COVID Again Rampant in Jax

[BridgeTroll]

DeSantis defies Biden...

https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2021/09/23/desantis-bringing-in-3000-doses-of-new-covid-19-treatment-after-biden-administration-diverts-supply/

TAMPA – Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday announced the state is purchasing 3,000 doses of a new monoclonal antibody treatment after the Biden administration made the decision last week to limit the number of Regeneron doses received by Florida and other states.

DeSantis said the new doses coming to the state will be sotrovimab, a single-dose monoclonal antibody manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline that was granted emergency use authorization by the FDA in May.

The supply of Regeneron, which the state has used at 25 treatment sites across Florida, has dropped off dramatically, according to DeSantis....

[Snaketoz]

I have a feeling that Florida's new surgeon general will have a very short time in his position.

Why? He is exactly what Gov. Desantis wants. He gives "medical expertise" to their unscientific ravings.

He has an ego.  Don't think he will withstand the critics of DeSantis' policies.  After signing the "Great Barrington Declaration", he changed his tune by saying he didn't agree with half of it.  The chemistry is a sure problem.

[tufsu1]

DeSantis defies Biden...

https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2021/09/23/desantis-bringing-in-3000-doses-of-new-covid-19-treatment-after-biden-administration-diverts-supply/

TAMPA – Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday announced the state is purchasing 3,000 doses of a new monoclonal antibody treatment after the Biden administration made the decision last week to limit the number of Regeneron doses received by Florida and other states.

DeSantis said the new doses coming to the state will be sotrovimab, a single-dose monoclonal antibody manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline that was granted emergency use authorization by the FDA in May.

The supply of Regeneron, which the state has used at 25 treatment sites across Florida, has dropped off dramatically, according to DeSantis....

I would submit he isn't defying Biden - he found another treatment.

Fact is the Biden administration is right to re-balance Regeneron shipments - it made sense for the south to have the majority over the past two months while the virus was rampant. Now it is receding there, and increasing in areas of the upper midwest and (to some extent) the northeast. 

[Adam White]

DeSantis defies Biden...

https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2021/09/23/desantis-bringing-in-3000-doses-of-new-covid-19-treatment-after-biden-administration-diverts-supply/

TAMPA – Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday announced the state is purchasing 3,000 doses of a new monoclonal antibody treatment after the Biden administration made the decision last week to limit the number of Regeneron doses received by Florida and other states.

DeSantis said the new doses coming to the state will be sotrovimab, a single-dose monoclonal antibody manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline that was granted emergency use authorization by the FDA in May.

The supply of Regeneron, which the state has used at 25 treatment sites across Florida, has dropped off dramatically, according to DeSantis....

I would submit he isn't defying Biden - he found another treatment.

Fact is the Biden administration is right to re-balance Regeneron shipments - it made sense for the south to have the majority over the past two months while the virus was rampant. Now it is receding there, and increasing in areas of the upper midwest and (to some extent) the northeast.

Yeah, I don't see that he defied anyone.

[BridgeTroll]

Rofl... it was my tongue in cheek headline to mimic similar hyperbolic JLT headlines

[jaxlongtimer]

Rofl... it was my tongue in cheek headline to mimic similar hyperbolic JLT headlines

Which of my headlines is hyperbolic? 

[jaxlongtimer]

An interesting but sad way to have to make a point about Florida's new "surgeon general" (in quotes because I think he is totally unqualified for the job):

After a family member died of Covid-19, a man took aim at Florida's top health official in sarcastic letter

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/01/us/covid-19-letter-to-the-editor-tampa-bay-times/index.html

[bl8jaxnative]

Bl8rjax, stop posting this anti-vax shit. I’ve warned you repeatedly. I’m not doing it again.

Posting an article in _SCIENCE_ magasine  that speaks to a peer-reviewed article is anti-vax shit?

That sort of puerile rejection of scientific work smells like someone who suffers from narcissism.   

[bl8jaxnative]

^ Did you struggle this much with all of your required vaccines, or just this one?

Lunican, unless you work for a hospital or something similar, it's highly unlikely you were required to prove any vaccinations before being employed.

[Tacachale]

Bl8rjax, stop posting this anti-vax shit. I’ve warned you repeatedly. I’m not doing it again.

Posting an article in _SCIENCE_ magasine  that speaks to a peer-reviewed article is anti-vax shit?

That sort of puerile rejection of scientific work smells like someone who suffers from narcissism.

1. You didn't post anything from Science magazine (or "_SCIENCE_ magasine").
2. I'm one of the owners of this website.
3. Bye.

[BridgeTroll]

^ Did you struggle this much with all of your required vaccines, or just this one?

Lunican, unless you work for a hospital or something similar, it's highly unlikely you were required to prove any vaccinations before being employed.

Many major employers are requiring vaccination or be terminated. (Florida Blue)

[jaxlongtimer]

Below is an interesting analysis showing the impact of the GOP's politicization of COVID vaccines.  Killing their own.  Just, wow.

P.S. Click on link at the end to see charts mapping the mathematical correlations referred to in the article.

Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame

Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden. That's according to a new analysis by NPR that examines how political polarization and misinformation are driving a significant share of the deaths in the pandemic.

NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across the U.S. from May 2021, the point at which vaccinations widely became available. People living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.7 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates.

In October, the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the bluest tenth, according to Charles Gaba, an independent health care analyst who's been tracking partisanship trends during the pandemic and helped to review NPR's methodology. Those numbers have dropped slightly in recent weeks, Gaba says: "It's back down to around 5.5 times higher."

The trend was robust, even when controlling for age, which is the primary demographic risk of COVID-19 mortality. The data also reveal a major contributing factor to the death rate difference: The higher the vote share for Trump, the lower the vaccination rate.

The analysis only looked at the geographic location of COVID-19 deaths. The exact political views of each person taken by the disease remains unknowable. But the strength of the association, combined with polling information about vaccination, strongly suggests that Republicans are being disproportionately affected.

Recent polling data that show Republicans are now the largest group of unvaccinated individuals in the United States, more than any other single demographic group. Polling also shows that mistrust in official sources of information and exposure to misinformation, about both COVID-19 and the vaccines, run high among Republicans.

"An unvaccinated person is three times as likely to lean Republican as they are to lean Democrat," says Liz Hamel, vice president of public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy think tank that tracks attitudes toward vaccination. Political affiliation is now the strongest indicator of whether someone is vaccinated, she says: "If I wanted to guess if somebody was vaccinated or not and I could only know one thing about them, I would probably ask what their party affiliation is."

It was not always this way. Earlier in the pandemic, many different groups expressed hesitancy toward getting vaccinated. African Americans, younger Americans and rural Americans all had significant portions of their demographic that resisted vaccination. But over time, the vaccination rates in those demographics have risen, while the rate of Republican vaccination against COVID-19 has flatlined at just 59%, according to the latest numbers from Kaiser. By comparison, 91% of Democrats are vaccinated.

Being unvaccinated increases the risk of death from COVID-19 dramatically, according to the CDC. The vast majority of deaths since May, around 150,000, have occurred among the unvaccinated, says Peter Hotez, dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

While vaccine hesitancy exists in many different groups, Hotez suspects that the deaths are "overwhelmingly" concentrated in more politically conservative communities. "How does this make sense at any level?" he asks....

....Misinformation appears to be a major factor in the lagging vaccination rates. The Kaiser Family Foundation's polling shows Republicans are far more likely to believe false statements about COVID-19 and vaccines. A full 94% of Republicans think one or more false statements about COVID-19 and vaccines might be true, and 46% believe four or more statements might be true. By contrast, only 14% of Democrats believe four or more false statements about the disease.

Belief in multiple false statements highly correlates with vaccination status, Hamel says. "If you believe that the vaccines can damage your fertility, that they contain a microchip and that the government is inflating the number of COVID-19 deaths, you're going to think really differently about whether to get vaccinated."

Disinformation breeds complacency

Perhaps the most pernicious pieces of misinformation have to do with the perceived severity of COVID-19 itself. The most widely believed false statement was: "The government is exaggerating the number of COVID-19 deaths."

Hamel says that underestimating the severity of COVID-19 appears to be a major reason why Republicans in particular have fallen behind in vaccination: "We've seen lower levels of personal worry among Republicans who remain unvaccinated," she says. "That's a real contrast with what we saw in communities of color, where there was a high level of worry about getting sick."

Complacency around the risks of contracting COVID-19 certainly seemed to be a major reason why the Valentine brothers avoided vaccination. While not conspiracy theorists, they were staunch Trump supporters. The arrival of coronavirus just ahead of the presidential election of 2020 seemed like "the most fortuitous pandemic in the history of the world" for the Democratic Party, recalls Mark....

....He thinks the elements of the Republican Party that are endorsing anti-vaccine ideas need to take a big step back. "I'm not trying to change Republican thinking or far-right thinking," he says. "I'm trying to say: 'The anti-science doesn't belong; it doesn't fit. ... Just stop it and save lives.' ''....

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/05/1059828993/data-vaccine-misinformation-trump-counties-covid-death-rate