A Liberal in Trumpistan: January 26, 2022: Sarah Palin

Monday, February 28, 2022

January 26, 2022: Sarah Palin - Plague Spreader

1/26/22: This past weekend, Sarah Palin, the adamantly unvaxxed former governor of Alaska, tested positive for COVID-19. It turns out that the night before, the Wicked Witch of Wasilla dined indoors at a fancy Manhattan restaurant – despite a local ordinance that requires diners to show proof of vaccination.

If you sat nearby or waited on her table, you just had to hope she didn’t cough in your direction.

Then you might take the virus home to your immuno-compromised wife, or your elderly grandfather.

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What are the odds?

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Palin is both too much of a dunce to get the vaccine and too selfish to stand by her decision. Don’t want the vaccination? Okay. Then eat fast food in your hotel room after going through a Wendy’s drive-thru.

In the meantime, this poor blogger has argued endlessly with conservative Facebook friends the few still left – who insist the coronavirus isn’t that bad. Masks are for sheep. The first step down a meadow path to tyranny. What next? Will Biden order us to wear earmuffs when we go outside in winter? They claim that if they do get vaccinated, they will become magnetized or die hideous deaths.

If male, their gonads will swell to the size of basketballs first.

They really believe this crap.

Twenty-one times greater odds.

I KEEP PROVIDING evidence to show that the odds are greatly in their favor, if they want to stay healthy, and help keep others safe, if they decide to get the shots. I keep checking for facts. I taught history. I love facts. The more the better. So, once again, I spent part of my day compiling evidence, starting with Ohio, where I live.

I’m fairly good with math and I’m not a science-averse dolt like the former Governor of Alaska. So I can look at that second block and see 8 into 168 goes 21 times. Put another way, an unvaccinated Ohioan, with the same health issues and the same age as me, has just under 21 times as great a chance of dying as I would if I caught COVID (in my case, again). I have to puzzle it out a moment, but without using a calculator, I see chances of getting hospitalized are about 17 times greater if you’re unvaxxed. I like facts. I decide to keep checking.

WASHINGTON STATE health officials report the same kinds of figures: 12-34-year-olds, 5 times more likely to be hospitalized if infected if not vaccinated; 35-64-year-olds, 7 times as likely; 65-years-old or above, 7 times more likely to end up in a hospital bed, and 11 times more likely to end up in the morgue.

I give Texas a shot. I know my conservative friends think if you quote CDC numbers, those numbers must be fake and bogus and rigged.

Plus they want to hang Dr. Fauci.

The Texas State Department of Health Services reported on December 24, that the unvaccinated Texan was 16 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than the smarter, not-Palin-kind of Texan, who had shots.

I try another red state. South Carolina reported on December 15 that 74% of all South Carolinians who died from COVID-19 in the previous month had been the unvaccinated style.

Red State #3: The Alabama Department of Public Health reported that 15 out of every 16 people who died in that state from coronavirus (April to mid-August) were unvaccinated.

To be exact: 94.1%.

“Patients are dying in our hospitals who really don’t need to die.”

OKAY, HOW ABOUT Oregon? My daughter and her husband work for the Oregon Health and Science University. From March thru December of last year, 693 Oregonians who had been vaccinated died from COVID-19 (see page six of the linked report). That compared with 3,413 individuals who had not had shots.

Roughly 7-to-1 odds in favor of getting what the anti-vaxxers like to refer to as the “jab,” or the “jabby-jabby.”

In Pennsylvania, recently, Gerald Maloney, chief medical officer for hospital services at Geisinger Health warned: “Every day, there are patients dying in our hospitals who really don’t need to die. But by the time they come to the hospital, it’s too late for a vaccine, and that’s the tragedy.” Across the Geisinger system, which operates nine hospitals in the state, 90% of those hospitalized are unvaccinated. Another 8% are not fully vaccinated. WellSpan hospitals put the number of unvaccinated vs. vaccinated filling their beds at 90%, and 95% of those on ventilators. At Lehigh Valley Health Network, 75% to 85% are unvaccinated, with the proportion in ICU even higher.

At Penn State Health, interim hospital medicine chief Fahad Khalid walked through the intensive care unit at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center on Thursday. Inside were 33 COVID-19 patients. All were unvaccinated.

“We continue to struggle,” Khalid said at a virtual briefing.

On January 7, almost 6,400 Pennsylvanians were hospitalized with the fast-spreading Omicron variant.

And the moral of the story?

Donald Yealy, chief medical officer at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center couldn’t have made it any simpler. “Many of those people will be seriously ill. That will disproportionately be people who have chosen not to get vaccinated,” he said. “So, again, the message: Please get vaccinated [emphasis added]”

I kept digging for facts. Last October, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services put the number of deaths in that state, among those vaccinated, at 1.3 per 100,000. That compared to 24.5 per 100,000 who refused to get the shots (or perhaps couldn’t afford them). Or: 19 to 1 odds, in your favor, if you had shots.

A few days ago, new figures were released. By now, if you’ve haven’t had the shots and the booster, your odds of being hospitalized or dying compared to those who have had both are 60 times greater.

The North Carolina Department of Health reported in December that 91% of all deaths from COVID in that state in 2021 had been unvaxxed individuals. Out of 11,066 deaths in North Carolina, only 993 had had shots.

It’s really that simple.

I DECIDED to look up other countries for variety. The pattern held. The Office of National Statistics, for Britain, points out that mortality rates, adjusted for those vaccinated vs. unvaccinated, were lower for the vaccinated by 99% in February 2021. The figure was 78% in October.

In Israel, 17% of the population – the unvaxxed portion – accounts for 65% of all serious COVID cases. Health Ministry statistics show that for every Israeli over age 60, who has died, the unvaxxed are as 15 to 1, compared to those who’ve had the shots.

Knowing that four times as many Israelis are vaccinated as are not, it would seem the chances of death for those not protected, and over age 60, are 60 times worse. So if you don’t get vaccinated – and you carry the virus home to older relatives – also unvaccinated – you put them at much greater risk.

It’s really that simple.

In Canada, since the start of the national vaccination campaign, there have been 8,903 deaths among those unvaxxed, or not completely vaxxed, vs. 1,253 persons fully vaccinated. That would be 7-to-1 odds.

I tried a few more. In Spain the unvaccinated elderly (ages 60 to 80) were 25 times more likely to die. In France, those who dodged the shots, or perhaps had medical reasons to avoid them, were 9 times as likely to be hospitalized or end up dead. In Russia, where the government is adept at covering up bad numbers, the Moscow Times reports that “excess deaths,” the number of deaths reported compared to previous years, since the pandemic began, may be as high as 900,000.

Even Vladimir Putin seemed frustrated, as the death toll climbed. “We have a reliable and efficient vaccine. The vaccine really reduces the risks of illness, grave complications and death,” he added.

(Okay. I don’t trust that scumbag.)

In Germany, health officials have warned that 90% of patients in ICU are unvaccinated. With infections, hospitalizations and deaths spiking, as the Omicron variant took hold, Markus Söder, the governor of Bavaria, warned, “We have two viruses in the country.” One was the coronavirus. The other was “this poison, which is being spread on a massive scale,” misinformation about vaccines.

The ”sick and dying are the unvaccinated.”

ANYWAY, I like facts. I went back to checking states and local statistics. The Minnesota Department of Health reported that unvaxxed individuals, age 65+ were fifteen times as likely to be hospitalized as the vaccinated. Those who had not had shots, in the 50-64 age group, were “only” 9.5 times more likely to end up in hospital beds. Death rates among the unvaxxed and infected were more than fourteen times higher, 65+, and nine times higher, 50-64.

When you look at the population hospitalized with COVID-19, “Without a doubt, it’s unvaccinated people,” said Dr. Joshua Huelster, a critical care/intensivist at Allina’s Abbott Northwestern Hospital.

The median age of Minnesotans who died unvaxxed has been 69. For those who died despite having been vaccinated, the median age was 83.

The Washoe County Health Department in Nevada reported that out of more than 1,000 COVID deaths, only 68 persons who died in that county had been fully vaccinated. Only two patients who had been vaccinated and received boosters, both women in their 90s, had died.

In September Chief Medical Officer Dr. William Hathaway of the Mission Health system in Asheville, N.C., reported that none of the 415 COVID-19 deaths reported at Mission Hospital had been vaccinated. “The patients who are in the hospital who are sick and dying are the unvaccinated, not the vaccinated,” he said. “We have not seen a vaccinated patient die.”

Hathaway later amended his statement to indicate that yes, some vaccinated persons had still died.

He said the number was: 2.

This isn’t about semantics.

STILL, ON JANUARY 10, Peter Doocy, reporting for Fox News, tried to get in a shot on President Biden, after the president said that what we were facing in this country was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

Doocy asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki how that could be true. He noted that he had had the shots, and been boosted. He caught the virus. He pointed out that Psaki had been vaccinated and boosted. She got COVID too.

She could have been rude and responded that at Fox, everyone was required to have shots – although almost all the hosts continue to make it sound like vaccinations are only for sheep and commies.

She did explain, as if to an adult-size toddler, that, yes, Peter, she had been infected. She had “minor symptoms.” She went on to add that if you were unvaccinated and got sick your chances of being hospitalized were 17 times greater, and your chances of dying were 20 times as great.

Those were the figures from the Centers for Disease Control. Pretty much what everyone else has said.

In other words, it’s long past time to quit quibbling over the phrasing President Biden uses. On the day Doocy asked about the wording, 130,000 Americans were hospitalized with some variant of the coronavirus, including 22,715 in intensive care.

And the numbers were trending up. Four days later, new infections in the U.S. peaked (we hope) at a seven-day average of almost 800,000. Two weeks later, this nation would be losing, on average, 2,166 people to the virus daily.

The isn’t about semantics.

This is about tragedy for the sick, the dying, and the bereaved families, unnecessarily left behind.