ALL the anti-vaxxers should be apologizing to health care workers! Man returns to the ICU where he almost died of COVID-19 to apologize to healthcare workers https://www.upworthy.com/covid-19-unvaccinated-hospital-apology Throughout the pandemic, we've seen countless stories of patients in the ICU, terribly sick with COVID-19, still insisting that the virus isn't real. Such stories of denial are frustrating, especially for healthcare workers who are doing their best to save people's lives. That's why this story of a COVID patient returning to the hospital to thank—and apologize to—the medical staff who helped him offers a ray of hope that not all who are in denial will stay that way. According to KOMO News, Richard Soliz hadn't known anyone who had gotten sick from the coronavirus. He had also fallen prey to misinformation on social media about the vaccine, so had chosen not to get vaccinated. Then he fell ill in late August, spiked a fever and found it difficult to breathe. (More at above url)
Unvaccinated adults more than three times as likely to lean Republican: KFF analysis https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...-three-times-as-likely-to-lean-republican-kff
GOP clowns are now pushing "natural immunity". The science shows that approximately 20% of people never develop natural immunity whatsoeverafter infection. Over 36% show insufficient anti-bodies for natural immunity at three months after infection. And the large majority of the infected have anti-body levels wane so they have no natural immunity after six months. Depending on "natural immunity" for protection without continual anti-body level testing is a farce. The best protection against Covid is vaccination. GOP embraces natural immunity as substitute for vaccines https://www.aol.com/news/gop-embraces-natural-immunity-substitute-153213875-171048894.html TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Republicans fighting President Joe Biden's coronavirus vaccine mandates are wielding a new weapon against the White House rules: natural immunity. They contend that people who have recovered from the virus have enough immunity and antibodies to not need COVID-19 vaccines, and the concept has been invoked by Republicans as a sort of stand-in for vaccines. Florida wrote natural immunity into state law this week as GOP lawmakers elsewhere are pushing similar measures to sidestep vaccine mandates. Lawsuits over the mandates have also begun leaning on the idea. Conservative federal lawmakers have implored regulators to consider it when formulating mandates. Scientists acknowledge that people previously infected with COVID-19 have some level of immunity but that vaccines offer a more consistent level of protection. Natural immunity is also far from a one-size-fits-all scenario, making it complicated to enact sweeping exemptions to vaccines. That’s because how much immunity COVID-19 survivors have depends on how long ago they were infected, how sick they were, and if the virus variant they had is different from mutants circulating now. For example, a person who had a minor case one year ago is much different than a person who had a severe case over the summer when the delta variant was raging through the country. It's also difficult to reliably test whether someone is protected from future infections. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in August that COVID-19 survivors who ignored advice to get vaccinated were more than twice as likely to get infected again. A more recent study from the CDC, looking at data from nearly 190 hospitals in nine states, determined that unvaccinated people who had been infected months earlier were five times more likely to get COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people who didn’t have a prior infection. “Infection with this virus, if you survive, you do have some level of protection against getting infected in the future and particularly against getting serious infection in the future,” said Dr. David Dowdy of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s important to note though that even those who have been infected in the past get additional protection from being vaccinated.” Studies also show that COVID-19 survivors who get vaccinated develop extra-strong protection, what’s called “hybrid immunity." When previously infected person gets a coronavirus vaccine, the shot acts like a booster and revs virus-fighting antibodies to high levels. The combination also strengthens another defensive layer of the immune system, helping create new antibodies that are more likely to withstand future variants. The immunity debate comes as the country is experiencing another surge in infections and hospitalizations and 60 million people remain unvaccinated in a pandemic that has killed more than 770,000 Americans. Biden is hoping more people will get vaccinated because of workplace mandates set to take effect early next year but which face many challenges in the courts. And many Republicans eager to buck Biden have embraced the argument that immunity from earlier infections should be enough to earn an exemption from the mandates. “We recognize, unlike what you see going on with the federal proposed mandates and other states, we’re actually doing a science-based approach. For example, we recognize people that have natural immunity,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who has been a chief critic of virus rules, said at a signing ceremony for sweeping legislation to hobble vaccine mandates this week. The new Florida law forces private businesses to let workers opt out of COVID-19 mandates if they can prove immunity through a prior infection, as well as exemptions based on medical reasons, religious beliefs, regular testing or an agreement to wear protective gear. The state health department, which is led by Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who opposes mandates and has drawn national attention over a refusal to wear a face mask during a meeting, will have authority to define exemption standards. The Republican-led New Hampshire Legislature plans to take up a similar measure when it meets in January. Lawmakers in Idaho and Wyoming, both statehouses under GOP-control, recently debated similar measures but did not pass them. In Utah, a newly signed law creating exemptions from Biden’s vaccine mandates for private employers allows people to duck the requirement if they have already had COVID. And the debate is not unique to the U.S. Russia has seen huge numbers of people seeking out antibody tests to prove they had an earlier infection and therefore don’t need vaccines. Some politicians use the science behind natural immunity to advance narratives suggesting vaccines aren't the best way to end the pandemic. “The shot is not by any means the only or proven way out of the pandemic. I’m not willing to give blind faith to the pharmaceutical narrative,” said Idaho Republican Rep. Greg Ferch. U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican and physician, along with 14 other GOP doctors, dentists and pharmacists in Congress, sent a letter in late September to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, urging the agency, when setting vaccination policies, to consider natural immunity. The White House has recently unveiled a host of vaccine mandates, sparking a flurry of lawsuits from GOP states, setting the stage for pitched legal battles. Among the rules are vaccine requirements for federal contractors, businesses with more than 100 employees and health care workers. In separate lawsuits, others are challenging local vaccine rules using an immunity defense. A 19-year-old student who refuses to be tested but claims he contracted and quickly recovered from COVID-19 is suing the University of Nevada, Reno, the governor and others over the state’s requirement that everyone, with few exceptions, show proof of vaccination in order to register for classes in the upcoming spring semester. The case alleges that “COVID-19 vaccination mandates are an unconstitutional intrusion on normal immunity and bodily integrity.” Another case, filed by workers of Los Alamos National Laboratory, challenges their workplace vaccine mandate for civil rights and constitutional violations, arguing the lab has refused requests for medical accommodations for those workers who have fully recovered from COVID-19. A similar lawsuit from Chicago firefighters and other city employees hit a bump last month when a judge said their case lacked scientific evidence to support the contention that the natural immunity for people who have had the virus is superior to the protection from the vaccine.
Overall, across these 43 states, as of November 15, 2021, 56% percent of White people had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, which was close to the rate for Hispanic people (54%) but higher than the rate for Black people (49%). https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-cov...a-on-covid-19-vaccinations-by-race-ethnicity/
In a shocking turn of events, Covid positivity rates align with political maps, which, in turn, align with vaccination rates. COVID-19 cases higher in towns with lower vaccination rates, Courant analysis shows https://www.courant.com/coronavirus...0211128-6admansjl5gale5izok6scz4zm-story.html Amid Connecticut’s recent COVID-19 spike, towns with higher rates of vaccination have recorded far lower rates of new cases in recent weeks, state numbers show. The pattern is visible not only through a quick glance at the map — eastern Connecticut and the Naugatuck Valley are both the least vaccinated and most infected parts of the state — but also through statistical analysis. According to a Courant review, Connecticut municipalities with fewer than 60% of residents fully vaccinated experienced a median rate of 26.4 daily cases per 100,000 residents over a recent two-week period, while municipalities with more than 70% of residents fully vaccinated saw a median rate of 13.8 per 100,000 residents over the same stretch. In other words, COVID-19 outbreaks were, on balance, nearly twice as severe in towns and cities with low rates of vaccination as in those with high rates. Overall, The Courant found an inverse correlation between vaccination and infection at the town level that is statistically significant at a 99% confidence interval, meaning it is highly unlikely to be the result of chance — as well as a similar relationship between a town’s vaccination rate and its COVID-19 test positivity rate. COVID-19 risk level differs from town to town based on how many people have been vaccinated. Here’s a look at the vaccination numbers in each town across Connecticut » These findings are consistent with what public officials and health experts have said for months: Though a high rate of vaccination does not guarantee a community will be safe from COVID-19, it does make an outbreak much less likely. “That is a no-brainer, for sure,” Dr. Ulysses Wu, and infectious disease specialist at Hartford HealthCare, said Wednesday. “If an area is less vaccinated, there is going to be more COVID.” Most of the Connecticut towns and cities experiencing the most dramatic spikes during the current COVID-19 wave are those with relatively low vaccination rates, state numbers show. Of the 25 Connecticut municipalities with the highest number of new cases per capita from Nov. 7-20, all but one have fewer than 70% of their residents fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, of the 25 municipalities with the lowest vaccination rates, all but three are currently in the state’s “red alert” category, meaning they have averaged at least 15 daily cases per 100,000 residents. By comparison, none of Connecticut’s eight most vaccinated municipalities qualify for the “red alert” category, and only four of the 25 most vaccinated municipalities have an infection rate about the state average in recent weeks. Many of Connecticut’s low-vaccination/high-infection towns are in the state’s eastern half, where the local population tends to be more conservative and where vaccination has lagged all year. Polling both nationally and in Connecticut has found conservatives to be less likely than liberals to trust COVID-19 vaccines. Windham County, in the northeast corner of the state, currently ranks as the Connecticut county with both the lowest rate of vaccination and the highest rate of new cases, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some of Connecticut’s largest cities have also lagged in vaccination rate, with Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven, New London and New Britain all ranking among the state’s least vaccinated municipalities. These cities have tended throughout the pandemic to have higher rates of new COVID-19 cases than surrounding towns with higher rates of vaccination, a pattern that has held true in recent weeks. Connecticut’s most vaccinated towns have tended to be relatively liberal suburbs, including in Hartford County and along the state’s coast. One of few exceptions, at least on paper, to the relationship between vaccination rate and rate of new cases, has been Mansfield, which has recorded few COVID-19 cases in recent weeks despite being listed as having the lowest vaccination rate in the state. But officials say Mansfield’s data is misleading due to the presence of UConn students, who are almost all vaccinated but who don’t count toward the town’s figures. When Mansfield is removed from the statewide data set, the inverse correlation between vaccination rate and rate of new cases among towns becomes even stronger. Despite large variance from one part of the state to the other in terms of both vaccination rate and infection rate, Wu said his advice for Connecticut residents doesn’t change much depending what part of the state they live in. “Keep it simple,” Wu said. “You vaccinate, you mask, you social distance, you wash your hands, you don’t engage in behaviors that may put you at risk.”
Republicans find a way to extend the time before social security runs out of money... As U.S. Nears 800,000 Virus Deaths, 1 of Every 100 Older Americans Has Perished https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-nears-800-000-virus-130041903.html
Omicron evades the only effective covid treatment Trumpers will accept... Omicron overpowers key COVID antibody treatments in early tests Nearly all of the monoclonal antibodies used to prevent severe disease fail to stand up to the new variant, laboratory assays show. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03829-0
The Trump crowd won't even follow the dictates from their leader, Donald. Trump hails the COVID-19 vaccine as 'one of the greatest achievements of mankind' and rejects vaccine skepticism in new interview https://www.businessinsider.com/tru...-achievements-mankind-owens-interview-2021-12 Trump: 'People Aren't Dying When They Take the Vaccine' https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/trump-covid-19-vaccine-candace-owens/2021/12/23/id/1049775/