This is the price of COVID-19 disinformation
Mark Sumner, Daily Kos Staff
In Rhode Island, flu is hitting young people the hardest (ages 5 to 24), Chart from the RI Department of Health
Last
week, it became clear that under new CEO Elon Musk, Twitter had stopped
enforcing a policy against spreading disinformation related to COVID-19 and
vaccinations. They didn’t make a big announcement about this. It wasn’t until
people began wondering why so much outright anti-vax nonsense was suddenly
floating around, that it was discovered that Twitter had stopped trying to
block such propaganda back in mid-November.
The cost of that disinformation campaign is absolutely measurable. In the United States, not only did the total number of Americans vaccinated with the original vaccine stall out at under 70%, the percentage who have gotten the latest bivariant booster, which has been available for three months, is a mind-boggling 12.7%.
Rhode Island data by age group of percentage who have gotten the latest booster:
That number explains why, over the last few months, the number of new deaths among those who got the original vaccine has come to exceed the number of deaths among the unvaccinated.
According
to the CDC, even among those who
got the original vaccine, 81% have failed to get the latest booster. For most
of those, all their shots and boosters are so far in the past, that the
residual effect is much smaller than it was in the weeks and months after the
vaccine was first administered. As a result, it’s expected another 120,000
Americans are projected to die of COVID-19 over the next year.
But
that’s not all. That disinformation is leading directly to the worst flu season
in many years, at a time when the U.S. is seeing one of the nastiest flu
variants in some time.
The disinformation campaign around COVID-19 has done exactly what anti-vax forces hoped; it has spilled over into a growing resistance to vaccines in general.
Right now the U.S. is seeing a decline in flu vaccinations. It’s also being hit
with a variant of the flu that expresses the H3N2 proteins — a variety
that has not been seen in so long that few Americans have any resistance.
However, the current vaccine is well-matched for the strains of flu that are
circulating, meaning that it provides good protection both against infection
and against severe effects.
As The Washington Post reports,
there’s a direct link between the anti-vax propaganda spread concerning the
COVID-19 vaccines, and lower uptake of flu vaccines. Officials have even
anticipated this, similar resistance has been displayed in both schools and the
military against vaccines that have previously been routine.
The
disinformation campaign has tried to make it seem as if, in protecting
ourselves from COVID-19, we somehow lowered our resistance to flu. This
is 100% not true. In fact, the opposite is true. It was ending the
steps being taken against COVID-19 that has created conditions for a bad flu
season.
Officials
had been bracing for a more robust flu season this fall and winter because so
many people have dropped covid protection measures and are reluctant to get
vaccinated.
When
people try to dismiss COVID-19 as a “mild” disease, with symptoms no worse than
the flu, they’re forgetting how bad the flu actually is. Not only does it lead
to many serious illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths each year, the flu,
like COVID-19, has “long” effects that may not always be identified with the
disease.
What
many people don’t realize is that even after someone recovers from the flu, the
inflammatory response generated by the virus continues to wreak havoc for
another four to six weeks in those who are middle-aged and older, increasing
the rate of heart attacks and strokes, Schaffner said.
For
two years, the level of flu in the United States has been exceptionally low.
There’s a reason for that: Flu has a basic reproductive rate (R0)
below 2. That’s less than even the initially circulating form of COVID-19, much
less the supercharged variants we have now, which have R0 values
around 10.
What
this means is that the basic steps taken to protect against COVID-19—wearing a
mask in public, frequent hand washing, and avoiding large groups—remains highly
effective against flu. Anything that works to slow the spread of COVID-19 is
going to work against flu even better.
However,
people are out there actively trying to get people to skip vaccinations.
They’ve even continuing to spread propaganda against mask-wearing. And now they
are more than free to do so on Twitter.
You’d
like to think that if people were on Twitter encouraging their fellow citizens
to fire weapons randomly into crowds (hey, you probably won’t hit anyone, and
you need to test that weapon to make sure it still fires!) that Twitter would
take steps to stop it. Though … maybe not these days.
The
steps that can be taken to prevent the worst flu season in decades are all
clear enough:
· Keep your flu
shots and COVID-19 boosters up to date
· Wear a mask when
inside stores or other public places.
· Wear a mask when
riding on buses, trains, or planes.
· Avoid large
groups, especially indoors.
· Order carryout
when possible and avoid eating inside crowded restaurants.
· Wash your hands
frequently, especially after being in public spaces.
It’s
doesn’t take a militaristic lockdown to slow the spread of COVID and all but
eliminate the flu. It just takes acting with concern for your own family and
for others.
It
certainly doesn’t help when, from Fox News to Twitter, right wing media sources
are pushing anti-science and anti-common sense disinformation that will
absolutely lead to more misery and more deaths.