MFA and COVID19 Update – November 27, 2022
PDA’s Dr. Bill Honigman – CA Dem Party Senior Caucus Presentation 2018
By Dr. Bill Honigman, Healthcare Human Rights, Coordinator – Progressive Democrats of America
COVID & MFA REALITY CHECK
1,087,403 Total COVID19 deaths in US to date*
434,961 US COVID19 deaths prevented with MFA**
*Harvard University Daily Tracker
This is now our 146th consecutive weekly PDA Online Sunday Town Hall that began when #COVID19 first hit the U.S. in the spring of 2020. And once again today, we must report that the United States continues, to our shock and dismay, as the world leader among nations in total number of confirmed deaths due to the coronavirus.
The Harvard University daily tracking center is reporting the U.S. confirmed COVID19 total death toll today at 1,087,475, which means according to the Lancet Commission Report of 2021, that a shocking 434,961 Americans have now died unnecessarily from COVID19, and would still be alive today under a system of Universal Healthcare like #SinglePayer expanded and improved #MedicareForAll (MFA).
That’s an additional 771 unwitting victims in the US that died just this week due to the political intransigence to change Healthcare in this country away from commercial interests to saving lives and saving money under MFA.
This week, world new cases and deaths due to COVID19 continued at relatively low levels, but hospitalizations and death rates are notably rising. New cases increased in France, Italy, and Japan, and spiked in the U.K. and Brazil, while data for the U.S., Germany, and Russia still showed leveling, at least for the time being.
OurWorldInData.org is reporting now that only 68.5% of world population have received at least one dose of the COVID19 vaccine, with only 24.6% of those who happen to live in low-income countries, primarily of the global south, having received any COVID19 vaccine so far.
The U.S. still has only 69.3% of its population with a completed initial series.
And, the Johns Hopkins Resource Center which ranks countries by percentage COVID19 vaccinations as first dose only, this week has the U.S. at No. 50 once again in this category, still just behind Tuvalu and Panama, and just ahead of Kuwait and Belgium.
And the U.S. worst state for COVID19 vaccination continues to be Wyoming, once again this week tied with Alabama, and both at only 52.7% of their respective populations now fully vaxxed, that’s no significant increase since last week despite the warnings of “triple-demic” heading their way.
Speaking of vaccines, the White House pushed hard this week for those eligible to receive the latest multi-valent booster. With the Omicron variant of COVID still dominant, in fact with the BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 subvariants of Omicron having risen now to comprise more than half of new cases nationwide, they have promoted new scientific evidence this week showing this latest booster is especially likely to provide “…significant additional protection against symptomatic infection in people who had already received at least two shots of the monovalent vaccine.”
As a result, they are especially pushing “booster uptake” for the elderly, minority communities, and for those in rural areas, all of which have been disproportionately impacted with severe disease and deaths so far in the pandemic.
Nonetheless, this push for vaccines, without the backing of a national Healthcare system, continues to suffer from a deadly political divide. The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study just this week that showed that if the 10 U.S. states with the worst vaccination records (listen up Wyoming and Alabama) had matched the 10 best states, 122,000 deaths would have been avoided, and if the whole country had matched the 10 most-vaccinated states, over 266,000 deaths would have been avoided.
And as Electoral-Vote.com pointed out, Trump and the anti-science Republican Party, can be easily blamed for much of this. And as regards the midterms, they point out that “…since COVID19 deaths were far greater in red counties than blue counties, it may well have been a major factor in some narrow Republican losses.”
Regardless, the CDC reported earlier this week that only an abysmal 11% of those age 5 years and over have received their bivalent booster so far. And even, Dr. Anthony Fauci in what is believed to have been his last public appearance before he retires this month as chief medical advisor to the White House, stressed the need to get boosted, as protection against the virus wanes over time from the last vaccination.
By the way, Dr. Fauci also this week said that he fully intends to cooperate with any investigative proceedings called for by the new Congress and the Republican led House of Representatives. Noting that during the span of his 40+ year public service career, he has already testified “a few hundred times” before Congress, and he would have “no trouble testifying” defending, explaining, and “we could stand by everything that we’ve said.”
And we thank you for that, Dr. Fauci, and for your tremendous service to this country. However, we only wish that your job had been supported by a national Healthcare system like MFA, so we would have less difficulty getting factual medical information and treatment to those in need, so we could have not just better vaccine compliance, but better universal testing, contact tracing, and medical risk reduction by treatment for everyone of chronic medical conditions like diabetes, heart disease, asthma and COPD, as well.
The struggle against COVID19, and for MFA continues.
Thanks, and onward!
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A very interesting article.