Vaccination Crisis or False Alarm in Israel? 90% of COVID-19 Patients Fully Vaccinated
That is because nearly everyone in Israel is fully vaccinated. If 100% of a population is vaccinated, 100% of COVID patients will be vaccinated. They will all be breakthrough cases. There is no one else left to infect. The same applies to the U.S. Provincetown outbreak. Nearly every infected person was vaccinated, because ~95% of the people in Provincetown were vaccinated. Fortunately, breakthrough cases with vaccinations are almost all mild, with no hospitalization needed, and virtually no fatalities, unless you are already at death's door from cancer or old age. That is why there were only 7 hospitalizations, none of them severe, and no deaths.
Where the population is about half vaccinated and half unvaccinated, 97% of hospitalized cases will be the unvaccinated, and 100% of deaths will be the unvaccinated. In other words, the vaccine is very effective. Unfortunately it does not prevent as many Delta breakthrough cases as it did with the Alpha variant, but it prevents serious cases and deaths as well as it did with Alpha. Surprisingly, it also prevent contagious transmission from the infected person to others almost as well. You wouldn't think so, but that's what preliminary data shows. Apparently, the viral load in the sinuses goes down rapidly as the immune system kicks in.
In Provincetown, the local district and districts where the tourists came from are upscale and Democratic, so nearly everyone is vaccinated. In the U.S., there is now a sharp correlation between wealth, voting, COVID vaccinations, and COVID infections. The nation has split in two. Within Georgia you can predict vaccination and infection rates by looking at the election returns. We are quite safe where I live, but 20 miles away in GOP districts you risk your health and your life going to the grocery store. Everyone here wears a mask. Virtually no one in GOP districts does, and if you do, you will be harrassed and yelled at by strangers in the grocery store. All the students in my neighborhood highschool wear masks even outdoors (as I saw yesterday), whereas in Florida the governor threatens to withhold funding to school districts that mandate masks, and angry crowds threaten to assault teachers and doctors who plead with people to wear masks at public hearings.
It is true that 40% of GOP voters nationwide have been vaccinated. They tend to be wealthy people, or they are from moderate, Democratic-leaning districts in places like New York or Atlanta. They are influenced by their neighbors. In many so-called ruby-red districts, only 18% to 30% of the population has been vaccinated. Here is a map by county. Note that a county is larger than a voting district. With regard to COVID and public health, a heavily Democratic district might as well be on another planet compared to a Republican one:
Because the Delta variant is more contagious, and possibly more dangerous for young people and children, those people are now in more danger than they were in December. The case mortality rate for a given age cohort will be the same as it was in December. They are risking their money, their health and possibly their lives to politics. To "own the libs." It is gruesome to say this, but in close races, with so many disabled and dead GOP fanatics, this might actually swing the election.
They are risking their money because GOP voters in rural Georgia districts tend to be poor people with inadequate insurance, and Georgia hospitals tend to be bloodsucking monsters that will gladly take every dime you have, and you car, and your house, and then send your account to a collection agency. I am not kidding. There are news stories about this often. It happened to two people I know, one of them after a week in the hospital in a coma caused by his military service during the Vietnam war. He was out cold and they did not know he was a vet, so they did not send him to the V.A. hospital. That did not stop the hospital from billing him for $90,000. Anyone in the hospital with COVID for more than a few days will pay tens of thousands if you are lucky and you have good insurance, or hundreds of thousands if you don't. If you can't pay, you will be bankrupted and harassed by collection agencies from now on. The agencies are not nice people. They come and take your car at 5 in the morning, and frighten the hell out of your children, deliberately. That happened to my neighbor.
It is widely noted that U.S. healthcare is the most expensive in the world, costing 2 or 3 times more per capita than any other advanced nation. It is also dead last among advanced nations, except for rich people. What is less often noted is that it is an extraordinarily cruel system, resembling 19th century debtor's prisons in England. Those prisons took poor people in debt and made their situation much worse, by preventing them from working. It was like pouring gasoline on a fire. U.S. healthcare does something similar, destroying the lives of people who are already sick or in bad shape. Making their situation far worse, without a house or an automobile, unable to work or take care of themselves. It is no wonder people are afraid to go to the hospital! People gravely injured in accidents, with their arms fractured or bleeding, sometimes plead with the police and bystanders, "Don't call an ambulance! I can't afford it!!" They can't. Just taking an ambulance to the hospital will cost you up to $1,500 in Georgia. Bear in mind that 63% of people in the U.S. do not have $500 in ready cash to pay for unexpected expenses or emergencies:
It is not a wealthy nation, particularly with regard to healthcare costs. Only a minority, the top ~10%, can afford healthcare, where you have to pay $8,000 or $20,000 to have a baby even with health insurance, and far more without. (https://www.ajmc.com/view/how-…s-it-depends-on-the-state). Being hospitalized for COVID will bankrupt most families. The top 1% has $34 trillion in assets (30% of all wealth), and the bottom 50% holds $2 trillion (2% of of all wealth). This is a recent development. It was not like this in the U.S. until the 1990s. Most GOP voters, and nearly everyone in rural Georgia districts, are in the bottom 50%.
