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This week, Minnesota broke its previous 2021 high water mark for COVID-19 hospitalizations.
As of Friday, there were more than 1,670 COVID-19 hospitalizations in Minnesota; 338 in intensive care. Meanwhile, the state is still reporting dozens of COVID-19 deaths per day.
With more than 60 percent of Minnesota’s population fully vaccinated against the virus, this wave is smaller, overall, than the massive one that peaked around Thanksgiving last year, just weeks before vaccines were approved. But it’s lasted longer.
“It’s a marathon. This has gone on and on,” said Dr. David Wilcox, chief medical officer for Sanford Health of Northern Minnesota.
The rising number of people going to the hospital and dying of COVID-19 in recent months has also included some people who were vaccinated against the disease. For some, these breakthrough infections have raised alarm that the vaccines might not protect people as much as had been hoped.
That alarm is for the most part unfounded. The data on hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 in Minnesota since vaccines became available clearly show that the unvaccinated are far more likely than people with the vaccine to end up in the hospital or die of the disease.
Stark differences
The Minnesota Department of Health keeps data on the vaccination status of those who go to the hospital or die of COVID-19. Here are the data broken down by age groups:
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When you look at the population hospitalized with COVID-19, “Without a doubt, it’s unvaccinated people,” said Dr. Joshua Huelster, a critical care/intensivist at Allina’s Abbott Northwestern Hospital. Huelster said the last figure he heard put the share of COVID-19 ICU patients who are unvaccinated at 92 percent.
People who are unvaccinated and hospitalized or die of COVID-19 are also, on average, significantly younger than those who are vaccinated with the same outcomes, data from the Minnesota Department of Health show. Between early May and early November, the median age of COVID-19 hospitalization for those not fully vaccinated is 61, while the median age of people who have died is 69. In the same timeframe, the median age of COVID-19 hospitalization for people who were fully vaccinated and experienced a breakthrough case is 73, while the median age of people who died was 82.
When it comes to people who are vaccinated and get very ill, Minnesota Department of Health spokesperson Doug Schultz said in an email that roughly 90 percent of vaccine breakthrough hospitalizations and deaths have at least one underlying medical condition.
Huelster said that at Abbott, the majority of breakthrough patients at Abbott have another condition that is known to prevent their immune system from mounting a strong response to the vaccine. Some of the most common are people on immunosuppressive drugs due to solid organ, like kidney, transplant. Others include those with autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis that suppress the immune system.
For teens, the state’s data show the risk of death and hospitalization is low regardless of vaccination status relative to older populations. Still, hospitalizations and deaths are certainly not unheard of in kids, and doctors urge them to get vaccinated if eligible to reduce the spread of the disease overall in the community.
“About a third of our cases are school-aged children,” Wilcox said. “And that will continue to be a source of virus for everyone else — the mid-lifers and the grandparents, and the great grandparents, to become ill because this virus will continue to find a place to circulate.”
Long-term effects
What’s often missing from the conversation about the impact of COVID-19 is something that doesn’t show up in the state’s data, Huelster said: people, including the young, who survive COVID-19 but whose physical health is completely changed by the virus.
In the past week, Huelster said Abbott Northwestern has had as many as eight people under age 50, and several in their middle to late 30s, on ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), an intensive treatment that adds oxygen to the blood from outside the body, allowing the patient’s heart and lungs to take a break.
“They’re living but they’re just devastated physically,” Huelster said. Some will have lifelong respiratory issues and others are listed for lung transplants due to permanent lung damage.
The best defense? Getting vaccinated.
“People want this so much to be binary: vaccines do work, or vaccines don’t work, or someone got a breakthrough on vaccine so that means I really shouldn’t get vaccinated. And there’s nothing further from the truth,” Wilcox said. “Just like the flu, plenty of people get the flu after a vaccine, but they don’t end up in the hospital or dying or being on a ventilator and all those more dramatic responses. So our one-liner is that hospitalizations, ICU care, ventilator care and death is becoming a disease of the unvaccinated, primarily.”
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Does MDH keep data on how many Covid cases go on to develop long Covid, and also the vaccinated vs. unvaccinated numbers for those?
Pat, the short answer to your question is: “No”. Long COVID is a much more complex scenario, there really isn’t even a clear diagnostic definition for it and MDH has it’s hands full just doing what it CAN do now. I’m sure there ARE some studies underway looking as some of the symptoms but that’s not something State Health Departments are going to be doing right now for the most part.
Another alarming factor is that the case count, fatalities, and hospitalizations aren’t going down… we seem to be in an a really extended plateau. It was hoped that COVID would burn through the unvaccinated population and we’d a slow drop in cases, but the math just isn’t on our side with so many unvaccinated.
There are also more breakthrough cases among the “immune” who had COVID 19 but didn’t get vaccinated.
Apparently the relentless, ongoing propaganda against vaccinations from “the usual suspects” will bolster a much longer incidence of coronavirus claiming victims. New variants against which no one possesses immunity (the clue is in the term “new”!) emerge, and if the rich nations blunder and hoard vaccines, the poorer nations will be a rich breeding ground for fully exportable coronavirus variants as well, into an indefinite future.
The Trump Virus is a fitting name for the entire farrago of needless death, pain and suffering.
It would be interesting to see a regional or county-by-county analysis. Would we see disproportionate numbers of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in outstate counties?
The online version of The New York Times has a daily, county-by-county and country-by-country update of cases, deaths, and vaccinations. As a subscriber, I check it every morning, hoping to see some light at the end of the tunnel, but the patterns are clear.
About 64% of Minnesotans are fully vaccinated, and it took us an awfully long time to reach that level. Still, the 64% is an average figure. Cook County (Grand Marais) and Olmsted County (Rochester) are over 70% vaccinated, a level that seems to lead to reduced cases when countries achieve it, but some central and western Minnesota counties are less than 50% vaccinated. The booby prizes go to central Minnesota counties like Todd, Isanti, Benton, and Kanabec, all of which are less than 40% vaccinated. Hennepin County is 68% vaccinated, but that, too, varies tremendously by neighborhood and suburb.
The per capita case rate reported for Hennepin County this morning was 67 per 100,000. That number was going down very, very slowly, hovering in the 40s, until Thanksgiving, when it shot up again. Waseca County currently has the highest per capita case rate in the nation at 215.
In the early days, the illness was concentrated in the Twin Cities, home to the only major international airport between Chicago and Denver, and in other major cities that serve as ports of entry. This gave rural Minnesotans a false sense of security and a feeling that Governor Walz was instituting strict measures just because he had dictatorial tendencies, and that was in addition to the right-wing media telling their audiences that covid was “no worse than the flu” or “a Democratic hoax,” that various quack remedies or praying in the right way would save a person.
In the current wave, illnesses and deaths follow the same pattern in the less vaccinated counties, according to the graphs on the Times website, while the more vaccinated counties show deaths much lower than illnesses in the more vaccinated counties.
A helpful, informative post. Thanks.
The Cleveland Clinic and John’s Hopkins are doing extensive tracking, as are other prominent clinics & universities, I’m sure. Here and abroad. Plus of course the WHO (World Health Organization) and other more global entities. A worldwide pandemic of a new, novel, emerging virus wb thoroughly tracked for years….
Yes.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/minnesota-covid-cases.html
Paul… Pull up the latest Park Rapids Enterprise to see a thorough look at this 8 county lake area covid count ….hospitalizations, deaths, et. al. Little Hubbard county, 49 covid deaths. This is big Trump/Red country with many anti-vaxer beliefs.
“This is big Trump/Red country with many anti-vaxer beliefs.”
And what of all the areas with Biden/blue beliefs that also happen to be black?
You can actually look at the maps MDH provides every week in their weekly summary.
https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/situation.html#weekly2
I admit to not being a medical doctor, but data like this seems to me unequivocal proof that those people who continue to oppose vaccine mandates, including, especially, some relatively small groups of medical professionals in out-state areas, and including the aggressively-foolish bar owner from Faribault blathering about “freedom” as she’s led off to jail, are either malevolent and sadistic when it comes to the welfare of their fellow citizens and community members, and don’t mind being accessories to avoidable deaths, or their opposition literally has nothing to do with the medicine and science behind the mandates. It’s exclusively ideological, which makes it, like the Faribault bar-owner, aggressively foolish.
Richard Turnbull above may well be on to something. The former president, himself aggressively foolish, keeps calling it “the China Virus,” but a more accurate name, especially in the current context, is the Trump Virus. After months of lying about the severity of the disease, including not bothering to tell close associates that he himself was infected and was contagious, Mr. Trump has demonstrated to the nation and the world that his egocentricity and dishonesty are near-total. He should not to be trusted with any degree of authority over anyone, much less elected to office, and in particular an office with national influence. He’s a killer.
Calling it trump virus is just as foolish as calling it the china virus. Delta and Omicron came after he left office.
If trump wasn’t a fool, he could have been a hero.
If hillary’s president, would the resistance to control methods been any less
Greg… do you really think that Hillary and her staff would have denied covid’s seriousness and existence such as Trump did, thereby giving the virus free reign like he did, for as long as Trump did ?
Greg, no one is actually calling it the Trump virus, whereas Trump and his devotees have called COVID the China Virus. Richard was using a rhetorical device.
????? You need more schooling. Delta and Omicron are variants of the new, novel, emerging coronavirus casually called Covid 19 which started during Trump’s rule of terror ( late Dec, Jan). And because they are more populated w lg cities the blue states got hit first. He was fine w that cuz those folks dying didn’t vote for him(!) It wasn’t until the red states started being affected more in Mar that he became a bit more forthright, tho even then minimalized risk and insisted red state governors do so as well and not push vaccines, masks, social distancing, etc. I could go on and on, but you get the gist now. Right???
You know Ray, the folks that should be reading this aren’t, and if they were they would call Greta fake news. Just reminds me of a quote: “I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it.”
— Edith Sitwell, poet and critic. There just isn’t any place we can go with some folks.
Absolutely agree. Politically weaponizing a pandemic for personal gain crosses all sorts of ethical lines. And the resultant numbers of completely unnecessary deaths are indeed criminal. Trump and all complicit sb charged, tried publicly and jailed for life. (Tho even that doesn’t seem like nearly enough since he is in his 70s and not the picture of health). Another strong plus is that he wb unable to run for ofc again.
Is there any recent data on breakthrough cases ? The latest data from MDH website is from October. I now know 4 fully vaccinated and “boosted” people who tested positive – but not seriously ill – kinda like the flu they say.
Doug, new data and observations are emerging every week. The problem is they are presented in dozens of papers and publications that no one has time to summarize for the public consumption. There’s nothing particularly “new” in recent data that would be more enlightening or different than the October stuff you see here.
By the simple math of 60% of folks being vaccinated (probably closer to 80% of 70+ year olds) there should be less severe cases and less deaths than 1 year ago. There have been more deaths in the USA the past 10 months, during the time vaccine has been available, than all of 2020. How do you explain that? You would have to say the virus is killing the 40% of unvaccinated folks at a much higher rate than it did 1 year ago. The math just doesn’t figure for the virus killing only 40% of the unvaccinated population at current rate.
You need to keep up, Joe. It has been all over the news that the delta mutation is much more contagious than the previous variants.
Furthermore, the first wave didn’t affect rural areas all that much and did the most damage in major cities, giving rural areas a false sense of security. The Twin Cities appeared to be covid-free by July of this year, but then along came the delta mutation. In late summer and early fall, it was burning through the South and the Great Plains.
Timing would suggest that the delta mutation came to this area just in time for the State Fair and the Sturgis motorcycle rally, both of which acted as super spreader events for rural Minnesota.
The most vaccinated parts of the state still have the lowest death rates. Being over 65 and having lost a relative and several acquaintances to covid, I got vaccinated (and boosted) as soon as possible.
So far, the omicron version is more contagious but causes a milder illness. Our best hope is that the covid virus evolves so that the dominant form may be more contagious but is not as deadly or disabling as the delta variant.
Karen, I believe the Delta variant is more transmittable but not more than twice as deadly as SARS-Cov2. Without killing vaccinated folks, the Delta variant would have to be almost 3 times more deadly than original COViD when you figure in that 60% of folks are vaccinated. The one fact in this equation is: more deaths from COViD in 10 months of vaccination time versus 1 year prior with no vaccinations. The math doesn’t work nationwide when you add up more deaths from COViD with vaccines versus than without, subtracting 60% of the population from the equation. I believe we would have heard if Delta variant was that much more lethal. Math doesn’t lie.
“Karen, I believe the Delta variant is more transmittable but not more than twice as deadly as SARS-Cov2.”
Joe, you’re right… Delta isn’t twice a deadly… it’s 10x to 15x as deadly- for unvaccinated people. Thanks (in part) to the efforts of people like yourself, as displayed in comment threads, social media, FOX news, and congress… Delta still has tens of millions of unvaccinated victims to infect and kill.
You can’t do epidemiology with “simple” math, but if you were to look into it you would find that the work has already been done, and we know the the high fatality rates your complaining about are the result of so much illness and death among the large unvaccinated population. You keep playing games with percentages, kind of like when you guys were scoffing at the danger of COVID to children because it was only predicted to be lethal to 1% of children; that is until someone pointed out the fact that this would 2 million children. Likewise you fail to realize that 20%-30% of 5+ million people in MN is over a million people, more than enough susceptible people to account for this years increased fatality rates.
Think of it this way, if there were only a million people in MN and NONE of them were vaccinated, these are very nearly the hospitalization and fatality rates you would expect to see. Whereas if everyone were vaccinated the fatalities would be reduced by 80+%.
“Math doesn’t lie”…
Not when used by people who understand its principles. Or when its used by professional degreed epidemiologists whose life’s work it is to understand infectious diseases and public health crises .
When used by others in vain attempts to “rebut” those docs’ claims about Covid mortality, not so much. But I do have to grant you your singular and dedicated efforts at misunderstanding (either willfully or not) most aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic, Joe. No one can claim that you didn’t go down with the (anti-vax) ship!
Sure, math doesn’t lie. But this isn’t math. This is word salad. This is psuedoscientific nonsense.
Or, put another way… there IS less severe illness and death among VACCINATED people.
Well, seems you are struggling with the math! There is a chart provided by Greta above, that has unvaxed death rate at 39.2/100K and vaxed at 2.7/100k which suggests a 14.5 X probability of death higher for un-vaxed than vaxed if you get the covid. Now, it also seems, there were more restrictions a year ago than today, i.e. restaurants, events remote this, remote that etc. etc. etc., but the cry baby anti mask anti vaxers would rather go around contaminating everyone vs. wearing a mask etc. , too uncomfortable and restrictive, better to be obstinate and take an ICU bed from someone that really needs it than think about your neighbor’s welfare.
Nice try.
But like the attempts most deniers, a mishmash of mixed up timelines, poor math, and factual slight of hand still don’t add up to a logical argument.
The pandemic didn’t start until well into March of 2020. So “all of 2020 vs 10 months of 2021” isn’t the appropriate comparison at all. Thanks to the early lockdowns, it was pretty well contained everywhere except New York and Seattle until summer.
Vaccines weren’t readily available until March of 2021. Nowhere near “all of 2021.”
We spent early 2021 with an unvaccinated population dropping like flies after the Thanksgiving and Christmas surges ripped through a disbelieving populace that fell for the idiocy they heard on Fox News.
The appropriate comparison would be from about April 1, 2020 to about March 31, 2021. Then, period 2 would be April 1, 2021 to date.
Want to try your math again with an appropriate set of dates?
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/05/1059828993/data-vaccine-misinformation-trump-counties-covid-death-rate
If not, here’s a link from NPR that makes pretty clear how successful arguments like yours have been. Not helpful, but clearly successful.
This pandemic started in Asia. Likely due to wet animal markets.. Documentation now exists that proves it was in the USA for sure in Dec, possibly last Nov. –So over 2 years ago.– I used to work in healthcare/govn. I still try to stay current. I was aware of it the first week of Jan, as I’m sure was our federal govn.
Well for starters: approx 85% of the general population needs to be FULLY VACCINATED (today in Dec 2021 that means 3 shots) in order to reach ‘herd immunity’. Immunity also doesn’t just apply to locales, as it is a worldwide pandemic. With a global society traveling a lot again now, but with many poorer countries still largely unvaccinated, this means the virus will continue to spread and morph…til far, far more people gets their shots. We’re talking YEARS…unless, until vaccination becomes the norm for the world population. Then the pandemic can become classified as an endemic and controlling will become easier.
You are forgetting that people who have not been vaccinated but contracted COVID-19 and recovered are part of the percentage of people who can comprise those necessary to reach herd immunity.
Ever since this pandemic began we’ve had a dedicated team of deniers, pseudo-skeptics, and wannabe science wizards who keep trying to play math, logic, or rhetorical games with the data. These folks have thus far displayed an amazing capacity to resist education and reliable information.
Despite the fact that ALL of available data and information about vaccines, SARS CoV-2, transmission, treatment, masking and distancing, shut downs, etc. etc. has refuted ALL of the various objections and complaints these people have made… they keep making them and they keep trying to invent new ones. Ordinarily people are embarrassed when their absurdities are revealed but these folks don’t seem to have any shame.
With that in mind I’m going to try one last time with a new strategy that might penetrate this wall of suborn intellectual density. In reference to Joe’s example of “simple” but nonetheless ridiculous math… I assume these Libertarian/Republican leaning people are fans of Clint Eastwood so I’ll point to a famous line of his from “Magnum Force”… “Man’s got to know his limitations.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG2cux_6Rcw One of the most important intellectual skills anyone can master, is knowing your limitations. You guy have have been exceeding your limitations for years… listen to Clint, he’s your kind of guy right?
I think it’s important to note that if Joe’s resistance to COVID education was just… Joe, it wouldn’t be worth responding to for over two years. But it isn’t just this one guy… I see the same garbage all over the place from people all over the world. They think they’re being clever, and critical, and educated, but they’re just being dense. I tend to call this folks dunderheads but my wife came across another description the other day- “Covidiots”. Covidiot is a catchy phrase but I’m afraid this intellectual density isn’t limited to COVID, we see everywhere from education to economics and climate change.
This would be an interesting cultural observation if it weren’t getting so many people killed and injured. My concern is that as a culture and society we actually cultivate and manufacture these toxic mentalities in a variety of ways. I suspect the problem is magnified by this cultivation more so than if it was a simple result of natural selection as it were. If we don’t figure out how to change that, we risk extinction because the crises we face are increasing in magnitude almost geometrically. We may get through this pandemic, but I’m not sure we can afford to stumble through all of our crises like this. Sooner or later this stuff will bury us.
Paul, please show me a scientific study where the lethal component doesn’t change, you remove 60% of potential patients and the number of deaths grow. Use any study you would like to show that removing 60% of any group, variable doesn’t change and number goes up…. Thank you.
If you took 60% of drivers off the streets, nobody changed their driving habits, would you expect more or less accidents and deaths?
Again, this is just word salad. This isn’t science – its nonsense.
I’ll ask yet again, why? Why the deliberate ignorance? Why ignore the science in favor of internet researches who cherry pick bits and pieces and come up with nonsensical conclusions?
Do you want Covid to never go away? Do you not care that this is needlessly killing unvaccinated people? That the ICUs are full and people can’t care? What is the point of promoting nonsense?
Pat, not word salad just straight math. If you eliminate 60% of potential COViD victims with the vaccine, the Delta variant continues its normal morbidity rate, how in 10 months can there be more deaths from COViD than the previous year when you had 100% of the population in play?
Joe, I can sympathize with being the Voice in the Wilderness. It happens to me all the time….
I shouldn’t waste my time like this, Joe, but I do enjoy your stuff, so here goes.
The fatal flaw in your argument is the idea that 100% of the population was “in play” in the pre-vaccine component of the pandemic. As you might recall, since you diligently railed against it as totally unnecessary liberal “dictatorship” ,we had extreme lock-downs (and masking and social distancing) ordered and enforced throughout much of the country at this time. This means that the Covid morbidity rate in the pre-vaccine period was far below what it would have been if most responsible elected officials hadn’t heeded the advice of the infectious disease docs. We (meaning you!) simply can’t know how bad it would have been had these measures not been taken.
I’ve said many times before, one simply can’t compare the pre-vaccine Covid data with the post-vaccine data. Most of today’s un-vaxxed are essentially committing suicide to vindicate some absurd principle. They could be alive today if they had a brain in their head or hadn’t sat listening to preposterous rightwing propaganda trying to “prove” Dr Fauci “wrong”, of all idiocy. Have a good day!
BK, you are making assumptions not verifiable by any means. COViD virus was running rampant through major metropolitan areas, NYC, Boston, Washington DC to name a few, in 2020, the country was in a panic. The vaccine became available in January of 2021, with the promise of two jabs and you will not get or give the virus…. That was not true. Now you are saying that the vaccinated are not currently dying from COViD but the number of folks who died from COViD in 10 months of 2021, surpasses the 2020 totals. With 60% of folks being vaccinated, roughly 200 million out of 350 million Americans, you now claim only the unvaccinated are dying without Delta variant being more lethal. The math just plain doesn’t work.
So your assumptions are without masks, mandatory vaccination and lockdowns the virus would be totally out of control and killing at a much higher rate than we saw in 2020. Explain Florida, less cases per 100,000 than anywhere in USA, with no restrictions. There are assumptions and then there are facts.
“The vaccine became available in January of 2021, with the promise of two jabs and you will not get or give the virus”
No, that was never the promise. In fact, I remember many instances of officials stressing that it was too early to know whether or not the vaccine prevented a person from acquiring a viral load (as distinguished from becoming sick) or from passing any of that viral load on to others. Here is just one example article I found from mid-February:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00450-z
No promises were EVER made that the vaccines would prevent getting or giving the virus.
And you still haven’t fixed your erroneous timelines. If you insist on spreading disinformation, you should at least put in the minimal effort to make it passable to a cursory review. The elementary errors you keep repeating damage your credibility.
Sorry, Joe, but you are the one making unverifiable assumptions.
It’s easy to “explain” FL (and TX, if you’d like). Even though they were “governed” by Repubs hostile to modern medical science, many, many responsible and informed people still live in those states and THEY followed the clear recommendations of the CDC at the time. Thus they curtailed their activity, stayed home as best they could, bought and wore masks, forwent holiday gatherings, and socially distanced. In other words, they worked to keep themselves “out of play”, to use your terminology.
Again, you have no way of quantifying this phenomenon, however much you want to, and unfortunately it renders your fervent efforts intellectually (and mathematically) fruitless.
And Joe, allow me finally to say that I love that you are literally arguing (statistically, no less!) that the only possible explanation for the many Covid deaths in the post-vaccine period is that they MUST be coming from large (apparently equal!) numbers of vaccinated people as well, despite the fact that a patient’s vaccination status is one of the rock-solid data points that we have!
Who’s doing the lying here? The treating docs, nationwide? The CDC? The lib’rul media? All of the above?
This is a highly-evolved conspiracy theory, and all I can say is: Bravo!
Joe, you’re not processing or comprehending the summary’s that have been available for almost two years now. Digging up the source journal article those summary’s are based on for you would a waste of time.
You’re creating a straw man, and a flimsy one at that. Let’s use your example, though, Joe.
“If you took 60% of drivers off the streets, nobody changed their driving habits, would you expect more or less accidents and deaths?”
So, as straw men go, this is one is low on straw and lit on fire before anyone even considers knocking it down. Turns out, we did have this nearly exact scenario. During the pandemic, we DID take 60% of the drivers off the streets. And we saw MORE deaths. Why? Because the variables DID change. Drivers DID change their habits. The drivers left on the streets were those who HAD to drive in a pandemic and those who WANTED to drive in a pandemic. Open streets invite more speed, so the drivers who HAD to drive in a pandemic were likely enticed to drive faster (no, I’m not going to do the research for you, Joe–that data is widely available and easy to find/free to access). These individuals didn’t necessarily drive badly or more recklessly–they were still driving to work, so they had a responsibility at the end of that commute. But they were probably, on average, driving faster. And speed is directly related to death in an accident. For every 5 mph faster, there’s an 8.5% increase in death risk. So, these people probably contributed some to the higher death rate during the pandemic. The other group — people who WANTED to drive during a pandemic — were already predisposed to recklessness. While some might have been individuals in need of getting out of the house for a Sunday drive, a far higher percentage were those who were attracted to the ability to drive at dangerous speeds and with reckless abandon. They went from being that jerk you flip off, but was otherwise limited to the physics of spatial fill of corporeal entities, to the jerk who only meets solid objects when he’s at 120 mph instead of 60. You generally don’t survive if you hit a solid object at 120 mph, whether you’re the driver or at the receiving end of his recklessness.
So, the variables changed because people are not reliable constants.
So, too, with the virus. People changed their habits and we haven’t run out of naive immune systems yet. And, just like with people who are vaccinated, people who previously got COVID aren’t off the hook, either. We’re recycling victims at this point. At least with the vaccine, you don’t have to get hospitalized to decrease your risk of getting hospitalized/dying the second time (or more) around.
It’s moved to the red states where the most deniers & unvaxed live.
If whatever drove the 60% of drivers off the roads still existed/persisted: yes, I’d expect more accidents/deaths.
Well highway deaths did ho up during vovid
Why do we continue to put a political spin on this? Look at all the comments.
Plain and simple vaccinations safe hospital beds and lives. Get vaccinated!! All of us need to pull together and do what is right for everybody. We all have loved ones we don’t want to get sick.
Vaccines might not be perfect (they aren’t), but the data overwhelmingly supports their importance in fighting this.
I just get sick seeing the comments about the Trumpers vs the metro area. People are people.
Well, the truth hurts, robert. But the data is the data; no getting around it, no matter how painful.
Other than that, I do agree with your comment…
Robert, in order to stop transmission and reduce infection and illness you need to locate the source of ongoing illness and infection. That source right now in the US is primarily unvaccinated Americans, and those people in a vast majority are Republicans or Libertarians, not Democrats. That’s not a political spin, it’s just a fact. So when we talk about this fact it’s not a political attack, it’s an attempt to figure how to protect ourselves and suppress transmission. The biggest politicizers of the pandemic have always been Republicans and Libertarians complaining about their “freedoms” and profits. Surely you don’t expect us to ignore that fact so you can pretend everyone is equally responsible for this ongoing crisis? And since you guys are always the champions of personal responsibility surely we need not explain why it’s important to identify those who are responsible right? We’re still dealing a crises and we need competent leadership and policy… you don’t want some guy who’s de-worming himself to be driving the bus right?
The unvaccinated have already dug their heels in. Any belittling of them, pointing a finger at them, isn’t going to make any difference. The whole reason we are in this mess, with no coherent path forward is the political nature of every single thing about this pandemic. We can all rant and rave all we want to, nothing is going to change. And when I say political, yes it is absolutely on both sides of the aisle. This whole thing hasn’t been driven by medical or public health. Trump this, Biden that, who cares?
Devotion to the “Both Sides Do It!” narrative is where you have made your critical error in analysis here.
The reality is that both sides DON’T do it, particularly in this pandemic. One “side” tried to effectuate (to varying degrees) what professional public health officials were recommending, and the other “side” essentially resisted that very early on, minimized the problem, and tried to “rebut” the docs and squirm away from the recommended policies. Do you think it’s some sort of coincidence that the strongest Trump counties have some of the lowest vaccination rates? What’s your explanation for the phenomenon if “people are people”?
And crying about some (nameless) Dem on the internet claiming in Nov 2020 they “wouldn’t take the Trump vaccine!” doesn’t save your bacon on this point….
Hilarious, which prominent democrat said they would take the vaccine prior to Biden being elected? I am waiting for the list.
Biden, no, Harris, no, Pelosi, no, Schumer, no, etc. Trump was pushing operation warp speed, which he personally had little to do with, and every democrat said they didn’t trust it.
They all said no. It had nothing to do with the safety of the vaccine, they were all political answers to undermine Trump and elect Biden. The rhetoric from Jan 2o to Nov 20 was all political driven. And guess what, it hasn’t stopped. Every move that Trump tried to make in the early days to limit international travel he was screamed at as racist or fascist. Now Biden does it and not a peep from the media.
I state again. We will all either get vaccinated or we will get the virus. You can’t stop this train that is flying down the tracks.
Well I don’t know any Democratic politicians but most of the people I know including myself had declared our willingness to get vaccinated long before Biden got elected. I would have gotten into the clinical trials if possible. And while that was going on Republicans were organizing super spreader events that got their own people killed, and gearing up to block mandatory vaccinations as assaults on their liberties. I’m sure that among thousands of Democratic politicians in our country some of them shared this attitude towards vaccines. We know Trump pulled every string he could to get experimental treatments when got himself infected.
The unvaccinated have already dug their heels in. Any belittling of them, pointing a finger at them, isn’t going to make any difference.
Then they’ll die, and it will be their fault. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care about their hurt feelings, I don’t care about their beliefs, I don’t care if they live or not. NOW, because of their intransigence, I am left only the option to care about those whose lives and opinions I value, my decisions made ONLY to protect their lives. I have no further time for those who desire conflict for conflict’s sake, contrarianism for the sake of sport or egotistical boasting. Those people are dying at an alarming rate, must suck for them.
That’s the worst part of all this, Matt. They’ve succeeded in destroying our empathy. And it wasn’t just the last 2 years. It’s been at least 5 years. My effs are all gone. And that, my friends, is a house divided while we’re all on this side of the turf. Congrats to our enemies within and without. And for those of us who believe in anything on the other side of the turf, the theft of our souls at metaphorical gunpoint hurts quite a bit, too.
I wouldn’t say they’ve destroyed my empathy, I still have plenty of it, for those that deserve it. All conservatives have done is convince me, emphatically, that they are not among them.
Robert, you still seem to think that the response we get from the unvaccinated is relevant somehow… it’s not. Nothing we’re doing or saying here is intended to sway the unvaccinated, they have clearly made their choices and will live or die accordingly. No one is belittling them in an attempt to change their minds, we do not expect them to change their minds regardless. The focus here is making sure that those who want reliable information have access to it. The fact that the unvaccinated are driving the latest surge is just information, it’s data we can use. It’s not a political observation.
Robert, the virus is not a political phenomena, it’s a virus, you understand that right? SARS CoV-2 doesn’t know or care what political Party you belong to or what your political beliefs are. Your assumptions regarding the politicization of the vaccine simply reflect your own mentality, which is NOT universal. If you think a majority of American were waiting for Biden to elected before they’d take the jab you’re simply daft, they were just waiting for the vaccine to be released. Had the vaccine been ready earlier in Trump’s term we would have taken it earlier. The majority of Americans have gotten jabbed because of medical advice and scientific assurances, not because they’re Democrats.
THIS is the article we needed. Enough of the clickbait headlines that feed the denier nonsense (gah, it’s hard to justify my paid subscriptions at some large and well-known sites right now). AND…it appears that this is the type of article that defeats the copy/paste keyboard warriors who want to “rebut” the evidence but lack the understanding. Not that they had a point before, but it would appear that this nicely researched, clear article short circuited the ability to find the right boilerplate to put in the comments section. GREAT JOB Ms. Kaul!
Since MinnPost requires posters to use their real names, you don’t see the phenomenon of the covid denier swarm here as you do on social media, but it’s suspicious how quickly any factual article or statement attracts covid deniers. It’s as if a Batman signal goes up to inform the mob of trolls that they have a new target.
Facebook and Twitter don’t require people to use their real names, so it’s hard to tell who the members of the swarm are, but they are definitely trollish, with their laughter e-mojis or “ROFL” responses to reports of covid deaths or factual information.
I’m tired of them and of all covid deniers, so instead of arguing, I just block them so that I don’t have to look at their nonsense.
It’s been 21 months since what I consider “the last normal day,” March 11, 2020, and the fact that the U.S. has the highest per capita rate of covid cases of any nation in the Western Hemisphere is due to the anti-vax, anti-mask crybabies, who won’t take the simplest measures to protect their fellow humans. A couple of months ago, Suriname and Cuba had higher per capita covid infections than the U.S., but today, both countries are doing far better than the U.S. Europe is going through an outbreak, but since most of the Western European countries are 70% or more vaccinated, the death rates remain low.
I don’t actually believe that all of the posters here are using their real names. But yes, it does help that it’s a “requirement.” And yes, I also believe there’s a Batman signal. I’ve posted about this phenomenon here before, but it didn’t get past the moderators. You can see it when an article is posted about a so-called “controversial” issue and brand new MinnPost commenters show up specifically for the article. It happens less now, though. We have just our resident deniers, mostly, lately. Oh, and I’m dead serious that there are websites out there specifically designed to allow deniers of reality to copy and paste canned “facts” to put all over the internet with the most efficiency.
Don’t worry, I imagine they’ll be back around February or so. It’s an election year, after all.
Yep, all those pro-vax folks got it wrong, just ask your local medical provider!
“Hospital systems in Minnesota took out full page ads in Sunday papers across the state yesterday urging Minnesotans to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and to wear masks and socially distance. “We’re overwhelmed,” the advertisement read.”
Compliments MinnPost:
Interesting about the hospitals. The same hospitals that took $500mm for covid staff up, then laid off staff and shut down hospitals. Of course the CEO’s all got huge bonuses. I have no doubt they are overwhelmed now. It is truly sad, but this trail of money is bigger than the trail of tears.
Which hospitals are those? HCMC? North Memorial? Children’s? etc. , and can you provide some support? Please show that trail of money and all those lay offs.
Doesn’t anybody read the news or comprehend it?
Fairview closed their Covid unit at Bethesda, and Repurposed St Joe’s. All those hospital beds and 900 people laid off, right in the middle of a pandemic. At they same time they were bleeding money and the state stepped in to support them. The state passed bills to support the Covid induced elective treatment slowdown they imposed. All of this is public record.
And you answered your own question: Why did they close, not making any money, and of course we don’t want a socialistic system, or do you? So you get your free market close up shop, and then apparently the blame has to go somewhere else! Tough time connecting those dots? Here is the article. “Financial losses”
Yeah the truth she hurts, and she doesn’t mind questions.
https://www.startribune.com/fairview-cuts-will-include-two-hospitals-affect-900-jobs/572641022/
Uh, as I recall Bethesda was being mothballed prior to Covid, and was only pressed back into service on a temporary basis, so any jobs created were never going to be permanent. “The covid induced elective treatment slowdown they imposed” Huh? Are you trying to suggest the hospitals were somehow happy to turn paying customers away, for their own safety, that folks getting elective procedures should have been exposed to covid patients to get their procedures completed, or that hospitals should not have accepted covid patients? I’m pretty sure there’s no public record of the vast conspiracy among health care professionals that you suggest, but hey that’s never stopped a conservative before.
Because the truth needs to be told.
Oh, as you can see, Mr weir hunted around the internet, found something marginally relevant about one Metro hospital chain and this is seen as adequate to prove the “hospitals-caused-their-own-crisis!” narrative. Nationwide, apparently.
The reason? Because any examination of reality shows hospital systems nationwide are being crushed by anti-vax morons and those defenders of the right need some story to prevent the cognitive dissonance from becoming toxic. The story simply can never be the one lib’ruls are “selling”; and now the hospital CEOs and docs themselves are the lib’ruls!
Narrative?? All I am saying is in this case they took hospital beds away, when they would need them the most at the same time that they were paid money to expand staff to support Covid. Why? This isn’t a nationwide issue, but it is a Metro area issue. It is totally sad that the hospitals are flooded with Covid patients, mostly unvaccinated patients. You are so blinded by perceived bias that you can’t see what is in front of you face. Deflect what?? It is very sad and stupid that people aren’t getting vaccinated. I am really tired of this ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ jousting. All it does is make more resistant to get vaccinated and it is making a less civil society. Guess what, it is ok when people have a different way of thinking that you. Accept it and move on, instead of acting like a bunch of 3rd graders.
You don’t live in a subjective reality. There IS a right and wrong answer here, not just competing opinions. That some insist the wrong answer is right is not a problem for those of us who knew what the right answer was all along, but THEIR intellectual and character flaws. If they won’t follow the correct path by utilizing proper decisionmaking capacity, they must be compelled to do so through ever more harsh penalities. This is done in self defense by the the overwhelming majority of us that view public health as a vital priority. Their “hurt feelings” and antisocial personalities matter not a whit.
Lack of proof?? Did not Fairview shut down Bethesda and repurpose St Joe’s? Did not the legislature and gov appropriate $’s for the Hospitals for Covid ‘relief’? Wow, you can spout off all you want until somebody says something you don’t want to hear, then they have to have ‘verifiable citations’??? What a joke.
Oh for goodness sake, capitalist hospital groups have been closing, downsizing, “rightsizing” and re-orging for years and years before the pandemic, ostensibly to reduce health care costs. So when the Covid pandemic hit (just over a year and half ago) the industry was stuck with fewer beds than we now need, especially when huge numbers of people have decided not to do their patriotic duty and get vaccinated, in order to vindicate some braindead principle of “liberty”, or whatever damn reason they are doing it.
Thus docs and nurses need the anti-vax morons to get vaccinated so the hospitals aren’t 100% full every damn day. That’s the reality. The morons are far more to blame for current crushing situation than whatever decisions the healthcare industry made in 2012, or whatever.
You go into a pandemic with the healthcare system you have, not the one you want to have, to paraphrase rightwing hero Donald von Rumsfeld….
Don’t look now but CDC says most Omicron patients are fully vaccinated folks…. According to folks here at Minnpost, the only people getting sick are the unvaccinated. Interesting?
Are you referring to this?
https://www.khou.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/cdc-79-percent-omicron-vaccinated/285-c4a5c9e4-118d-4b54-8a62-e4c0723d68dd
So it appears the point is, as of Houston reporting, don’t get vaccinated because you may be more likely to get the more transmissible but perhaps less lethal C-virus strain, but if you don’t get vaxed you will probably get the less transmissible but more lethal strains? (PS: They aren’t the only people) Do you know how percentages, work?
Um…that was data on a total of 43 people, Joe, and of those people only 1 was hospitalized. Probably because most of them were vaccinated. Meanwhile, Delta is still ravaging the unvaccinated, and the unvaccinated are taking up WAY more than their fair share of hospital beds. You have no point, Joe.
There may come a time when the anti-vaxx, anti-mask, “Covid’s a hoax,” conspiracy theorists have all died from the disease, and then these pointless arguments trying to persuade them will cease. Until then, human stupidity being the immovable object, some people will choose to believe in ideas that are factually wrong and have been repeatedly disproven. I fervently hope that by the time we reach that grim point, humanity will have been largely purged of willful ignorance as a survival strategy.
The most obvious point, to me, is that this pandemic is essentially a political problem, more than a scientific or medical problem.