Unvaccinated America in 5 charts

[LuFins Dad]

@jon-nyc said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

@Horace - i don’t know that they’re all rural but something like that. Blacks have a history of distrust of the medical system that predates covid. The traditional RFK Jr/granola chick anti vaccine crowd has been anti-vax since long before covid.

This third group is new to the anti-vax stuff, by and large. . I think it’s an open question as to whether their intensifying emotions on the topic will spill over into other vaccines or other parts of medicine or public health.

I don’t think I’ve made any controversial claims here. Maybe jolly can explain himself.

The Granola Chick thing really does have a pretty big crossover recently with Conservative Christians, lately. I joked about the Essential Oil things, but the the 4 biggest granola chicks I know are evangelicals…

My issue is referring to them as Trumpists…On other issues, their views might mostly align with Trump and they may have supported him, but in this particular issue it doesn’t. Not even close. So on this particular issue to refer to them as Trumpists is inaccurate and inappropriate.

[Loki]

@george-k said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

Sort of related: The Bitter Truth: There’s Still No Rhyme or Reason to COVID-19

The stats defy the spin: This pandemic does not hinge on whether the governor is a Democrat or Republican, whether restrictions are tight or loose. It does not care.

Two presidents. Fifty states. One-hundred-and-ninety-five countries. A multitude of different approaches. And still, there’s no rhyme or reason to this pandemic.

Vaccines help a great deal. That much we know. Beyond that, though, the coverage of the virus has mostly been partisanship and witchcraft. Here, current as of today, is the per-state death chart per 100,000 people in the United States:

Confusing, isn’t it? Try as you might, you will not find a plausible way of blaming this on that party or region or policy that you hate.

A few days ago, the New York Times ran an excellent piece on the terrible spike in Florida. “Even a state that made a major push for vaccinations . . . can be crushed by the Delta variant,” the paper observed, while noting that “Florida ranks 21st among states and Washington, D.C., in giving people of all ages at least one shot.” Indeed, the Times noted, nobody is quite sure why this is happening. “Exactly why the state has been so hard-hit,” it concluded, “remains an elusive question” — not least because “other states with comparable vaccine coverage have a small fraction of Florida’s hospitalization rate.”

Many of the Times’s readers were frightfully upset by this blunt assessment of the facts. On Twitter, MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin put his fingers in his ears and screamed, “This is not true.” “And,” he added, “you know it. Do better.” Soledad O’Brien, meanwhile, went so far as to describe the piece as “journalistic malpractice.” What a strange, neat little world some people have made for themselves.

What Griffin, O’Brien, and others wanted the Times to say was that Red States Are Bad and Blue States Are Good — or, perhaps, as Paul Krugman argued over the weekend, that the North Is Good and the South Is Bad, Just Like During the Civil War. But this simply isn’t correct. If it were, what could possibly account for the death-rate pairings of New York and Mississippi? Of Alabama and Connecticut? Of Michigan and Arkansas? Of Texas and Delaware? Of Idaho and Colorado? For months, many in the press have banged on and on and on about Florida’s governor and then been shocked to learn that, even after a terrible spike — a spike that, mercifully, is beginning to fade — Florida’s record remains better than those of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Michigan, and Illinois; that the number of children who have died in Florida (per capita) is not only exactly in line with the national average, but around five times lower than D.C.’s number, and just over half of New York’s; that, far from lagging behind, Florida’s vaccination rate is above the national average; and that, despite having a disproportionately old population, Florida sits in the bottom half for deaths among senior citizens. The state of Louisiana, which seems to get hit around the same time as Florida each time there is a wave of COVID-19 infections, currently boasts many policies that Florida does not — among them, an ongoing indoor mask mandate that applies even to the vaccinated, a statewide school-mask mandate for all students over the age of five, and, in the city of New Orleans, a system of vaccine passports. Despite this, Louisiana’s death rate is the fourth worst in the nation, while Florida — which has a much older population (as of 2020, Florida has the largest senior population in the union; Louisiana’s is 42nd) — sits in 20th place. What gives?

Last night, ABC News reported that there is bad news coming out of Oregon — yes, the same Oregon that’s home to Governor Kate Brown, she of the innovative outdoor mask mandate for the vaccinated. “The death toll from COVID-19,” the outfit noted, “is climbing so rapidly in Oregon in some counties that the state has organized delivery of one refrigerated truck to hold the bodies and is sending a second one.” What, within our Good/Bad dichotomy, can have caused this, one must wonder? Has Governor Brown not frowned enough? Have Oregonians failed to burn a sufficient number of dead radio hosts in effigy? Does the state’s health director sport a bad haircut? Or could it be, perhaps, that this is a terrible virus, that it prompts unpredictable results, and that our present political hysteria is as poor a frame for understanding what is happening in New Jersey and Oregon as it is for understanding what is happening in Texas and Alaska?

Israel, which has done everything that the loudest critics on the Left wanted America to do, is nevertheless stuck in the throes of a devastating surge. Israel has instituted repeated and draconian lockdowns (enforced by drone, no less); it has used nationwide mask mandates; it has vaccinated everyone early — and even added booster shots into the mix; and it has even instituted a system of vaccine passports. And, right now? Well, it’s getting crushed. Per NPR, despite becoming “the first country on Earth to fully vaccinate a majority of its citizens against COVID-19,” it now “has one of the world’s highest daily infection rates. . . . Nearly one in every 150 people in Israel today has the virus.” I wonder: Is Israel a Red State or a Blue State?

Much as they would hate to hear this, it remains the case that the most vitriolic voices in our COVID debates are little more than glammed-up conspiracy theorists — the sort of narrow, monomaniacal, quackish people who, in an era not that far removed from our own, would have been selling leeches by the ton. The journalist David Aaronovitch argues that such people tend to fall back on their ideas because the volatility and complexity of the real world is simply too scary for them handle. It is much easier to believe that George W. Bush ordered 9/11 than to accept that America is vulnerable and life is unpredictable, because if George W. Bush ordered 9/11 you can prevent it from happening again by imprisoning him; whereas if 19 guys with box cutters carried out 9/11, it could probably happen again. So it is with COVID-19. It is much easier to believe that, if we put the people you like in charge of everything and make them say the right words on TV, the worst pandemic in a century will bend to their will than it is to accept that human beings are alarmingly susceptible to chaos.

The uncomfortable truth is that, beyond developing, encouraging, and providing inoculation, there’s not much that any government can do to guarantee success — and, even when it does what it can, a lot of people are going to resist for reasons bad and good. In their transparent attempts to draw attention from President Biden’s disastrous performance in Afghanistan, certain pundits have begun shouting loudly that we should be paying more attention to the 1,000 or so COVID-19 deaths we’re seeing here in America each day. Well, okay then; let’s do that. While running for president, Joe Biden said he’d “shut down the virus.” It’s been seven months since he took over, and, after a lull, we are now back in crisis. The obvious question, then, is: Why is Biden failing so badly?

And here’s the thing: If that’s an unfair question because it’s a little more “complicated” than that for Biden, then it’s an unfair question because it’s also a little more complicated than that for Phil Murphy, for Ron DeSantis, for Gretchen Whitmer, for Greg Abbott, and for everyone else who has had the misfortune to become a talisman during this terrible time. Given how polarized we are at present, one can easily comprehend why, in its early days, so many political obsessives thought it might be efficacious to use the pandemic as a stick. But now? Eighteen months in? It’s beyond time for them to shut the hell up.

Unless this is before and after vaccines were available it is worthless at best and dangerously misleading at worst.

[Doctor Phibes]

@loki said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

Unless this is before and after vaccines were available it is worthless at best and dangerously misleading at worst.

The fact that New York and Massachusetts are so high indicates it's all about the first wave of the pandemic, where the East got hit really hard. I'd say that graph is very misleading if we're looking at the situation now.

[Jolly]

@doctor-phibes said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

@loki said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

Unless this is before and after vaccines were available it is worthless at best and dangerously misleading at worst.

The fact that New York and Massachusetts are so high indicates it's all about the first wave of the pandemic, where the East got hit really hard. I'd say that graph is very misleading if we're looking at the situation now.

Why would it be misleading? You think the virus cares what variant it is?

If you think so, read up on vaccine efficacy against gamma and lambda and get back to me.

[Loki]

@doctor-phibes said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

@loki said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

Unless this is before and after vaccines were available it is worthless at best and dangerously misleading at worst.

The fact that New York and Massachusetts are so high indicates it's all about the first wave of the pandemic, where the East got hit really hard. I'd say that graph is very misleading if we're looking at the situation now.

It’s fake news for the argument at hand but accurate in total.

[Doctor Phibes]

@jolly said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

Why would it be misleading? You think the virus cares what variant it is?

The reason it's misleading is because New York and to a lesser extent MA were overwhelmed at the beginning of the pandemic, before any protection was in place - NY was essentially ground zero, and MA had a huge super-spreader event with the Biogen conference in Boston. We're not fighting the same battle any more. Looking at death rates based on what happened in Spring 2020 isn't particularly helpful.

[George K]

@doctor-phibes

[Doctor Phibes]

@george-k thanks - that's a much more useful graph.

I'd suggest that people living in places that got hit really hard back in 2020 are more likely to take the risks more seriously in mid to late 2021.

[Jolly]

@doctor-phibes said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

@george-k thanks - that's a much more useful graph.

I'd suggest that people living in places that got hit really hard back in 2020 are more likely to take the risks more seriously in mid to late 2021.

Not necessarily...New Orleans got rolled in the First Wave. Delta came along and they got rolled again...

[LuFins Dad]

@George-K could you please post that graph with just Florida, Texas, New York, New Jersey, and Oregon?

[George K]

@lufins-dad

[LuFins Dad]

@george-k thanks… I personally think the current situation is pretty simple… Florida, Louisiana, and Texas had the misfortune of being extremely hot just as Delta started really hitting the US. While the rest of us were heading outside, they were spending more time indoors… We may be seeing a preview for the rest of us in a few months.

Now would it be possible to run a graph comparing Florida, Texas, Israel, Britain?

[George K]

@lufins-dad said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

Now would it be possible to run a graph comparing Florida, Texas, Israel, Britain?

Can't combine states and countries....

[Larry]

@axtremus said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/alex-jones-attacks-trump-for-promoting-vaccines-maybe-trumps-actually-a-dumba/

Alex Jones rebuked Trump for encouraging people to get vaccinated, saying Trump may be a dumbass.

Alex Jones is not a spokesman for the Republican party. He is not .ca spokesman for Conservatives. He does not represent our views or our values.

Biden on the other hand, does represent the current idiocy of the democrats. So for the fourth time Ax - are you still proud of Biden?

[Jolly]

You can keep asking, but he won't answer.

See, for Ax, we're a petri dish full of fascinating organisms. Organisms should know their place...

[Loki]

@lufins-dad said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

@george-k thanks… I personally think the current situation is pretty simple… Florida, Louisiana, and Texas had the misfortune of being extremely hot just as Delta started really hitting the US. While the rest of us were heading outside, they were spending more time indoors… We may be seeing a preview for the rest of us in a few months.

Now would it be possible to run a graph comparing Florida, Texas, Israel, Britain?

The Northeast had about the hottest summer on record, I don’t see a material difference as to who was indoors vs outdoors but I haven’t seen that argument presented in any relevant data. What people are inside vs outside data is there? Temperature alone I don’t believe is different enough?

[LuFins Dad]

@george-k said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

@lufins-dad said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

Now would it be possible to run a graph comparing Florida, Texas, Israel, Britain?

Can't combine states and countries....

Yeah, that’s problematic. Notice that the Israeli and UK numbers didn’t really start to go up until August though their new cases spike started in June? There’s that lag we’ve discussed. It makes me concerned about what we’ll be seeing in the south in mid-late September.

[Copper]

The effect of the UK Trumpists is obvious.

[Doctor Phibes]

@copper said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

The effect of the UK Trumpists is obvious.

I've heard they call him Britain Trump!

[Horace]

@doctor-phibes said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

@copper said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

The effect of the UK Trumpists is obvious.

I've heard they call him Britain Trump!

I've heard him called a true conservative.