Don't Let The Talk About "Breakthrough Case" Fool You

There has been a lot of talk in the media lately about "breakthrough cases" of COVID-19 -- cases where a vaccinated person contracted the virus. Sadly, even the normally sane NBC and MSNBC have been guilty of this, and the right-wing sites have been crowing about it. The impression given is that even the people who have been vaccinated have a good chance of getting COVID-19.

That is pure bullshit! The number is cases where a vaccinated person contracted the disease is incredibly tiny. 

Note the chart above, which uses figures from the CDC and state dashboards. About 99.923% of vaccinated Americans have NOT gotten COVID-19. That means only 0.077% have gotten sick. That is less than one-tenth of one percent!

The vaccines (especially the Pfizer and Modern vaccines) are incredibly effective. And anyone who wants to be safe from the virus, even the Delta variant, should get vaccinated.

Don't let the media scare you into failing to be vaccinated!

Public Does Not Trust Trump To Give Them COVID-19 Info

The chart above is from the NBC News / SurveyMonkey Poll -- done between July 27th and August 2nd of a national sample of 47,190 adults, with a 1 point margin of error.

It shows that 51% of the public trusts Dr. Fauci, and 55% trusts the Center for Disease Control to give them information about the Coronavirus pandemic. But far fewer trust Donald Trump -- only 31%.

About 69% of Republicans said they trusted Trump, and that skewed the survey. Only 13% of Independents and 2% of Democrats trust him.

Trump is not helping himself with his one-person press conferences on the virus, because most Americans simply don't believe anything he says about that.

Who Does Public Trust To Give Them Medical Advice?

The chart above reflects the results of the new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between July 19th and 21st of a national sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,222 registered voters). The margin of error for both adults and registered voters is 3.2 points.

Donald Trump has resumed giving updates on the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, but this time he is doing it alone -- without any doctors, public health officials, or the CDC.

This is probably a big mistake, because most people consider him dishonest and untrustworthy (see chart below).

When asked who they trusted to give them medical advice (see chart above), Trump was the least trusted. Joe Biden was trusted a bit more, and both Dr. Fauci and the CDC were trusted a lot more.

Former CDC Directors Blast Trump For Politicizing Science

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) was created to protect the health of the citizens of this country. And it has been very effective in doing that -- until now. That's because all previous presidents have followed the guidance of the scientists in that agency. Sadly, Trump is different. If the CDC guidelines don't say what he wants, he demands the agency change. He is demanding the agency, which depends on good science, deny that science to please him.

The following op-ed in The Washington Post was written by four former CDC directors (Tom Frieden, Jeffrey Koplan, David Satcher, Richard Besser) who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents. They write:

As America begins the formidable task of getting our kids back to school and all of us back to work safely amid a pandemic that is only getting worse, public health experts face two opponents: covid-19, but also political leaders and others attempting to undermine the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As the debate last week around reopening schools more safely showed, these repeated efforts to subvert sound public health guidelines introduce chaos and uncertainty while unnecessarily putting lives at risk.

As of this date, the CDC guidelines, which were designed to protect children, teachers, school staffers and their families — no matter the state and no matter the politics — have not been altered. It is not unusual for CDC guidelines to be changed or amended during a clearance process that moves through multiple agencies and the White House. But it is extraordinary for guidelines to be undermined after their release. Through last week, and into Monday, the administration continued to cast public doubt on the agency’s recommendations and role in informing and guiding the nation’s pandemic response. On Sunday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos characterized the CDC guidelines as an impediment to reopening schools quickly rather than what they are: the path to doing so safely. The only valid reason to change released guidelines is new information and new science — not politics.

One of the many contributions the CDC provides our country is sound public health guidance that states and communities can adapt to their local context — expertise even more essential during a pandemic, when uncertainty is the norm. The four of us led the CDC over a period of more than 15 years, spanning Republican and Democratic administrations alike. We cannot recall over our collective tenure a single time when political pressure led to a change in the interpretation of scientific evidence.

The CDC is home to thousands of experts who for decades have fought deadly pathogens such as HIV, Zika and Ebola. Despite the inevitable challenges of evolving science and the public’s expectation of certainty, these are the people best positioned to help our country emerge from this crisis as safely as possible. Unfortunately, their sound science is being challenged with partisan potshots, sowing confusion and mistrust at a time when the American people need leadership, expertise and clarity. These efforts have even fueled a backlash against public health officials across the country: Public servants have been harassed, threatened and forced to resign when we need them most. This is unconscionable and dangerous.

We’re seeing the terrible effect of undermining the CDC play out in our population. Willful disregard for public health guidelines is, unsurprisingly, leading to a sharp rise in infections and deaths. America now stands as a global outlier in the coronavirus pandemic. This tragic indictment of our efforts is even more egregious in light of the disproportionate impact we’ve witnessed on communities of color and lower-income essential workers. China, using the same mitigation tools available to us and with a far larger population, has had just a tiny fraction of the 3.1 million cases reported here. The United States now has more cases and deaths than any other country and the sixth-highest rate of any large country in the world — and we are gaining on the other five. The United States is home to a quarter of the world’s reported coronavirus infections and deaths, despite being home to only 4.4 percent of the global population.

Sadly, we are not even close to having the virus under control. Quite the opposite, in fact.

That’s what makes it hard to plan for schools. Any parent with a young child knows that classrooms, cafeterias and school buses are petri dishes for the common cold and the flu, even in normal times. And although children are at lower risk for serious illness and death from covid-19, the same is not true for the adults who work in schools, nor for the families children and school staffers go home to each evening. We must pay careful attention to safer school policies, including those the CDC released, to do everything we can to reopen our schools — and our economy — as safely as possible. This cannot happen equitably without additional federal and state resources to ensure that every school district — no matter the Zip code — can take the necessary measures to protect children, teachers and staffers. Black, Latino and Native American communities have suffered disproportionately during the first six months of the pandemic. We cannot let this same tragedy unfold this fall in our schools. The CDC’s guidance is a call for all of our nation to work together so as many schools as possible can reopen as safely as possible. This will mean wearing masks correctly, increasing distance — including by closing bars and restaurants in many places — and tracking and stopping the spread of the virus by supporting patients and protecting contacts.

Trying to fight this pandemic while subverting scientific expertise is like fighting blindfolded. How well and how quickly we adhere to the advice of public health experts at the CDC will determine whether, how soon and how safely our schools can reopen.

It is not too late to give the CDC its proper role in guiding this response. But the clock is ticking.

Public Disapproves Of Trump/Pence Handling Of Pandemic

The chart above is from the Morning Consult Poll. They questioned 2,200 U.S. adults on how they thought differing people and organizations were handling the Coronavirus pandemic. The poll was done between May 1st and 3rd, and has a 2 point margin of error.

The chart shows the net approval (approval minus disapproval) for each.

The two entities receiving the highest net approval are the CDC and state governors. The two receiving the lowest net approval are Mike Pence (close to zero) and Donald Trump (below zero).

Public Trusts The CDC's Handling Of Coronavirus

The chart above is from the Morning Consult Poll. It is from a survey conducted between February 7th and 9th of a national sample of 1,839 likely voters, with a 2 point margin of error.

Back in 2014, Americans were very frightened of the Ebola virus, and it showed in their trust of how the Center for Disease Control (CDC) was handling that epidemic. Only 39% approved of how the CDC was handling the epidemic, while 53% disapproved.

It is much different for the new Coronavirus. Currently about 80% of the public approves of how the CDC is handling this new virus outbreak, while only 4% disapproves. That's quite a big difference.

Part of it may be because the CDC actually did a very good job in 2014 of keeping Ebola out of the U.S., and the public now recognizes that. That gives them more trust that the CDC can do an equally good job with the Coronavirus.

Measles Outbreak Sets A 21st Century Record

The number of new measles cases in the United States in 2019 is the highest of any year in this century -- and that's for only four months of this year. Imagine how high it will be by the end of the year!

We can thank the idiots in the anti-vaxxer movement for this for spreading lies about vaccines.

From NPR.org:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 695 measles cases in 22 states.

"This is the greatest number of cases reported in the United States since measles was eliminated from this country in 2000," says a CDC statement issued late Wednesday. . . .

"The longer these outbreaks continue, the greater the chance measles will again get a sustained foothold in the United States," the CDC said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement that the rise in measles cases is "avoidable."

"Measles is not a harmless childhood illness, but a highly contagious, potentially life-threatening disease," he said. "We have the ability to safely protect our children and our communities. Vaccines are a safe, highly effective public health solution that can prevent this disease. The measles vaccines are among the most extensively studied medical products we have, and their safety has been firmly established over many years in some of the largest vaccine studies ever undertaken." . . .

The measles outbreaks were largely imported by unvaccinated travelers who were exposed to the disease in another country and then on their return to the U.S. exposed other unvaccinated people. If a community is highly vaccinated, then the outbreaks are minimal or don't happen at all.

"However, once measles is in an under-vaccinated community, it becomes difficult to control the spread of the disease," said the CDC. . . .

The states with reported cases of measles are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, Tennessee and Washington.

There Were Nearly 40,000 Gun Deaths In U.S. In 2017

There is an average of one mass shooting every day in the United States. That alone should convince rational people that we have a serious problem with gun violence. But now we have another statistic that shows the problem is growing.

The number of gun deaths in the United States is growing. There were 28,874 gun deaths in 1999. In 2017, the number of gun deaths had grown to 39,773 -- a yearly growth of more than 10,000 deaths.

And this cannot be attributed to a growth in population. The rate of gun deaths per 100,000 has also grown -- from 10.3 in 1999 to 12.2 in 2017. That a significant jump!

I expect Trump and the Republican Senate will block any attempt to save lives with more reasonable and constitutional laws about guns. That's why they must be voted out of power in 2020.

The numbers in the charts above are from the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Are Gun Owners Really Safer? Researchers Say No!

(The image above is from the website genius.com.)

One of the biggest ideas proposed by the NRA is that gun ownership will make a person safer -- and they even go so far as to say that the more guns there are in our society, the safer all Americans will be (because a "good guy" with a gun can protect us from a "bad guy" with a gun). That may sound logical to those who want to believe that, but research doesn't bear it out. The truth is that owning a gun makes your life more dangerous, not less dangerous. Here is how Amber Hall (of The Takeaway on PRI) puts it in an article for msn.com:

Back in the early 1990s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control provided funding for studies on gun violence. The NRA was not pleased.

“[Our research] underwent peer review and was thought to be very solid and worthwhile research,” says Dr. Fred Rivara, who was part of the team that researched gun violence. “The CDC stood by our research — they had funded it and they stood by it. Unfortunately, it raised the attention of the National Rifle Association, who then worked with pro-gun members of Congress to essentially stop funding firearm research.”

Rivara, a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at the University of Washington at Seattle Children's Hospital, discovered that having a gun in the home is associated with a threefold increase in the risk of a homicide.

“The most common reason that people have a gun is because they have it for home protection,” he says. “Unfortunately, the data indicates that having a gun is associated with both an increased risk of homicide, but even more importantly, an increased risk of suicide. We know that, for example, if there’s a gun in the home, the risk of suicide among adolescents and young adults increases tenfold.”

Back in 1993, Rivara and his colleagues released this information in a series of articlesthat appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most highly respected medical journals in the world. The NRA quickly went after the research — as well as Rivara and his colleagues.

Rivara says 10 pro-gun senators worked to get the ear of Arlen Specter, then a senator from Pennsylvania and chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee.

“[Specter] approached the Centers for Disease and Control and discussed the idea that this research was biased,” says Rivara. Congress “ended up cutting the CDC budget by the exact amount of money that was used to fund the gun research. They had first threatened to cut all of the funding for injury research at the CDC. They didn’t do that, but they ended up cutting it by the exact amount that was spent on gun research.”

And that wasn't all. “More importantly, however, was that they put a clause for the appropriations of the CDC that essentially blocked all gun research for the next two decades," Rivara says.

The CDC budget cuts all but ended federal gun research. Dr. Arthur Kellerman, who also worked on the 1993 study, stated in a December 2012 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that “no federal employee was willing to risk his or her career or the agency's funding to find out” if any gun research could be done. "Support for firearm injury prevention research quickly dried up.”

The NRA also wrote to the National Institutes of Health to request that the Office of Scientific Integrity review the research published by Rivara, Kellerman and their colleagues.

“That’s a big deal,” says Rivara. “There’s only two or three of these that are done each year, and it’s basically questioning our credentials as scientists and saying that we had lied or falsified our research. Fortunately, the NIH did not find any basis for that and the CDC backed us up. But it was really chilling in terms of our ability to conduct research on this very important problem.”

But while Rivara calls that period "a frightening time," he does admit it had a silver lining: “It was also good because it told us that we were doing important work."

The Racist Myth Regarding African-American Fatherhood

For a while now, there has been an idea permeating our society. It is that a lot of African-American men aren't good fathers -- that they are absent, and are not involved in the raising of their own children. Fortunately a new study at the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has exposed that as a myth -- a racist lie.

The results of that study are in the chart above (compiled by the Los Angeles Times from the CDC study). Note that African-American fathers are no different from White or Hispanic fathers in performing the duties of fatherhood, and in some cases do an even better job.

Of course this brings up the question -- why is this mistaken belief so prevalent in our society? The obvious answer is that we are still a long way from solving our problem with race in this country. Some progress has been made. In the 1960's, a few tools used by racists against African-Americans were eliminated with the passing of the Civil Rights laws.

Unfortunately, those tools of racism were replaced by an expanded effort at propaganda. Since the racists didn't have their cherished tools to keep minorities down, they used lies to attempt to accomplish the same purpose -- and sadly, some of those lies (like the myth of the absent African-American father) came to be accepted by many (some of whom were not racist, but just gullible).

I applaud the CDC for this study, and websites like Think Progress who are actively trying to destroy the racist propaganda. The Los Angeles Times is also to be credited for their coverage. Hopefully, this becomes widely known very soon -- and we can put this racist myth behind us.

Medically-Accurate Sex Education Works

(This chart was made using CDC figures from their latest report on births in U.S.)

There is more evidence now that real medical-accurate sex education works to prevent teen pregnancies -- and works far better than the religiously-driven abstinence-only programs. The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) has released its report of births in the United States (2011). And the information about teen pregnancies is particularly interesting.

The teen pregnancy rate for the country as a whole dropped from 34.2 in 2010 (per 1,000 girls) to a rate of 31.3 in 2011. The rate dropped in nearly every state, but it has dropped the most (and remains the lowest) in those states that provide real sex education to students.

An excellent example of this is what has been accomplished in California. That state has seen its teen pregnancy rate drop about 60% -- from a high in 1991 of 70.9, to a current rate of 28.7 (below the national average). State officials and public health officials give credit to state laws mandating comprehensive sex education with medically-accurate information on birth control, and community-based family planning programs providing resources to teens. California is definitely moving in the right direction.

That's still not as low as some other states (like New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont -- who have the lowest rates in the nation), but it is a remarkable accomplishment for such a large state -- and it shows what can be done with some reasonable state effort. I expect the rate will continue to drop there.

Meanwhile, the states mandating abstinence-only religious programs continue to have the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the nation -- states like Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Mississippi, and Arkansas. There is no reason these states couldn't do as well (or better) than California. But they will never do it by preaching abstinence-only instead of teaching real medical-accurate sex education.

We can do even better in this country. But we'll never do much better until we stop replacing science with religion in too many of our schools. We need to trust our young people enough to teach them the truth.

Suicide Rate Rising For Working-Age Adults

(The image above is a sculpture in Barcelona's Poblenou Cemetery. It was found at the website Kuriositas.)

There is a disturbing new report from the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The CDC reports that the number of deaths from suicides has for the first time eclipsed the number of people killed in auto accidents. This could have been expected, since the population is growing while cars become safer. But what was not expected, and is much more troubling, is that the rate of suicides (the number of suicides per 100,000 people) is also growing -- and that can't be accounted for by any increase in population.

Traditionally, suicide has been viewed as a problem mainly of the young and the elderly -- but the CDC found suicide is growing among those between 35 and 64 (increasing 28.4%), meaning much more effort needs to be taken to prevent suicides in that age group. That rate rises even more sharply for those from 45 to 64 -- and for both women and men, Whites, and Native Americans. It has also grown significantly among all areas of the country.

Here are the figures for the age 35 to 64 group. The first figure given is the 2010 suicide rate (per 100,000), while the number in parentheses is the 1999 rate -- followed by the percentage difference between the two figures:

General public...............17.6 (13.7).....up 28.4%

Men...............27.3 (21.5).....up 27.3%
Women...............8.1 (6.2).....up 31.5%

35 to 39...............15.3 (14.4).....up 6.4%
40 to 44...............16.7 (14.3).....up 16.5%
45 to 49...............19.3 (14.3).....up 34.3%
50 to 54...............19.9 (13.4).....up 48.4%
55 to 59...............19.1 (12.8).....up 49.1%
60 to 64...............15.6 (11.4).....up 37.0%

Whites...............22.3 (15.9).....up 40.4%
Blacks...............6.8 (6.4).....up 5.8%
Hispanics...............7.4 (7.1).....up 3.5%
Asians/Pacific Islanders...............7.8 (7.1).....up 10.6%
Native Americans...............18.5 (11.2).....up 65.2%

Northeast...............13.9 (10.5).....up 32.7%
Midwest...............17.3 (12.7).....up 35.6%
South...............18.4 (14.8).....up 24.4%
West...............19.5 (15.8).....up 23.6%

The study doesn't go into the causes of the sharp rise in the suicide rate. However, I can't help but feel it may have at least something to do with the economy and huge jobless rate. People who have always been able to work and take care of their families can no longer do so. That is just my guess, and may not be true -- but the fact that groups who have been used to having a harsher economic problem (like Blacks and Hispanics) tends to lend a bit of credence to my theory, since their rise in the suicide rate was very small.

What do you think? Why is the suicide rate rising among the 35 to 64 age group (who traditionally have had a much smaller rate than that among the young and the elderly)?

A Gun In The Home Increases The Danger

(The cartoon above is by Steve Sack in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.)

Back in the early 1990s the Center for Disease Control (CDC) was conducting a study of gun violence in the United States. But that scared the hell out of the NRA, because the CDC was a respected organization and if they told the truth about guns the public might believe them. So the NRA lobbied their friends in Congress (the ones they had bought), and in 1996 all the funds were cut off for the CDC study by Congress.

What was scaring the NRA. Well, some preliminary findings had been discovered, and it didn't support what the NRA was preaching -- that more guns mean more safety. The folks over at The Raw Story decided to find out what the CDC had discovered before their funds were cut off. They talked with Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who had led the research on gun violence back in the 1990s. Here is some of what Dr. Rosenberg had to say:

One of the critical studies that we supported was looking at the question of whether having a firearm in your home protects you or puts you at increased risk. This was a very important question because people who want to sell more guns say that having a gun in your home is the way to protect your family.

What the research showed was not only did having a firearm in your home not protect you, but it hugely increased the risk that someone in your family would die from a firearm homicide. It increased the risk almost 300 percent, almost three times as high.

It also showed that the risk that someone in your home would commit suicide went up. It went up five-fold if you had a gun in the home. These are huge, huge risks, and to just put that in perspective, we look at a risk that someone might get a heart attack or that they might get a certain type of cancer, and if that risk might be 20 percent greater, that may be enough to ban a certain drug or a certain product.

But in this case, we’re talking about a risk not 20 percent, not 100 percent, not 200 percent, but almost 300 percent or 500 percent. These are huge, huge risks.

CDC Prepares America For "Zombie Apocalypse"

Thank goodness someone working for the government has a sense of humor. I just didn't think that person would be working at the Center for Disease Control (CDC). One of the jobs of the CDC is to prepare the American people for an emergency -- so they will know what to do if and when an emergency strikes. One clever person at the CDC (Ali S. Khan) has come up with a way to draw interest to this topic in a unique way. He has written an account of how to prepare for a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE (with the knowledge that this same preparedness could be used in any kind of disaster).

I urge you to go over to the CDC site and read the whole thing. I'm only posting a part of it here, but it's good information that we all should be aware of -- and it's a pretty funny article to boot. Here's some of what he had to say:

There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.


The rise of zombies in pop culture has given credence to the idea that a zombie apocalypse could happen. In such a scenario zombies would take over entire countries, roaming city streets eating anything living that got in their way. The proliferation of this idea has led many people to wonder “How do I prepare for a zombie apocalypse?”


Well, we’re here to answer that question for you, and hopefully share a few tips about preparing for real emergencies too!


So what do you need to do before zombies…or hurricanes or pandemics for example, actually happen? First of all, you should have an emergency kit in your house. This includes things like water, food, and other supplies to get you through the first couple of days before you can locate a zombie-free refugee camp (or in the event of a natural disaster, it will buy you some time until you are able to make your way to an evacuation shelter or utility lines are restored).


If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine). It’s likely that an investigation of this scenario would seek to accomplish several goals: determine the cause of the illness, the source of the infection/virus/toxin, learn how it is transmitted and how readily it is spread, how to break the cycle of transmission and thus prevent further cases, and how patients can best be treated. Not only would scientists be working to identify the cause and cure of the zombie outbreak, but CDC and other federal agencies would send medical teams and first responders to help those in affected areas (I will be volunteering the young nameless disease detectives for the field work).