VA least safe state in pandemic
Thanks to Mr Smith for finding this link.
The study, which places the highest weight on death rate rather than vaccination rate, shows VA the state where you’re most likely to die of COVID.
That’s what happens when you use scarce vaccines to pay political debts instead of vaccinating the most vulnerable. Fortunately. with more vaccine becoming available, evne Northam won’t be able to prevent those who should have been vaccinated first from eventually being protected.
Of course, with the appointments being made in secret, maybe he’ll find a way.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
Your hate is palpable.
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Hate is entirely appropriate when directed at mass murder.
We had enough vaccine to protect the vulnerable by the 2nd week of February. Had it gone to them instead of young government employees, the recent spike in deaths would not have happened.
Everyone of those deaths is on Northam’s head.
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In a word: Bullshit.
“Mass murder” ?
Kiss what is left of your credibility goodbye…..
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Show me my error.
The vaccines are 100% effective in preventing death.
The state had the vaccines to protect the vulnerable part of the population.
It had the data to direct the vaccines to them.
It chose instead to give the vaccines to political allies who were at very little risk of dying
How are those deaths not the result of that cold blooded decision?
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There is no medical consensus on which segment of the population should be vaccinated first (yeah, I know you have your opinion). Your political payoff charge is a supposition I don’t buy into…at all.
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No medical consensus?
Compared to those under 30, those 65 to 74 are 90 times more likely to die. Those 75 and over, 220 times more likely. Blacks were about 15% more likely to die than age matched whites.
The comorbidities are closely correlated with age.
We supplied that data in our registrations, so selecting the most vulnerable, sorted by risk of death would be simple,
That those citizens were not vaccinated first was a deliberate choice.
Is it your contention that the public employee union members who are reliably Democrat were vaccinated first instead was a coincidence?
Because I don’t buy into that, at all.
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“We supplied that data in our registrations”…
Interesting. I say that because the VB registration asked if I had any of the co-morbidities, but it was a Yes/No question without asking what it was. That was why I had the one prescription medication I take (Lisinopril for HBP) in my pocket in case it came up as a question the day of my first appointment.
…”public employee union members who are reliably Democrat”…
Again a supposition on your part. You cannot say one way or the other what the political proclivities are of the MEMBERSHIP of the PEU. The union itself, as an institution, supports mostly Democratic candidates. That does not necessarily translate to the union members. And because VA is a Right-to-Work state, non-union members benefit from Union work, without the dues.
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I’m thinking maybe I answered the wrong question.
“There is no medical consensus”
There is absolutely a medical consensus IF YOUR GOAL IS TO SAVE LIVES.
The question is what was the POLICY goal.
Clearly it was NOT to save the most lives.
So, what is the goal for vaccinating young public employees who were at risk of mssing a couple of weeks work if not political?
Was there labor of such critical value that we could not afford them staying home a couple of weeks? SInce most of them were staying home anyway because of the lockdowns and school closures, that can’t be it.
So, with the impossible eliminated, what remains is the truth.
And that is political payback.
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“Show me my error.”
You take your imagined political shenanigans as facts. And based on something you pull out of your ass you accuse our governor of “mass murder.” That is beyond error. It is sheer stupidity.
Your evaluation of the relative risks of different groups is simplistic. You NEVER take into account the ability of people over 65 to control their risk by the choices they make versus the lack of such choices by essential workers. All this in your stupid eagerness to find “corruption” everywhere but where it is most prevalent.
To compound your errors, you refuse to acknowledge the many thousands of deaths fairly attributable to the failed policies, lies and lack of leadership of Donald Trump. If our country had been merely average in our response instead of among the worst, we would have more than 100K fewer corpses to bury. THAT is a massive and deadly failure.
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Trump is not and never was Governor of Virginia.
Assume(incorrectly) that all those over 65 could isolate as you have.
What is the justification for imprisoning them in their homes months longer than necessary to avoid a mild illness for government workers who mostly aren’t going to work anyway,
That is the inequality here, for most young people, wherever they work, getting infected is an inconvenience, for the Elders and medically compromised, it is a high risk of death.
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“Trump is not and never was Governor of Virginia.”
You are correct, However, that means his inaction and downplaying of the virus is responsible for a lot more deaths.
An inconvenient truth, but one you really need to come to grips with.
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“Trump is not and never was Governor of Virginia.”
What a sad little dodge that one is.
Hmm, you pose what you think is a tough moral decision . . . me having to endure an extra month or two of isolating at home versus an essential worker AND his family risking their lives so that I can be free to be out and about a little sooner. Tough one!
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But they AREN’T risking their lives. Young essential workers are at risk of missing 2 weeks work, Elders are at risk of dying. Not the same thing.
What is being compared is 2 weeks of mild illness with months of home confinement.
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“Young essential workers are at risk of missing 2 weeks work,”…
Not to mention spreading it to their families, including elders in the same household, or other workers in the household who also miss two weeks of work and now who is gonna pay the bills? Or better yet, they go to work after getting the virus and spread it AT work and to customers, including the elderly ones who can’t isolate.
What is being compared is just playing the one side against the other. And both are right… or wrong.
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Yes, it was a consensus question and even then you are wrong. There is NO consensus because the ancillary repercussions of young(er) essential worker’s interactions with others when they HAVE to expose themselves is unknown.
You choose to ignore/discount that and focus as usual on what YOU want to believe is the most salient aspect of the on-going debate. Feel free, but it don’t make you right.
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@Tabor
You oversimplify every aspect of the tough decisions that have to be made.
You assume for example that the older person who has to wait to get vaccinated is going to die. In reality, until they get vaccinated they will take extra care to avoid infection.
You assume that it is the policy of vaccinating teachers that has caused Virginia’s poor ranking in this analysis. That leaves the question – why have other states with the SAME policies towards essential workers done so much better? Could it be that there are MANY factors driving such results?
Saving lives is NOT just about the statistical outcome for a younger person versus an older person. Another very important dimension is what policy will save lives overall by slowing the spread of the virus. Younger people moving actively in society are the prime spreaders. Older people able to shelter at home are not. Getting the prime spreaders vaccinated first is the best way to stop the exponential growth of the virus which – if not blunted – will ultimately cost more lives.
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What other state has pursued vaccinating public employee union members to the exclusion of all others for the first 2 months of vaccine availability?
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“mild illness”
That can kill you, put you in the hospital and can damage your vital organs and/or brain for life.
Covid-19 can be mild in younger people but it can also – and often is – devastating.
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90 times less so than for those over 65, and 220 times less so than for those over 75
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“90 times less so than for those over 65, and 220 times less so than for those over 75”
These are the death rates. So in your mind there are only two possibilities . . . It is either a “mild illness” or a “fatal illness.” Nothing in between. That is nonsense. Death rates are much lower for younger people but that does not make Covid-19 a “mild illness.”
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Over half of cases in young people are asymptomatic.
If you’re looking for absolutes, you won’t find them in medical matters.
However, hospitalization is a good proxy for serious illness, and that is 10 times higher for those 56-74 and 30 times higher for over 75
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“If you’re looking for absolutes, you won’t find them in medical matters.”
LOL! Why not just admit that younger people risk more than “mild illness” when it comes to Covid-19. You are the one looking for absolutes.
You like to portray yourself as having a scientific mind but you are failing in that regard big time on this matter. The fact that Covid-19 is far, far worse the older you get is NOT evidence that it is a “mild illness” for younger people.
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Can’t recall many, if any on this forum defending the job Northam and the Commonwealth has done vis-a-vis the vaccine rollout. Gleefully posting every “opinion” about our bad performance in this regard is tiresome and juvenile.
BTW: the “study” construct is suspect, similar to the “tell me the ROI you want and I’ll justify it for you”…
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The study was intended to quantify the risk of death, It was quite transparent in how the study was weighted to demonstrate that.
It was not intended to weight useless vaccinations of people not at risk.
What do you find suspect?
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You miss my point; the study had a conclusion it wanted to support and crafted the the data used, and how the data was used to do that. Having constructed hundreds of such “studies” I wasn’t even being critical just commenting on the obvious and giving the conclusions the appropriate “weight”.
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I understand.
There have been lots of studies. Many are based simply on how many vaccines were given. But if you don’t give them to the people who need them, you might as well be injecting squirrels.
This study was intended to evaluate the risk of death, and was appropriately weighted to that end.
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RE: “That’s what happens when you use scarce vaccines to pay political debts instead of vaccinating the most vulnerable.”
Placing politics over public health is an emerging theme of the pandemic response.
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“Placing politics over public health is an emerging theme of the pandemic response.”
And it actually began in February … 2020!
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This whole thread and the vicious attacks on our governor are premised on a palpable falsehood – that Virginia is the least safe state in the pandemic.
We are not the least safe. Not by a long shot.
As of March 5, 2021, we have suffered 110 deaths per 100K of population. There are only 12 states that have done better. There are 37 that have done worse – many FAR, FAR worse.
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/us-coronavirus-deaths-by-state-july-1.html
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But what is death rate per case?
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The risk we are talking about is DEATH. That risk is relatively low in Virginia compared to most other states. You can slice and dice until you find an answer you like but these hard cold numbers cannot be spun away even by the most dedicated and skilled sophistry.
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RE: “But what is death rate per case?”
Exactly.
It makes no sense to criticize a ranking scheme because of the outcome it produces. The one you posted takes multiple factors into account, Mr. Muphy’s just one. It is ridiculous to pretend that one is a better reflection of reality than the other.
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No, Mr. Roberts, what is ridiculous is spreading falsehoods about how our state is doing. It is NOT “the least safe state in the pandemic.” Not even close. It is NOT “the state where you’re most likely to die of COVID.”
It is very, very clear that the “ranking scheme” and the weightings used in the “analysis” are badly flawed if they lead to a completely bogus results.
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The results aren’t bogus. You just don’t like them.
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“The results aren’t bogus. You just don’t like them.”
No, the problem is that you and other hyper-partisans looking for something to bash Northam with like the results too much. So much that you throw basic logic out the window. A result that is the opposite of the truth is a bogus result. Period.
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Basic logic? Basic logic is that Truth is not what YOU say it is. Lewis Carroll dealt with your type when he invented Humpty Dumpty.
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Humpty Dumpty?
Even your attempted insults are dumb.
Basic logic tells us that a statement cannot be both True and False. Either Virginia is “the state where you’re most likely to die of Covid” or it is not. Basic logic also says that whether a statement is True or False can be determined by the evidence. An arbitrary selection and arbitrary weighting of different metrics does not trump the direct evidence that there are 37 states where you are more likely to die of Covid than you are in Virginia.
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Here is the methodology for the Wallethub study, where to do disagree
https://wallethub.com/edu/safest-states-during-covid/86567
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The “study” is what it is.
An ARBITRARY set of metrics for an ARBITRARY time frame given ARBITRARY weightings.
Did I mention ARBITRARY?
The point is that this “study” provides ZERO support for your hyper-partisan Northam-hater claim that “VA [is] the state where you’re most likely to die of COVID.” That claim is at best nonsense and at worst is dishonest nonsense.
How do I know that it is nonsense? Uh, that would be the EVIDENCE – non cherry-picked, non-Arbitrary, non-weighted EVIDENCE. The FACT is that there are 37 states where the risk of Covid death is greater than it is in Virginia. There are SIX states where the risk is more than double what it is in Virginia. And, there are only a handful of states where the risk of Covid death is substantially lower than in Virginia. The EVIDENCE is clear – Virginia is one of the safest states with respect to Covid death and is nowhere near what your partisan claim say it is.
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Again, stop and think it through for yourself.
Treatment protocols are pretty much uniform across the country.
If there is a difference in the death rate per case it isn’t because of treatment, it is because of who is getting sick.
So, you would expect more deaths from those states where the infections are skewed toward the more vulnerable.
So, naturally, the death rate is going to be higher in those states that prioritize young people and lower where the Elders are protected first.
Virginia is single-mindedly determined to delay vaccinating Elders as long as there is a public employee union member still waiting.
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“Again, stop and think it through for yourself.”
You should try following your own advice. Your latest post reinforces the fact that the original claim that Virginia is where you are most like to die of Covid was FALSE.
For starters the metric you are talking about – the case fatality rate – isn’t even one of the five metrics chosen by the “study.” And that is one where Virginia – contrary to your claims – does just fine.
According to you, Virginia is not vaccinating the most vulnerable. According to you again, “you would expect more deaths from those states where the infections are skewed toward the more vulnerable.” BUT Virginia has one of the best overall death rates. Our policies – as bad as you say they are – are working better than 37 other states.
But, if you want to focus on the rate of deaths per Covid case reality does not match your partisan claims there either. Nationwide that figure is 1.8%. The rate for Virginia is 1.6%. There are 28 states which have worse case fatality rates than we do.
https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/cumulative-covid-19-cases-and-deaths/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22COVID-19%20Fatality%20Rate%22,%22sort%22:%22desc%22%7D
Bottom line, you once again show a total disregard for actual, provable facts that do not fit your partisan accusations.
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