As you can see, the death rate in the United States has been spiking upward for over a week now. This is mostly due to the spread of the delta variant combined with low vaccination rates in states that watch a lot of Fox News.
God knows that Fox News has plenty on its conscience already, but its contribution to vaccine resistance is truly a low point. I'm not sure how they live with themselves in that building.
Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through July 14. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.
Dude, Blacks are the least vaccinated group while white's make up 78% of 18+. Maybe stop whining about "Fox News" and start accepting where the problems are at.
This so called spike compared to last year is nothing and will be declining by the last third of the month.
4% of Democrats say they will not get vaccinated compared to 44% of Republicans.
Also, in the last couple months Blacks and Hispanics have been getting vaccinated at a higher rate than whites so they are catching up.
Oops, I forgot to put in the link:
https://civiqs.com/results/coronavirus_vaccine?annotations=true&uncertainty=true&zoomIn=true
Lolz.enough. Those polls are trash and actual data doesn't support it.
Nope, Blacks and Hispanics aren't getting vaccinated higher than whites. Nope, nope and more nope.
Here's another that says the same thing, one based on CDC data:
https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-data-on-covid-19-vaccinations-race-ethnicity/
But I guess I should trust you instead because you said so
That isn't data. That is narrow analysis. In July, vaccine uptake is about 600000 a day. 39% are white, 32% are hispanic, 18% is black. Raw data rejects your nonsense.
Spades,
He did not say that minorities are getting vaccinated at a higher rate than whites cumulative. Just that they are getting vaccinated at a higher current rate than whites and I think this is true. Thus catching up some, but still very unlikely that they will catch up completely.
I have not seen any clear data on this, but I expect that the same is true for " conservatives" in the white subset or at least might be soon. I.e. that white conservatives are getting vaccinated at a higher current rate than white liberals. I would guess that pretty much all white liberals except the few hard vaccine resistors have already got vaccinated. There just are not many left who ever will. But there is a sizable group of white conservatives who are not hard line resistors but just were unsure and felt no " tribal " compulsion to be vaccinated. And they will still be slowly dribbling in to be vaccinated over time, especially if delta increasing moves them over the line.
So I think the conservative liberal gap is slowly closing but will never completely close.
Nope, look at the raw data, not narrow trends. Let's remember vaccinations will rise in the fall due to seasonality.
You said: In July, vaccine uptake is about 600000 a day. 39% are white, 32% are hispanic, 18% is black.
Assuming that your Googling is correct and I'm able to parse your string of English-like words correctly, this means that Blacks are getting vaccinated in July at a higher rate than their percentage of the population (13%) would dictate.
As for Hispanic people, they are only 17% of the population, so if 32% of new vaccinations are Hispanic, they're doing great and playing catch-up.
I hope everybody gets vaccinated, but I accept that willful ignorance can seldom be cured.
There is no real spike because there was no real dip on the Fourth of July. However, deaths are creeping up now.
Identification of over 200 long COVID symptoms prompts call for UK screening programme,
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-07/ucl-ioo071321.php
Heart problems resolve in majority of kids with COVID inflammatory syndrome,
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-07/cuim-hpr071321.php
The place where I work is implementing a proof of vaccination or weekly testing policy. Most people were vaccinated, but there are some groups opposed to it--so they whined, then are getting their vaccinations.
Fox news has a strong effect. But it's not just those glued to Fox News that are affected. Elected officials have to tow the line too--and their comments can permeate local news, and that adds an air of legitimacy to their nonsensical claims. That also shows up in local op-eds--"concern trolls" leading the charge. Fearmongering running amok. Then it gets down to conversations at work, with the constant faux outrage driving the discussion in places.
The bulk of un-vaccinated are conservative white males. Old fashioned anti-vaxxers are not a huge population nationally, but there are some local hotspots. Minorities are, well, minorities and not monolithic, so only affect the national numbers a bit. Their levels of vaccination tend to follow their access to health care, so can be low in spots. Some communities also distrust government authority, complicating matters.
The 4th of July holiday, summer traveling, and the Delta variant means there was going to be a bump up. Large pockets, and even entire states, with low vaccination levels means this will grow into a new wave of infections. Most of the elderly have been vaccinated, so deaths should not jump nearly as much as before. Hospitalizations are filling up in areas, esp with younger people, and almost all of them have not been vaccinated.
Overall, 67.8% adults vaccinated (first dose); 55.7% of population.
LA and MS still below 40% vaccinated (first dose) for total population, below 50% of adults.
Lol, minorities account for about half of the prime age population fool. They are dragging down national stats. Your whole post is garbage. Educate yourself. Education is the biggest factor. White Conservative males???? Give me a break.
The "bulk", which has to mean the majority at least, are clearly not conservative white males. Take out all the females, then take out all the non white males, then take out all the non conservatives( even if you define conservative as simply the 50% right of median so half of usa is conservative) and you absolutely get less than half of total. By far.
And looking at polls asking people if they have had or will get vaccinated is not going to get you the actual facts. Because each political " tribe " knows what their tribe's right answer is and will sometimes lie to fit that. I 100% know that some conservatives trump supporters who did get vaccinated will lie and say they never will if polled. And pretty sure there are some liberals who are not vaccinated who will lie and say they did ( especially if the reason is they were just lazy or selfish and have no ideological objection).
And there seems to be little discussion about three things which might make more sense to focus on if trying to get vaccination rates up.
One is the rural vs. Suburban and urban split. The vaccination rates seem much lower in rural areas even if you control for politics. The pockets of conservative Republicans in large urban areas do not look to have that much lower vaccination rates, but it really declines as you go down to smaller cities and especially rural areas. Some part of the lower vaccination rates for Republicans is just a function of being more rural. And rural areas might be more where lack of easy access is significant vs just unwillingness.
Second is the gap between first shots and full vaccination. Although that is very very slowly closing, clearly there are a good number who got the first shot and not the second , and not just because they are waiting the 3 weeks ( as new first shots have dropped that group is shrinking). And these are people who did get the first shot so clearly are not hard resistors. And many might just be lazy procrastinators or do not know that the first shot alone is a weak help for delta. They can be convinced. But seems all the discussion is about first shot numbers.
Third, far less of an issue if someone who already caught covid and recovered does not get vaccinated ( especially if in last year) as compared to someone unvaccinated who never caught covid. They already have at least some immunity naturally. A vaccination should improve that, but not as much as going from no immunity to vaccinated.
The key to me is what number of people have zero immunity from either natural or vaccinated. And thus the correlation between the two is crucial.
Say a population had 40% catch covid and recover ( probably high for us as a whole but might be true for NYC, Los Angeles, etc.), and 60% are fully vaccinated ( ignoring partial for now). If the 40% unvaccinated consist of 60% of those who had covid ( or net 24%) and 27% of those who never had covid ( or net 16%) , 84% have immunity and looking pretty good. If no correlation, then there are 76% with immunity which might not be enough with delta. Why can I find nothing for anyone trying to estimate this correlation?
And there has to be some correlation. Those who resist vaccination are also more likely to have not changed their lives last year and caught covid. And whether someone caught covid or not makes a big difference as to how much they "need" to be vaccinated and factors into their decision.
Great post. Why modern politics has to be so dialectical, is just silly. I blame the internet.
Spades,
I hope you take this the right way and sort of hate to say this right after you said great post to me, but
I think many of your posts are making valid points and are criticizing or contesting some unreasonable statements made by someone ideologically fairly far left..
But you do not have to express your point in such an exaggerated insulting way as then the person you are responding to is not going to consider what you said. I know you are probably frustrated as something said seems so ridiculous, and so react, but it does no good at all.
I was writing my response when you posted so did not see it before. And seems in essence you were making part of the same point I did. But now anyone more on the left are going to read your post first and see how insulting it is. And then never read my post either which I try to be civil.
And would add that your response was to golack. While his opinions are far left and I agree I would think quite extreme and ridiculous sometimes, seems who usually at least does take a somewhat civil tone that is attempting to not be insulting. And he does actually make arguments and not simply say " Republicans bad evil". And takes the time to provide some good info that is useful on numbers.
So maybe someone like golack is due you disputing and criticizing their points, even strongly. But does not deserve " your whole post is garbage. Educate yourself ".
Note that in prior days I had a long back and forth with cld. And after he made a number of borderline insulting posts ( but not that bad) and I think I tried to stay more civil, eventually cld did post a sort of apology that maybe he went too far. If you insult, you are going to get that back and conversation is useless.
I am saying this to you because it does not seem to me that you are just being a troll making insults with no points. You seem to have valid things to say even if many do not agree with you here. But the way you say it interferes with your message.
I stand corrected. The bulk of the resistance to vaccination is from conservative white males, not the bulk of the un-vaccinated.
I know Trump supporters who were first in line to get vaccinated. And they could be first in line since they were elderly. I also know other younger people who have bought into the anti-vax hype.
As for natural herd immunity--not a strong effect for this virus, esp when variants are taken into consideration--see Manaus, Brazil.
https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-generated-from-covid-19-vaccines-differs-from-an-infection/
First, I still would say you are wrong re the majority of vaccine resistance being conservative white males. But at least arguable and totally depends on how you define "resistance ". If you are only considering resisting vaccines due to an ideological bias, maybe. If considering any sort of resistance, I doubt it.
And biggest issue is you are excluding all females, including all female conservative whites. And that is too large a group when you add in all minorities ( including conservatives) and every white Male liberal.
If you want to say that conservative whites, Male or female, are the bulk of vaccine resistors ( excluding those maybe just lazy, etc. ) that might easily be true. And might be true even for majority of non vaccinated though likely not quite ( a lot of moderates too).
But honestly not much point to quibbling about this.
On the paper you cite, thanks as it is interesting. But not only does it not prove that natural immunity is less useful, it does not even claim that. If you read what it actually says, it is only claiming that they found something that COULD result in mrna vaccines being more effective , not that they are ( actually two reasons but one seemed to just be speculation). Lots of "may" phrases in that paper.
There of course may also be reasons why natural immunity is better than vaccine immunity. I mean it has to help in some way for the immune system to see the actual virus itself.
My pure speculation is that maybe a key issue is making the immune system recognize the covid virus as a real threat. The immune system evolved to not produce antibodies forever to something it expects to be a minor threat. Cannot waste all that effort. So I would guess that a mild or asymptomatic infection will produce a lower immunity, because the body thinks it can beat this again easy if it comes back again, and can just keep some t cell memory around and does not need antibodies. But a bad case, the body will decide it really needs to be ready.
Where possibly the two dose vaccines are helpful is just because there are two doses. So first dose immune system says this is no big deal. Can beat this again. And then here it is back again in 3 weeks! What the hell! Better take this more seriously.
"This is mostly due to the spread of the delta variant combined with low vaccination rates in states that watch a lot of Fox News."
Did Fox News spring fully formed from the forehead of Zeus?
Not really, took about 5-7 years before it had the reach to turn on the shit.
This is mostly due to the spread of the delta variant combined with low vaccination rates in states that watch a lot of Fox News.
Talk with your neighbors, dude.
COVID-19 rebounding in Orange County, other Southern California suburbs
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-07-14/covid-cases-hospitalizations-up-across-southern-california
"Orange, San Diego and San Bernardino counties have all seen their daily case averages more than triple over the past two weeks.... Fourteen days ago, Orange County was reporting a weekly average of about 48 new cases per day. Now, the figure is 150. "
Nope, not really. They didn't report for 3 whole days. Please educate yourself.
Walked into Starbucks today. Only one other person was wearing a mask. True, the indoor mask mandate was removed two weeks ago, but, wow.
I would not dare step into any indoor establishment w/o a mask, even being fully vaccinated. The Delta mutant is 2-3x more transmissible and is causing a spike in breakthrough infections.
This could get bad in a hurry. Parts of Missouri are all out of ICU beds. There will be lots of resistance to shutdowns; we could have the worst wave, yet.
I'd probably have preferred to see the government hold off on relaxing masking recommendations. But that's all they really were -- recommendations. And in wide swaths of the country, these recommendations weren't being followed in any event. Also, it would appear that fully vaccinated people face about 1% of the risk of picking up a fatal covid infection as non-vaccinated people. In other words, if you're vaccinated, covid's a not-particularly dangerous flu*. If you want to continue to wear a mask out of an abundance of caution have at it, but there's not much need to stress about it.
*I'm basing this on my horseback calculus derived from data just released by Massachusetts. IIRC about 80 of the state's 4 million+ fully vaccinated residents have died of covid infections.
The more concerning thing is where vaccinated people can spread it. Like to my son who at 4 cannot be vaccinated. Wear a mask for my son please.
I got vaccinated. How about you just keep your son away from me rather than put the onus on me to protect him by wearing a mask I don't really need.
Or how about you show a bit of consideration for folks who may or may not be vaccinated who end up lacking full immunity? You don't know who they are in the crowd so be kind.
I have shown a lot of consideration for about 16 months now. How much longer do you want? When the non-vaccinated people included those who had to work and be out and about in places like grocery stores etc., that was an entirely different situation. There is no reason a 4-year old HAS to be any place where I am.
I don't think it's inconsiderate to not worry about the miniscule chance that I, a vaccinated person, catch covid and pass it on that that 4-year old's vaccinated parent, who then passes it on to their kid, who then actually has a meaningfully negative reaction.
Fatalities, sure, but an infection is still an infection and your risk of long-COVID neurological problems isn't reduced because you've been vaccinated. That asymptomatic infections can involve hidden encephalitis should give you pause.
I've seen reports of breakthrough infections of whole, fully-vaccinated groups of people hospitalized or bed-ridden. That's unnerving. You wouldn't expect whole groups of vaccinated people exposed at the same time to all get infected. These might be signs of a Delta subvariant that has gained critical advantages over Delta.
That's how I've been feeling about this lately. I sort of freaked out in a meeting when my boss requested that go into the building to our training room for a full day of training a dozen new contractors. After he check up the chain and realized only five folks at once were permitted in that room right now and that others agreed with my concerns he backed down and decided it would be better to train via skype in smaller groups.
Almost no expert anywhere in the country thinks it will be as bad as the January wave. Locally things may be worse but as a country it's very unlikely.
The experts won't predict a subvariant of Delta that will lead to the acceleration of a wave of infections including widespread breakthrough. They're not in the business of getting ahead of their skis, after all.
Yet, India had things well under control, and then one day, Delta arrived and then suddenly infections were out of control.
We're conducting a natural experiment where, because we've eliminated mitigation, one breakthrough Delta subvariant will be able to explode throughout a population of vaccinated persons who conduct themselves with confidence that they can't possibly get infected.
Is there any merit to quoting "percent of ADULTS vaccinated?"
Maybe I'm missing something, but I think this is bad practice we should all (including media, government) avoid. Instead, quote percent of total population vaccinated.
Yes, it's true that children under 12 cannot be vaccinated in America. But that's probably temporary, and in any event the virus by all accounts is perfectly happy to hitch a ride on a kid.
Percent of TOTAL population vaccinated is what's relevant to the pursuit of herd immunity.
Nope. 18+ works due to hospitalization. 85-95% of this group is the reference range.
My personal preference is the way Marin County, California does it:
https://coronavirus.marinhhs.org/vaccine/data
It give an easy to read full picture of what’s going on there. Note that the over 65 population is nearly 100% vaccinated and over 50 is 90% vaccinated. If the rest of the country had Marin Country’s stats we would. E in great shape.
That marin county website is pretty good.
Why report adults only?
Of course one big reason is that children not eligible. So, if issue is that you are measuring what progress vaccination is making compared to "ideal", of course you are only going to look at those eligible.
But, if you are interested in how close to herd immunity you are getting, discounting those not yet eligible per se is wrong. But still some reason to discount children partially. We do not know how much less, but quite clear now that children do not spread covid as easily as adults. Probably largely because they just do not expel as much virus maybe just because they are smaller? And I have wondered if it might be a little that the shorter you are, the less risk you have of spreading it ( but higher risk of catching?) Because you are closer to the ground and eventually gravity should pull viruses toward the ground a bit.
So likely ther getting an adult fully vaccinated is somewhat more helpful to herd immunity than same for a child.
So best measure would be something weighting children in the total a bit less than adults.
And I still say with delta, I think fully vaccinated % more useful number than one shot. And best would be % with either natural immunity from having had covid OR full vaccination. And have seen no good estimate on that. Have seen someone just adding two numbers together which is silly wrong. And also just assuming no correlation which is also incorrect.
Most of LA county is black/Brown cases. Shame on them.
Yes, most of la county cases are black or Hispanic. And that has been true for the whole time except just right at the start.
But that fact is not very important because Hispanics alone outnumber whites in la county. Even if rates were proportional, Hispanics and blacks combined would have the majority of cases.
But what is true is that blacks and hispanics did have proportionately more cases than whites and Asians a bit less than whites ( although for pumping slumping them all into one category makes little sense).
But, just like it is not fair to say " shame on them " about conservatives if they have more cases, not totally fair here too. Although I suspect that might have been your point really?
For Hispanics at least, much of the reason they had more cases before the vaccine was a choice they made as to how to live their lives. Basically that it was not worth taking so much enjoyment out of living their lives by social distancing and restrictions, etc. In order to avoid a relatively low chance of death. Partly because some immigrated from areas where they still die from even more serious diseases a good amount that Americans have forgotten and they learned to just continue to live.
That was not the choice I made but that does not mean their choice was wrong.
I definitely could tell last year that Hispanics were the least compliant with mask mandates and ( although not as clear) that blacks were next least compliant followed by whites and asians.
Now with vaccinations, asians and whites definitely started ahead but Hispanics at least seem to be starting to catch up. Blacks not so much. Although they might be having a slightly greater pace than whites now, that is only because they are so far behind.
And now among the black community is where covid cases are going up the most. Was hispanics with highest case count all through almost all of the pandemic, but blacks have zoomed by them.
And although Hispanics are below whites in cumulative vaccinations, and not likely will ever catch up, I do think perhaps they have more total immunity ( vaccination and natural) than whites or will soon. Hispanics were hit so hard here in la county that I would guess more than 50% have some sort of natural immunity now.
Now that it’s just killing the willfully unvaccinated I dgaf. Let em die.