Category: coronavirus deaths

June 7, 2022

State Audit Reveals Florida Undercounted COVID Deaths by Thousands

An audit released by the state of Florida on Monday suggests that information that the state released to the public during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic was inaccurate and incomplete.

The report, conducted over the past year by the Florida Auditor General, examined the state’s COVID-19 response from March to October 2020.

The audit reviewed a sample of tests from three separate state-run facilities in its investigation — and ultimately came to the conclusion that data on case and death counts frequently went unreported, and that the state often failed to adhere to protocols regarding the virus.

State-contracted labs, for example, failed to return results for around 60 percent of the tests that were administered during that eight-month period. Of the results that were returned, many didn’t include critical demographic information, failing to record a person’s ethnicity 60 percent of the time and failing to account for their race more than half of the time.

Auditors also found that the state didn’t conduct contract tracing for 23 percent of the positive cases it identified — put another way, close to one in four Floridians who tested positive for coronavirus during the early months of the pandemic were never told they had the virus in their systems, the audit concluded. Even when people were notified of their positive results, many weren’t alerted until well after they got tested — in some cases, more than a week later.

The audit also found that Florida officials had undercounted deaths in the state. More than 3,000 additional COVID-19-related deaths were reported by physicians than were on the state’s official list of total deaths during the first eight months of the pandemic.

The Florida Auditor General also said in the report that the state failed to conduct routine checks on data collection to ensure accuracy in their numbers. When discrepancies were found, there was no follow-up, the report said.

The conclusions in the report confirm what many Floridians were warning about early on in the pandemic, when Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and other right-wing lawmakers were claiming that businesses and other entities were safe enough to reopen despite instituting few statewide precautionary measures to address the continued presence of coronavirus.

In the first year of the pandemic, for example, the state restricted local medical examiners from publishing their own numbers on COVID-19 deaths after their numbers conflicted with the state’s official reports. A state employee named Rebekah Jones, who was in charge of updating infection numbers across the state, was fired after she alleged that the numbers were being manipulated.

DeSantis frequently downplayed the dangers of the virus, and even made campaign materials that were critical of national health officials who implored people to take the pandemic more seriously.

Florida is currently seeing an increase in case numbers, reporting nearly 10,000 new cases of COVID-19 per day over the past two weeks. More than 74,700 Floridians have died due to coronavirus since the pandemic began more than two years ago — a figure that’s equivalent to the entire population of Daytona Beach.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
May 5, 2022

US Surpasses 1 Million COVID Deaths Since Pandemic’s Start

The United States has reached a grim milestone: More than 1 million Americans have now perished due to coronavirus since the pandemic began two years ago.

According to numbers compiled by NBC News, the one-millionth death from COVID-19 in the U.S. occurred Wednesday.

Other measures vary on where the U.S. officially stands on COVID-19 deaths — The New York Times, for example, places total deaths due to coronavirus as of this week at 995,000, while worldometers.com says 1.02 million people in the country have died so far from the virus.

Experts warn that these are conservative estimates and that the true death toll is probably much higher. Indeed, other figures have been revised this week, including the WHO’s estimate of global deaths due to COVID-19, which is now believed to be around 15 million,, a tripling of the organization’s previous figure.

NBC News’s figures indicate that the daily rate at which Americans are dying from the virus has slowed compared to what it’s been in recent weeks, but it still remains in the hundreds. As of right now, around 360 Americans die daily due to COVID-19.

The U.S. is also ahead of every other country in the world, in terms of the raw number of deaths it has seen since the pandemic began. Brazil, the country with the second-highest number of COVID-related deaths, has seen just over 660,000 deaths recorded, NBC News reported.

Study after study has concluded that many of the coronavirus deaths in the U.S. could have been avoided through public health measures.

The virus itself was politicized, in many ways, by far right figures and former President Donald Trump, who continuously downplayed the significance of the virus as his administration disseminated conflicting accounts over the pandemic. Trump, who sought reelection in 2020, saw the practice of mask-wearing to limit the spread of the virus as an affront to his presidency, and peddled fraudulent COVID-19 treatments that many of his supporters continue to promote.

Trump’s actions bred public distrust over the efficacy of vaccines. According to a recent Economist/YouGov poll, the total number of Americans receiving at least three shots of a vaccine so far — indicating they’ve received a booster shot since completing their original vaccine series — is 55 percent. Among self-identified liberals in the poll, that number is much higher, at 68 percent; among conservatives, however, it’s lower, at 50 percent.

But skepticism among conservatives isn’t the only reason why the coronavirus pandemic has been especially bad in the U.S., compared to other countries. The for-profit health care system in the country, too, has been credited with being largely responsible for many avoidable deaths in the U.S., as a more equitable system of health care (such as a single-payer model) could have helped more people survive the pandemic.

According to a report from The Lancet last year, nearly 40 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. could have been avoided, had a better health care system been in place before the pandemic started and disinformation about the virus from the former president and others been limited.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
February 20, 2022

3 Incarcerated Women Die of COVID After Requesting Compassionate Release

Rory Adams did not know that Christmas in a small rural hospital in West Virginia would be the last time he saw his wife alive. She’d entered prison in early January 2021 to serve a 42-month sentence for failure to collect payroll taxes. She was supposed to return to North Carolina, their two adult children, and their quilting business this summer.

But when he saw her, she was heavily sedated. A ventilator was helping her breathe as she struggled with COVID-19. Rebecca “Maria” Adams, 59, died 18 days after Christmas in the same hospital bed.

The pandemic has proved especially deadly behind bars. Inmates are more than twice as likely to die of COVID as the general population. And the deaths continue to pile up.

Adams was the second of three women incarcerated at Alderson Federal Prison Camp to die of COVID in less than a week in January. The prison that holds fewer than 700 inmates had 50 cases as of Feb. 8. When U.S. case numbers surged in December because of the omicron variant, an understaffed and still underprepared federal prison system was once again swamped by COVID cases.

The deaths of these three women imprisoned in West Virginia reflect a federal prison system plagued by chronic problems exacerbated by the pandemic, including understaffing, inadequate medical care, and few compassionate releases. The most recent statistics from the Federal Bureau of Prisons report 284 inmates and seven staff members have died nationwide because of COVID since March 28, 2020. Medical and legal experts say those numbers are likely an undercount, but the federal prison system lacks independent oversight.

Alderson, where Adams was incarcerated, was one of the first federal prisons to have a COVID outbreak in December in this latest national surge. But as of the first week of February, 16 federal facilities had over 100 cases. More than 5,500 federal inmates and over 2,000 BOP staffers had tested positive for COVID, according to BOP data. At one prison in Yazoo City, Mississippi, over 500 inmates — almost half the prison — tested positive in late January. Including the three women from Alderson, 12 federal inmates died while sick with COVID in January.

The Bureau of Prisons has come under fire in the past few months after investigations by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project alleged widespread corruption and called the agency a “hotbed of abuse.” In January, before all three Alderson inmates died, the head of the BOP, Michael Carvajal, announced his resignation, although he remains in charge until a successor takes the helm.

The criticism of the agency continued in congressional testimony in January after the deaths at Alderson. Legal and medical experts specializing in the federal system, as well as members of Congress, accused the BOP of hiding COVID deaths and cases, repeatedly failing to provide adequate health care, and failing to properly implement the compassionate release program meant to move at-risk inmates to home confinement. Five recently released inmates, two incarcerated inmates, and six family members of women incarcerated at Alderson, confirmed these allegations to KHN.

The Alderson inmates and their families reported denial of medical care, a lack of COVID testing, retaliation for speaking out about conditions, understaffing, and a prison overrun by COVID. Absences by prison staff members sickened by the virus led to cold meals, dirty clothes, and a denial of items like sanitary napkins and clean water from the commissary.

In an email, BOP spokesperson Benjamin O’Cone said the agency does not comment on what he called “anecdotal allegations.” He said the BOP follows COVID guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

O’Cone pointed to the BOP’s online dashboard about COVID statistics when asked how many inmates have died since Dec. 1 and how many had tested positive for COVID before death. A day after KHN emailed the BOP about the deaths of the three inmates from Alderson, two appeared on the dashboard and news releases were published. The women had been dead for almost a week.

All three women — Adams, Juanita Haynes, and Bree Eberbaugh — had sought compassionate releases because of preexisting medical conditions that made them more susceptible to dying from COVID, including Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure, obesity, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Nationwide, over 23,000 people were released from the federal system from March 2020 to October 2021, but more than 157,000 people are still imprisoned. After early pandemic releases, the prison population in the U.S. is climbing back to pre-pandemic levels. Some of the early drop was due to inmate deaths, which rose 46% from 2019 to 2020, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

For people like Adams, compassionate release never came. The BOP reports that only two women have been granted compassionate release from Alderson since the outbreak began in December. One was Haynes, who was granted release while intubated. She died four days later, in the hospital.

“They will literally be released so they don’t die in chains,” Alison Guernsey, clinical associate professor of law at the University of Iowa, said in congressional testimony in January. She called BOP facilities “death traps,” referring to the BOP’s “inability or reticence to control the spread of COVID-19 behind bars by engaging in aggressive evidence-based public-health measures.”

Guernsey testified that the BOP death data is “suspect” because of delayed reporting, the exclusion of deaths in prisons run by private contractors, and those released just in time to “die free.” Haynes’ death, for example, is not counted in BOP data even though she got sick with COVID while incarcerated because she was freed through compassionate release right before she died in January, months after her first applications were denied.

Guernsey questions the BOP’s COVID infection numbers because the agency does not report the number of tests administered, just the number of positive tests. “The BOP can hide whether low infection rate is due to low COVID cases or inadequate testing,” she said. All these factors mean the numbers of deaths and cases are likely “substantially” greater than reported, Guernsey said.

The impact of incorrect data trickles down to the denial of compassionate release requests. One factor that judges consider is the level of COVID cases and risk within that prison. Eberbaugh, the third inmate from Alderson to die in January, applied in March 2020 for compassionate release from her 54-month sentence, citing preexisting medical conditions.

In August 2020, a court denied Eberbaugh’s motion, in part citing the lack of COVID cases in the prison. A few days later, she responded in a handwritten letter, appealing for legal counsel from the public defender’s office. “Your honor, it is only a matter of time before it reaches here and I am in fear of my life,” she wrote.

The court denied that appeal in April 2021. Within nine months, she had died of COVID.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
November 21, 2021

As COVID Cases Surge in Europe, US Death Toll Now Surpasses 2020 Fatalities

Europe is in the grip of a potentially devastating fourth coronavirus wave and the United States has now recorded more Covid-19 deaths in 2021 than it did in 2020, heightening alarm among public health experts who fear another brutal winter surge.

Dr. Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe, warned Saturday that the coronavirus could kill 500,000 more people in Europe by March if political leaders don’t take immediate action to forestall the current spread and increase vaccine uptake, which has been lagging in parts of the continent due, in some cases, to anti-vaccine sentiment.

“Covid-19 has become once again the number one cause of mortality in our region,” Kluge told the BBC.

In an effort to quell a major spike in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, the Austrian government announced Friday that it would institute a nationwide lockdown and soon mandate coronavirus vaccinations for its entire adult population. Thus far, around 65% of Austria’s population has been fully vaccinated — one of the lowest rates in Western Europe.

“The virus is back with new rigor in Europe again and new catastrophic waves are imminent in Africa and Asia,” said Shailly Gupta, communications adviser with Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign, pointing to regions that have been denied adequate supplies of vaccines and therapeutics. “Wealthy nations need to understand that unless everyone everywhere is vaccinated, the situation is not going to change.”

“Countries need to stop hoarding tests, drugs, and vaccines and big pharmaceutical companies need to stop hoarding technology if they really want to control this pandemic,” she added.

Austria’s mandate, set to take effect in February, prompted immediate backlash. On Saturday, tens of thousands of people — including many aligned with the country’s far-right Freedom Party — took to the streets of Vienna to denounce the public health measure, which Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said is necessary to break the nation’s vaccination plateau and prevent further deaths.

“We have too many political forces in this country who vehemently and massively fight against this,” he said in a speech Friday. “This is irresponsible. It is an attack on our health system. Goaded by these anti-vaxxers and from fake news, too many people among us have not been vaccinated. The consequence is overfilled intensive care stations and enormous human suffering. No one can want that.”

The Associated Press reported that “demonstrations against virus restrictions also took place in Switzerland, Croatia, Italy, Northern Ireland, and the Netherlands on Saturday, a day after Dutch police opened fire on protesters and seven people were injured in rioting that erupted in Rotterdam.”

“Protesters rallied against coronavirus restrictions and mandatory Covid-19 passes needed in many European countries to enter restaurants, Christmas markets, or sports events, as well as mandatory vaccinations,” AP noted. “The Austrian lockdown will start Monday and comes as average daily deaths have tripled in recent weeks and hospitals in heavily hit states have warned that intensive care units are reaching capacity.”

As The Week’s Ryan Cooper noted in a recent column, “There is a clear inverse relationship between shots and spread” in Europe.

“The countries suffering truly galloping outbreaks — mostly places to the south and east like Greece, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Slovakia — are typically below 70% full vaccination, often quite far below. By contrast, there appears to be a rough breakpoint near 75-80% vaccination where the rate of case growth is much slower. It’s surely not a coincidence Portugal and Spain are the most-vaccinated countries on the continent, and both have thus far mostly avoided a big resurgence.”

A year and a half after the coronavirus swept through Europe with devastating effect, the continent is once again the epicenter of the pandemic. Rioters set fires on the streets of Rotterdam on Friday and attacked police at a rally against Covid measures. https://t.co/9LmdcL5dhn pic.twitter.com/spzlXUjfow

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 20, 2021

In the U.S., meanwhile, data from the federal government and Johns Hopkins University show that the official Covid-19 death toll in 2021 surpassed 385,457 on Saturday, topping 2020 fatalities. The nation’s total death count currently stands at 770,800 — the highest in the world.

“The spread of the highly contagious Delta variant and low vaccination rates in some communities were important factors [this year],” the Wall Street Journal reported. “The milestone comes as Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations move higher again in places such as New England and the upper Midwest, with the seven-day average for new cases recently closer to 90,000 a day after it neared 70,000 last month.”

The surge comes as few public health restrictions remain in place across the U.S. Last week, the Biden administration suspended enforcement activities related to its vaccination and testing mandates for private businesses after a federal appeals court temporarily halted the requirements.

All U.S. adults are now eligible for booster shots, but public health experts have cautioned that the broad availability of third doses may not do much to stem the current spike in cases given that it’s largely being fueled by the unvaccinated. Less than 60% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the latest figures from Our World in Data.

A recent analysis by the Financial Times found that more booster shots have been administered in rich countries over a three-month period than total doses have been given in poor countries in all of 2021. The head of the WHO called for a moratorium on booster shots in August in an effort to bolster vaccination drives in poor countries, but the U.S. and other rich countries dismissed his demand.

Just 5% of people in low-income countries have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose.

“The evidence isn’t there that a large rollout of boosters is really going to have that much impact on the epidemic,” argued Ira Longini Jr., a vaccine expert and professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida.

Tom Philpott of Mother Jones wrote Saturday that “in the popular imagination, 2020 gets all the bad press, but this year has been no sunny day at the beach, either.”

“Sure, several effective Covid-19 vaccines emerged, but so did the highly contagious Delta variant, as well as new, more virulent strains of anti-vax sentiment, tightly yoked to conservative political ideology,” Philpott noted. “Worst of all, intellectual property hoarding has meant that the vaccines have so far largely bypassed low-income nations of the Global South, wreaking untold human misery and giving the virus ample opportunity to generate more contagious and/or more virulent strains.”

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
September 21, 2021

COVID Has Now Claimed More Lives Than the 1918 Flu Pandemic in the US

The United States passed a grim milestone this week, as the total number of deaths related to coronavirus surpassed the number who died in the country in the 1918 flu pandemic.

More than 675,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 since March 2020, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That number represents the estimated death count in the U.S. during the global flu pandemic that took place a little more than a century ago.

Some may argue that the figures are an apples-to-oranges comparison, given that the proportion of the population that died during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic was greater then than it is now. Around that time, there were roughly 103 million people living in the country, compared to today’s 330 million.

But there are other factors to consider, including advances in medical technology and practice over the past 10 decades. Stubborn refusals to wear masks and get vaccinated to mitigate the spread of coronavirus likely made the crisis many times worse than it had to be. By one study’s estimates from roughly a year ago, regular mask-wearing could have prevented up to 130,000 deaths from COVID-19 within the first six months of the pandemic alone

Another point to consider when making comparisons between the two pandemics is the fact that the current one hasn’t ended yet.

“The U.S. isn’t done accruing Covid deaths, sadly,” noted senior infectious diseases writer for Stat News Helen Branswell.

Speaking to CNN about Covid-19’s death toll in the U.S., Harvard School of Public Health professor and epidemiologist Stephen Kissler said that in the early days of the pandemic he would have been surprised by these numbers.

“But if you talked to me in probably April or May 2020, I would say I would not be surprised we’d hit this point,” Kissler added.

That was around the time former President Donald Trump began demanding that states’ economies “reopen,” in spite of the continued danger that the virus posed. Such a push had less to do with believing the U.S. was ready to do so and was more related to Trump believing his reelection hinged on the country returning to normalcy, observers noted at the time.

Trump’s insistence on “reopening” and his turning mask wearing into a political hot button issue made the pandemic even worse. Indeed, had Trump acted more responsibly regarding the coronavirus pandemic (and had health care in the United States been different from the largely privatized and for-profit system from the outset of the crisis), 40 percent of COVID-related deaths in the country could have been prevented, one study found.

Even as the country surpassed the 1918 flu pandemic death figures this week, most in the U.S. remain pessimistic over what the future holds. According to an Economist/YouGov poll conducted from September 12-14, just 27 percent of the U.S. population believes we’ve passed the worst part of the pandemic. Eighteen percent believe we’re currently experiencing the worst part, while a full third of Americans (33 percent) say the worst part is yet to come.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
September 8, 2021

13 Staff at a Florida School District Have Died of COVID in Just 3 Weeks

At least 13 staff members within the Miami-Dade County public school district have died due to coronavirus since the middle of last month, a union leader said.

The figure represents an anecdotal tally of the number of COVID-related deaths, United Teachers of Dade President Karla Hernandez-Mats told CNN, as the district, the fourth-largest in the country, follows virus case totals but doesn’t keep track of staff casualties caused by the virus. That information was provided by families of the deceased.

“These were extraordinary educators and people, and their loss is being felt throughout the community,” Hernandez-Mats said.

The known deaths included four teachers, seven school bus drivers, a security monitor and a cafeteria worker. None of those individuals had been vaccinated.

Noting that misinformation has created a lot of fear in the community, particularly among marginalized or underserved groups of people, Hernandez-Mats also said that all 13 of those who had died were Black. Vaccine rates in Black and Brown communities are notably lower throughout the U.S., due partially to hesitancy about the vaccine related to historical medical atrocities and the distrust that remains because of them, but also largely because of issues related to accessibility to the vaccines themselves within nonwhite communities.

In response to the distressing news, Hernandez-Mats and other leaders in the community coordinated a pop-up vaccination site on Tuesday, in part to honor those school staff members who had died. Around 40 individuals showed up to receive their first vaccination shots within the first few hours of the event’s opening, the county union president said.

Florida has been struggling with coronavirus for the past several weeks. Its daily average of new cases being identified is 65 percent higher than the U.S. average, and the number of people dying each day because of the virus is more than 3.5 times higher than the national rate as well.

In spite of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) reluctance to push for vaccinations among his state’s residents, a number of studies have shown that obtaining a vaccine for COVID-19 remains the best way to prevent contracting the virus as well as avoiding the need for hospitalization.

New research based on data from three separate locations in the U.S., for example, demonstrates that vaccinated people are far less likely to get infected than was previously assumed about breakthrough cases. New research shows that only around one in every 5,000 vaccinated individuals tests positive for a “breakthrough” case of coronavirus per day. In Seattle, one of the areas examined by the study, an unvaccinated person was around 10 times more likely to test positive for coronavirus than a vaccinated individual.

Other studies have shown that vaccines, beyond reducing the chances of getting the virus, also drastically reduce the possibility of needing hospitalization. Unvaccinated individuals are 29 times more likely to require a trip to the hospital to get treated for coronavirus, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found. Additionally, those who are vaccinated but still get infected with COVID are less likely to spread it unlike those who are unvaccinated and contract the virus, another study found.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
August 31, 2021

FL Altered How It Measured COVID Deaths, Making It Look Like They Were Declining

The Florida Department of Health (DOH) has changed the way it reports deaths from coronavirus in the state to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a move that some have said gives the false appearance of a decline in pandemic-related deaths.

The Miami Herald reports that Florida changed its methodology in its reports of COVID-related deaths earlier this month. Rather than providing data on deaths after their causes have been determined, the state is now reporting deaths on the date that they occurred.

The seemingly insignificant change has drastic repercussions. If Florida had continued using the old method of reporting deaths, it’s tally on Monday would have shown an average of 262 daily deaths in the state for the previous seven days. Instead, it only reported 46 “new deaths” per day for the previous seven days, a measure that is about 82 percent lower than what it ought to be.

SPECIAL REORT: As cases ballooned in August, the Florida Department of Health changed the way it reported death data to the CDC, giving the appearance of a pandemic in decline, an analysis of Florida data by the @MiamiHerald and @elnuevoherald found. https://t.co/wbwSF5cbO3

— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) August 31, 2021

The discrepancy comes from reporting deaths on the day they occur before the cause of death — such as COVID-19 — is definitively recorded. Death certificates typically take days, sometimes weeks, to complete, and the numbers that get reported “day-of” only reflect cases that are fully known to have been COVID-related.

Christina Pushaw, the press secretary for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida), defended the change, calling The Herald’s reporting “disinformation.”

“Florida didn’t change its COVID-19 data. [DOH] now reports deaths by actual date of death because it’s the most precise and accurate way to report deaths,” she claimed in a tweet.

But Shivani Patel, a social epidemiologist and a professor at Emory University, told The Herald that the change was “extremely problematic,” adding that it makes the state “look like we are doing better than we are.”

Changing to the new way of reporting coronavirus deaths leaves too many things up to people’s imaginations, including whether things are improving or not, Patel explained.

“It shouldn’t be left to the public, to scientists, national policy makers or the media to guess as to what these numbers are,” Patel said.

Nikki Fried, the state’s Agriculture Commissioner and Democratic candidate hoping to run against DeSantis next year, also voiced dissatisfaction with the change, calling it “deeply troubling.”

Florida, under DeSantis’s watch, has taken a number of liberties with how it reports its COVID data. While it reports its numbers to the CDC daily, its reports to the public on total cases, hospitalizations and deaths are only made on a weekly basis. The state also stopped sharing data on county-level case and death numbers in June.

DeSantis has been scrutinized for downplaying vaccines and masks as effective ways to quell the spread of coronavirus. His failure to lead on the issue, including the noticeable increases in hospitalizations and deaths in the state, has resulted in diminished polling numbers over his handling of the pandemic in Florida. With this new change in the state’s methodology for reporting coronavirus deaths DeSantis will likely face fresh criticisms.

Since DeSantis declared “victory” against coronavirus in May, Florida has seen 8,410 deaths related to the virus — or over 38 deaths per 100,000 residents, based on the state’s population — in the past four months alone. In the past two weeks, the state has seen 262 deaths per day, on average, making it the third worst in the nation on that measure on a per capita basis.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
August 5, 2021

MO Coroner Says He Alters Death Certificates If Families Dislike COVID Inclusion

A county coroner in the state of Missouri is honoring requests from family members to alter the cause of death on the death certificates of their loved ones who have died from COVID — an action that, if replicated in other areas, could be disastrous results for purposes of tracking the true toll of the pandemic in the United States.

The 11 COVID deaths out of a total of 30 in Macon County, Missouri — which has a population of about 15,000 — that have been wrongly categorized are a small enough number to be statistically insignificant. However, some have rightly argued that actions like these are probably responsible for the current total number of COVID deaths in the U.S. being undercounted.

Speaking to The Kansas City Star on the matter, Macon County Coroner Brian Hayes said he altered the cause of death on at least six certificates at the request of family members. Instead of COVID, he listed a different condition such as pneumonia as the cause of death. Or, as he put it, in some cases saying that a death occured because “grandma had one lung and smoked all her life.”

The reasons for these requests appear to be politically motivated, as these Macon County residents don’t want to admit that their loved ones died of a virus that many in the country have tried to downplay, explained Hayes, who is a Republican.

“A lot of families were upset. They didn’t want COVID on the death certificates,” Hayes told the newspaper. “I won’t lie for them, it’s gotta be true, but I do what pleases the family.”

The admission by Hayes that he changes coroner reports at the request of families suggests that coroners in other Republican-dominated parts of the country may also not be recording COVID deaths as they should be. Reporting on Hayes’s actions, journalist Andrew Jeong from The Washington Post wrote that his undercount “comes amid broader recognition that the number of covid fatalities in the United States is probably higher than the official tally of 614,000.”

Indeed, researchers at the University of Washington estimated in July that the number of cases of coronavirus alone in the U.S. is likely undercounted by as much as 60 percent. The true tally of deaths in the country could be as high as 900,000.

Missouri, like much of the nation, is experiencing troubling increases in its coronavirus infection and hospitalization rates. The state is currently sixth in the nation in terms of how many residents have COVID-19 on a per capita basis, with 46 out of every 100,000 individuals in the state currently testing positive for it. It’s also fifth in hospitalization rates compared to the rest of the country, with its daily hospitalization number reaching 2,053 residents, on average, as of this week — an increase of 34 percent from where that rate was just two weeks ago.

Residents aren’t doing as much as they can to protect themselves from the virus, with only 42 percent of the state being vaccinated at this time, a rate that makes it the 13th worst state in the nation on that metric. Additionally, less than half of the state (49 percent) has received at least one dose of any of the vaccines that are available for protection against coronavirus.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
July 29, 2021

FL Counties Impose Mask Mandates Despite Threat From DeSantis to Invalidate Them

Local government officials in Florida are issuing new rules in their areas that will require some residents to mask up in certain indoor locations and county workers to get vaccinated, a move that could challenge a law signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this year.

At least two mayors in Florida counties have issued new mandates in response to the growing threat of coronavirus in their jurisdictions as a result of the growing dominance of the Delta variant, which is more transmissible than other strains.

Masks or facial coverings are now required in all indoor buildings and facilities managed by Miami-Dade County. Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the decision was based on a recent surge of new cases and hospitalizations in the county.

“We have all come too far. We have all sacrificed too much in this past almost year and a half. We cannot turn back now,” Levine Cava said.

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings also announced that nonunion county employees would be required to get their first COVID-19 vaccine shots by the end of August, and second shots would be required by the end of September. Similar rules were being negotiated for unionized workers in the county.

Orange County is home to Disney World, which also announced masks would be required for patrons in the indoor parts of its parks, including inside buses, the monorail and other modes of transport, no matter what a person’s vaccine status is.

In Broward County, the school board announced it would also impose mask requirements inside all of the schools for pupils, teachers, staff, and visitors who step inside those buildings for the coming academic year.

“I really wanted to start this school year as normal as possible. And a few weeks ago, I thought that we were in a position to go back to school without wearing masks and giving parents a choice,” said school board member Lori Alhadeff. “But now with COVID soaring, and the Delta variant, a lot has changed.”

The decisions by these county leaders to impose new requirements come as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made new recommendations for people in some of the nation’s hotspots. Regardless of whether a person is vaccinated or not, the CDC said, people should wear masks indoors if they’re residing in one of these hotspots.

The rules in Florida, however, may be challenged by DeSantis, who has expressed an anti-scientific viewpoint when it comes to the management of COVID-19 in his state. Florida Republican lawmakers passed a bill, which DeSantis signed in May, granting the governor the ability to cancel any local orders related to the pandemic.

DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw said that at least one of the new mandates would “be addressed” by the governor soon. DeSantis himself was not in the state on Wednesday, instead appearing at a conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) conference in Utah, where he joked about the new CDC guidelines to a mostly maskless audience.

“Did you not get the CDC’s memo?” the Florida governor said at the conference, referring to the new recommendations released this week. “I don’t see you guys complying.”

DeSantis’s humor will likely be viewed as being in bad taste by many, given how things are worsening in his home state more than 1,800 miles away. More than 38,000 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in Florida on Tuesday alone, the day before he spoke at the ALEC conference, clocking in at the highest single-day count since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. In the past week, more than 350 Floridians died as a result of contracting coronavirus.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
July 9, 2021

Biden “Dealt a Better Hand” Than Any President Ever, Stephen Miller Claims

Stephen Miller, the noted xenophobic former adviser to former President Donald Trump, appeared on Fox News Thursday evening, where he attempted to argue that current President Joe Biden had a good “hand” dealt to him before assuming office — a claim that ignores the fact that hundreds of thousands of Americans likely unnecessarily died under Trump’s watch during the coronavirus pandemic.

“No president in history has been dealt a better hand on day one than President Biden,” Miller said on Fox News’ “Hannity” program.

Miller went on to tout what he considered Trump’s major accomplishments, suggesting that they have helped Biden since he took office earlier this year.

“Think about what President Trump left him and what it’s become,” Miller said. “He left him a Middle East that was at the dawn of a new peace, the most secure border in American history, energy abundance — and we had more energy than we knew what to do with.”

Stephen Miller: No President in history has been dealt a better hand on day one than President Biden. pic.twitter.com/0gcSY26oZ8

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 9, 2021

“We had an economy that was primed to roar,” the former Trump adviser added. “We had a viable path towards peace in Afghanistan. All of this and more was left at the doorstep for Joe Biden.”

Of course, much of what Miller said in the segment was either exaggerated or just plain false.

In regards to the Middle East, the agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel was simply a mere formality of relations between the two countries that had already existed for several years.

The Trump administration also backed Israel’s ongoing campaign of dispossession in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank — which undoubtedly set the stage for the brutal crackdown on Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and the devastating war on Gaza.

A study by Brown University found that civilian deaths in Afghanistan were highest during several years of the Trump presidency. “From 2017 through 2019, civilian deaths due to U.S. and allied forces’ airstrikes in Afghanistan dramatically increased,” according to the research. “In 2019 airstrikes killed 700 civilians — more civilians than in any other year since the beginning of the war in 2001 and 2002.”

The peace deal signed with the Taliban during the Trump presidency also failed to bring an end to violence by the U.S., Afghan government or the Taliban.

In regards to the economy, Trump was “the first president to leave office with a loss of jobs since Herbert Hoover,” according to economist Dean Baker.

However, the most obvious omission by Miller was the coronavirus pandemic, with the daily death rate in the U.S. at its highest during the weeks as Trump left office and Biden assumed the presidency.

By January 20, 2021, 24.5 million Americans had tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 413,000 Americans had died because of the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University. There were reportedly more than 3,050 new coronavirus deaths per day, on average, by the time Biden was inaugurated, a number that has since dropped to 194 deaths per day.

Many experts have noted that, along with the disastrous U.S. public health care system, the former president bears much of the blame for the virus’s devastation over the past year, as he continuously lied to the public during the crisis, discouraged mask usage and social distancing, and wrongly told Americans they had nothing to worry about, comparing COVID-19 to the flu (in spite of knowing otherwise).

“It’s important to note that Stephen Miller sometimes forgets that most humans view death, disease and despair as bad things,” said Robert Maguire, research director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“Biden was literally handed a country suffering from a deadly pandemic and a struggling economy that had just endured an outright insurrection,” added Rantt Media co-founder Ahmed Baba, “but go off Stephen.”

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
March 12, 2021

GOP-Run States Saw Higher COVID Death Rates, Study Shows

A new study, which examines the outcomes of different states’ approaches to the coronavirus pandemic based on what party their governors belonged to, shows that, for most of 2020, states with Republican governors were more likely to see higher incidence rates and death tolls versus states with Democratic governors.

Published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Preventive Medicine this month, the study, conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina, took a look at different parts of the pandemic and saw a noticeable shift happening at the start of summer last year.

At the onset of the pandemic, from March until early June, there were higher per capita incidence rates as well as deaths from the virus within Democratic states. But from July through the remainder of the year, states with Republican governors had worse outcomes.

“From March to early June, Republican-led states had lower Covid-19 incidence rates compared with Democratic-led states. On June 3, the association reversed, and Republican-led states had higher incidence,” the study said.

“For death rates, Republican-led states had lower rates early in the pandemic, but higher rates from July 4 through mid-December,” the study added.

“Governors’ party affiliation may have contributed to a range of policy decisions that, together, influenced the spread of the virus,” said the study’s senior author Sara Benjamin-Neelon, a professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health, Behavior and Society. “These findings underscore the need for state policy actions that are guided by public health considerations rather than by partisan politics.”

Why did “blue” states fare worse at the start of the pandemic than “red” ones? The researchers theorize it had less to do with policies implemented by Democratic governors, and more because those areas were “home to initial ports of entry for the virus in early 2020.”

Meanwhile, researchers said, “The subsequent reversal in trends, particularly with respect to testing, may reflect policy differences that could have facilitated the spread of the virus,” the study stated.

The pandemic, the authors added, “became increasingly politicized in the U.S. and political affiliation of state leaders may contribute to policies affecting the spread of the disease.”

Several Republican governors did indeed prioritize “reopening” their states’ economies, with detrimental outcomes, around the time the study said things began to shift. Former President Donald Trump himself seemed to politicize methods to stem the spread of coronavirus, stating in a Wall Street Journal interview that he thought people wore masks in order to demonstrate their disapproval of him.

Trump also tried to wrongly suggest in September that drastic rises in the number of cases and deaths due to COVID-19 were not because some states were loosening standards, but rather due to Democratic leadership.

“Blue states had tremendous death rates. If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at,” Trump had claimed. “We’re really at a very low level. But some of the states, they were blue states and blue-state-managed.”

The findings of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina study demonstrate that the former president’s assertions were way off.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
March 11, 2021

50 Days Into Office, Biden Has High Approval Rating, Polling Shows

Fifty days after being sworn into office, President Joe Biden is receiving high marks from a majority of the U.S. populace.

Polling from Pew Research Center shows that 54 percent of Americans approve of the way Biden has handled his job in the White House so far, with 42 percent disapproving.

The poll also gauged the public’s views of Biden on a number of issues, with a majority of Americans expressing confidence in his leadership on the economy (56 percent), immigration (53 percent) and foreign policy (56 percent).

Biden’s highest rating in the poll came on the issue of the coronavirus pandemic, with nearly two-thirds of the public (65 percent) approving of his related actions.

But voters are still skeptical about one key promise Biden made on the campaign trail last year: His ability to close partisan divides in the U.S. On that topic, only 48 percent of Americans said they were confident in his leadership, with a 52-percent majority saying they didn’t have confidence in his ability to follow through on it.

The polling from Pew matches other polls on Biden’s first 50 days in office. According to a recent aggregate of polls collected and analyzed by FiveThirtyEight.com, Biden is averaging a 53 percent approval among voters, with around 40 percent disapproving of his performance so far.

Biden’s approval numbers, according to FiveThirtyEight’s aggregate, have not shifted much since he took office, when he also averaged around 53 percent. The president’s disapproval numbers, however, are slightly higher from when he took office on January 20, when the aggregate of polling showed only 36 percent disapproved of him.

Biden’s first 50 days in office were capped off with his signing of a $1.9 trillion stimulus package, which is aimed at curtailing the negative economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. By signing the bill into law on Thursday, the White House said, Americans could expect to see $1,400 stimulus payments as early as this weekend.

Biden plans to give an address to the nation, his first since taking office, on Thursday evening, the one-year anniversary of the start of the pandemic. As of this week, nearly 30 million cases of COVID-19 have been identified, with more than 529,000 Americans having lost their lives to the virus so far.

The positive polling numbers that Biden is currently seeing are far higher than numbers that his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, saw within his own first 50 days in the White House, back in 2017. Polling for Trump at the start of March of that year showed 41 percent of the country approving of his work while 49 percent of Americans disapproved.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
February 22, 2021

Biden Will Hold Candle Lighting Ceremony to Mark 500,000 US Deaths From COVID

President Joe Biden will take part in a candle-lighting ceremony on Monday night, followed by a moment of silence to acknowledge the grim milestone of 500,000 deaths due to coronavirus in the United States.

Biden will be joined during the event by first lady Jill Biden, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff. Prior to the ceremony, Biden plans to deliver a statement marking the occasion, which will take place at 6:15 pm Eastern Time.

On Sunday evening, the U.S. reportedly surpassed 500,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic began, according to a tally from NBC News. Other sources show that total deaths from coronavirus was just under 500,000 at this time, but will likely surpass that number by the time Biden delivers his remarks this evening.

The number of deaths reached due to coronavirus so far is equivalent to the number of U.S. lives lost during both World War II and the Vietnam War, or roughly equal to the total population of Kansas City, Missouri.

The move to acknowledge the number lost to COVID is a stark departure from what Biden’s predecessor, former President Donald Trump, would typically engage in when it came to reminders of the impact of the virus on American lives. At the 400,000 COVID deaths mark, for example, which happened in mid-January, Trump did not even acknowledge the milestone, let alone hold a ceremony to acknowledge the solemn occasion as Biden is doing Monday night.

Indeed, on the evening prior to their inaugurations, it was Biden and Harris who held a moment of silence at the Lincoln Memorial, to acknowledge the U.S. deaths at that time.

While in office, Trump frequently tried to deflect away from statistics highlighting how many had perished due to a virus he once claimed would disappear within a matter of days. During an interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios last August, for example, Trump tried to change the metric by which we should measure the impact of COVID-19, by trying to dismiss the total number of deaths recorded at that time. When Swan persisted in questioning the former president about the U.S. death toll, Trump finally acknowledged that a significant number were dying from the virus, but doing so in a curt and seemingly indifferent way.

“They are dying, that’s true. And you have — it is what it is,” Trump said at the time.

While the grim milestone being reached on Monday is difficult for many to take, there are small signs of optimism on the horizon. The current numbers for infections are still much too high to feel untroubled over, experts warn, but in recent weeks there has been a noticeable decline in both the rate of new cases being reported as well as the number of deaths occurring across the country per day.

The seven-day average of new cases being counted, for instance, was at 195,064 cases per day on January 20, according to figures from The New York Times. As of February 21, the daily average was down to 66,393 per day.

The rate of deaths is also diminishing. The seven-day rate of new deaths being reported a month ago was 3,056 per day. While still too high in the eyes of health experts, the February 21 rate of new deaths being reported is at 1,928 per day — a welcome decrease in that metric.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.