Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Scratchy throat.

 

This is from Fauci last week.
War in Ukraine could lead to ‘devastating’ tuberculosis problem, warns Anthony Fauci. And the White House press briefing March 2.
Press Briefing by White House and HHS Public Health Officials, March 2, 2022 | The White House Maybe the websites you go to, “where is Fauci “ abound try a Google search?

 

Apparently China is getting hit with a fresh omicron wave and may end up shutting down some global shipping. Something else to toss on the supply chain/inflation pile the right wants to hang around Biden's neck exclusively.

 

Pfizer’s CEO believes that a fourth dose of his company’s Covid-19 vaccine is “necessary.”

Appearing on Face the Nation Sunday, Pfizer chief Albert Bourla told anchor Margaret Brennan that he thinks the Pfizer vaccine will be needed annually, much as a flu shot is administered now. He added that he believes a fourth shot of the vaccine will be required to prevent against infections.


Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla: Fourth Covid Shot 'Necessary'

 

Could it be because the deaths tolls are still climbing? Could it be that even though Biden promised he was going to stop COVID more people died under his watch than under Trump's (even with vaccines and effective treatments). Maybe

 

While Biden isn't directly responsible for supply chain issues and inflation he was pretty dismissive about it last summer, saying and I'll paraphrase it was "transitory".

Who could have figured out that when you dump 5 Trillion into the US economy and shut a bunch of stuff down around the world there might be inflation..

 

The supply chain related issues are/were believed to be transitory by most economists out there. You have to look at it sector by sector and see the underlying root of the inflation. Anyone relying on shipping and delivery is going to see higher shipping costs, but other industries have more specific problems (like automakers reliance on semi-conductors). THAT is what they refer to as transitory because it is related to a temporary issue that is expected to “go away”

Unfortunately with this Russian war situation, the associated energy prices are going to be felt across the board (as we already see). I’ve read it will also exacerbate the semiconductor situation, as Ukraine does 50% of the worlds neon gas (something apparently needed for semiconductor production). So the automakers who were expecting their problems to resolve in 2022 are saying it could persist into 2023.

 

Every person I know in business on the production side it wasn't going to be fixed quickly. That's because many plants run at 90% capacity, when they are shut down the demand may drop some but for the most part it doesn't. Short of adding more capacity limited by workers and machinery(that takes years to get) you can't just ramp production with the flip of a switch. They need time to catch up back order, and then fill new orders. Part of the reason for example windows now are upwards of a year to get when a year ago the lead time was 4 months up from 4 weeks. Just had to build a new house and have detailed knowledge of this. Same thing for lumber, clips for trusses, garage doors(aluminum anyway).
Supply chains won't normalize for 1-2 more years.

 

And here we have more of these so called "pediatric deaths" due to covid. And people wonder many don't believe the numbers

 

How long are we going to continue to pretend that a large majority those who died didn't make a foolish choice in not protecting themselves with vaccines that could have saved their lives?

Not to mention, why did so many remain anti-vax, driving those death numbers?

The answers to these questions aren't Biden or our public health leaders.

 

About as long as we pretend it was only anti vax Pubs who were dying from COVID in 2021-2022.

For the record I'm not blaming the deaths on Biden or Trump for that matter.
Give people the info and they get to decide what they want to do. That's why people can sign out of hospitals against medical advice.

 

It wasn't just anti-vax pubs, but after the vaccine came out, it became obvious where the largest COVID death rates existed. Red counties. Before, it was blue counties, in large part because blue areas tend to be urban, and the virus spread easier in places with higher population density. But just look at the graph, and what happened in April, after the vaccine became widely available to all.

 

Uh oh. Hopefully it’s still omicron with minimal deaths/hospitalizations. China shutting down and Europe cases growing.

 

I now you guys love the RED vs Blue county charts. Too bad many people aren't registered and there are some very large segments of historically Dem voters that have terrible vaccination rates.
Many of those "red' counties are rural areas where obesity/ DM/HTN are rampant and poorly controlled which as you know is a large predictor for death from COVID vaccinated or not.

 

Any large data set is going to have outliers. But you chart/graph all the data to look for patterns. Sometimes, there aren't any. Other times, the pattern becomes obvious. Here's a scatter graph that looks at state level data. The more to the left, the more a state voted for Biden. Right, Trump. Higher on the graph, the higher the COVID mortality rate. There are outliers in blue states, like Nevada, and red states, like North Dakota. But overall, the pattern seems to be clear. 11 red states above the trend line, versus only 5 blue states, and 2 purple states (like GA).

 

As to registration: an important point if one were to assume that failure to register was not only not a random variable from the population but was also highly negatively correlated with the political leanings of the county. So, you would essentially need to argue that Democrats in Republican counties and Republicans in Democratic counties were so overwhelmingly unlikely to register, relative to the dominant party's members, that it resulted in stark political differences. That seems unlikely. This is a much better argument for the even more tribalist argument of "Democrats shouldn't care that Republican Counties are killing themselves" but isn't a great argument against the fact that there is a political component to anti-vaccination activity at this point.

Second, I assume by "large segments of historically Dem voters that have terrible vaccination rates" that you are referencing race. However, these gaps have been closing for a long time. The African American gap at a national level is down to 5% compared to Non-Hispanic Whites, while Hispanics have now actually become 2% more likely to be vaccinated. And neither of those control for the age breakdowns, where African Americans and Hispanics, on average, are more likely to be in age groups that are not eligible for the vaccine (i.e., too young) or in groups with very low vaccination rates (those just old enough to be vaccinated). So the numbers with proper age-adjustments are likely better.

Latest Data on COVID-19 Vaccinations by Race/Ethnicity

 

Spring breakers flock to Florida beaches without COVID restrictions

 

This is pretty weak. Please support your position with actual statistics on crosstabs of segmented obesity and vaccination rates and the odds ratio to covid deaths.

 

Devil in the details?
Florida has a huge % of elderly. Ala has a huge % of obese/HTN/DM also huge risks for death from COVID.
Fla has a huge % of elderly the group with far and away highest mortality from COVID by many multiples. Ala has a huge % of obese and htn and DM also huge risk for COVID death. i