photo: PDA’s Dr. Bill Honigman, MFA Rally at AMA Convention in Chicago, 2019.
Pictured left to right, Jim Carpenter, Dr Bill’s wife Carrie, Dr. Bill and Jim’s friend.

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

COVID & MFA REALITY CHECK

1,058,629 Total COVID19 deaths in US to date*

423,451 US COVID19 deaths prevented with MFA**

*Harvard University Daily Tracker

**Lancet Comm, Feb 2021

This is now our 139th consecutive weekly PDA Online 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 as the pariah among the other advanced countries of the world, as the world leader in deaths due to the coronavirus.

The Harvard University daily tracking center is reporting the U.S. COVID19 total death toll today at 1,058,629, which means that now an estimated 423,451 Americans have now died from COVID19 unnecessarily, who would still be alive today if we were really following the science of Public Health and Economics, and had #SinglePayer expanded and improved #MedicareForAll (MFA) in this country, as we should.

That’s once again over a thousand more, specifically, just this week alone 1,237 more Americans who died preventable deaths due to inadequate prevention and treatment of COVID19.  

As was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this summer by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health and made public just this last week, their opinion was that MFA specifically as a means for “Pandemic Preparedness” would have saved over 200,000 lives in 2020 alone, and would have saved the U.S. over $450B in unnecessary COVID19 treatment and other untoward economic impacts also in just the year 2020 alone.

Of course, the wanton human and social sacrifices and fealty to the almighty U.S. medical industrial complex continues.

This week, world cases and death rates due to COVID continued to be relatively low, with new cases still in decline in the U.S., India, South Korea, Japan, and Russia.  However, continued rising new cases in much of Europe, including the U.K., France, Germany, and Italy, have many here in the U.S. concerned about a possible early winter resurgence.  And regionally in the U.S., there do appear to be some increases specifically in the New England and Pacific Northwest, suggesting a “northern rim” of increased new infections here.

Globally, OurWorldInData.org is reporting only an estimated 68.2% of world population have received even just one dose of the COVID19 vaccine, and only an estimated 22.9% of those who happen to live in low-income countries have received their first dose of a COVID19 vaccine.  The U.S. has only 68.5% with a complete initial series.  

The Johns Hopkins Resource Center which ranks countries by percentage COVID19 vaccinations as first dose only, has the U.S. down this week to No. 44, in this category, still just behind Thailand and Israel, and just ahead of Panama and Laos.

And the U.S. worst state status for COVID19 vaccination continues to be Wyoming, now estimated at only 52.2% of its population fully vaccinated, leaving almost half of their eligible population of “rugged individuals” unprotected.

This week, in particular with the prospect of a winter resurgence in mind, more attention has been brought to bear on the phenomena of COVID19 reinfections, and on the other generally underused treatment modalities including not only a poor take-up rate of the new bivalent COVID and Omicron vaccine, with only some 8 million of the estimated 200 million Americans now eligible for this new vaccine having received it so far, but also noncompliance with known effective and safe, recommended anti-viral treatments such as Paxlovid and monoclonal antibodies.  

An expose published in the NYT just this last Friday, explains this as primarily due to two influences in those deciding against treatments.  The first is “caveats and concerns” about potential side effects, which infectious disease experts overwhelmingly agree are not enough to outweigh the potential benefits, including preventing death and disability due to the possible COVID19 infections themselves, especially in those higher at risk.  And the second is a social and political obstinance by especially those in red states, to not take the disease and all of its horrible manifestations seriously.  

If fact, they point out that, “government data shows that of the 20 states with the least Paxlovid use between late August and late September, 18 were won by Donald Trump in 2020.”

And they conclude with the statement that, “Persuading more doctors of Paxlovid’s benefits would probably have the biggest impact.”  However, what they don’t address is, what good is all of that if the message can’t get from your provider to you, because big insurance and their Wall Street financiers block access to those prudent and trusted professional resources?

The struggle of fact versus fealty, in this pandemic and more generally, continues. 

Thanks, and onward!