Weird.. We're seeing the exact opposite in Spain. Deaths from the Omikron wave which infected millions were much lower than the influenza epidemics of recent years.
However vaccination rates here are > 80% (> 60% boosters, and most of the younger people have only been able to get them for the last week or so)
What particularly matters is vaccination rates among the elderly. It's >99% vaccination rate in here Ontario, Canada for those over 70 years of age. Unfortunately some US states barely reach 80% for the same demographic. As far as I can tell that explains most of the difference in mortality since we lost control over the omicron wave.
Yeah, I think this point tends to be missed sometimes. Two countries with the same headline rate, where one has ~universal vaccination of over-65s and the other has 80%, would be expected to have very different death rates.
Also, that does sound a lot like most of the people affected are unvaccinated, in which case I feel it's been their own choice to risk it. Though of course the added health system load is bad for all.
I guess a lot has to do with how you identify death from Covid. It is cynical to state that old people probably always die of other health related reasons, but adding age groups to the statistic would help a lot to asses the danger.
Not really. Trump downplayed the virus, said it would go away by summer, went on a joy ride around the block while sick just to wave at supporters, he politicized the virus using it to throw democratic governors under the bus even though all states eventually where hit in similar ways
He created part of the perception that is causing the virus to continue to infect a higher number of people in the US, than other similar countries (places with vaccines highly availabe)
Trump for his part has been advocating for the vaccine now, but he did a lot of damage already
Counter argument, we knew far less about the virus then and didn't have a vaccine. Biden inherited a vaccine and a year of knowledge about the virus and we still had more deaths under him than under Trump.
Now, I don't blame Biden. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy in the media with how they decide to dole out blame. It's so biased that they have lost credibility. That's a problem.
Biden also inherited a year of misinformation by Trump telling people that the virus was unimportant. People who have taken the vaccine are largely protected -- not perfectly, but nobody ever promised you perfect. But it's very, very good, and the people dying are largely those who are unvaccinated, or infected by those who were. (Despite BS to the contrary, breakthrough cases go away much faster than cases in the unvaccinated, and so they have less time to spread it.)
There's no hypocrisy, just accurately reporting the facts. They could blame Biden for failing to convince people who still buy into Trump's anti-vaccine rhetoric -- despite weak protestations to the contrary, he has spent two years downplaying the vaccine and playing up the choice not to get it.
I wouldn't object to them calling that out, but it's not hypocrisy for them to not do it. "Couldn't force people to do it" just isn't in the bounds of his office -- nobody could do it.
I think this is a very biased take on it. The vaccine was developed under Trump and he heavily promoted it over the summer of 2020 and into the election. He took credit for it so much that Kamala Harris said she was not interested in "a Trump vaccine"[1] during the lead up to the election. Oddly enough, I don't hear much criticism about that. Instead the focus is on what Trump said 6 months before that, when the virus was brand new.
That's the focus because that's what his followers are still hearing. The FDA did its job, despite interference from the top, and everybody actually interested in science has accepted it.
But decades of anti-science rhetoric have eroded that to the point that it's an article of faith -- including many supposedly science-oriented people here on HN -- that any piece of science that they don't like can be dismissed as untrustworthy.
They did, and as part of their authorization they gave Pfizer until June 2025 to complete the long term testing on all the cases of myocarditis and pericarditis - https://www.fda.gov/media/151710/download
So if the FDA says long term testing will not be complete until June of 2025, should we not take them at their word that long term testing is still needed?
We should take at their word that it's stunningly obvious at this point that deaths from covid are vastly greater than deaths from myocarditis.
So you do the thing that saves your own life, and incidentally helps everyone else, and then you can split all the hairs you want about the pharmaceutical testing in which you are suddenly an expert. Meantime I've got zero fucks to give for distraction tactics.
Of Covid, or with Covid? With an autopsy, or without an autopsy? With comorbidities, or without cormodbidities? 'Vaccinated', or un'vaccinated'?
If we really want to start going down the statistics road there is plenty of ammunition that challenges the pro-biotyranny/pro-Covid/pro-vaccinations/pharma vested interests etc crowd. We could start with the recording of deaths within x weeks of vaccination as being due to Coronavirus, rather than the 'vaccine', we could go on to talk about the completely mysterious and unexplained (and absolutely nothing to do with vaccines, ho no!) spike in deaths amongst vaccinated athletes, footballers etc. and go from there.
However vaccination rates here are > 80% (> 60% boosters, and most of the younger people have only been able to get them for the last week or so)
Source from a local paper: https://www.elperiodico.com/es/ext_resources/infographics/20...
The Omikron wave is also on a sharp path down here already.