COVID-19 Update

“For folks without a very recent infection or a bivalent vaccine, you likely have very little protection against infection. And for older folks, diminishing protection against serious illness,” Ashish Jha, coordinator of the White House’s covid-19 response, tweeted Jan. 4. “So am I concerned about XBB.1.5? Yes. Am I worried this represents some huge set back? No.”

 

Avg Daily Cases: 67,242

Avg Daliy Deaths: 390 

New variant XBB.1.5 is ‘most transmissible’ yet, could fuel covid wave

Three years after the novel coronavirus emerged, a new variant, XBB.1.5, is quickly becoming the dominant strain in parts of the United States because of a potent mix of mutations that makes it easier to spread broadly, including among those who have been previously infected or vaccinated.

XBB.1.5, pegged by the World Health Organization as “the most transmissible” descendant yet of the omicron variant, rose from barely 2 percent of U.S. cases at the start of December to more than 27 percent the first week of January, according to new estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 70 percent of cases in the Northeast are believed to be XBB.1.5.

While there is no evidence so far that XBB.1.5 is more virulent than its predecessors, a recent swirl of misinformation linking the rise of new variants to vaccination has cast a spotlight on this latest strain and raised concern among some health experts that it could further limit booster uptake.

“XBB did not evolve because people were vaccinated,” said Vaughn Cooper, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Pittsburgh. “The way it evolved, let’s be straight, is because people were infected by multiple viruses at the same time.”

Since the omicron variant ignited an explosion of cases last winter, it spawned a host of descendants that are even more adept at slipping past antibodies and caused most infections in the United States. The XBB line emerged as a result of two other omicron subvariants swapping parts.

Virologists who studied XBB.1.5 say it does not appear better at escaping antibodies than other immune-evading predecessors, but it is better at binding to the cell and replicating. That means it can more easily become the dominant strain in a community than its relatives, but it doesn’t necessarily worsen an individual’s covid symptoms.

Health officials are urging Americans to get a booster dose of the new coronavirus vaccine formulated for omicron subvariants to protect against an expected winter surge in cases from holiday gatherings and as people continue to congregate indoors.

The nation is averaging nearly 48,000 people hospitalized with covid-19 over a seven-day period, the highest since late February but far below the 150,000 peak set about a year ago. The average daily count of hospitalized patients is up by about 20,000 since Thanksgiving.

But only 15 percent of those eligible — and 38 percent of senior citizens, who are most at risk — have received the updated shots.

“For folks without a very recent infection or a bivalent vaccine, you likely have very little protection against infection. And for older folks, diminishing protection against serious illness,” Ashish Jha, coordinator of the White House’s covid-19 response, tweeted Jan. 4. “So am I concerned about XBB.1.5? Yes. Am I worried this represents some huge set back? No.”

XBB prompted some concerns because of lab studies showing antibodies generated by vaccines struggle to block that variant. But that doesn’t mean the vaccines don’t work: For much of the last year, waves of infections from immune-evading variants have not caused surges of severe illness at hospitals, and experts believe that widespread immunity from shots and prior infections are making people more resilient to the virus.

While antibodies do not provide foolproof shields against reinfections, they still reduce the odds of contracting the virus and greatly reduce the likelihood of severe illness and hospitalization.

“Things like boosters are always beneficial,” said Kristian Andersen, a professor in the department of immunology and microbiology who tracks coronavirus variants at the Scripps Research Institute. “Even if you get infected, you are expected to have less viral load, and you are expected to be able to transmit the virus less.”

But the focus on boosters is also drawing criticism. An opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal by a member of its editorial board suggested that repeated vaccination made Americans more susceptible to new variants.

After holiday surge, viral illnesses could derail school, work plans

Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said the risk of mild breakthrough infection has been consistent throughout the pandemic despite the virus’s evolution, so there is no reason to blame shots for the variants. But he said it’s difficult to justify regular booster shots for the general population when the protection against mild illness is brief and immunity from earlier shots or infections still provides robust protection against severe outcomes.

“At some level, we are going to have to get used to mild illness unless you want to take three doses a year and stay in your house most of the time,” said Offit, who also advises the Food and Drug Administration on vaccines.

FDA commissioner Robert Califf, in a series of tweets he said he wrote to address prevalent “misinformation/disinformation,” noted that there was no clear evidence to support the thesis of the Wall Street Journal piece.

“Raising doubts about the value of vaccines will continue to lead well-intended people to delay getting an updated vaccine, leading to a clearly documented risk of death or severe illness,” Califf tweeted, after Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.); Richard Urso, an ophthalmologist and member of America’s Frontline Doctors, a group that spreads covid misinformation; and many others cited the Wall Street Journal piece as they questioned the use of coronavirus vaccines.

Several studies have tried to examine whether SARS-CoV-2 variants spread faster in locations with higher vaccination rates and found no evidence to support it, said Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.

“XBB.1.5 is just sort of the latest variant in what is going to be a continual process of the virus evolving,” Bloom said. “There’s a lot of space for the virus to get mutations.”

While XBB.1.5’s mutations have sparked scientific intrigue, experts caution it doesn’t substantially change circumstances for ordinary people navigating pandemic life with omicron’s descendants as the dominant strains since last spring. In addition to staying up to date on boosters, don’t assume you can’t get sick again if your last shot or bout with covid was more than several months ago. Wear high-quality masks and avoid crowds to avoid infections that can still cause mild illness, disrupt plans and lead to long-term health complications.

As the BA.5 variant spreads, the risk of coronavirus reinfection grows

The World Health Organization is monitoring XBB.1.5 because of how quickly it has supplanted other subvariants — and each wave of mass infection brings opportunities for the virus to morph into something more dangerous.

“The more this virus circulates, the more opportunities it will have to change,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on covid-19 at a Wednesday news conference. “We do expect further waves of infection around the world but that doesn’t have to translate into further waves of death because our countermeasures continue to work.”

XBB.1.5 surged first in the Northeast, where it now makes up nearly three quarters of cases. But hospitals there have not raised alarms about people coming in sicker because of the new subvariant.

Official case counts are no longer considered reliable because at-home test results are not reported, but wastewater tracking and other measures suggest cases are rising across the country.

At Northwell Health, New York’s largest hospital chain, the ranks of patients testing positive rapidly increased after Thanksgiving, along with the share of viruses confirmed to be the XBB.1.5 strain in lab testing. The “vast majority” of patients with coronavirus are admitted for other causes or coronavirus is a complicating factor, Northwell’s chief of infectious diseases Bruce Farber said. The share of those patients who received intensive care or were placed on ventilators remained stable after the rise of XBB.1.5 in early December. “In terms of very sick people with covid, it’s almost exclusively elderly and people with a lot of morbidities or who are immunosuppressed,” he said.

Experts hope hospitals in other parts of the country can share Northwell’s experience: weathering a rise of cases without covid wards packed with people fighting for their lives.

“Even though this thing is continuing to evolve, if you take a step back and look at the big peaks, they are not as ferocious as let’s say delta in the last half of 2021 or the early BA.1 omicron wave,” said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “Robust population immunity helps communities withstand new variants.”

COVID-19 Update

This weeks' averages

New Cases: 67,242/day

New Deaths: 390/day

Coronavirus found in samples from 96% of flights

If you believe it's now safe to fly without a protective mask, you might want to think again. New research shows the COVID-19 virus has been found on nearly every flight tested.

Scientists who analyzed wastewater samples taken from 29 flights in Kuala Lumpur have found the coronavirus in 28 of them, according to the National Public Health Laboratory Malaysia. Testing on the 29th sample has not yet been completed, per the laboratory.

The samples were taken at international entry points from June through December 2022. During the same time frame, the lab also tested 301 samples from 15 sentinel locations representing each state in the country.

All totaled, "SarsCoV-2 was detected in 288 samples," or 95.7% of all flights, health director-general Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a statement to Malaysian newspaper Sinar Harian.

The aircraft sewage surveillance process involves systematic sampling and testing for untreated wastewater and sewer contamination. RNA fragments of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are found in the feces of infected individual regardless of health status (symptomatic, asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic, recovered) and can be detected in sewage. This form of the virus is not infectious and can't be transmitted via feces.

The sewage is taken out of the airplane through a septic tank truck to the aircraft waste disposal facility. Once the targeted flights are identified, officials obtain samples of the sewage water before it undergoes treatment and send them to the lab for testing.

Dr. Abdullah said sewage water sampling from aircraft is carried out twice a week.

"For the sewage water surveillance from this aircraft, as many as one liter of sewage water samples are taken from selected aircraft," Abdullah told Sinar Harian.

The testing is continuously carried out by Malaysia's Ministry of Health as supplementary surveillance to identify countries at risk for COVID-19. Abdullah said the surveillance is intended as an early warning and is one of the control measures the country is using in facing the current situation of the coronavirus.

The concentration of a virus in wastewater can paint a picture of how much COVID-19 is present in that community. Testing at airports can help provide context for how prevalent the virus is among international travelers, and provide clues as to what new variants are emerging.

Within the last week, the Center for Disease Control announced it is considering use of wastewater testing at airports, mainly on incoming international flights, to track any emerging new variants as COVID-19 surges in China. Health officials in Australia and the United Kingdom announced similar plans.

Torturing The Language

Nearly a third of the nation believes the COVID-19 vaccine has killed somebody they know, highlighting the safety concerns the public still has about the shot.

As the first family renewed their call for the country to get vaccinated, 28% of likely voters told Rasmussen Reports that they “personally know” somebody they think died from the side effects of the shot.

That last bit kinda says it all. They're not going all the way with "COVID Vax kills people" - that could get 'em sued right outa their socks.

But they edge right up to it.

They make it vague enough to keep the rubes in line by inviting the inference that their "thinking" is correct, while not tarnishing The Examiner's credentials as Über Conservative, and staying within the bounds of reason so they help "the smart guys" rationalize their bullshit positions.

COVID-19 Update

Somethin' ain't right

1.4 billion people have been turned loose after a coupla years of isolation. Which is bad enough because now everybody gets exposed to whatever bugs everybody else is carrying around with them, plus most Chinese are without adequate vax protection, even though Beijing tells us 92.7% of the people have gotten at least one jab.

Stale Meme Alert:

What could possibly go wrong?

After years with little covid, videos show China is now getting hit hard

Emergency departments are overflowing, with patients sleeping in hallways until they can be evaluated or taken to a hospital room. In at least one hospital, half of doctors and nurses were absent because they had tested positive for covid.

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These and other alarming scenes in China’s medical facilities have been captured in videos and photographs posted to social media during the past two weeks. They offer a glimpse of the toll a huge coronavirus wave is wreaking — and undercut Beijing’s claim that the government is in control.

The full extent of the outbreak is unclear. The government’s sudden easing of coronavirus restrictions in early December came as infections were already surging. Officials soon stopped reporting asymptomatic cases, leaving the public to rely on social media to understand what was happening.

To better assess the impact of the current wave — which projections suggest could claim more than 1 million lives in 2023 — The Washington Post tracked hundreds of posts on popular Chinese platforms, including Weibo and Douyin, and reviewed material that was reposted on Twitter and other sites. The Post’s preliminary analysis found evidence of overwhelmed health-care facilities in major cities, particularly along the country’s heavily populated east coast.

Given China’s strict censorship, the content is only a snapshot of what’s happening nationwide. But it shows that many communities are struggling to cope with the massive number of patients infected with covid.

China’s low covid death count is being criticized as implausible

Most at risk: The elderly

Videos like this one, taken at Tianjin Medical University Hospital and posted on Douyin — a Chinese video platform owned by TikTok parent company ByteDance — reveal the current strain on medical facilities. Patients, many of them elderly, are seen resting on gurneys or cots in crowded lobbies or near elevators and other public areas. Family members appear to hover nearby — proximity certain to help spread the virus.

A video posted to social media on Dec. 20 — described as taken a day prior — shows visibly sick patients crowded in Tianjin Medical University General Hospital. (Video: @用户/Douyin)

“It’s clear that [in] those major cities, the health-care system is overwhelmed because of the rapid increase of the cases, especially [among] the elderly,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, who reviewed the footage for The Post. Only about 40 percent of people ages 80 and older in China have received a coronavirus booster shot.

This viral tsunami hit northern cities fastest and hardest. Beijing’s health authorities said on Dec. 11 that 22,000 people daily were visiting fever clinics, 16 times more than the previous week.

A video posted to Douyin on Wednesday shows many elderly patients seeking care at Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital. “The emergency room is extremely crowded,” wrote a woman who said she had brought her mother for care a day earlier. “Wherever I went, wherever I looked, there were younger senior citizens accompanying those even older,” the woman noted. “Everyone must please take care of the elderly around you.”

A video posted to social media on Dec. 21 shows crowded conditions at Tsinghua Changgung Hospital in Beijing. (Video: @Mrs树树/Douyin)

The country’s most populous city is suffering a similar outbreak. On Wednesday, Shanghai Neuromedical Center posted — then quickly deleted — a WeChat article estimating that 7 million residents were already infected and that half of the city’s 25 million people would be infected by the end of this week.

Shanghai’s draconian lockdown in March and April traumatized locals and shocked the rest of the country. The municipal government, determined to avoid a replay of acutely sick people stuck at home without medical care, is directing patients to 2,600 designated fever clinics across the city.

State media reported Friday that the emergency department of the Zhongshan Hospital, one of the most prominent in China, was handling about 1,000 patients a day, up from 700 to 800 at the same time last year.

Inside the ER, video taken Wednesday by a journalist for The Post shows patients crammed in hallway after hallway — on gurneys, cots and even folding chairs probably brought from home. Relatives crouched by their sides, leaving barely enough room for others to walk.

Video taken inside Shanghai’s Zhongshan hospital on Dec. 21 shows hallways crammed with mostly elderly patients. (Video: Lisa Movius/The Washington Post)

Videos and social media posts also suggest some children’s facilities are unusually busy, especially with parents bringing in young babies despite officials’ assurances that infants are at lower risk than other vulnerable groups. A popular video blogger’s announcement on Dec. 20 that his 2-year-old daughter died of encephalitis caused by a coronavirus fever was discussed widely online, although authorities never confirmed any connection publicly.

Illness among the young could be exacerbated by other respiratory viruses, including the combination of flu and RSV that has hit children in the United States hard, noted Justin Lessler, a professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina.

“There are few, if any, places in the world where the health system would not be severely taxed by a large epidemic of severe respiratory infections in children,” said Lessler, who also reviewed footage that was part of The Post’s analysis.

Video posted by one father in the southern city of Guangzhou shows weary family members waiting with little ones in the hallways of Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center. The man explained that he had been there 10 hours.

Video posted to social media on Dec. 21 shows families waiting with small children at a recently constructed hospital in the southern city of Guangzhou. (Video: @明天会更好/Douyin)

Hospitals with too few doctors and nurses

The National Health Commission recently advised hospitals to rehire retired health-care workers to help deal with exploding numbers of covid cases — as well as to fill in for doctors and nurses who have themselves become infected.

Nearly 1,000 staff were called back to front-line positions in Guangzhou, according to local reports. Doctors and nurses are being redeployed from smaller cities to Beijing, where officials have converted sports stadiums previously used as centralized quarantine centers to serve as temporary emergency wards.

In Nanjing, about 190 miles west of Shanghai, the Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital reported that half of its doctors and even more nurses were on sick leave because of covid. Visitors posted videos of an empty entrance foyer with signs saying that most counters were temporarily closed.

Video posted to social media on Dec. 21 shows empty hallways and closed counters at the Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital because of staff testing positive for covid. (Video: @雲山石岩/Douyin)

The pressures continue to increase. In eastern China, the Wenzhou Medical University Second Affiliated Hospital said in a statement that one of its pharmacists had fainted from fatigue while on the job at 4 a.m. The Post verified three videos showing people packed into the hospital’s common areas.

Video posted to Douyin on Dec. 21 shows large numbers of people inside the Second Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University in Wenzhou, China. (Video: @ 清零/Douyin)

Triaging medical resources will be a challenge in a country that for decades has tried, with limited success, to keep medicines, equipment and health-care professionals from being concentrated only in large hospitals in major cities. Though well-known facilities are in theory best equipped to handle critical cases, they often end up overrun and their staff exhausted.

In Shenzhen, China’s third-most-populous city, many people are desperate to see a doctor. One video posted to Douyin on Dec. 19 shows a line stretching around the block at Longhua People’s Hospital. Wait times have extended to more than half a day, according to videos and pictures from the scene confirmed by patients and verified by The Post.

Video posted to social media on Dec. 19 shows a line stretching around the block outside Longhua People’s Hospital in Shenzhen. (Video: @费费/Douyin)

When Zhou Zedong, 28, arrived there late the next night, he was warned about a 20-hour wait. Shortly before midnight, he went home with plans to come back the next morning — only to discover upon his return that he’d missed his number being called and would have to start the process again.

“It makes me angry,” said Zhou, who diverted to a traditional Chinese medicine clinic and asked family members to send medicines that were sold out at many pharmacies in Shenzhen. “It’s not the level of medical care that a first-tier city should have.”

Suddenly, a country of ‘zero negative’

The government’s contradictory messaging has intensified public unease. For nearly three years, authorities justified harsh lockdowns as necessary to save every life possible. Anger over the “zero covid” policies erupted publicly in November with a week of defiant protests in at least a dozen cities.

Chinese lock themselves down, hoard medicine over fear of new covid wave

Then, almost overnight, everything changed. Required testing and centralized quarantine were jettisoned. And just as international health experts had predicted, a country with very limited immunity succumbed quickly to the virus. Some Chinese joke that the government’s new policy is “zero negative” because everyone is infected.

Jonathan Chen, 21, a medical school student, visited the University of Hong Kong’s Shenzhen Hospital on Tuesday after testing positive and spiking a fever. He waited for eight hours to see a doctor and now wonders whether “zero covid” should have been phased out gradually.

“I used to hope the government would open up as soon possible,” Chen said. He’s no longer sure that was the smartest move.

COVID-19 Update

Masks Are a Proven Way to Defend Yourself from Respiratory Infections

Respiratory viruses have rebounded hard after COVID seclusion, and masks are one of the best ways to avoid getting them

The cold and flu season of 2022 has begun with a vengeance. Viruses that have been unusually scarce over the past three years are reappearing at remarkably high levels, sparking a “tripledemic” of COVID-19, the flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. This November’s national hospitalization levels for influenza were the highest in 10 years.

We are infectious disease epidemiologists and researchers, and we have spent our careers focused on understanding how viruses spread and how best to stop them.

To respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, we and our public health colleagues have had to quickly revive and apply decades of evidence on respiratory virus transmission to chart a path forward. Over the course of the pandemic, epidemiologists have established with new certainty the fact that one of our oldest methods for controlling respiratory viruses, the face mask, remains one of the most effective tools in a pandemic.

Unlike the many past waves of COVID-19 since the spring of 2020, this fall’s surge of respiratory disease is not due to a single novel virus. Rather, now that masks and other measures have gone by the wayside, the U.S. has returned to the classic cold and flu season pattern. In a typical year, many viruses co-circulate and cause similar symptoms, leading to a wave of illness that includes ever-shifting combinations of more than 15 types and subtypes of viruses.

Nowhere is this pattern more obvious than in young children. Our research has shown that classrooms house many viruses at once, and that individual kids can be infected with two or three viruses even during a single illness.

While mere inconveniences for most people, respiratory viruses like the seasonal flu are responsible for missed work and school. In some cases they can lead to severe illnesses, especially in very young children and older adults. After years of fighting one virus, parents are now exhausted by the reality of battling many, many more.

But there is a straightforward way to cut down on the risk for ourselves and others. When it comes to individual decisions, masks are among the most low-cost and most effective steps that can be taken to broadly reduce transmission of a multitude of viruses.

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers were studying the effectiveness of masks at reducing transmission of other respiratory viruses. Meta-analyses of viral spread during the original SARS epidemic in 2002-2003 showed that one infection was averted for every six people wearing a mask, and for every three people who were wearing an N95 mask.

Mask-wearing by health care workers has long been considered a primary strategy for protecting young at-risk infants from RSV infection transmitted in hospital settings. Scientific evaluation of the effectiveness of masks has historically been clouded by the fact that mask-wearing is often used in conjunction with other strategies, such as hand-washing. Nonetheless, the use of personal protective equipment, including masks, as well as gowns, gloves and possibly goggles in the health care setting, has been commonly associated with reduced transmission of RSV.

Similarly, one of the largest pre-COVID-19 randomized studies of mask-wearing, conducted with over a thousand University of Michigan residence hall students in 2006 to 2007, found that symptomatic respiratory illness was reduced among mask-wearers. This was especially true when masks were combined with hand hygiene.

More recently, researchers measured the amount of virus present in exhaled breath from people with respiratory symptoms to study how well masks blocked the release of virus particles. Those who were randomly selected to wear a mask had lower levels of respiratory shedding for influenza, rhinovirus—which causes the common cold—and non-SARS coronaviruses, than those with no mask.

Now, three years into the pandemic, evidence around masks and our experience using them has grown enormously. Laboratory studies and outbreak investigations have shown that masks lower the amount of virus that enters the air and reduce the quantity of viruses that enter our airways when we breathe. Recent studies have shown that wearing a surgical mask in an indoor public setting reduces the odds of testing positive for COVID-19 by 66%, and wearing an N95/KN95 type of mask lowers the odds of testing positive by 83%.

Our own research has shown the major impact of mask-wearing on transmission of SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19—and other viruses. During the circulation of the highly transmissible delta variant in the fall of 2021, we found that schoolwide mask requirements were linked to a reduction in COVID-19 infections. School-age children living in districts without mask requirements were infected at a higher rate that increased faster in the early weeks of the school year than their counterparts in districts with complete or partial mask requirements. Similar patterns occurred in other states coinciding with the lifting of school mask requirements in spring 2022.

Our preliminary work in a community with frequent mask-wearing behavior has found that the rate of non-COVID respiratory illness in families fell by 50% during 2020 and 2021 compared with earlier years. In our study, as participants reported the relaxing of mask-wearing and other mitigation behaviors in early 2022, the viruses that are now gripping the U.S. began to return. This resurgence started, curiously enough, with a reappearance of the four “common cold” seasonal coronaviruses.

Unfortunately, vaccines are only available for two of the major causes of respiratory illness: SARS-CoV-2 and influenza. Likewise, antiviral treatments are also more commonly available for SARS-CoV-2 and influenza than for RSV. RSV vaccines, which have been in development for many years, are expected to become available soon, but not in time to stem the current wave of illness.

In contrast, masks can reduce transmission for all respiratory viruses, with no need to tailor the intervention to the specific virus that is circulating. Masks remain a low-cost, low-tech way to keep people healthier throughout the holiday season so that more of us can be free of illness for the time that we value with our family and friends.

COVID-19 Update

Overlapping Virus Outbreaks Threaten ‘Tripledemic’ Crisis

COVID cases are on the rise again in many countries. And this time, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has company. In the United States, Europe and Asia, the flu virus and a third dangerous pathogen—the respiratory syncytial virus—are surging at the same time as the novel coronavirus.

It’s a “tripledemic,” to use an admittedly non-scientific term. And it’s a harbinger of our pathogenic future. As we chop down more forests, releasing more and more animal viruses into the human population—and as disinformation floods social media, driving vaccine-skepticism to startling highs—overlapping viral outbreaks could become the norm.

Add another monkeypox or bird flu outbreak, and we might even experience a “quadrupledemic.” Besides potentially overwhelming health systems, the simultaneous outbreaks come with another troubling risk. Research indicates they might actually make each other worse.

Epidemiologists expect viral infections to spike in the winter months. People are traveling for various holidays, dragging their viruses along with them and exposing everyone else along the way. Cold weather drives people indoors, where they share air, spittle and any pathogens riding on the air and spittle.

Hence the seasonal flu outbreaks we usually see in the winter. COVID has also developed a seasonal pattern for the same reasons. So it came as no surprise that COVID cases began ticking upward in the U.S., Europe, and Japan in recent weeks. There’s an alarming surge in novel-coronavirus infections in China, too—but there are unique reasons for that.

COVID and flu were about to begin their usual winter rampage when the respiratory syncytial virus showed up in a big way, too. At the peak of the RSV outbreak in the U.S. in mid-November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention logged a case-rate five times as high as last year.

The European division of the World Health Organization summed up the crisis in a Dec. 1 statement. “The region is currently experiencing increasing circulation of influenza and RSV. Together with COVID-19, these viruses are expected to have a high impact on our health services and populations this winter.”

RSV usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms—and most people recover quickly. In infants and seniors, however, RSV can be deadly. It’s the leading cause of pneumonia in newborns. Besides the cumulative strain that RSV and other viruses can place on hospitals when they surge simultaneously, there are signs that the flu and COVID are making RSV more dangerous—and vice versa.

James Lawler, an infectious disease expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, pieced together the clues. “We had relatively normal levels of flu and RSV activity last year, but with relatively normal… hospitalization [or] death consequences,” he told The Daily Beast. “This year, we have somewhat higher than normal flu and RSV activity—at least earlier for flu—and much higher rates of hospitalization in young people.”

Last year’s winter surge in COVID, driven by the Omicron variant, may have weakened millions of people who wouldn’t normally be at high risk for flu and RSV. “COVID results in long-lasting disruption in immune function and health effects in people well after acute infection,” Lawler explained.

It’s OK to be skeptical of possible interplay between the three viruses. “It’s difficult to say we have hard evidence,” Lawler stressed. But he noted a compelling bit of circumstantial evidence. “Countries that have done better controlling COVID—South Korea, Japan, Taiwan—are not experiencing increased levels of hospitalization from flu or RSV this year.” Sure, the rate of flu and RSV is high in Japan, but the severity is normal—and most people are recovering at home.

Research could eventually prove, or disprove, that the immune effects of one viral infection make a separate and different infection more likely or worse. While we wait for the science to catch up, we’re walking on epidemiological thin ice. Humanity seems determined to expose itself to more and more viruses. At same time, it’s equally determined not to protect itself from the effects of these pathogens.

Many of the worst human viruses didn’t start in humans. They’re animal viruses that made the leap to homo sapiens after prolonged exposure. Monkeypox was endemic in monkey and rodent populations in West and Central Africa and only became a human problem with the accelerating destruction of the African rainforest in the 1970s. COVID appears to have jumped from pangolins (a kind of scaly anteater) or bats to people, possibly at a wildlife market in Wuhan, China. Bird flu, which occasionally rages through human populations, is—as its name implies—a bird virus.

The more forests we chop down, the more wild animals we trade as pets or for food and the more chickens we cram into industrial farms, the more viruses we come into contact with—and the greater the risk of animal-to-people transmission. A process scientists call “zoonosis.”

Barring a profound shift in the way people build and eat, zoonosis is only going to get worse. “Larger human population overall—increases the number of human-animal contact events,” Tony Moody, a professor of immunology at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, told The Daily Beast. There’s also a “need for increased food production because of the increased population, so increasing domestic animal contacts.”

We could protect ourselves from the worst outcomes with vaccines. But the trends on that front are equally discouraging. As trust in science wanes and more people get their “news” from conspiracy theorists on social media, vaccine uptake is beginning to suffer.

A quarter of Americans still refuse to get any COVID vaccines. Uptake of the latest booster is catastrophically low in the U.S. More people didn’t bother getting their flu jabs this year, as well. Vulnerable communities eagerly embraced the monkeypox vaccine, thank goodness, but rejection of the tried-and-true polio vaccine in a handful of New York counties led to a rare—and frankly terrifying—surge in polio cases this summer. Polio, once widespread, can cause paralysis in a small number of cases.

This Game of Chance Could Curb COVID—or Send It Spiraling

Zoonosis and vaccine-hesitancy are the twin forces of the overlapping viral outbreaks that could define our epidemiological future as a species. It’s hard to imagine any point in the foreseeable future when humanity won’t be grappling with at least one major viral outbreak, because it’s hard to imagine humanity swiftly ending deforestation and quickly reversing the flow of disinformation on the internet.

Preventable outbreaks are here to stay. From probably more than one major virus at a time.

COVID-19 Update

386 Dead Americans Every Day

You don't have to care about what goes on in China, but try to remember that there's no such thing as 'disconnected' in this world, so with a billion-and-a-half Chinese wandering around, don't think their shit isn't headed your way.

Now look at the 14% of Americans north of 5 years old who are fully vaxxed and boosted.

This could get real fucked up real fast.

One Million Could Die From COVID in China, New Projection Shows. Here’s What to Know

Roughly a million people could die from COVID-19 in China by next year as a result of the country’s rapid abandonment of pandemic restrictions, a new projection suggests.

Researchers worry that ill-prepared healthcare systems, low rates of vaccination among the elderly and ineffective vaccines will contribute to a massive and deadly COVID-19 surge that has already begun overwhelming hospitals in Beijing.

The country of 1.4 billion has had some of the strictest COVID containment measures in place since the pandemic began nearly three years ago, but the government began easing restrictions this month after a wave of fervent protests that began in November against President Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policies.

One million deaths

Reuters’ analysis of new data from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, concludes that COVID cases in China will peak around April, at which point there will have been 322,000 COVID-related deaths and a third of the country will be infected. Currently, China’s official death toll remains low at just over 5,000 deaths, compared to the U.S.’s more than one million. However, some question the Chinese government’s count accuracy. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that there have been 311,113 confirmed deaths in China from COVID-19 since January 2020.

Gabriel Leung, former dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, and a group of other experts from Hong Kong who met with Chinese officials last month to share advice on lifting national COVID restrictions, also authored a report with similar findings.

Leung’s team estimates more than 900,000 deaths from the virus if China continues with its current plan to ease restrictions and that such extensive infections could result in new mutations. The report says that if the government delays such plans until January and prepares by improving vaccine rates and access to antiviral drugs, the total death rate could decrease by 26%.
Beijing overwhelmed

In the capital of Beijing, the situation has already become dire and healthcare workers describe being overwhelmed by patients and deaths. WHO reported 105,045 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in China on Dec. 12, a decline from the previous month, but omitting all unconfirmed cases.

Since the government announced new, less-restrictive policies on Dec. 7, people with COVID-19 that show mild or no symptoms are now permitted to recover at home, rather than a hospital. Under the changes, free PCR testing with quick results are more difficult to find.

Although about 90% of the country has been vaccinated against COVID-19, China relied on vaccines with lower efficacy rates than the mRNA-based vaccines that many other countries sought to produce. Only 65% of people over the age of 80 have been fully vaccinated and just 40% received their booster, a concerningly low rate for the country’s most vulnerable demographic.

Infection rates are expected to worsen around Jan. 22, the Lunar New Year, during celebrations.

Zero-COVID

Under China’s “zero-COVID” restrictions, movement was highly regulated in China through mandatory isolation at designated facilities and regional lockdowns during outbreaks. The government also implemented health-tracking apps, frequent COVID tests at workplaces, mass testing sites and proof of negative COVID tests to enter businesses and commercial establishments.

For many in China, the zero-COVID cessation is a win against the tight hold the government had on Chinese people’s movements and gatherings. Under the policies, people often had trouble accessing food and other resources during impromptu lockdowns with indefinite ends, healthcare systems became reliant on such measures rather than preparing for more cases and the country’s economy plummeted.

The government vowed to crack down on the widespread protests when they began in late November, which was rare to see at such a large scale and was compared to the violent Tiananmen Square protests from 1989. It’s unclear how many people were detained, but protesters who were arrested have shared reports of human rights violations and hostility in police custody.

Not A Documentary

Funny how the "fuck your feelings" crowd seems always to go in big for anything contrarian, as long as it makes them feel good about their ignorance. 

The Anti-Vaccine Documentary Died Suddenly Wants You to Feel, Not Think

Clearly, the makers of Died Suddenly don’t want you to do your own research.

People want to feel like their concerns are heard. Being dismissed can lead to loss of trust, which can send people looking for empathy in the wrong places.

Members of the anti-vaccination movement and of its media arm excel at portraying themselves as “those who care.” The rest of us—scientists, doctors, politicians, journalists—are represented as either apathetic or simply evil. The latest “documentary” to emerge from this movement, Died Suddenly, is an exercise in reframing compassion. It also represents the apogee of conspiritualist ideas, where grand conspiracy theories surrounding vaccines are painted on a canvas so large, they involve a Biblical war between the forces of absolute good and those of pure evil.

Who are portrayed as ringing the alarm for Armageddon in Died Suddenly? Embalmers.
A tale made out of whole clot

The documentary’s smoking gun is the alleged discovery of long, white, fibrous clots in the deceased bodies of people who, we are told, got vaccinated against COVID-19. Sometimes, their blood also looks dirty, like it contains coffee grounds. This claim seems to have originated from Richard Hirschman, an embalmer in Alabama, who spoke about it to The Epoch Times, a frequent vehicle for misinformation and grand conspiracy theories. Hirschman and a few other embalmers testify to their findings in Died Suddenly, with some being blurred out, their voices altered, like they are sharing secrets so damning they’re about to be shipped to their local witness protection program.

Every conspiracy demands its whistleblower, and Hirschman serves as one of many for this documentary. He can boldly speak out while his colleagues self-censor, he tells us, because he doesn’t work for a funeral home. The movie cozies up to the body horror genre by repeatedly showing us images and clips of these lengthy strings of organic matter being pulled out of post-mortem incisions. The power of these alien, rubbery artefacts grows in the telling: in the Epoch Times piece, a cardiologist says these clots have “nearly the strength of steel.” Given the shock that these visuals can give to the untrained eye, it’s no wonder these supposed “vaccine clots” are making the rounds on TikTok.

The problem is that embalmers and funeral directors are not medical professionals. Don’t take it from me, but from the National Funeral Directors Association in the United States, whose representative told me as much, and from Ben Schmidt, a funeral director and embalmer with a bachelor’s degree in natural science. Schmidt wrote a detailed explanation of what is happening here. Clots can easily form after death, as the liquid and solid parts of blood separate and as formaldehyde and calcium-containing water used in the embalming process catalyze clotting. Refrigeration can also be to blame, especially when a rapid influx of bodies due to COVID necessitates longer stays in the cooler as embalmers make their way through their backlog.

Then there are the clots that happen prior to death. Embalmers do not typically know that someone who died was “in normal health,” as is often claimed in the documentary, nor do they reliably know someone’s vaccination status. Blood clots do happen in life, for a variety of reasons. The COVID-19 vaccines made by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson were indeed associated with rare—and I must repeat, rare—cases of blood clots, but risk factors for blood clots in general include obesity, cancer, a sedentary lifestyle, pregnancy, family history, and smoking. Oh, and COVID-19 itself, which you won’t learn from Died Suddenly. This may surprise you, but an American dies of a blood clot every six minutes. Clots, either before or after death, are common.

As anatomical pathology specialist Irene Sansano told a fact-checking website, the clots shown by Hirschman do not look different from the ones pathologists regularly see in blood clot autopsies at the hospital. To know if there really was an uptick in clots seen during embalming, we can’t rely on a scattering of anecdotes. We would need a database to monitor trends, and as Schmidt points out, this database does not exist.

But if the sight of strings of clotted material isn’t scary enough, Died Suddenly is willing to make its title even more manifest by showing us rapid-fire montages of people fainting and seemingly dropping dead. Out of context, these videos are distressing. However, The Real Truther account on Twitter has demonstrated that many of them are not what they seem. The woman who passes out and falls into a moving train? Her name is Candela. She fainted because of low blood pressure and survived with a fractured skull. That young basketball player who collapses on the court? His name is Keyontae Johnson, and his fainting took place on December 12, 2020, before the COVID-19 vaccines were readily available. He has since been medically cleared to play and recently signed with Kansas State. These people are not dead. To borrow a phrase from the conspiracy playbook, we have been lied to.

Given that syncope, the medical term for a temporary loss of consciousness brought about by a drop in blood pressure, affects one in five over their lifetime, and given the ubiquity of cameras in our world, that’s a lot of fainting episodes captured on video that can be used to bolster a narrative that “something’s not right.”

Outside of the documentary, its Twitter account and many more in the anti-vaccination space have used “died suddenly” as a rallying cry. One of the producers of the movie, Stew Peters, interviewed a woman who claimed that Canadian physicians were dropping like flies in the prime of their lives. Peters didn’t mince words: “We absolutely know 100% what is going on. They want to cover it up. The doctors are dying, and they’re dying from these stupid shots.” Their evidence comes from the Canadian Medical Association’s In Memoriam webpage. I had a look. Peters’ interview was released on August 22nd of this year. I looked at the last ten doctors who had been memorialized at this point. For most, the cause of death is not mentioned. For the others, it’s Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia, COVID-19, and a two-year spell with brain cancer. The average age at which these ten physicians died? 82. The youngest was 64. Hardly in the prime of their lives. That same woman making the claim goes on to hypothesize that Alberta was sent the most toxic batch of the vaccines because its residents don’t typically vote for Justin Trudeau. How else to explain its high mortality during the pandemic?

The Died Suddenly Twitter account, which boasts an authoritative blue check mark it received after paying $8 a month, memorializes a long list of people who, we are led to believe, died of the vaccine, including the voice of Batman, Kevin Conroy, who very recently passed away from intestinal cancer. Except that scrolling through these names, it becomes apparent the list includes anyone who died suddenly, who died after a short illness, who died after a long illness, who died of cancer or of an immune condition or of a viral infection. Their vaccination status is often not even known. Basically, everybody dying after the vaccines were rolled out has now been killed by the jab.

One of the funeral directors interviewed in Died Suddenly, who now identifies as an anti-vaxxer, tells us to go on Google and type in “died suddenly.” I listened to him and did the exercise.

Disturbingly, I found a 13-year-old boy who died suddenly after collapsing while playing in a schoolyard; a 38-year-old publisher who died suddenly at home, with no known health issues; even actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s brother who died suddenly at 36. What I didn’t tell you is that I did the search for the year 2010. Sudden deaths are not new. I even found a particularly distressing example. Her name was Kalina and she had shown no sign of illness before suddenly falling ill and dying that very evening. She was only 25 years old and was the third adult to die from her place of work in a four-month period.

Scary stuff, isn’t it? Except that Kalina was a killer whale who died at SeaWorld Orlando in 2010.

What Died Suddenly does is akin to grave-robbing. It raids online obituaries, with complete disregard for consent or basic journalistic integrity, and stitches a pseudoscientific horror story with the faces of the deceased.

The makers of Died Suddenly don’t want you to think; they want you to feel. For all of the anti-vaccination movement’s admonitions to “do your own research,” the thing that consistently sinks their arguments is doing your own research. It’s fact-checking if what they are telling you is correct.

None of this is new, though the conspiracy they are selling is growing to epic proportions.

Cut from the same clot

Died Suddenly can serve as a teachable moment for those of us who study the post-COVID-19 anti-vaccination movement, to help us recognize its traits and see its progression.

We witness motivated reasoning: starting from the conclusion that the vaccines cannot be safe and looking for evidence that matches the conclusion. We see a thick coating of “after the fact, therefore because of it,” as anybody dying from 2021 onwards is said to be the victim of a vaccine that can kill you instantly, with a delay, or simply worsen a pre-existing condition. The “VAERS scare” tactic is also briefly adopted, as the database of “bad things that happened after getting a vaccine” is easily trawled for hits.

Died Suddenly also features fake experts, a characteristic of science denial. The VAERS scare itself is brought up in the documentary by entrepreneur Steve Kirsch, who is seen stopped by police after repeated, uninvited visits to the private residence of Dr. Grace Lee, the chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. He tells the cops he’s “a journalist for Substack,” a fancy term for “blogger” if there ever was one. In the documentary, he confidently asserts that no one wants to know what’s in the vaccines and that no journalist has ever asked, “What’s in the vials?” Funny how there was so much worry about what was in the COVID-19 vaccines, their manufacturers released a list of their ingredients at the beginning of the roll-out, which was covered by the mainstream press. But this is the kind of accuracy you can expect from a grown man who literally called me a chicken on his blog for refusing to debate him.

Meanwhile, a military whistleblower tells us that deaths are up 40% in the 18-to-64 age group, pointing the finger at the vaccines. Except that it’s not the vaccines; it’s the COVID-19 pandemic itself. From blood clots to excess mortality, everything caused by the virus is blamed on the vaccines.

Died Suddenly premiered on both Twitter and Rumble, the alternative video platform favoured by conservatives who loudly proclaim their right to free speech, to a combined 8 million views as of this writing. The text box below the documentary is filled with sponsor links that echo the concerns of the people living outside the mainstream: survival food, “manly” supplements, and precious metal investments. There’s also a link to Mike Lindell’s MyPillow company. The subtleties of the anti-vaccination movement have been shed: the box asks viewers to “support anti-vax activism.” The masks are off.

Meanwhile, the movie throws everything onto the conspiracy cork board, with Jeffrey Epstein, Anthony Fauci, Justin Trudeau, Greta Thunberg, and Bill Gates flashing before our eyes, next to mentions of MKUltra and a clip from that infamous Sasquatch hoax video.

A clip of Tom Hanks explaining Malthusian theory during a press tour is borrowed, which introduces us to the ultimate thesis of the documentary: the COVID-19 pandemic was apparently an excuse to roll out a deadly vaccine engineered to decimate our military forces, affect pregnant women, and kill as many people as possible. As Thomas Malthus once wrote, our population will someday exceed in numbers our ability to provide for everyone. The Powers That Be thus had to come up with a solution: an injectable bioweapon.

And this is where conspirituality comes in. As Died Suddenly ramps up to its climax, religious beliefs are made clear and the full scope of the conspiracy is laid out. This is spiritual war, we are told. The depopulation agenda was written by the forces of Evil and it is our God-given role to fight back.

The anti-vaccination movement no longer sees itself as merely opposing an industry; its vociferations are a clarion call for divine salvation.

Those who care

I have already read superficial denunciations of the movie by media outlets that do not address the core claims the movie makes. I get it. The escalation of the anti-vaccine rhetoric into a mad fever pitch is so pronounced, it can leave us speechless. We resort to dismissal, anger, and accusations of widespread idiocy.

I worry that this sort of drive-by skepticism—quick, often smug—, excusable though it may be, plays right into the hand of a movie like Died Suddenly. Its brave “truthtellers” are shown as people who care. They want to prevent deaths. They are tearing through the wall of passivity and the thicket of wickedness they see in order to save human lives. Propped up by the shallow depth of field of the camera, the professional lighting, the unnerving music, and the storytelling power of a good edit, it makes for convincing fodder.

Our casual dismissal of these propaganda pieces doesn’t help, in my opinion. If we want to persuade the people caught in their wake—not the die-hard believers, who can hardly be swayed, but those who are scared yet still willing to listen to reason—we must fact-check with empathy. We must show how easy it is to topple the scarecrows of anti-vaccine propaganda.

We need patience, as hard as it can be to find these days.

COVID-19 Update

Remember when Jared Kushner suggested Trump just hang loose with the emergency help during COVID because "it's having a bigger effect on blue states"?

Well, guess what, asshole - nature bats last, and payback's a motherfucker.

Once COVID Vaccines Were Introduced, More Republicans Died Than Democrats

A new Yale study looks at excess deaths by partisan affiliation in two states during the pandemic. Once vaccines were introduced in the spring of 2021, Yale SOM’s Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham and his co-authors found, the rate of deaths among Republicans and Democrats began to diverge.

Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials have warned that some of us are at higher risk of severe outcomes from the virus, due to factors such as age or preexisting medical conditions.

New research from Yale SOM points to another factor that puts people at greater risk of dying from COVID-19: party affiliation. The study finds that excess deaths during the pandemic were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats in two states, Ohio and Florida. What’s more, the partisan gap in death rates increased significantly after vaccines were introduced.

The research was conducted by Yale SOM’s Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham and Jacob Wallace and Jason L. Schwartz of the Yale School of Public Health.

To Goldsmith-Pinkham, the sharp divergence in excess death rates that emerged in the post-vaccine period “is pretty striking…and the magnitudes are quite large.” While the research doesn’t definitively prove that low vaccine uptake among Republicans explains the mortality gap, “it points to this as a potential mechanism.”

The question of whether and how much party affiliation affects COVID-19 outcomes has been widely debated among public health scholars and isn’t easy to answer. Some research has found that the death toll from COVID-19 has been higher in red counties than blue ones, but analyzing data at the county level makes it hard to be sure that party alone explains the differences. It’s theoretically possible that other factors about those counties, such as weather or average household size or availability of health care, could be more significant contributors to the death rate than how they voted.

Goldsmith-Pinkham and his co-authors decided to take a different approach that would avoid these pitfalls. They gathered nearly 600,000 Ohio and Florida death records from 2018 to 2021 and matched those records to voter registration data from 2017. This allowed them to determine the party affiliation of each person who died.

Then, they used data from 2019 as a benchmark to determine expected death rates based on age, time of year, location, and party affiliation. In other words, they calculated how many Republicans and Democrats in a given age bracket and a given county would normally die in a given season. Anything above or below that 2019 “normal” was considered an “excess death.”

The excess death framework had two important strengths: It allowed the researchers to study the effects of political party at an individual rather than geographic level, and it provided a built-in means of accounting for differences of age and location.

When the researchers looked at excess deaths before and after the pandemic, the results were sobering. Tragically, but not surprisingly, both Republicans and Democrats experienced a sudden uptick in mortality in during the first year of the pandemic. While excess death rates were slightly higher among Republicans than Democrats, “both are dying at really high rates over this period,” Goldsmith-Pinkham says.

Between March 2020 and March 2021, excess death rates for Republicans were 1.6 percentage points higher than for Democrats. After April 2021, the gap widened to 10.6 percentage points.

The fates of Republicans and Democrats began to diverge markedly after the introduction of vaccines in April of 2021. Between March 2020 and March 2021, excess death rates for Republicans were 1.6 percentage points higher than for Democrats. After April 2021, the gap widened to 10.6 percentage points.

Does this mean that differing vaccine uptake levels between Republicans and Democrats caused the mortality gap? Goldsmith-Pinkham says this study alone doesn’t prove that’s the case. However, he believes it does offer “pretty good evidence” that vaccines are at least an important part of the story.

And if indeed that’s the case, it suggests that policy makers should be looking at vaccine-promoting interventions specifically targeted at Republicans, Goldsmith-Pinkham says: “It gives you a sense of where you should be looking and who you should be targeting if you want to solve some of these problems.”

Still more than 300 dead Americans every day

COVID-19 Update

Almost Twice as Many Republicans Died From COVID Before the Midterms Than Democrats

The authors of a new study can’t say if this impacted the midterms, but say that it’s “plausible given just how stark the differences in vaccination rates have been, among Democrats and Republicans.”

 By Matthew Gault

COVID-19 is killing more Republicans than Democrats, according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study, titled Excess Death Rates for Republicans and Democrats During the COVID-19 Pandemic, used voter registration and death records to answer a question: is there a link between political affiliation and rates of COVID related death in the U.S.?

The short answer is yes. “In 2018 and the early parts of 2020, excess death rates for Republicans and Democrats are similar, and centered around zero,” the study said. “Both groups experienced a similar large spike in excess deaths in the winter of 2020-2021. However, in the summer of 2021—after vaccines were widely available—the Republican excess death rate rose to nearly double that of Democrats, and this gap widened further in the winter of 2021.”

The study attributes this to the vaccine uptake disparity between Republicans and Democrats, which has been widely documented as more Republicans refused to take the vaccine; the most vocal anti-vax voices were Republican politicians and some conservative news outlets: “The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available,” the study notes.

Is it possible that anti-vax Republicans dying from COVID affected the midterms? “If Republicans are dying in increased numbers relative to their Democratic colleagues in a political climate where there are so many close electoral contests, could that have been the decider in a particular particular race?” Jason L. Schwartz, an associate professor of Health Policy at the School of Public Health at Yale and one of the authors of the study, told Motherboard. “Our study can't answer that. But it certainly seems plausible given just how stark the differences in vaccination rates have been, among Democrats and Republicans.”

Philip Bump at the Washington Post looked at this same data and posits that COVID deaths did not affect the midterms and suggests that even asking the question is a “grotesque effort to score political points.” However, with so many House races still too close to call and voting margins razor-thin in many important races, it is worth trying to understand if COVID-19 and vaccine rates had any effect on the races.

Schwartz said that he and his colleagues wanted to look at something that hadn’t been carefully studied before. “Could we actually drill down at the level of individuals—in this case of individual death rates—and see whether or not politicization could be linked to mortality,” he said. “So far, it looks like there really is a signal here, particularly linked to the availability of vaccines.”

Schwartz and his colleagues started with voter registration data in Florida and Ohio from 2017. Then they looked at data from Datavent, an organization that provides privacy-preserving information linked to data from the Social Security Administration. The researchers connected all this data to information from funeral homes, newspapers and other resources to build a database of annual U.S. deaths.

The research discovered that excess deaths between Democrats and Republicans remained steady in the early part of the pandemic then began to separate after vaccines were widely available. Schwartz said the reasons why were beyond the remit of the study, but speculated that early COVID prevention measures were government-driven while the vaccine required someone to make a personal choice.

“If you think about the pre-vaccine period…those were times where a lot of measures in place to mitigate the virus were top-down government policy. “Schools closing, football games played in empty stadiums, or restrictions on large indoor gatherings. There were absolutely political divides about those policies,” he said. “But in some cases they were harder for the individual to avoid…once vaccines were on the scene, that really did shift things into that individual choice domain.”

The excess death rate difference isn’t small. “In the summer of 2021—after vaccines were widely available—the Republican excess death rate rose to nearly double that of Democrats, and this gap widened further in the winter of 2021,” the study said. This rose to a 153% difference after all adults could take the vaccine in Florida and Ohio.

This data is part of an early study and doesn’t paint the whole picture. “Our study has several limitations. First, our mortality data, while detailed and recent, only includes approximately 80 percent of deaths in the US. However, excess death patterns in our data are similar to those in other reliable sources,” the study said. “Second, because we did not have information on an individual’s vaccination status, analyses of the association between vaccination rates and excess deaths relied on county-level vaccination rates. Third, our study is based on data from the only states where we could obtain voter registration information (Florida and Ohio); hence, our results may not generalize to other states.”

The pandemic also isn’t over. The vaccines have stopped a lot of people from getting COVID, but vaccine rates in deep red parts of the U.S. are still low. “If these differences in vaccination by political party affiliation persist, then the higher excess death rate among Republicans is likely to continue through the subsequent stages of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the study said.