The first day of the new year – How the unvaccinated affect patients afflicted with any ailment – Exodus of public health officials – Evening statistics
The first day of the year ended better than it began. The hike in which I had originally been scheduled to participate was canceled because the leaders came into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID and they did not want to take the chance of infecting others. It may have been possible to find another hike to join, but the weather for much of the day was a continual downpour and as a result I was not inclined to go out. In the late afternoon, however, the rain had come to an end just as I was leaving the house to go to a New Year’s Day party. The hosts were EF and MJ, whose penthouse apartment has an extensive outdoor terrace, and the weather for the evening was surprisingly warm and less damp than it had been earlier. Certain precautions were taken, of course. All of the guests were vaccinated. Each of us took a COVID test before the day of the party. The guests wore masks while inside the living room, but we took them off once we went out on the terrace. The guests were staggered, so that there would not be 30 people occupying the apartment all at the same time. To some such measures might seem excessive and to others they may seem insufficient, but I believe it was quite reasonable to hold a social function on such terms.
It is perhaps fanciful of me, but I have a strange conviction that this first day of 2022 is emblematic of the year to come: that is, dark and depressing at the beginning, but giving way to milder conditions and a relaxation of the restrictions later on.
The family of Dale Weeks is blaming unvaccinated patients for indirectly causing his death. Weeks was diagnosed with sepsis in November and was hoping to get treated for it before Thanksgiving. He was initially taken to a small rural hospital for treatment but had to wait 15 days to be transferred over to a large hospital with better treatment options. Hospital systems in Iowa , where he resided, have been overwhelmed by the high number of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients, causing a strain on all of their resources, even those for patients with unrelated ailments. Jennifer Owenson, his daughter, said: “It was terribly frustrating being told, ‘There’s not a bed yet.’ All of us were talking multiple times a day, ‘Why can’t we get him a bed?’ There was this logjam to get him in anywhere.” By the time he was able to have surgery, his condition started to deteriorate and he died on Nov. 28th of complications by the operation. His son Anthony Weeks said afterwards: “The thing that bothers me the most is people’s selfish decision not to get vaccinated and the failure to see how this affects a greater group of people. That’s the part that’s really difficult to swallow.”
The effects of the self-centeredness of those who refuse the vaccines and who violently protest against them are not confined to hospitals. In addition to losing health care workers, we are seeing a precipitous departure of public health officials as a direct consequence of their behavior. Lee Norman, head of the Department of Health and Environment for Kansas, was told to resign by the state governor on account his daily briefings about the virus, which placed him in direct contradiction with the state’s GOP-controlled legislature. Angie Hitson, director of the Health Department for Missouri’s Franklin County, stepped down after receiving repeated threats to herself and her family. “The daily verbal assaults, threats of violence and even death threats directed at the department, my family and at me personally for following orders I was directed to follow, are not only unbearable, they are unacceptable,” she wrote in her resignation letter. “Resigning was not an easy decision for me, rather it was one I felt I had to make for my own safety and well-being.” Nichole Quick, the chief health officer in Orange County, California, resigned in June 2020 after protesters displayed an edited photo of her with a Hitler mustache and swastikas, while another one of her critics publicly revealed her home address to any would-be assailant. Other officials, in states like Montana, New York, Oklahoma and Texas, have left their jobs not only because of the persistent threats but a supine lack of support from lawmakers and other government leaders. Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, has calculated that more than 500 public health officials have been pushed out or left their jobs since the early days of the pandemic. They are not easily replaceable; those with the necessary qualifications for such positions are reluctant to assume them on account of the continual stream of threats and intimidation.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 289,662,341; # of deaths worldwide: 5,456,873; # of cases U.S.: 55,864,519; # of deaths; U.S.: 847,162.