October 21, 2021: COVID-19 Deaths - Doctors vs. Scam Artists

10/21/21: If you haven’t bothered to check, the United States is still leading the world in coronavirus deaths. Cruel shouts of, “We’re #1! We’re #1!” 

India is in second place.

 

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“This is a chance to love your family – and love your neighbor.” 

Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institute of Health

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In terms of deaths per million population, Worldometers reports that the U.S. is also among the worst: 

Peru:                           5,956

Bosnia and

Herzegovina:              3,467

N. Macedonia:            3,366

Bulgaria:                     3,320

Montenegro:              3,270

Hungary:                    3,167

Gibraltar:                   2,910

Czechia:                      2,850

Brazil:                         2,819

San Marino:               2,675

Argentina:                  2,532

Colombia:                  2,461

Georgia:                     2,427

Slovakia:                     2,359

Romania:                   2,299

USA:               2,260

Slovenia:                    2,245

French Polynesia:      2,244

Paraguay:                   2,240

Belgium:                   2,217

 

For comparison, across the border to our north, the death rate is 1/3, and Germany’s death rate is 1/2 ours. I include Finland and Norway (below) for fun since both countries offer socialized medicine. 

In both South Korea and Japan people routinely mask up and leadership took the pandemic seriously from the start. Ireland and the U.S. were tied for deaths per million last summer, but we’ve long since passed the Irish by. Sweden tried for “herd immunity.” Then the Swedes realized that was a terrible mistake. They’ve got free and universal healthcare, too, by the way.

 

Sweden:                      1,469

Germany:                   1,138

Ireland:                       1,072

Canada:                         751

Finland:                         205                 

Norway:                        163

Japan:                            144

South Korea:                   53

 

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WE KNOW many members of the Trump cult are adamantly opposed to vaccinations, or wearing masks, or using Kleenex to blow their noses. This week, Dr. Francis Collins, longtime head of the National Institute of Health, explained that data showed getting vaccinated was one of the best ways to protect those who can’t get vaccinated, including children. 

“This is a chance to love your family – and love your neighbor,” Collins wrote. 

As ABC noted, 

Collins reiterated that studies have shown vaccinated individuals are significantly less likely to spread coronavirus to family members within a household. He cited a Swedish study published in JAMA Internal Medicine Journal last week that looked at 1.8 million people from more than 800,000 families “who acquired immunity from either previous COVID-19 infection or full vaccination.”

 

“The data show,” Collins wrote, “that people without any immunity against COVID-19 were at considerably lower risk of infection and hospitalization when other members of their family had immunity, either from a natural infection or vaccination.”

 

Specifically, the study found that households with one immune family member had a 45% to 61% lower risk of a COVID-19 infection, and that when a household included two immune family members the risk dropped 75% to 86%. With three or more immune family members, the risk of infection dropped almost 97%.

 

“These results show quite clearly that vaccines offer protection for individuals who lack immunity, with important implications for finally ending this pandemic,” Collins wrote.

 

Anti-vaxxers immediately claimed that Dr. Collins was lying. ABC was lying. The only person you could really trust when making decisions about medical care was Alex Jones. And they would rather get smallpox or rabies or herpes, or all three, than put vaccines into their blood. 

And pass the Ivermectin!

 

Right-wing nutjob Pastor Rick Wiles insisted that everyone at NIH hated God, and that if we got vaccines, they “put an egg that hatches into a synthetic parasite that grows inside your body.” 

“Give me leprosy, or give me death,” one QAnon believer was heard to shout. 

Okay, sorry, I made that last part up. 

Except about Wiles. 

 

FUN FACT – WITH CRAZY PERSONS: Right-wing media type Candace Owens came up with a creative plan to stop the spread of the mask-wearing, shot-getting, stop-the-spread-of-disease threat to the world. Insisting that the people of Australia were “suffering under a totalitarian regime,” she wondered when we would send in U.S. troops to free Australians from their masks.

 

According to Worldometers, Australia has suffered 62 deaths per million from COVID-19. Whereas with the aid of people like Wiles and Owens and Alex Jones, spreading their daily disinformation, the U.S. has a rate of 2,260 per million, or more than 36 times as high.