COVID Mitigation Worked

 

Without a Plan

The impact of vaccines and behavior on US cumulative deaths from COVID-19

 America’s improvised strategy to fight COVID-19—public and private behavioral changes to slow transmission until vaccines could be deployed—prevented close to 800,000 deaths in the country. The ad hoc effort’s effectiveness is surprising because public health officials could not precisely target mitigation as they lacked precise information on the routes and mechanisms of the disease’s transmission.  -Brookings

What Worked?

Hand Washing

Masking

Social Distancing

Isolating

Testing

Lockdowns

Ad hoc measures to keep us safe were the best things we could do with no plan in place until the vaccine was developed. Research suggests without the ad hoc measures, COVID would have cost over two million lives instead of one million. It is estimated that vaccine hesitancy cost an additional 273 thousand lives.

There were two forces at work. The first group, people who had a a good idea of what needed to be done, forged ahead with solutions. 

The second group, people who were blown away by the enormity of the task, spent an inordinate amount of energy looking for somebody to blame. They looked for conspiracies from the CDC and HIH. They blamed the World Health Organization. They blamed China for deliberately releasing the virus as a form of warfare. Another conspiracy theory claimed it was a plot by the establishment to deny the president in his bid for reelection. None of this was supported by the facts. All of it got in the way, and put all of us at risk.

Thank God the first group persevered. 

Your Identity Matters

Express Yourself

Who you are is an asset, not a liability. Inclusiveness is a strength in a productive working environment and for society.

To anybody who has ever questioned your identity ever, ever, ever, or you find yourself living in the gray spaces, I promise you this: There is indeed a place for us.- Ariana DeBose

According to the CDC, discrimination comes in many forms. They list:

• Age Discrimination
• Disability Discrimination
• Sexual Orientation
• Status as a Parent
• Religious Discrimination
• National Origin
• Pregnancy
• Sexual Harassment
• Race, Color, and Sex
• Reprisal / Retaliation

What's The Problem?

Discrimination can influence individuals' health indirectly, even when they are unaware that it has happened. Discrimination due to race, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation determine access to health care and the social determinants of health, including contact with the criminal justice system. (-healthaffiars.org Feb 2020) Discrimination is corrosive, eating away at self worth and self esteem. Discrimination leads  to resentment and hate. The result for our society is a lot of wasted potential.

There's an economic cost for this country because of discrimination. Broad groups of people are categorized and marginalized by discrimination. We lose trillions of dollars by not allowing certain groups full participation in the economy. Those trillions would be put back into the economy in jobs, and increased spending power. For example, Gender inequality costs the US economy over 6 billion dollars a year. Racial disparities and discrimination has resulted in $16 trillion in lost potential over the past 20 years. -Citigroup Sep/2020

Instead of dividing us to gain political power and wealth, as some leaders do, we should be embracing the talents of those they would marginalize.

To change this we have two choices. We can wait for somebody to take charge, to become the leader of a just cause, or we can, as a group, speak out. Activism creates leaders and leadership. We need to be raising our voices, rejoicing in our diversity to help our society reach something closer to its full potential. 

But How?

I borrow from a positioning statement the Methodists once used, “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors.”  If our hearts and minds are truly open, it must mean we're listening. Then, the doors will open wide. 

Discrimination is a learned behavior. Because of that, there is still the hope we can get it right.

 

Playing politics with our health

 Trump's political appointees are playing games with our safety and well-being. Political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services are scuttling reports from the CDC they believe might be unflattering to the president. Why? Because the reports might hurt his chances at reelection.

This is from the the NY Times.

The Times reconstructed the White House’s push for a plasma therapy, and found a pattern that helps explain the intensifying concern that President Trump could demand pre-Election Day approval of a vaccine.

For instance, in August, President Trump called the director of the National Institutes of Health, demanding fast action to approve expanded use of convalescent plasma to treat the coronavirus. Even though it didn’t come, Mr. Trump announced the expansion of the treatment anyway, with the F.D.A.’s approval, on the eve of the Republican National Convention.

Tensions over the White House’s urgency to show progress against the pandemic, which has killed more than 193,500 people in the U.S., are also playing out at the Department of Health and Human Services, where political appointees have repeatedly meddled in weekly outbreak reports prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Where's our integrity? Where's our ethics? Where's our compassion for our fellow human beings? Where's our common decency? Where's our love for all people? This last question is supposed to be a bedrock value of Christianity. What does this say about his so-called Christian supporters? We're way too deep into partisan politics. It's needs to end, now!

Increased Autism Rate - Diagnosis

A study out of Denmark by researchers at Aarhus University suggests the increase is because of the way Autism is now diagnosed.

“This study is important because it shows a large part of the increase has nothing to do with the environment, but rather administrative decisions,” says study author Stefan Hansen.

The CDC estimates that one in 68 children in the United States is on the Autism Spectrum. That represents a 30% increase over 2012.

As always. more study and research is needed. The CDC announced on January 2nd that it is ovesting $20MM over the next four years to better track children with autism spectrum disorder so that the U.S. can better understand what impacts the prevalence of autism.

You can read more about this research at Time Magazine.