Will we do anything to stop unnecessary deaths?
By Will Collette
Most people don’t want to hear it and most politicians – certainly not wimpy accidental Gov. Dan McKee or leader of the disloyal opposition and Charlestown state rep Blake “Flip” Filippi - will oppose any restoration of COVID restrictions.
For weeks now, our COVID transmission rates have been going
steadily upward. You may have noticed that people you know, friends and family,
are reporting they have gotten COVID even though they are fully vaccinated. Look
at the RI Health Department chart above to see why so many people you know have
gotten COVID despite being vaccinated.
Fortunately, at least within my own circle, these
breakthrough cases were relatively mild. Others, especially the unvaccinated or immuno-compromised,
were not so lucky.
As Dr. Tony Fauci predicted, we are being hammered with new
strains of COVID because COVID, like any living organism, adapts to survive and
thrive. It has spawned a new family of BA variants that are much more easily
transmitted and can penetrate even the antibody protections you get from being
fully vaccinated.
This will continue until we finally decide to take all the
necessary measures to stop COVID, such as ensuring that everyone is fully
vaccinated and that mask mandates and social distancing are enforced until we
kill this thing once and for all.
But we’re not going to do that. For the right-wingers like Flip Filippi, it’s all
about “freedom.” The freedom to be stupid and to endanger other people’s lives.
For weak-minded officials like McKee, it’s fear of criticism or harm to his beloved small businesses.
The US has more recorded COVID deaths than any other
country- over one million. According to a new
study by Brown University, reported by National Public Radio, up to 319,000
of America’s million COVID casualties could have been prevented just by being
fully vaccinated.
Predictably, there’s a huge Red State/Blue State difference. The highest numbers of preventable deaths happened in Texas and Florida (of course), each losing about 30,000 people unnecessarily. Their crypto-fascist governors Greg Abbott and Ron DerSantis led their people into the Valley of Death to make some right-wing point.
The four states with the highest rate of preventable deaths
are predictably all solid Red, led by West Virginia along with Wyoming,
Tennessee and Kentucky. Among the lowest rates is Massachusetts along with
Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
In the next lowest tier, are Rhode Island and most of the rest
of the Blue states. Even though our preventable death rate is low, we still had 611 Rhode
Islanders die who could have lived on had they been vaccinated. Our total COVID
death toll is 1,763.
Thanks to Dan McKee, Rhode Islanders are free to largely
ignore COVID while rates rise. Our excellent Health Department Director quit
after frequent clashes with McKee and has not been replaced. Mention of COVID
has largely dropped off the Health Department’s twitter feed.
But the numbers show that cases are way up. The infection
rate is way up. Hospitalizations are up and, sadly, deaths are climbing as
well. The true case numbers are actually much higher than those officially recorded
because so many people now have home test kits, the results of which are usually not
included in the official count.
Nonetheless, look at the incredible spike in the case rate just in the past few weeks (below). I screenshot this chart from the Health Department website just this afternoon.
I am hopeful that our accidental governor will be beaten in the Democratic primary; my pick is our term-limited Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea who has done an excellent job running her department for the last eight years. Then I hope Nellie will trash Trumplican Ashley Kalus.
Kalus ran an unsuccessful COVID testing company and says the politician she most admires is Florida's Ron DerSantis.
But while McKee stays in office, it will be up to Rhode
Islanders to make their own choices about how to handle the pandemic and the
fifth surge in cases.
You don’t have to wear a mask, but you should. A good N-95
mask gives you great protection. I noted that after McKee ended all mask
mandates, very few people wore them. But the ratio of masked to unmasked has
gotten higher as cases rise.
Personally, I mask up when going out in public.
And I am fully vaccinated. I trust the vaccine and there are
319,000 dead people that I would cite as proof of that faith. Not to mention
friends and relatives who have had breakthrough infections and come out the
other end a few days of mild illness.
Obviously, being vaccinated in no guarantee that you won't catch COVID. Nor is it a guarantee you won't land in the hospital or die. Just look at the chart at the beginning of this article. However, being vaccinated improves your odds tremendously from joining the 319,000 unvaccinated dead.
Recently, I got my fourth shot – my second booster. I wasn’t expecting any reaction or side effects since I had handled my previous three shots with little more than a sore injection site.
This time was different: on
the day after the shot, I became pretty ill, wracked with body aches, extreme
fatigue, a cough, and overall miserable feeling. I had not felt that sick in
years. So I went to bed.
I slept like a corpse and instead of waking up like one, I
awoke feeling fine, as if nothing had happened. I was miserable for about 18
hours, but through that time, I kept thinking how bad I’d feel if I actually
had COVID.
Despite my unhappy experience with shot #4, I will readily
take shot #5 or, hopefully, a new broader-spectrum shot.
Pandemics end when the disease runs out of people to infect.
At minimum, we should take every reasonable step to make sure we protect
ourselves from infection.
