PBS NewsHour explains 'How misinformation and the partisan divide drove a surge in U.S. COVID deaths,' a pandemic update on Throwback Thursday

I included a program note in the footnote to Dr. Fauci and Stevie Wonder address political division at commencement ceremonies in Michigan.

I'll probably get to "more pandemic news, including global death estimates" that I promised in NBC News and MSNBC report the U.S. passed 1 million deaths from COVID-19, a pandemic update Friday or Saturday. In the meantime, stay tuned for the final retrospective of the 2021-2022 blogging year on Throwback Thursday.

It turned out that the most active link to a blog entry posted between March 21, 2021 and March 20, 2022 was 'Contagion' vs. COVID-19 updates last year's most commented entries on Throwback Thursday, so instead of making today's final strictly about Twitter, the final retrospective of the 2021-2022 blogging year will again be about the pandemic.

I begin with PBS NewsHour revisiting Vox explains 'How American conservatives turned against the vaccine,' a pandemic update as it explains How misinformation and the partisan divide drove a surge in U.S. COVID deaths.

As the death toll from the coronavirus nears 1 million Americans, we’ve been exploring why the U.S. Suffered such a terrible loss, especially when compared to other nations similar to us. While there are many reasons for this, one of them is that many Americans have not wanted to be vaccinated. William Brangham reports.

I'm going to be a good environmentalist by recycling my reaction from February.

I found this depressing but not surprising, as I've been seeing this develop since I wrote Samantha Bee on 'Mask Hysteria' two years ago, even before vaccines. Since then, I've been paying attention to Charles Gaba at ACASignups.net who has been tracking vaccination rates vs. partisanship since May 2021....He found the same relationship between party identification and vaccination rates that [PBS NewsHour] showed in the video above.

I'm also going to recycle my reaction from U.S. life expectancy continued falling in 2021, a pandemic update, "widespread availability of vaccines has not translated into universal acceptance of vaccines..." On that note, here is Charles's graph that best matches the vaccinated vs. unvaccinated death rate in the video above from Monthly Update: COVID Death Rates by Partisan Lean & Vaccination Rate, except that it charts death rate by county against partisanship instead of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated.


It's amazing how closely they match.

PBS NewsHour also covered global death estimates last week when it reported WHO report finds nearly 15 million deaths associated with COVID-19 worldwide.

Nearly 15 million people around the world have died from COVID's impact, directly or indirectly, during the first two years of the pandemic, according to a new World Health Organization report. It’s also about three times higher than governments have reported so far. University of Washington's Jonathan Wakefield, whose modeling work helped produce the report, joins William Brangham for more.

I explored excess deaths during the pandemic from other causes in Americans speeding during the pandemic is increasing traffic deaths, a driving update, Traffic accidents down but fatal accidents up in Michigan while drivers overpaid $1 billion for insurance during 2020, a driving update, and COVID-19 and diabetes for World Diabetes Day 2021, a pandemic update, so I'm not surprised by the high rate of excess deaths not directly caused by COVID-19. I am a little surprised that Australia and New Zealand didn't experience higher traffic deaths. I guess the land of Mad Max didn't have people speeding on open roads. Before I move on, I was always a little skeptical that India had fewer deaths than the U.S. from the pandemic. An estimate of 4.7 million may be higher than I expected, but I really do think India had more deaths than the U.S.'s 1 million.

Speaking of which, both PBS and ABC News, which broadcast and uploaded Breakthrough COVID-19 deaths increasing as omicron subvariants spread last night, still think the country is close but hasn't passed that grim milestone yet, but expect it will pass it soon (I think we passed it already).

Breakthrough deaths comprise a larger share of COVID-19 deaths amid a surge of cases nationwide. ABC News medical contributor Dr. Alok Patel explains what you need to know.

That's not good news. Despite what Dr. Fauci said to PBS NewsHour last month, we are still in an active pandemic and cases are going up, even though deaths so far haven't followed suit.

That's it for today's pandemic update. Follow over the jump for the most active links on Twitter during the eleventh year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.

Vox explains 'How American conservatives turned against the vaccine,' a pandemic update

Vox gave me an opportunity to change the subject from climate change to pandemic yesterday with How American conservatives turned against the vaccine.

The partisan pandemic, explained in 15 charts.
...
President Donald Trump presided over the fastest vaccine development process in history, leading to abundant, free vaccines in the US by the spring of 2021. Although the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines haven’t been able to stop transmission of the virus, they have been highly effective against hospitalization and death, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and rendering the majority of new Covid-19 deaths preventable.

Trump has received three doses of the vaccine. But many of his most dedicated supporters have refused, and many have died as a result. Why? Obvious culprits include misinformation on social media and Fox News and the election of Joe Biden, which placed a Democrat at the top of the US government throughout the vaccine distribution period. But if you look closely at the data, you’ll see that vaccine-hesitant conservatives largely made up their mind well before the vaccines were available and before Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

To understand why, I took a deep dive into the data, interviewed researchers, and spoke to people who lost loved ones to preventable severe Covid-19 infections. What I found is a stark cautionary tale for the country and for Republican political elites. Partisan polarization takes on a life of its own; once set into motion it’s nearly impossible to stop, even when the fallout is immense and irreparable.

I found this depressing but not surprising, as I've been seeing this develop since I wrote Samantha Bee on 'Mask Hysteria' two years ago, even before vaccines. Since then, I've been paying attention to Charles Gaba at ACASignups.net who has been tracking vaccination rates vs. partisanship since May 2021.* He found the same relationship between party identification and vaccination rates that Vox showed in the video above. In fact, it has been getting more pronounced, as the animated .gif he included in his most recent post on the subject, Updated: A Full Year of U.S. COVID Vaccinations by Partisan Lean...Animated, shows. Watch as the slope steepens over time.


The disparities in vaccination rates have resulted in noticeably higher death rates in counties that voted Republican in 2020, which Charles graphed two days ago.


Yikes! Talk about dying to "own the libs!"

*I've known Charles since before I started writing this blog, but I've never mentioned him here before. After eleven years, it's about time I did. He does very good work on health care and my readers should read him, too.