By Dr. Bill Honigman, Healthcare Human Rights, Coordinator – Progressive Democrats of America

This week, world cases of #COVID19 were up by an alarming 9 million reported new cases.  That’s over double the number of last week’s rise, and total global deaths rose by another 82 thousand compared to 69 thousand last week, for a total global death toll now of over 4.35 million.  Case numbers are still rising, as they were last week, in the US and Turkey, but seemingly leveling or declining everywhere else, at least in the advanced countries of the world.  Thankfully, global vaccinations are continuing more rapidly now, with an estimated 23% of the total world population vaccinated compared to last week’s 15%.

The US continues shamefully as the world leader in COVID deaths, this week with some 4,588 reported new deaths, or an average of about 655 lost souls per day due to this public health nightmare on own our shores, for a total US COVID death toll now of 621,051 since the pandemic began.

And as we have been obliged to point out in these pages now week after week, according to public health experts, an estimated full 40%, or 248,420 of those lost mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, sons, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, would still be alive today if we had a #SinglePayer expanded and improved #MedicareForAll system in place, with a public system of financing and prioritizing our Healthcare needs rather than commercial systems to deal with public health emergencies such as this.

Politicization has been allowed to dominate over science and rational thinking, creating the new surge, now known as the “Delta pandemic of the unvaccinated”.  

Our southern states in particular, which have shown unprecedented refusal to comply with all public health measures, including especially vaccinations and masking, are clearly now suffering most.  Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and Texas are the leaders, with Florida just yesterday reported having broken its own record in new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began.  And on Friday, it was reported by CBS Miami, Broward County lost 3 unvaccinated educators and a devoted community member, vaccine status unknown, all in their late 40s, within a 24-hour-period from Tuesday to Wednesday, less than one week before that start of school from COVID19.

Clearly, more must be done to focus attention back on systems solutions that overpower the politicization fueled by misinformation that have led to this current surge, and that we know will result in even more such surges, if allowed to further fester in our public discourse.  With primary care providers, as trusted sources of medical information and evidence-based treatments, being rationed away from us by predatory commercial interests, especially by big insurance and big pharma, we can only expect more of the same, or worse.

And what does that mean?  It means what epidemiologists are now predicting, that even higher thresholds of immunity will be required to control COVID19 and its variants, with perhaps as many as 90% of the population needing to be vaccinated, rather than the 70 to 80% previously thought necessary.  And just how we are likely to achieve these new seemingly impossible benchmarks?  That’s anyone’s guess.

But clearly, at least to those of us who are paying attention and giving this at least some considerable thought, a system of Universal Healthcare, where ALL of the people get ALL of the care, such as every other advanced country in the world already has, and as a result is doing so much better than we are for it, and considering what a Medicare for All system in this country would represent in lives and money saved, this would put the US on par with those other countries, and is what will get us a long way toward that goal of global immunity and prosperity.  

And we need it with the fierce urgency of now!

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