Covid vaccination update

Crushed

From the NYT

Only about 60 percent of Republican adults are vaccinated, compared with about 75 percent of independents and more than 90 percent of Democrats, according to Kaiser. And Republicans are both disproportionately white and older. Together, these facts help explain why the white death rate has recently been higher than the Asian, Black or Latino rate......

In heavily conservative, white communities,......, many conservative media figures, politicians, clergy members and others have amplified false or misleading information about the vaccines. Millions of Americans, in turn, have chosen not to receive a lifesaving shot. Some have paid with their lives.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/briefing/covid-race-deaths-america.html

  


  

Jo C.

Best to read entire article for more full informational picture.

J.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Crushed

 Her is the text 

One of the defining characteristics of the pandemic’s early stages was its disproportionate toll on Black and Latino Americans.    During Covid’s early months in the U.S., the per capita death rate for Black Americans was almost twice as high as the white rate and more than twice as high as the Asian rate. The Latino death rate was in between, substantially lower than the Black rate but still above average.

“We’re most vulnerable to this thing,” Teresa Bradley, a nurse in Michigan, told The Times in 2020, after surviving a Covid hospitalization. When she was wheeled through the emergency room, she was pained to see that every other patient she saw there was also Black.  These large racial gaps seemed as if they might persist throughout the pandemic, especially because white and Asian Americans were initially quicker to receive vaccine shots. Black and Latino Americans, by contrast, had less convenient access to the shots and many were skeptical of them.

But these large racial gaps in vaccination have not continued — and as a result, neither have the gaps in Covid death rates.  Instead, Covid’s racial gaps have narrowed and, more recently, even flipped. Over the past year, the Covid death rate for white Americans has been 14 percent higher than the rate for Black Americans and 72 percent higher than the Latino rate, according to the latest C.D.C. data.

It is a remarkable turnabout, a story of both public health success and failure.

Bottom up

The successful part of the story is the rapid increase in vaccination among Black and Latino Americans since last year. Today, the vaccination rate for both groups is slightly higher than it is for white Americans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s surveys.

That has happened thanks to intense outreach efforts by medical workers, community organizers and others. In Chattanooga, Tenn., for example, the Rev. Steve Caudle preached about the importance of vaccines: “If it’s the truth, if it’s going to save lives, it should be preached from that pulpit,” he told The Chattanooga Times Free Press. In Imperial County, just north of California’s border with Mexico, health workers took advantage of the medical infrastructure that Obamacare helped create, according to Joe Mathews of Zócalo Public Square.

One crucial feature of these campaigns has been their bottom-up nature. Local leaders have often designed outreach campaigns to fit their own communities. Rachel Hardeman, the director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota, described this approach to me as “centering at the margins.”

It can be especially effective when doctors and nurses listen to people’s vaccine skepticism and respond respectfully and substantively. Dr. Viviana Martinez-Bianchi, a family physician in North Carolina, has described this attitude as “listening with humility.”

Why haven’t you heard more about the narrowing of Covid’s racial gaps? I think part of the reason is that many experts and journalists feel uncomfortable highlighting shrinking racial gaps in almost any area. They worry that doing so will somehow minimize the problem of racism and the country’s enduring inequities.

Certainly, there are important caveats to the Covid story. For one thing, the total death rate remains higher for Black and Latino Americans, because the early disparities were so huge. For another, the unequal nature of underlying health conditions — and access to good care — means that a Black person remains more vulnerable on average to severe Covid than a white person of the same age, sex and vaccination status.

Here are the trends based on age — which still show a narrowing gap, especially in recent months:

Weekly Covid death rates, ages 18 to 49

Even with these caveats, the larger story remains: Covid has killed a smaller percentage of Black, Latino or Asian Americans over the past year than white Americans. To deny that reality is to miss an important part of the Covid story.

It also serves as a reminder that rigorous, well-funded public health campaigns have the potential to narrow racial gaps. And there are many stark racial gaps in public health: Traffic deaths, which have surged during the pandemic, disproportionately kill lower-income Americans and people of color. Gun violence, which has also surged, has an even more disproportionate effect. Diabetes, H.I.V., high blood pressure and infant mortality all take a higher toll on Black America.

With Covid, the country mobilized to reduce the racial vaccination gap — and succeeded. With many other public health problems, a similar focus could probably save lives.

As I mentioned above, the narrowing of Covid’s gaps does involve some bad news: The share of white Americans who have received a Covid vaccine shot has barely budged since last summer.

The main culprit is politics. Only about 60 percent of Republican adults are vaccinated, compared with about 75 percent of independents and more than 90 percent of Democrats, according to Kaiser. And Republicans are both disproportionately white and older. Together, these facts help explain why the white death rate has recently been higher than the Asian, Black or Latino rate.

In heavily conservative, white communities, leaders have not done as good a job explaining the vaccine’s benefits — and Covid’s risks — as leaders in Black and Latino communities. Instead, many conservative media figures, politicians, clergy members and others have amplified false or misleading information about the vaccines. Millions of Americans, in turn, have chosen not to receive a lifesaving shot. Some have paid with their lives.

    Many Americans — of all races — can still benefit from getting vaccinated or boosted. Here’s how to find a shot.

Crushed

Victoria2020 wrote:

Not being a rich US taxpayer supported early retiree

I  was a STATE employee And my pension is part of my compensation for a lifetime of  highly skilled work.  I won a merit scholarship  to college. I  Paid for law school and bought my first new car when I was 37  I took a public service salary at a third of the private sector rate.  
 
Sheesh

dayn2nite2

Ahhh, I am one of the great unwashed as well, what a pity the paywall blocks me but I'm too busy worrying about what kind of loan I'll need to fill my gas tank.

Hey Crushed, we who work in the private sector haven't seen "pensions" (huh?  What's that?) in decades.

We also give lifetimes to our work, but there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for us.

Thanks for giving us a lil peek at what the rich folks read.

ButterflyWings

Just an observation: This forum can go from ultra-compassionate to throwing shade in a heartbeat, for certain topics or people. I'm sorry to see that. Just another thing to struggle through some days. And seems like we all agree that dementia is enough of a struggle as it is...

Wishing each of you, and all of us, peace. Some way, some how.

Crushed

dayn2nite2 wrote:

Ahhh, I am one of the great unwashed as well, what a pity the paywall blocks me but I'm too busy worrying about what kind of loan I'll need to fill my gas tank.

Hey Crushed, we who work in the private sector haven't seen "pensions" (huh?  What's that?) in decades.

We also give lifetimes to our work, but there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for us.

Thanks for giving us a lil peek at what the rich folks read.

Lawyers in private practice make triple what public servants make
Doctors make at least double 

PUBLIC SERVICE JOBS ARE OPEN TO ANYONE WITH
THE EDUCATION WILLING TO MAKE THE SACRIFICE

Here are recent law gradate salaries   left is average private sector right is public sector 
 

Cornell University   NY   $180,000   $64,228   1 U. of Chicago   IL   $180,000   $63,000   1 Yale University   CT   $180,000   $62,591   1 U. of Virginia   VA   $180,000   $62,000   1 Fordham University   NY   $180,000   $61,250   1 U. of Pennsylvania   PA   $180,000   $61,218   1 Northwestern University   IL   $180,000   $60,518   1 Boston College   MA   $180,000   $60,223   1 U. of Michigan-Ann Arbor   MI   $180,000   $60,210

  https://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/median

Who needs pensions when you make triple the salary ?

 
  

harshedbuzz

For those who don't have an online subscription to NYT, check your local library to see if you can access it via your library card online. My county library system offers NYT, WaPo, and a few others electronically.  

HB

Quilting brings calm

Dag nab it.  Typed in a reply and mistakenly hit cancel rather than post. 

Crushed - thank you for the article text   I found it informative and thought provoking. I think people who intended to and could get vaccinated already are.  Those that aren’t are either still too young, too immune compromised, still skeptical due to prior experience with the medical field  or misinformed ( that’s a dangerous place to be).  I do think some of us( me ) are putting off that second booster until fall for maximum winter coverage  

BW- I agree with you that throwing shade happens here regarding political beliefs and us vs them.  It needs to stop because we all made the best choices we could regarding our jobs given our education, location, our families and the job market, 

I will say that I was a private sector information technology worker who had multiple jobs go away because companies kept getting sold and locations closed.  I would have had a pension if that hadn’t happened.  So at the age of 48, I took a state job.  Lower pay, lower and fewer salary increases, fewer promotions. In return I got job stability and a small pension - which I was required to contribute towards every paycheck, an equal amount to the state’s contribution.  That was invested for my pension.  I held up my end of the bargain.  I was proud of my work. 

Phoenix1966

A link that circumvents the paywall:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220609104008/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/briefing/covid-race-deaths-america.html

Rescue mom

Wow wow wow….pretty sure I’ve never seen this kind of nasty (or throwing shade, as BW said) to….well, anybody . about a previous occupation. Or citing a newspaper that’s behind a paywall—like many, if not most, are now.  Seriously ? Really??

Donr

On the papers we had to fill out for a vaccination it never asks for my political affiliation.

Crushed

Donr wrote:

On the papers we had to fill out for a vaccination it never asks for my political affiliation.

its done by polling and other techniques

The medical significance  is what we call "clustering"  Clustering defeats herd immunity (which may not exist for covid anyway) 

Covid is a communicable disease   What clustering tells you is which groups are more likely to spread disease

Lets assume that Ice hockey fans have a far higher vaccination rate then Basketball fans  
They play in the same arenas at the same season but not the same time. 
The basketball cluster will have far higher disease spread than the Hockey cluster
 
That explains why Florida had a high rate of vaccination and also a high covid  death rate at the same time  They had two different clusters  with deaths concentrated in the anti vax cluster

Rennbird

Crushed, Something tells me you are going through a difficult time right now.

Crushed

Rennbird wrote:

Crushed, Something tells me you are going through a difficult time right now.

My whole career I've done nothing but try to keep people alive using the best science we can find
Ships, Buildings aircraft Drugs medical devices , medical procedures, road crossing, fires , wild animals  anything.  Ive been in a room with 8000 tons of chicken manure worrying about fire safety .   The photo is me  on my Honeymoon in 1975  I'm standing in the crater of the Kingman Arizona Gas tank car explosion that wiped the fire department 

My wife was a government physician I was a state University law professor. We did public service all our lives.  Our daughters are in public service keeping people safe.  I ignore the abusive comments about pensions.  But there is a nasty group in this country determined to excoriate and abuse anyone who works for the common good. We can't hire a public health officer in our county because the death threats come in when the candidates names become known.  
 
 In the UK the Tory government just decide it was too expensive to provide fire safety for the disabled on the grounds that it would "outrage the non disabled who might have to pay more"

Fleeing a burning building is a natural instinct, but for many disabled people it might be impossible to get out unaided. Following the Grenfell Tower fire, recommendations were made to create evacuation plans for residents who need extra assistance to escape, so why did the government go against it?
  
https://www.bbc.com/news/disability-61566282

I have grandchildren in elementary schools .  They have gun drills as if that will prevent armed sociopaths from killing them 

And right now covid is still killing over 300 a day
And we just had our latest Mass shooing in Maryland  It hit home because I was in front of that building last year  The sociopaths are everywhere
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/09/us/maryland-shooting-columbia-machine/index.html

  
So yes its tough  
  
 
 

JoseyWales

Want to hear a shocking fact about school fire drills that all of us have done for decades? My school - along with many, many others I would assume - no longer do fire drills the same way. Now we hear the fire alarm, we have to wait until we hear all clear, then exit the building. Why? Because shooters pull the alarms to get kids to open classroom doors and exit into the hallway, making it easy to pick people off.  **We do have permission to exit immediately if we smell smoke. 

We are requiring kids to hide from shooters each month now, because fire drills are required monthly. Think about all my kindergarten, first and second grade students hiding from shooters 12 times a year (10 required fire drills, 2 active shooter drills).