Thursday, December 23, 2021

DYING IN JOE BIDEN'S AMERICA - Life expectancy in the US dropped by an astounding 1.8 years during the first year of the pandemic

 

Life expectancy in the US dropped by an astounding 1.8 years during the first year of the pandemic

During his live televised speech regarding Omicron’s dominance in the United States on Tuesday, President Joe Biden claimed that the country was in a far better position now than in March of 2020. This blatantly false assertion was exposed the next day when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that Americans’ life expectancy fell 1.8 years (from 78.8 to 77.0) in the course of 2020, 0.3 years more than their interim estimate of July 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic has been the cause of the most significant drop in life expectancy in the US since World War II, 75 years ago.

Figure 1—Life expectancy at birth in years, 1980 to 2020

Last year more than 3.3 million people died in the United States, the highest such number at any point in the country’s history. By comparison, in 2019 and 2018, 2.85 and 2.84 million died, respectively. COVID-19 deaths were attributable for three-quarters of the overall life expectancy decline in 2020 and 11 percent of annual deaths.

By comparison, China’s life expectancy has climbed from 76.91 years in 2019 to 76.96 in 2020 and 77.13 in 2021. Their pursuit and strict adherence to a dynamic Zero COVID policy limited the death toll to 5,000 during the initial outbreak. Only three people have reportedly died of COVID-19 since April 2020, and as a consequence, it is likely that this year China, still a relatively poor country, will surpass the United States in life expectancy for its citizens.

As a trigger event in world history, the pandemic magnifies every social contradiction of capitalism in its advanced state of decay. For instance, during the pandemic, the two-decades-long opioid crisis saw deaths jump 30 percent from 2019 to 2021 with deaths attributed to accidental overdoses exceeding 100,000.

Still, as staggering as these statistics for 2020 are, 2021 has proven even more deadly. The US COVID-19 death toll by the last week of December 2020, according to the Economist, stood at 340,878 and excess deaths at 528,185. One year later, the magazine’s dashboard placed the COVID-19 reported deaths at 810,000 and excess deaths between 1.0–1.1 million. This suggests there will be an even more significant drop in life expectancy in the first year of Biden’s presidency than during the last year of Trump’s.

According to a report published yesterday by USA Today, “Nationwide, nearly one million more Americans have died in 2020 and 2021 than in normal, pre-pandemic years, but about 800,000 deaths have been officially attributed to COVID-19, according to the CDC data. A majority of those additional 195,000 deaths are unidentified COVID-19 cases. Public health experts have long suggested [this], pointing to the unusual increase in deaths from natural causes.”

Coronavirus has become the third leading cause of death in the US, behind heart disease and cancer. More than 203,000 people between 18 and 65 have died during the pandemic, and it was the leading cause of death for people aged 45 to 54. One in 400 people of all ages have died from COVID-19, and among those 65 and older, one in 100.

Figure 2 - Average daily deaths in the United States from COVID-19 (November 2021) and other leading causes (2021)

Each week since August 12, 2021, more than 100,000 children have been infected with COVID-19. They have consistently accounted for nearly one-quarter of all infections. Since the onset of the pandemic, almost 7.4 million children have tested positive for COVID-19. More than 790 children under 18 have died from COVID-19, a level nearly twice the average flu mortality and in the top 10 leading causes of death for this age category. Severe multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) continues to climb. Almost 6,000 have developed this menacing illness, and 52 have died in the US.

Hospitalization rates among children, who are, for the most part, the largest constituent of the unvaccinated, have climbed higher than at any other time in the pandemic. Though children fare much better than adults, they remain at risk for chronic complications posed by Long COVID that can affect a small subset of children. These, by the sheer scale of infections due to Omicron, will pose significant challenges with uncertain long-term consequences.

Biden, and the press corps surrounding him, did not once touch on the impact the pandemic has had on children who have been orphaned and won’t be sharing holiday celebrations with their loved ones and caregivers. A daunting 120,000-plus children have lost a parent or grandparent who was a primary provider or financial support, and another 22,000 have lost a secondary caregiver.

“Are these children better off, Mr. President? Wouldn’t we have all been better off if in March 2020 we had eliminated COVID once and for all and prevented such a colossal loss of life?” These would have been appropriate follow-up questions. But no one asked them.

A girl arrives carrying a book to sustain her through the wait as she and her family join a line snaking several blocks for COVID-19 testing, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, at a Curative testing kiosk outside an elementary school in northwest Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Indeed, in just three weeks, when the incidence of Omicron was far less than one percent of all sequenced strains, it now accounts for more than 73 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the country. By all accounts, the US trails the UK by around two weeks, which means events there have significant relevance to what the population can soon expect in the US.

In London, the epicenter of the Omicron wave in the UK, hospitalizations have tripled since a month ago. This means that state after state in the US can expect a potentially sudden and alarming rise in emergency room visits. Two years into the pandemic, with repeated assaults on their capacity to care for patients, health systems have been left destitute.

In a recent email by the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio to their medical and ancillary staff, where the state’s health care is facing calamity brought on by the surge of infections, they offer this sobering assessment:

This past month has been sobering for many of us in healthcare. Nearly two years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, we’re seeing some of the highest volumes of patients with the disease in hospitals throughout the Midwest. Here at Cleveland Clinic, we’re caring for more than 800 patients with COVID-19 at our Ohio hospitals. Of these, more than 200 are in the intensive care unit. The majority of these patients are unvaccinated. Our Ohio emergency departments are filled. We have people waiting to get into our hospitals. Neighboring hospitals in our communities are facing the same issues. We’ve had to postpone many non-urgent surgeries in Ohio as we try to leave enough space for patients with COVID-19. Our physicians, nurses, and caregivers are working around-the-clock to care for these sick patients. They are exhausted.

Despite the grim news on the decline in life expectancy, stocks traded higher on the President’s announcement that there would be little done in the way of impeding the surge of infections. Having recouped all their losses from Monday when Omicron’s dominance was announced, yesterday the Dow closed 261 points up at 35,753.

As comparisons between China and the US show, the drop in life expectancy is a purely political phenomenon attributable to the policies the ruling elites have employed that continue to place profits over lives, as evidenced by the financial aristocracy’s trillions amassed.

Victor Davis Hanson on Illegal Immigration | Highlights Ep.35



The Omicron surge: Scientific facts vs. Biden’s fictions

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported yesterday a staggering 288,579 new COVID-19 cases in the United States, the second highest daily case total ever, as the Omicron variant is spreading at an unprecedented rate throughout the country.

Amidst this catastrophic new phase of the pandemic, US President Joe Biden delivered a national address yesterday afternoon that combined lies, distortions, contradictions and no small amount of self-delusion. He did not advance a single concrete proposal that would meaningfully reduce the spread of the virus.

Biden’s entire speech was built around the narrative that the pandemic is a problem of the unvaccinated, attempting to transform the partial truth—that those who are unvaccinated are at the greatest risk—into an entirely false claim that those who are vaccinated are safe, and that no additional public health measures are required aside from encouraging more vaccination.

US President Joseph Biden speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington on Tuesday, December 21, 2021,. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

“If you are not fully vaccinated, you have good reason to be concerned,” Biden said. “You’re at a high risk of getting sick. And if you get sick, you’re likely to spread it to others, including friends and family. And the unvaccinated have a significantly higher risk of ending up in a hospital or even dying.”

But Biden said those who are vaccinated “have much, much less reason to worry. You have a high degree of protection against severe illness.” Biden added that COVID-19 cases in vaccinated people “are highly unlikely to lead to serious illness” and that vaccinated people are “protected from severe illness and death.”

Even if one were to accept this claim as true, the fact is that only 61 percent of the American population is “fully vaccinated,” currently defined as having two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one dose of Johnson & Johnson. Those who are not fully vaccinated include a large majority of children (only 16.7 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 11 have even one dose of the vaccine) and those who are infants up to the age of five, for whom no vaccine is available.

Even this, however, understates the gravity of the situation. The ability of the Omicron variant to evade existing vaccines means that being “fully vaccinated” requires having a third, “booster” shot. Only 18 percent of the American population have had a booster. There is even discussion now that to be protected against the Omicron variant requires not a third, but a fourth shot, which Israel has now approved for people 60 years or older four months after their third shot.

Biden’s main message was to call on the American population to get vaccinated and to get their boosters. “People with booster shots are highly protected,” he said. “Join them, join us.”

Even if the entire unvaccinated population and unboosted population were to follow his advice today, however, it would take two weeks for the impact of the vaccines to take full effect. Meanwhile, the virus will infect, at the current rate, millions of people. It is the equivalent of telling people in a burning building to quietly finish their lunch and then go down to the local hardware store to buy a fire extinguisher.

Moreover, the entire presentation of the issue by Biden is based on a lie—that only the unvaccinated need to worry about the massive surge in new cases.

Biden accepted as inevitable that millions of people will be infected. “We’ll see some fully vaccinated people get COVID, potentially in large numbers. There will be positive cases in every office, even here in the White House, among the vaccinated—from Omicron.” However, those who are vaccinated, Biden claimed, are “highly unlikely” to get seriously ill.

But the virus targets society, not individuals. With new infections numbering in the millions, even a small percentage of serious illnesses and deaths can produce a catastrophe.

A recent analysis by ABC News of data from 34 states found 16,700 deaths from breakthrough infections between April and November of this year, with 20 percent of all deaths in those states being vaccinated people. If that figure is representative of the entire country, that means that 300 vaccinated people are dying every single day in the United States. And these deaths took place before the current surge of the Omicron variant, which is far more resistant to vaccines.

Biden’s speech was constructed to justify a position that there must be no change in policy, no matter how rapidly the virus spreads. He particularly stressed keeping schools open for in-person learning, which is necessary to allow parents to stay at work.

“We must also keep our K-12 schools open,” Biden said. “The science is clear and overwhelming. We know how to keep our kids safe from COVID-19 in school. … Children are as safe in school as they are any place.”

This is another lie. To the extent that data exists, including in the state of Michigan, it has shown that schools are a major source of broader community outbreaks. Every serious study on the subject has shown that closing schools massively reduces community transmission of COVID-19.

The reopening of schools in the fall, amidst the surge of the Delta variant, has driven a sharp rise in infections and deaths among children. Over 1,000 children have already died from the disease, half of whom succumbed in the last four months.

The spread of the Omicron variant in South Africa and the UK has led to a sharp rise of hospitalizations among children, particularly infants under the age of five, for whom there is no vaccine. Addressing himself to parents terrified that their young child could catch COVID-19, Biden merely said, “One thing you can and must do, get yourself fully vaccinated and boosted, as well as those around you.”

However, even vaccinated and boosted adults can contract the virus, as Biden himself acknowledged, meaning that they can transmit it to their infant children.

Biden also advised that the millions of Americans traveling and gathering in groups for the holiday season should make no changes in their plans. “I know some Americans are wondering if you can safely celebrate the holidays with your family and friends,” he said. “The answer is yes… If you are vaccinated, and particularly if you have a booster shot. You should be comfortable celebrating the holidays as you planned it.”

Again, vaccinated individuals can transmit the virus, which means that even if only “fully vaccinated” people travel and congregate over the holidays, the airplanes and the homes of potentially millions of people will become “super-spreaders” for Omicron. Biden’s encouragement for the population to gather over the holiday “is not only misinformation. It’s premeditated social murder,” commented epidemiologist Seth J. Prins.

Perhaps the biggest lie of all was Biden’s claim that the country is in a far better position today than in March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. In March 2020, there were less than 1,000 deaths from COVID-19. Today, there are more than 800,000. The daily death toll then stood at less than 100; today it is over 1,200.

As for Biden’s claim that there has been a significant improvement in the health care infrastructure, even at current levels, the surge of the Omicron variant has already overwhelmed testing and contact tracing capabilities in the United States, with rapid test kits in short supply and lines at testing facilities. The US medical system has been massively degraded by two years of the pandemic, with its medical staff burnt out and many afflicted by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Finally, Biden claimed that this entire situation was unforeseen and unforeseeable. “I don’t think anybody anticipated that this was going to be as rapidly spreading as it did.” The president must take the American people for fools. Scientists and epidemiologists, along with the World Socialist Web Site, have been warning for over a year that the continued transmission of the virus would lead to the evolution of new, more infectious strains.

All of these lies and falsifications were intended for one audience: Wall Street. Biden’s task was to ensure the corporate and financial elite that no measures would be taken that undermined profit and the endless accumulation of wealth by the ruling class. Wall Street responded to his remarks with enthusiasm, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 560 points (1.6 percent) yesterday.

At this point, the most reliable indicator that anything serious was being done to save lives would be a sell-off on the markets. But this requires the intervention of the working class. Biden’s policy of “living with COVID-19,” repeated in its essentials in every major capitalist country, must be rejected.

The working class must fight for a policy of “Zero COVID,” that is, the elimination and eventual eradication of the virus. That such a strategy is viable is proven by the case of China, which has limited deaths in a country of 1.4 billion to less than 5,000 over the past two years. It has been rejected in the US and the major capitalist countries because the necessary public health measures to implement it—including the shutdown of nonessential production and the closure of schools, combined with mass testing, contact tracing and vaccination—go against the interests of the corporate and financial oligarchy.

This is why the fight for this strategy must be taken up by the working class, through the formation of rank-and-file committees to demand and enforce the necessary measures to save lives, and through the development of a revolutionary movement against the ruling elites and the entire capitalist system.

JOE BIDEN, SOCIOPATH. VACCINATE EVERYONE BUT OUR ILLEGALS

Victor Davis Hanson on Illegal Immigration | Highlights Ep.35



Paxton: Border Policies Show Biden Doesn’t ‘Really Care about COVID’ 

On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Evening Edit,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) argued that the lax coronavirus policies on the border by the Biden administration show that “they don’t really care about COVID.”

Paxton said, “It is shocking to me that this president really will stop American citizens from crossing the border, coming by flight or however they come, you cannot come into this country if you have COVID and you’re an American citizen, but if you’re illegal, we’re not going to check that and we’re going to send you secretly all over the country with COVID. That tells me that they do not care about COVID, and the fact that they’re willing to fire Americans for not taking a COVID vaccine, and at the same time, turn a blind eye, with no vaccinations, for those who are coming across illegally. Those two things don’t go together, and they tell you that there’s some reason they don’t really care about COVID.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

Victor Davis Hanson on Illegal Immigration | Highlights Ep.35



Victor Davis Hanson explains why illegal immigration undermines American citizenship. In this Highlight from Hillsdale College’s online course, “American Citizenship and Its Decline,” Dr. Hanson reminds us that illegal immigration is a threat to American citizenship because too many parties have too many vested interests and use illegal immigrants in their pursuit for wealth and power. Click the link below to enroll in this FREE online course today. https://hillsdale.edu/citizen - - Support Hillsdale College: https://secured.hillsdale.edu/hillsda... Visit our website: http://hillsdale.edu Learn from our online courses: http://online.hillsdale.edu Read Imprimis: https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/ Undergraduate programs: https://www.hillsdale.edu/information... Graduate School of Statesmanship: https://www.hillsdale.edu/academics/g... Graduate School of Government: https://dc.hillsdale.edu/School-of-Go... Listen to Hillsdale Dialogues Podcast: http://blog.hillsdale.edu/online-courses Hillsdale College is an independent institution of higher learning founded in 1844 by men and women “grateful to God for the inestimable blessings” resulting from civil and religious liberty and “believing that the diffusion of learning is essential to the perpetuity of these blessings.” It pursues the stated object of the founders: “to furnish all persons who wish, irrespective of nation, color, or sex, a literary, scientific, [and] theological education” outstanding among American colleges “and to combine with this such moral and social instruction as will best develop the minds and improve the hearts of its pupils.” As a nonsectarian Christian institution, Hillsdale College maintains “by precept and example” the immemorial teachings and practices of the Christian faith. The College also considers itself a trustee of our Western philosophical and theological inheritance tracing to Athens and Jerusalem, a heritage finding its clearest expression in the American experiment of self-government under law. By training the young in the liberal arts, Hillsdale College prepares students to become leaders worthy of that legacy. By encouraging the scholarship of its faculty, it contributes to the preservation of that legacy for future generations. By publicly defending that legacy, it enlists the aid of other friends of free civilization and thus secures the conditions of its own survival and independence.


SO, STOP THE INVASION, NAFTA JOE!

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