The Price of Denial: MAGA Republicans and the surge in COVID Deaths
Putting politics over healthcare is deadly.
“Once a vaccine advocate, the Ron DeSantis lost his enthusiasm for the shot before the Delta wave sent Covid hospitalizations and deaths soaring… Tapping into suspicion of public health authorities, which the Republican right was fanning, he effectively stopped preaching the virtues of Covid vaccines. Instead, he emphasized his opposition to requiring anyone to get shots, from hospital workers to cruise ship guests.” – NYTHow bad is it? How many people died from COVID in Florida? How many Floridans were infected by COVID? Check this map created with data from John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center and ArcGIS Online.Hold politicians accountable for their decisions. Especially those that result in avoidable deaths.
When politics trumps health science
16,000 preventable deaths
“A high vaccination rate was especially important in Florida, which trails only Maine in the share of residents 65 and older. By the end of July, Florida had vaccinated about 60 percent of adults, just shy of the national average. Had it reached a vaccination rate of 74 percent — the average for five New England states at the time — it could have prevented more than 16,000 deaths and more than 61,000 hospitalizations that summer, according to a study published in the medical journal The Lancet.”
Worse in Florida
“But in Florida, unlike the nation as a whole — and states like New York and California that Mr. DeSantis likes to single out — most people who died from Covid died after vaccines became available to all adults, not before. As the governor’s political positions began to shift, so did his state’s death rate, for the worse.” – NY Times
DeSantis Taps A New Surgeon General Who Doesn’t Support Vaccine Mandates
“Ron DeSantis announced the state’s next surgeon general, who falls in line with the governor’s belief that vaccine mandates during the pandemic are unnecessary.“Florida will completely reject fear as a way of making policies in public health. So we’re done with fear. That’s something that unfortunately has been a centerpiece of health policy in the United States ever since the beginning of the pandemic,” said Joseph Ladapo.” – NPR
John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center
The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center established a new standard for infectious disease tracking by publicly providing pandemic data in near real time. It began Jan. 22, 2020 as the COVID-19 Dashboard, operated by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering and the Applied Physics Laboratory. But the map of red dots quickly evolved into the global go-to hub for monitoring a public health catastrophe. – JHU
TakeAway: Hold politicians who put their ambitions over your healthcare accountable for their decisions.
Deepak
DemLabs
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