Covid vaccines saved 20 million lives in first year: study https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/06/covid-vaccines-saved-20-million-lives-first-year-study Covid vaccines prevented nearly 20 million deaths in the first year after they were introduced, according to the first large modelling study on the topic released Friday. The study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, is based on data from 185 countries and territories collected from December 8, 2020 to December 8, 2021. It is the first attempt to estimate the number of deaths prevented directly and indirectly as a result of Covid-19 vaccinations. It found that 19.8 million deaths were prevented out of a potential 31.4 million deaths that would have occurred if no vaccines were available. It was a 63 percent reduction, the study found. The study used official figures -- or estimates when official data was not available -- for deaths from Covid, as well as total excess deaths from each country. Excess mortality is the difference between the total number of people who died from all causes and the number of deaths expected based on past data. These analyses were compared with a hypothetical alternative scenario in which no vaccine was administered. The model accounted for variation in vaccination rates across countries, as well as differences in vaccine effectiveness based on the types of vaccines known to have been primarily used in each country. China was not included in the study because of its large population and strict containment measures, which would have skewed the results, it said. The study found that high- and middle-income countries accounted for the largest number of deaths averted, 12.2 million out of 19.8 million, reflecting inequalities in access to vaccines worldwide. Nearly 600,000 additional deaths could have been prevented if the World Health Organization's (WHO) goal of vaccinating 40 percent of each country's population by the end of 2021 had been met, it concluded. "Millions of lives have probably been saved by making vaccines available to people around the world," said lead study author Oliver Watson of Imperial College London. "We could have done more," he said. Covid has officially killed more than 6.3 million people globally, according to the WHO. But the organisation said last month the real number could be as high as 15 million, when all direct and indirect causes are accounted for. The figures are extremely sensitive due to how they reflect on the handling of the crisis by authorities around the world. The virus is on the rise again in some places, including in Europe, which is seeing a warm-weather resurgence blamed in part on Omicron subvariants.
COVID’s death toll would have been 3 times worse without vaccines, study shows—yet unequal access stopped jabs from saving more lives https://fortune.com/2022/06/24/covid-vaccine-study-pandemic-death-toll-equity-covax/
COVID would have killed 58% more Americans without vaccines: Study https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jul/6/study-covid-would-have-killed-58-more-americans-wi/ A new study estimates that COVID-19 vaccinations averted 58% of U.S. deaths that could have occurred in a hypothetical scenario in which no inoculations existed. Published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open, the modeling study concludes that COVID-19 vaccinations prevented 27 million infections, 1.6 million hospitalizations and 235,000 deaths among U.S. adults from December 2020 to September 2021. However, the study cautions that it relied on “incomplete national data” from multiple health records due to the lack of a national database and the “limitations of current methods” for measuring vaccine effectiveness. “We are unlikely to ever know the exact number of people saved by the nationwide vaccination campaign, but we do know that vaccination is our most powerful tool for preventing severe disease and death,” the study states. Infectious disease specialists agreed. “The findings are not surprising. The COVID-19 vaccines are unequivocally the best way to prevent the severe consequences of infection, including death,” said Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “We know the vaccines worked in clinical trials. These numbers are on par with what we expected, if not better,” added Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The study concludes that “more must be done to reach” the estimated 1-in-3 Americans who remain unvaccinated. “The marriage of politics and the pandemic has been a public health disaster that will have consequences for population health that reach far beyond the direct protection of vaccinated individuals,” the study notes. Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor University, said he estimates in a forthcoming book that “as many as 200,000 Americans lost their lives unnecessarily because they refused COVID vaccinations in 2021.” “I have no reason to question the numbers [of the study], which seem quite reasonable and a reminder about the importance of vaccines. But equally important is the needless loss of life among individuals who refused COVID vaccinations even after they became widely available,” Dr. Hotez said. He attributed vaccine hesitancy to “anti-science.” Three public health researchers based the modeling study on hospitalization data from COVID-NET, a network of more than 250 acute care hospitals in 99 counties in 14 states. They noted that this sampling, which covered hospitalizations within 14 days of a positive COVID-19 test result, was not representative of the entire U.S. population. That was due in part to differences in inpatient screening methods among different hospitals and states.
Sadly if appears that the lack of adequate steps taken before the latest Covid surge and refusal of Republicans to fund federally further Covid monitoring, vaccination, testing, treatment, and other public health measures while also blocking masking, etc. --- is setting the table for an additional surge in deaths in the U.S. Experts rue simple steps not taken before latest COVID surge https://apnews.com/article/covid-sc...and-politics-56da29e416cd40d1c29f99e929c14312 With new omicron variants again driving COVID-19 hospital admissions and deaths higher in recent weeks, states and cities are rethinking their responses and the White House is stepping up efforts to alert the public. Some experts said the warnings are too little, too late. The highly transmissible BA.5 variant now accounts for 65% of cases with its cousin BA.4 contributing another 16%. The variants have shown a remarkable ability to get around the protection offered by infection and vaccination. “It’s well past the time when the warning could have been put out there,” said Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, who has has called BA.5 “the worst variant yet.” Global trends for the two mutants have been apparent for weeks, experts said — they quickly out-compete older variants and push cases higher wherever they appear. Yet Americans have tossed off their masks and jumped back into travel and social gatherings. And they have largely ignored booster shots, which protect against COVID-19′s worst outcomes. Courts have blocked federal mask and vaccine mandates, tying the hands of U.S. officials. “We learn a lot from how the virus is acting elsewhere and we should apply the knowledge here,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha appeared on morning TV on Wednesday urging booster shots and renewed vigilance. Yet Mokdad said federal health officials need to be push harder on masks indoors, early detection and prompt antiviral treatment. “They are not doing all that they can,” Mokdad said. The administration’s challenge, in the view of the White House, is not their messaging, but people’s willingness to hear it — due to pandemic fatigue and the politicization of the virus response. For months, the White House has encouraged Americans to make use of free or cheap at-home rapid tests to detect the virus, as well as the free and effective antiviral treatment Paxlovid that protects against serious illness and death. On Tuesday, the White House response team called on all adults 50 and older to urgently get a booster if they haven’t yet this year — and dissuaded people from waiting for the next generation of shots expected in the fall when they can roll up their sleeves and get some protection now. Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest by population, is facing a return to a broad indoor mask mandate if current trends in hospital admissions continue, health director Barbara Ferrer told county supervisors Tuesday. “I do recognize that when we return to universal indoor masking to reduce high spread, for many this will feel like a step backwards,” Ferrer said. But she stressed that requiring masks “helps us to reduce risk.” LA County has long required masks in some indoor spaces, including health care facilities, Metro trains and buses, airports, jails and homeless shelters. A universal mandate would expand the requirement to all indoor public spaces, including shared offices, manufacturing facilities, warehouses, retail stores, restaurants and bars, theaters and schools. Sharon Fayette ripped off her mask the moment she stepped out of a Lyft ride in LA and groaned when informed another universal mask requirement might be coming. “Oh man, when will it end?” she wondered about the pandemic. Fayette said she was exhausted by shifting regulations and dubious another mandate would be followed by most residents. “I just think people are over it, over all the rules,” she said. The nation’s brief lull in COVID deaths has reversed. Last month, daily deaths were falling, though they never matched last year’s low, and deaths are now heading up again. The seven-day average for daily deaths in the U.S. rose 26% over the past two weeks to 489 on July 12. The coronavirus is not killing nearly as many as it was last fall and winter, and experts do not expect death to reach those levels again soon. But hundreds of daily deaths for a summertime respiratory illness would normally be jaw-dropping, said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. He noted that in Orange County, California, 46 people died of COVID-19 in June. “That would be all hands on deck,” Noymer said. “People would be like, ‘There’s this crazy new flu that’s killing people in June.’” Instead, simple, proven precautions are not being taken. Vaccinations, including booster shots for those eligible, lower the risk of hospitalization and death — even against the latest variants. But less than half of all eligible U.S. adults have gotten a single booster shot, and only about 1 in 4 Americans age 50 and older who are eligible for a second booster have received one. “This has been a botched booster campaign,” Topol said, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still uses the term “fully vaccinated” for people with two shots of Moderna or Pfizer. “They haven’t gotten across that two shots is totally inadequate,” he said. Noymer said if he were in charge of the nation’s COVID response he would level with the American people in an effort to get their attention in this third year of the pandemic. He would tell Americans to take it seriously, mask indoors and “until we get better vaccines, there’s going to be a new normal of a disease that kills over 100,000 Americans a year and impacts life expectancy.” That message probably wouldn’t fly for political reasons, Noymer acknowledged. It also might not fly with people who are tired of taking precautions after more than two years of the pandemic. Valerie Walker of New Hope, Pennsylvania, is mindful of the latest surge but is hardly alarmed. “I was definitely concerned back then,” she said of the pandemic’s early days, with images of body bags on nightly news broadcasts. “Now there’s fatigue, things were getting better and there was a vaccine. So I would say from a scale between one and 10, I’m probably at a four.” Even with two friends now sick with the virus, and her husband recently recovered, Walker says she has bigger problems. “Sometimes when I think about it I still put a mask on when I go into a store, but honestly, it is not a daily thought for me,” she said.
Vaccination saves millions of life. Unfortunately the anti-vax movement has undermined other public health efforts. This is what happens when lies pushed by demagogues and snake-oil sellers replace science. Polio Is Making a Comeback. Thanks, Anti-Vaxxers! If it seems like infectious diseases are coming at us faster, spreading more widely and persisting longer than they have in generations, it’s because they are, health experts say. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/anti-vaxxers-virus-polio-comeback-1396772/
Rates of diphtheria, polio, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, tetanus, tuberculosis, and yellow fever all increased—primarily due to vaccine hesitancy because of increasing anti-vaccine online rhetoric. Sadly, those are required vaccines for North American children to attend school in North America. Therefore, I'm going to assume that more children will be homeschooled by their Parents this fall considering the children will no longer be qualified to attend school... The above diseases have required vaccination regulation in most states of the United States and provinces of Canada. wrbtrader
Gut check. Are you honest? Do you want to know the truth? Don't you wish that authoritarian "Liberals, lol" could think for themselves? Can you define women? Well.... Pathetic and dangerous.
Study: About 7,300 lives saved by COVID-19 vaccine mandates on college campuses https://www.freep.com/story/news/lo...dates-college-campuses/10251236002/?gnt-cfr=1 College Vaccine Mandates Saved Lives In Surrounding Community According To New Study https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...unity-according-to-new-study/?sh=7124adf05762 Colleges’ Vaccine Mandates Significantly Decreased Covid Deaths, Study Finds https://www.chronicle.com/article/c...nificantly-decreased-covid-deaths-study-finds