Category Archives: Health Care

The health of our citizens

COVID Update

Broken in the USA, Education, Health Care

COVID Update

It is difficult for me to not post updates on the continuing pandemic. It has been over two years now since we had the initial recommendations from our CDC and the situation continues to be dire. Herd immunity remains a pipe dream. Persons with significant antibodies (those fully vaccinated combined with those that have survived the virus) is in the 75 – 80% range but the variants continue to spread at an alarming rate. Almost all of the spread is occurring among the unvaccinated. There are examples of people contracting COVID for the 3rd time. The prior week we had over 7500 deaths in just two days and over 95% were unvaccinated persons. Very few people in my community are wearing masks in retail stores and restaurants and almost 25% of the county has contracted the virus. Myself as well as all of my friends have either close friends or relatives that have passed away. I understand why many people do not want to be subjected to mandates but the lack of folks not taking responsibility for their health as well as the health of others is, to me, appalling.

The number of outspoken antivaccers that have succumbed to the virus continues to grow. Following are just a few examples:

“Unvaccinated 911 Operator Who Died Of COVID-19 Regretted ‘Wrong Decision’ While On Life Support” here: https://share.smartnews.com/4ZVy4

“Washington state trooper who said Gov. ‘Jay Inslee can kiss my ass’ after being fired for refusing to get vaccinated has died from COVID-19” here: https://share.smartnews.com/4urjN

A couple of more articles worth reading:

“Omicron variant of COVID may be the most contagious virus to ever exist, scientists say” here: https://share.smartnews.com/bJU2k “Eighth Child Under 10 Dies of COVID in Virginia As Omicron Cases Surge in Kids” here: https://share.smartnews.com/jddKu

COVID – 19 After two years

Broken in the USA, Health Care

COVID – 19 After two years later

Unfortunately, the latest news is not good. Deaths have not receded as we had hoped with the increases in those that are fully vaccinated. One issue is that the vaccination rate has stagnated at 68.2% for almost a month. Yes, there are people receiving vaccinations but almost all of these are booster shots. Almost 32%  of the population is at high risk of getting and spreading the virus. Further facilitating the issue is the large and essentially unprotected masses at sporting events and family gatherings.

To further exacerbate our situation Obese persons are at a much higher risk of COVID-related mortality. 40% of the adult population in the USA are obese. Recently I have noticed that most people shopping are not wearing masks and have little concern for social distancing.

Over 1,200 people are dying every day and it seems that very few people are paying attention.

Daily Trends in COVID-19 Cases in the United States Reported to CDC

7-Day moving average

Our ability to effectively manage this crisis has not been good, even though we were among the first countries to have unlimited access to the vaccine. The following shows the countries that have done the worst and the best. The key statistic is the Deaths/1M pop.

20 WorstDeathRatesEst. 675,000 died from the Spanish flu in 1918
#Country,TotalTotalTot Cases/Deaths/MortalityPopulation
OtherCasesDeaths1M pop1M popRate
1Peru2,263,739202,154 6,0098.9%33,642,68
2Bulgaria724,33730,047105,4054,3724.1%6,871,948
3Bosnia and Herzegovina284,27213,12187,4424,0364.6%3,250,975
4Hungary1,218,29537,530126,5833,8993.1%9,624,483
5North Macedonia221,0957,801106,1303,7453.5%2,083,249
6Georgia909,16013,071228,5493,2861.4%3,977,971
7Czechia2,403,24835,223223,8073,2801.5%10,738,025
8Romania1,797,70658,14394,3683,0523.2%19,050,013
9Croatia675,36311,981166,0082,9451.8%4,068,244
10Slovakia806,11516,014147,5452,9312.0%5,463,508
11Brazil22,212,343617,784103,4252,8772.8%214,767,569
12Lithuania502,3457,119188,3752,6701.4%2,666,728
13Armenia343,6367,899115,6502,6582.3%2,971,340
14Slovenia448,5615,496215,7212,6431.2%2,079,356
15Argentina5,386,453116,899       117,6042,5522.2%45,801,766
16Colombia5,105,285129,399         98,7962,5042.5%51,675,252
17USA51,696,205827,206       154,8532,4781.6%333,839,503
18Poland3,958,84091,485       104,7702,4212.3%37,786,004
19Latvia267,1394,444       143,9562,3951.7%1,855,697
20Belgium1,999,76427,895       171,4572,3921.4%11,663,349
        
Countriesthat were best
#Country,TotalTotalTot Cases/Deaths/MortalityPopulation
OtherCasesDeaths1M pop1M popRate
1China100,2844,6367034.6%1,439,323,776
2Burundi21,422381,72730.2%12,407,144
3New Zealand13,425492,684100.4%5,002,100
4Niger7,199272282113.8%25,483,389
5Chad5,701181333113.2%17,113,185
6DRC64,4481,126689121.7%93,531,207
7Tanzania26,483734426122.8%62,215,364
8South Sudan13,3091331,169121.0%11,385,443
9Benin24,9071611,979130.6%12,586,372
10Tajikistan17,0951241,735130.7%9,850,244
11Nigeria223,4832,9841,046141.3%213,593,168
A few others
40Taiwan16,8056704360.04%23,879,794
57Australia250,6163,8199,664831.5%25,932,108
59S. Korea565,0986,23411,008921.1%51,333,692
72Japan1,729,77719513,7381460.01%125,910,309

What is a life Worth?

Broken in the USA, Health Care

What is a life Worth?

I have no idea, but I do know that we have spent millions (and in some cases tens of millions) to save the life of a person that has gone missing. Unfortunately, in most cases these attempts may have located the missing person, but did not save their life. I realize that it may not be popular to view the recent pandemic in economic terms, but here goes. We have spent over $6 trillion over 15 months with the idea that it would assist aid the economy while we were saving lives. Where we failed was with our ineffective approach to containing the virus. The facts we that we spent more money per capita than countries like New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. At the same time all of these countries experienced less impact on their per capita GDP and higher levels of employment than the USA.

What is depressing is that, on average, these countries experienced COVID related per capita mortality rates that were about 1/20th that of our country. We spent more to save fewer lives. What would have been worth to save over a half million lives. Assuming an arbitrary value of a million dollars per life it would be worth $500 billion. We spent a lot more than that and failed, in my opinion.