a mountain of nonsense out in the public that real facts tend to get lost. So today's issue of SR is dedicated to just that. Real facts from sources with a proven track record of being accurate.
Ashley Kirzinger, Audrey Kearney, Liz Hamel, and Mollyann Brodie, - Kaiser Family Foundation
Stephan: The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) is a reliable source of accurate social outcome data, and this is what they report about the great schism over Covid vaccination. As I have been saying since this pandemic began and vaccines were first available, you can't fix willful ignorance. When people develop utterly ungrounded beliefs about something it is extremely hard to get them to give those beliefs up. It means having to admit you were wrong,
This is what I think is going to happen. Two major subtrends are emerging. The first will be watching how various societies in the world, and particularly in the U.S. the growing majority of vaccinated people come to see the unvacciinated, and the stress they are causing in America's illness profit system of healthcare. The second is what may be the silver lining. The near collapse of healthcare is going to make it clear, and politically desirable, to create a universal birthright healthcare system that make fostering wellbeing its function.
Key Findings
The latest analysis from the KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor, fielded after the omicron COVID-19 variant was first detected in the U.S., indicates that vaccinated and unvaccinated adults are having dissimilar reactions to news of the omicron variant. The quick response survey, which was conducted in a shorter field period and with a smaller sample than the monthly COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor, provides an early look at how the omicron variant may be changing public reaction and vaccine intentions.
Half of adults, including 52% of vaccinated adults, say they are worried they personally will get seriously sick from the coronavirus, up from 30% in November prior to the news of the omicron variant. Unvaccinated adults remain less concerned with about four in ten (42%) saying they are worried about getting seriously sick from the coronavirus.
The threat of the new variant may be encouraging some vaccinated adults to get a booster dose. Half of vaccinated adults who have not yet received a booster dose (27% of all vaccinated adults) say the news about the new omicron variant makes […]
Alaa Elassar, Ed Lavandera, and Ashley Killough, - CNN
Stephan: This is how crazy the anti-vaxxer movement has gotten. I think there is going to be major pushback against this ridiculous, selfish behavior. The doctors and nurses I talk to are both depressed and fed up.
Dr. Jack Lyons, a critical care physician at CentraCare – St. Cloud Hospital in Minnesota, describes the harassment he receives from his Covid-19 patients and their families.
Dr. Jack Lyons remembers the pandemic’s early days when grateful communities banged pots and pans to honor frontline health care workers.But now, faced with hostility just for trying to save his patients’ lives, he says that, sadly, those days are long gone.
Now health care workers fighting on the front lines of the pandemic are also coming face to face with patients who dismiss and even threaten them over how they are being treated for the virus.
“Folks act as if they can come in the hospital and request any certain therapy they want or conversely decline any therapy they want with the idea being that somehow they can pick and choose and direct their therapy. And it doesn’t work,” Lyons told CNN from the CentraCare hospital he works at in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Stephan: Here is some more solid social outcome data on healthcare to cut through the crap of mis- and dis-information. In addition to the longevity aspect, this also tells us a lot about the selfishness of the anti-vaxxer cohort. They are over-stressing the healthcare system and, in the process, degrading the system's ability to help people with other medical issues.
Nurses and healthcare workers mourn and remember their colleagues who died during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (which causes COVID-19) during a demonstration outside Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan on April 10, 2020 in New York City. Credit: Johannes Eisele / AFP
It’s clear that 2020 was a terrible year for health in the U.S., but just how terrible is now coming into focus. New mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics finds that life expectancy dropped by 1.8 years in 2020 compared to 2019, and more than 528,800 more U.S. residents died in 2020 than in 2019. It is the largest single-year increase in annual mortality since 1933, when data for the entire country first became available.
COVID-19 is the primary reason for this shift. The virus was the cause of 10.4% of all deaths last year and became the third-most common cause of death in the country. However, the report also reflects the shock waves the pandemic sent through the U.S. healthcare system. “The report card for the year […]
Stephan: More facts. This is an excellent and nuanced assessment of the anti-vaxxer cohort.
Two vaccine syringes Credit: Getty
The dramatic rise of the omicron variant has renewed medical experts’ warnings about the need for Americans to start taking the pandemic more seriously. Considering the generally low levels of vaccination in the U.S. relative to other wealthy countries, the CDC recommends that all Americans get vaccinated as the best means of protecting against severe illness from the variant, which has quickly overtaken delta as the dominant COVID strain in the U.S. Reporting from the first week and a half of December found that only 12 percent of new COVID-19 cases were from omicron; alarmingly, that had skyrocketed to 73 percent of new cases by the end of the third week of the month.
