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Tag: public health
GOP Legislators Undermine Public Health As Measles Spreads Across 15 States

GOP Legislators Undermine Public Health As Measles Spreads Across 15 States

West Virginia’s Republicans passed a bill through the House of Delegates on Monday that would allow religious exemptions for vaccines required for school attendance. The bill comes as dozens of measles cases across 15 states have been reported. The bill will now head to the state Senate for debate. If the bill passes, it would be the first nonmedical vaccine exemption allowed in West Virginia.

The bill began as a proposal to eliminate vaccine requirements for public virtual schooling, but it has expanded to allow private schools the right to decide whether to require vaccinations for their students. Whether the bill would allow parents to exempt their child from a public school’s vaccine mandate remains unclear at this time, according to analysis from ABC News.

The state GOP’s attempt to dismantle public health protections isn’t going over well with some West Virginians, though. Dr. Steven Eshenaur, the health officer for the Kanawha-Charleston health department, told the Associated Press, “It escapes sound reasoning why anyone would want to weaken childhood immunization laws. Our children are more important than any agenda that would bring these horrific diseases back to the Mountain State.”

Meanwhile, Republican-controlled Florida is in the midst of a measles outbreak at Manatee Bay Elementary School in Broward County. Seven of 10 statewide cases of measles have ties to the school, while the state’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo recently issued a letter that didn’t urge parents to make sure their children were immunized. Ladapo, who was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is best known for his vaccine denialism during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida has called for Ladapo to either resign or be fired. She said his handling of the Broward County outbreak has been “grossly irresponsible,” and calling Ladapo “a misinformation super spreader.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data in November showing that national vaccination rates among kindergartners have yet to return to their pre-pandemic levels, making West Virginia’s flirtation with religious-exemption policies that much more troubling. Currently, children in West Virginia are required to have at least one dose of chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus, and whooping cough before entering K-12 school for the first time.

By leaning into the right’s anti-science movement, GOP-controlled states are encouraging a new normal that includes outbreaks of childhood diseases once thought to be eliminated more than two decades ago.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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Study Shows Republican Policies Killing The Voters Who Support Them

Republicans aren’t just at war with each other in the U.S. House of Representatives: They’ve been quietly at war with their own constituents for decades. The Washington Post has a lengthy case study of what this has meant for one state taken over by Republicans: Ohio. One study the Post cites estimates that roughly “1 in 5 Ohioans will die before they turn 65…. a similar life expectancy to residents of Slovakia and Ecuador, relatively poor countries.”

The Post looks at Ashtabula County, Ohio, and compares it with its neighbor across the Pennsylvania border, Erie County, and the next county over, Chautauqua in New York state. The three counties have all experienced the same economic woes over the past several decades, as industrial jobs disappeared and wages fell. “But Ashtabula residents are much more likely to die young, especially from smoking, diabetes-related complications or motor vehicle accidents, than people living in its sister counties in Pennsylvania and New York, states that have adopted more stringent public health measures,” the Post found.

The primary difference: Democratic versus Republican lawmakers and leaders. Democratic states have enacted legislation to protect public health—including measures like seat-belt laws, high tobacco taxes, and more generous Medicaid and safety net benefits. Ohio and other Republican states have not. The Post cites a study by Ellen Meara, a health economics and policy professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in which she looked at geographic disparities in premature mortality over recent decades. It’s not just geography, she told the Post. It’s politics.

Meara’s paper doesn’t explicitly say that. Instead, she and her fellow authors say that “health disparities across states may arise from long-run changes in state policies or health ‘investments,’” including things like “anti-smoking policies, expansions of Medicaid, income support, and norms around health behaviors.” In other words, the kinds of investments blue states—like California, Pennsylvania, and New York—have made.

Three decades ago, California and Ohio had comparable health outcomes, ranking in the middle of all the states. Since then, the more proactive and progressive California has seen its premature-death rate fall significantly. Ohio has not. “By 2017, California had the nation’s second-lowest mortality rates, falling behind only Minnesota; Ohio ranked 41st,” the Post’s analysis found.

While Ohio is the specific case study for the Post, they found the divide has increased nationwide.

Today, people in the South and Midwest, regions largely controlled by Republican state legislators, have increasingly higher chances of dying prematurely compared with those in the more Democratic Northeast and West, according to the Post’s analysis of death rates.

Those disparities are bound to increase over the coming years. Some of these studies are still looking at pre-COVID-19 statistics. As Charles Gaba has been chronicling for the past few years, the death rate from COVID-19 is higher in Republican-leaning areas. Republicans have made the COVID-19 pandemic a political fight, like in Florida where the actual person in charge of public health calls the vaccine “anti-human” and is urging Floridians to avoid the newest vaccines.

Studies are soon also going to have to account for states that have banned abortion and criminalized reproductive health care. A study last year from the Commonwealth Fund determined that “maternal death rates were 62 percent higher in 2020 in abortion-restriction states than in abortion-access states (28.8 vs. 17.8 per 100,000 births).”

One of the factors behind that is on full display in parts of Idaho, where there are no practicing OB-GYN physicians any more—they’ve left the state over fear of prosecution. That makes giving birth a lot more dangerous. Making it even worse, the state is now going to prosecute emergency room doctors who provide abortions to stabilize a patient’s health.

Gun safety legislation—or the absence of it—is another key difference contributing to higher premature-death rates in red states. In 2021, the states with the lowest rate of gun deaths were Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and New York. Mississippi, Louisiana, Wyoming, Missouri, and Alabama had the highest gun-death rates.

In all of these states, the so-called “party of life” has consistently proven that what it’s really about is actively enabling premature death. They’ve proven that by refusing to save lives by expanding Medicaid, by warring against basic science, by keeping people hungry and vulnerable, and by criminalizing doctors. All in the name of so-called “family values,” “freedom,” and the “sanctity of life.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Keep Hope Up As Pandemic Ebbs — But Don’t Let Guard Down

Keep Hope Up As Pandemic Ebbs — But Don’t Let Guard Down

Are we at the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? Let's call it the middle.

The COVID-19 numbers are going decisively lower, both infections and deaths. Millions, meanwhile, are getting the vaccine and becoming mostly immune to the disease.

Still, the seven-day average of American deaths from this virus continues in the thousands. And it would be much higher if more of us let our guard down by ignoring calls to wear masks, socially distance, and sanitize hands.

We each make our own policy for how far to go. There are the absolutists, who take no chances. They see no friends and never enter a restaurant, much less step on a plane.

Then there are moderates, like yours truly, who always wear a mask in public but do gather with their "pod" of careful friends. We eat in establishments that take precautions.

Finally, there are those who don't care at all and do nothing protective. They risk their own life and the lives of others.

As we move into a somewhat less scary phase of this disease, we moderates probably have the most to think about. That's because we were always open to weighing more options.

Consideration No. 1: mask-wearing. Of course we'll continue wearing masks. But two masks with one of tight-fitting cloth, as Dr. Anthony Fauci advises? On public transportation, OK. But as the risk of infection heads down, perhaps we can lighten up and wear just a lightweight mask while on a walk.

Infectious-disease experts now believe that outdoor activities rarely cause the disease to spread unless people are in close conversation. They say that with a few exceptions, we can safely jog or bike without a mask.

That said, hospitals are still rationing medical-grade N95 masks even as their stockpiles grow, according to the Associated Press. Why? They remain traumatized by the terrifying mask shortage of a year ago and don't want to be caught short-handed again. They also fear a future surge in cases. (More on that later.)

We moderates continue to frown on the mask-less multitudes who crowd at super-spreader events. A recent example would be the bar parties following the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Super Bowl win. Health officials in Florida warn of a possible coronavirus spike as a result. For people like me, the difference now is we take all that reckless behavior less personally.

Consideration No. 2: traveling. Early in the pandemic, I flew across the country on a JetBlue flight with few passengers and distanced seating. I would not go on a crowded jet. Now that I've had my first shot, I worry less about flying. When I get the second one, I'll hop right on.

Consideration No. 3: guilt. As frontline workers, the elderly and other vulnerable people get their protective vaccinations, less stigma is attached to easing up a bit on the restrictions.

However, unsettling thoughts remain. New coronavirus variants are reportedly more infectious and not as easily tamed by some of the vaccines. Variants are reportedly reinfecting people who survived the early version of the disease. And, undoubtedly, more variants are coming at us.

To reach herd immunity, 60 to 90 percent of the population must be vaccinated or protected by prior infection, according to medical experts. If the 15 percent of Americans who say they'll never get the vaccine follow through on that vow, that goal could be hard to reach.

The hope in this country is that the pandemic will end around summer. As the scourge shows more definite signs of weakening, we who tried to do the right things may be able to relax — if just a little. This will be a strange time.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

public health, coronavirus

Fox News Undermined Public Health Measures — And Now Its Most Powerful Viewer Has Virus

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters

Fox News' pro-Trump hosts have spent months trying to bolster President Donald Trump's reelection chances by downplaying the threat posed by the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. They mocked former Vice President Joe Biden for the precautions his presidential campaign has taken to protect him and others and valorized Trump for defying the public health community by refusing to do so. Now, the president himself has the virus. He revealed overnight that he and the first lady, Melania Trump, had tested positive for COVID-19, and the White House on Friday morning said he is experiencing "mild symptoms."

Trump engaged in a series of risky behaviors before and after contracting the virus.

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