COVID-19 watch
Tracking Hardship - May 20, 2022
|
The million deaths edition. This week, the United States surpassed one million officially recorded deaths from COVID-19. So many people died from COVID-19 that a disease that didn’t even exist three years ago has become the third leading cause of death in this country, behind heart disease and cancer. This toll does not take into account so much additional pain and hardship – isolation, depression, job loss, homelessness, drug or alcohol addiction, millions of kids falling behind in school or dropping out altogether. The list goes on and on and on.
So where are we today? New cases are rising sharply, once again, and hospitalizations are up as well. The new daily case rate has climbed back above 100,000. But experts say Americans can assume infections in their communities are five to ten times higher than the official counts, according to the Washington Post. For example, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates only about 13 percent of new COVID-19 cases are being detected. “Any sort of look at the metrics on either a local, state, or national level is a severe undercount,” said Jessica Malaty Rivera, an epidemiologist at the Pandemic Prevention Institute housed at The Rockefeller Foundation. “Everyone knows someone getting Covid now.”
Some have downplayed the rise in infections, thinking COVID cases are milder than in the past. But it is worth noting that hospitalizations have risen 29 percent over the past two weeks.
With Memorial Day weekend approaching and a spate of graduations and family gatherings, case rates are expected to continue to climb – and then get worse, potentially much worse, when fall and winter arrive. So one might assume Congress is acting expeditiously to prepare our nation for what is to come.
Unfortunately, that is precisely not the case. As incredible as it sounds, Congress is taking its Memorial Day recess without acting – without passing a desperately needed emergency supplemental appropriations bill. That means we won’t have the money we need to pay for new vaccinations, to pay for treatment, for testing – all of the things that simple common sense tells us we need in the midst of an ongoing pandemic.
We expect more from our elected officials. At the very least, we demand that members of Congress act to save the lives and protect the health of Americans. Write your Senators today.
You can share these numbers on Facebook and Twitter.
|
As of Wednesday, May 18, 103,231 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the U.S., a 57 percent increase over the previous 14 days. Hospitalizations were up 29 percent. But deaths were down 17 percent. Tweet this.
|
America’s public schools have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020. Two causes: some parents frustrated with remote learning or mask mandates began home-schooling their children or sending them to private or parochial schools that largely remained open during the pandemic. Other families were thrown into such turmoil by pandemic-related job losses, homelessness, and school closures that their children simply dropped out. Tweet this.
|
Approximately one in three Americans 65 and older who completed their initial vaccination round still have not received a first booster shot. This is despite the fact that seniors who have completed an initial two-dose series of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine or gotten one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine still face substantial risk of serious illness and even death if they do not get boosted. Tweet this.
|
Although fewer than 1 percent of Americans live in nursing homes or assisted living facilities, they represent more than 20 percent of COVID-19 deaths. But critics say the federal government has not prioritized booster shots for nursing home residents – far different from the federal government’s efforts to ensure that residents received their first round of vaccinations. Tweet this.
|
The amount that America’s billionaires’ collective wealth ballooned between the time the pandemic began and May 2022, according to new research by the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness. Tweet this.
|
|
