Covid Cases spiking worse than last summer.

[cardcrimson]

The charts are really depressing and disturbing. Here’s Contra Costa’s :

https://www.coronavirus.cchealth.org/overview

What really jumps out are the number of cases among unvaccinated and the significantly high case rate among African Americans, and to a somewhat lessor extent, Hispanics.

I keep hearing on the news that the case rate jumps are all in Republican regions of the country. Clearly not, as CC County, especially the areas with the most troubling case rates are extremely Democratic strongholds. The state appears headed for another disaster which could peak just in time for the September 15th Recall vote.

[Legend]

The “Republican strongholds” trope is a smokescreen.   The “largest” group of unvaccinated might be white people in red states, but the highest proportions of unvaccinated are minorities across the board.  When we look at population concentrations, and overall rates of vaccination, the focus on minorities is a good one.

A few facts that matter:

• “Case counts” as a metric does NOT have the same meaning it had a year ago.  A year ago, people were dying at a much higher rate than now and we had no treatments.  What we should be focusing on is deaths, but that’s too touchy.
• Whites are more vaccinated than AA in pretty much every state of the union. Whites are more vaccinated than Hispanics in most states.
• The largest group of vaccine-resistant folks are white, rural dwellers.
• Blaming Republicans for the surge ignores the highest proportions of unvaccinated populations also tend to live around larger cities, and likely have higher risk of transmission.

My hunch is that if you promoted vaccination among rural whites like is happening among urban minorities, you’d see a lot more vaccination activity by targeting these “largest groups” but you would lose the virtue of focusing on “disadvantaged groups.”  Politicians are in a pickle.

https://www.vox.com/22587443/covid-19-vaccine-refusal-hesitancy-variant-delta-cases-rate

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/us-vaccine-demographics.html

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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)

[cardcrimson]

Thanks for the links. Love the headline in the Bloomberg piece: White Vaccination Rates Lag in States Where Covid Is Surging

Oddly, the charts they present below indicate an entirely different picture: in heavily democratic states, black vaccination rates significantly lag those of other races.

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