Pandemic Polarization

Many posts have discussed partisan polarization and aversive or negative partisanship.

 Jay J. Van Bavel have an article at  Perspectives on Psychological Science titled "The Costs of Polarizing a Pandemic: Antecedents, Consequences, and Lessons."

Abstract

Polarization has been rising in the United States of America for the past few decades and now poses a significant—and growing—public-health risk. One of the signature features of the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been the degree to which perceptions of risk and willingness to follow public-health recommendations have been politically polarized. Although COVID-19 has proven more lethal than any war or public-health crisis in American history, the deadly consequences of the pandemic were exacerbated by polarization. We review research detailing how every phase of the COVID-19 pandemic has been polarized, including judgments of risk, spatial distancing, mask wearing, and vaccination. We describe the role of political ideology, partisan identity, leadership, misinformation, and mass communication in this public-health crisis. We then assess the overall impact of polarization on infections, illness, and mortality during the pandemic; offer a psychological analysis of key policy questions; and identify a set of future research questions for scholars and policy experts. Our analysis suggests that the catastrophic death toll in the United States was largely preventable and due, in large part, to the polarization of the pandemic. Finally, we discuss implications for public policy to help avoid the same deadly mistakes in future public-health crises.

From the article:

Studies have suggested that partisan identity is the primary driver of affective polarization in the United States and that policy preferences contribute to affective polarization mainly by signaling partisan identity (Dias & Lelkes, 2021; Mason, 2018b). Affective polarization is at its highest point in 40 years, and out-group hate now surpasses in-group love in U.S. politics (Finkel et al., 2020). It is therefore reasonable to expect partisan affiliation to influence voting behavior and attitudes toward specific policies. But why would partisanship affect people’s health-related behaviors—especially in ways that clearly run counter to their own self-interest, such as avoiding disease and death (or infecting their family and friends)? A potential explanation is that political parties not only represent a set of political stances but also fulfill social functions, and these functions can therefore affect beliefs and behavior.

Social groups satisfy basic human needs, such as belonging, distinctiveness, status, and epistemic closure (Baumeister & Leary, 2017; Brewer, 1991; Hogg et al., 2008). According to social-identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 2004), people’s sense of self is defined not only by their personal traits but also by their group memberships—which can include their political-party affiliation (Iyengar et al., 2019; Mason, 2018a). In a polarized context, such as the United States, partisanship has become a particularly important social identity (Mason, 2018b; Van Bavel & Packer, 2021). The combination of elite cues, partisan news media, hostile rhetoric, social media “echo chambers,” and geographic sorting increases the centrality of partisanship to the self-concepts of citizens (Finkel et al., 2020). Furthermore, partisan identities have become “mega-identities” that are strongly associated with a number of other demographic identities (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, religion, region; Mason, 2018b).

These identities, in turn, shape how people interpret the environment around them (see Xiao et al., 2016). According to the identity-based model of political belief, people tend to believe information that allows them to maintain a positive view of the groups they identify with so that these groups can continue to meet their core social needs (Van Bavel & Pereira, 2018). Partisanship, or identification with a political party, is one way people satisfy these needs (e.g., by attending political rallies and events). As a result, political parties affect not only people’s policy preferences but also other aspects of their beliefs and behavior (see Dimant, 2023; Robbett & Matthews, 2021), including health-related choices. This becomes an issue when party members make unhealthy choices part of their identity—or resist healthy choices because they are associated with a hated out-group.

Social-identity goals can thus outweigh accuracy concerns, making people susceptible to believing misinformation (Van Bavel & Pereira, 2018). For instance, both Democrats and Republicans are more likely to believe and share positive news about the in-group and negative news about the out-group even when the information is false (Pereira et al., 2023). Moreover, one analysis of 2,730,215 social media posts found that out-group animosity was strongly associated with sharing political news (Rathje et al., 2021)—and similar patterns have been found for the spread of misinformation ( Batailler et al., 2022; Borukhson et al., 2022; Osmundsen et al., 2021).1 In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, many have expressed concern that a misinformation “infodemic” on social media may have harmed public health (Robertson et al., 2022; Van Bavel, Harris, et al., 2021; Zarocostas, 2020). For instance, COVID-19 misinformation has a causal effect on vaccination intentions (Loomba et al., 2021). Moreover, one global study of nearly 50,000 people found that belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories negatively predicted adherence to public-health behaviors across 67 countries (Pavlović et al., 2022). Thus, partisan differences in vaccination and other public-health behaviors in the United States (Dolman et al., 2023; Liu & Li, 2021; H. A. Roberts et al., 2022; Tram et al., 2022) could be partly explained by an identity-driven motivation to believe misinformation and conspiracy theories.

American Men and Life Expectancy

 A release from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

We’ve known for more than a century that women outlive men. But new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and UC San Francisco shows that, at least in the United States, the gap has been widening for more than a decade. The trend is being driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid overdose epidemic, among other factors.

In a research paper, to be published online on November 13 in JAMA Internal Medicine, the authors found the difference between how long American men and women live increased to 5.8 years in 2021, the largest it’s been since 1996. This is an increase from 4.8 years in 2010, when the gap was at its smallest in recent history.

The pandemic, which took a disproportionate toll on men, was the biggest contributor to the widening gap from 2019-2021, followed by unintentional injuries and poisonings (mostly drug overdoses), accidents, and suicide.

“There’s been a lot of research into the decline in life expectancy in recent years, but no one has systematically analyzed why the gap between men and women has been widening since 2010,” said first author Brandon Yan, a UCSF internal medicine resident physician and research collaborator at Harvard Chan School.

Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped in 2021 to 76.1 years, falling from 78.8 years in 2019 and 77 years in 2020.

The shortening lifespan of Americans has been attributed in part to so-called “deaths of despair.” The term refers to the increase in deaths from such causes as suicide, drug use disorders, and alcoholic liver disease, which are often connected with economic hardship, depression, and stress.

“While rates of death from drug overdose and homicide have climbed for both men and women, it is clear that men constitute an increasingly disproportionate share of these deaths,” Yan said.

Using data from the National Center for Health Statistics, Yan and fellow researchers from around the country identified the causes of death that were lowering life expectancy the most. Then they estimated the effects on men and women to see how much different causes were contributing to the gap.

Prior to the COVID pandemic, the largest contributors were unintentional injuries, diabetes, suicide, homicide, and heart disease.

But during the pandemic, men were more likely to die of the virus. That was likely due to a number of reasons, including differences in health behaviors, as well as social factors, such as the risk of exposure at work, reluctance to seek medical care, incarceration, and housing instability. Chronic metabolic disorders, mental illness, and gun violence also contributed.

Yan said the results raise questions about whether more specialized care for men, such as in mental health, should be developed to address the growing disparity in life expectancy.

“We have brought insights to a worrisome trend,” Yan said. “Future research ought to help focus public health interventions towards helping reverse this decline in life expectancy.”

Yan and co-authors, including senior author Howard Koh, professor of the practice of public health leadership at Harvard Chan School, also noted that further analysis is needed to see if these trends change after 2021.

“We need to track these trends closely as the pandemic recedes,” Koh said. “And we must make significant investments in prevention and care to ensure that this widening disparity, among many others, do not become entrenched.”

Alan Geller, senior lecturer on social and behavioral sciences at Harvard Chan School, was also a co-author.

“Widening Gender Gap in Life Expectancy in the US, 2010-2021,” Brandon W. Yan, Elizabeth Erias, Alan C. Geller, Donald R. Miller, Kenneth D. Kochanek, Howard K. Koh, JAMA Internal Medicine, online November 13, 2023, doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.6041

Home Schooling

Many posts have discussed education.

Laura Meckler and Peter Jamison at the  Washington Post:

In March 2020, an involuntary form of home schooling — remote learning — was thrust upon American families everywhere. Millions could not wait to get their kids back to school, but for hundreds of thousands of others, the idea of teaching their kids at home was appealing. A surge in home schooling became one of the lasting impacts of the pandemic.

Yet there has been scant reliable data on the magnitude of the growth or the nature of the new home-schoolers. As part of a year-long series, The Washington Post set out to understand who the new home-schoolers are, where they live, how many there are and why they made these choices.

This research has included more than 100 interviews and two groundbreaking data projects: the collection and analysis of six years of enrollment and home-schooling registration figures in nearly 7,000 school districts, and a national poll of home-school parents.

The results paint a picture of home schooling as the fastest growing part of the U.S. education system, embraced by families more diverse than ever before, who are engaged in new and different ways of home education from the home-schoolers who preceded them.

In the first year of the pandemic, home schooling surged. Although small declines followed in the next two years, the number of children in home schooling remained 45 percent higher in the 2022-23 academic year than it was in 2017-18, based on data collected by the Post.

In 18 states, The Post was able to compare the growth of home schooling to enrollment in public and private schools over six years. In those states, the number of home-school students rose 51 percent between 2017-18 and 2022-23 — far exceeding a 7 percent rise in private school enrollment and a 4 percent decline in public school enrollment. That makes home schooling the fastest growing form of education, by a lot

Behold a Pale Horse

 

Seat belts. Cigarette taxes. Public health investment.

Some lawmakers chose to back these policies. Others don’t.

Those choices along red and blue lines are shaving years off American lives.

w/ @ddiamond @dtkeating https://t.co/QJB3wadyGe

— Lauren Weber (@LaurenWeberHP) October 3, 2023

The mortality crisis has developed over decades, with early deaths an extreme manifestation of an underlying deterioration of health and a failure of the health system to respond.

Covid highlighted this for all the world to see. https://t.co/lHDJyxzH2Z

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 3, 2023

Life Expectancy and Education

 Anne Case and Angus Deaton:at Brookings:

The widening gap in death rates between Americans with and without a four-year college degree shows the U.S. economy is failing working class people, suggests a paper discussed at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA) conference on September 28.

The U.S. economy, as measured by conventional metrics such as growth in gross domestic product (GDP), has recently outperformed other advanced economies. But mortality data paint a different picture, according to “Accounting for the Widening Mortality Gap between American Adults with and without a BA.”

“GDP may be doing great, but people are dying in increasing numbers, especially less-educated people,” Anne Case, one of the authors, said in an interview with The Brookings Institution. “A lot of the increasing prosperity is going to the well-educated elites. It is not going to typical working people.”

She and co-author Angus Deaton, the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, both of Princeton University, analyzed U.S. death certificate information, including the age of death, cause of death, and educational attainment. They found that life expectancy for the college educated in 2021 was eight-and-a-half years longer than for the two-thirds of American adults without a bachelor’s degree. That’s more than triple the 1992 gap of about two-and-a-half years.

... 

 Deaths of despair were the leading driver of the widening mortality gap over the past 30 years, but the gap also widened for most other major causes of death, the paper notes. Cancer mortality, for instance, has declined overall but it has declined more for people with college degrees.

The mortality gap widened explosively during the pandemic, according to the paper. Both COVID-19 deaths and deaths of despair were more common among people without college degrees, who were more likely to work in public-facing jobs, use public transportation, and live in crowded quarters.

“People with BAs have Zoom. People without BAs don’t have Zoom; they have to go to work,” Deaton said.

 

Health Misinformation

 Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.

 Kaiser Family Foundation:

Overall, health misinformation is widely prevalent in the U.S. with 96% of adults saying they have heard at least one of the ten items of health-related misinformation asked about in the survey. The most widespread misinformation items included in the survey were related to COVID-19 and vaccines, including that the COVID-19 vaccines have caused thousands of deaths in otherwise healthy people (65% say they have heard or read this) and that the MMR vaccines have been proven to cause autism in children (65%).

Regardless of whether they have heard or read specific items of misinformation, the survey also asked people whether they think each claim is definitely true, probably true, probably false, or definitely false. For most of the misinformation items included in the survey, between one-fifth and one-third of the public say they are “definitely” or “probably true.” While the most frequently heard claims are related to COVID-19 and vaccines, the most frequently believed claims were related to guns, including that armed school police guards have been proven to prevent school shootings (60% say this is probably or definitely true), that most gun homicides in the U.S. are gang-related (43%), and that people who have firearms at home are less likely to be killed by a gun than those who do not (42%).

Combining these measures, the share of the public who both have heard each false claim and believe it is probably or definitely true ranges from 14% (for the claim that “more people have died from the COVID-19 vaccine than from the virus”) to 35% (“armed school police guards have been proven to prevent school shootings”).

Health misinformation everywhere, and most uncertain whether true or false @DrewAltman: “The public’s uncertainty leaves them vulnerable to misinformation..."

Reality: ALL DEFINITELY FALSE!

Ivermectin works? No.

Vaccines cause autism? No.

COVID vaccines cause fertility? No.… pic.twitter.com/TP27fHuWBn

— Timothy Caulfield (@CaulfieldTim) August 22, 2023

California Shrinking

From the California Department of Finance:

Stable births, fewer deaths, and a rebound in foreign immigration slowed California’s recent population decline in 2022, with the state’s population estimated at 38,940,231 people as of January 1, 2023, according to new data released today by the California Department of Finance.

Over the same period, statewide housing growth increased to 0.85 percent – its highest level since 2008. California added 123,350 housing units on net, including 20,683 accessory dwelling units (ADUs), to bring total housing in the state to 14,707,698 units. New construction represents 116,683 housing units with 63,423 single family housing units, 51,787 multi-family housing units, and 1,473 mobile homes.

The 0.35-percent population decline for 2022, roughly 138,400 persons, marks a slowdown compared to the recent decline during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Between 2021 and 2022, California’s population decreased 0.53 percent or 207,800 persons, due mainly to sharp declines in natural increase and foreign immigration.

For 2022, natural increase – the net amount of births minus deaths -- increased from 87,400 in 2021 to 106,900 in 2022. Births decreased slightly from 420,800 in 2021 to 418,800 in 2022, while deaths declined gradually from 333,300 persons in 2021 to 311,900 persons in 2022, respectively.

Foreign immigration nearly tripled in 2022 compared to the prior year, with a net gain of 90,300 persons in 2022 compared to 31,300 in 2021. While foreign immigration to California has nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels, natural increase has not rebounded. Total births remain low due to fertility declines; while deaths have eased gradually from their pandemic peak, they remain elevated.

With slower domestic in-migration and increased domestic out-migration likely the result of workfrom-home changes, declines in net domestic migration offset the population gains from natural increase and international migration.. 

California Inequality

Income Inequality in California, by Tess Thorman, Daniel Payares-Montoya, and Joseph Herrera at PPIC

• The gap between high- and low-income families in California is among the largest in the nation—exceeding all but three other states in 2021 (the latest data available). Families at the top of the income distribution earned 11 times more than families at the bottom ($291,000 vs. $26,000 for the 90th and 10th percentiles, respectively). In 1980, families at the top earned 7 times more than those at the bottom, and the current gap reflects 63% income growth for the 90th percentile, and 7% growth for the 10th percentile over four decades.
• California’s income distribution reflects high rates of poverty. Income is frequently not enough to meet basic needs (on average a family of four requires about $37,000). Families in the bottom quarter of the income distribution are at risk of poverty absent major safety net programs.
• Wealth is more unevenly distributed than income. In California, 20% of all net worth is concentrated in the 30 wealthiest zip codes, home to just 2% of Californians.
• Californians are concerned. According to the PPIC Statewide Survey, 71% believe that the gap between rich and poor is increasing; a similar share think the government should do more to reduce that gap.

The COVID-19 pandemic widened income inequality.

• Income inequality was shrinking in the years leading up to the pandemic, due to notable gains for the lowest-income families. Incomes for families at the 10th percentile increased by 23% between 2016 and 2019, compared to 5% for families at the 90th percentile.
• Between 2019 and 2021, top incomes grew consistently, by 6% for the 90th percentile. Middle incomes (50th percentile) faltered in 2020 but rebounded in 2021. Low incomes (10th percentile) fell 7%.
• These estimates describe pre-tax income and include a conservative estimate of unemployment (UI) benefits, without which low incomes would have been lower by at least 12% in 2020, and 5% in 2021. They also take a conservative approach with inflation, which may impact lower- and higher-income families differently and exacerbate inequality. For instance, from 2017–20, those in the bottom 20% spent 69% of all pre-tax income on food and transportation (including gasoline)—areas where prices have risen most—while those in the top 20% spent 14% of their income on those same categories.

Rising income inequality is driven by a job market that favors highly educated workers.

• Shifts in technology and international trade have played key roles in reshaping jobs, creating advantages for college-degree holders. Among families in which any member holds a four-year degree or higher, median income has increased by 34% since 1980. Median income did not increase for families where no member holds a four-year degree.
• Families with college graduates earn $2.24 for every $1 that families without college graduates earn, as of 2021.

Murder Down in 2022

German Lopez at NYT:

At the start of this year, America’s crime trends looked grim: Murders had spiked at a record speed in 2020 and increased further in 2021.

But now that the year is ending, it’s clear that the violence has eased.

Murders in large U.S. cities are down more than 5 percent so far in 2022 compared to the same time last year, according to the research firm AH Datalytics. Gun deaths, injuries and mass shootings are also down this year.

What happened? To regular readers of this newsletter, the explanations may be familiar: The causes of the murder spike have receded.

Covid disrupted much of life in 2020 and 2021, including social services that help keep people safe. That applies not just to policing, but also to places like schools and addiction treatment facilities that can help people — especially young men, the more common perpetrators and victims of violent crime — stay out of trouble. As life slowly returns to normal, these programs have reopened and helped suppress murders and shootings.

Life Expectancy Drops in 2021

Many posts have dealt with health policy, disease, mortality, and life expectancy.

Lenny Bernstein at WP:

U.S. life expectancy continued its steady, alarming decline in 2021, as covid-19 and illegal drugs took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, according to final government data released Thursday.

Even as some peer nations began to bounce back from the toll of the pandemic, life expectancy in the U.S. dropped to 76.4 years at birth, down from 77 in 2020, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. That means Americans can expect to live as long as they did in 1996 — a dismal benchmark for a reliable measure of health that should rise steadily in an affluent, developed nation. (In August, using preliminary data, the agency had pegged life expectancy in 2021 at 76.1 years.)

...
The data reinforces a trend line of American longevity declining relative to that of its peer nations. A child born in the United States in 2019, for instance, could expect to live to 78.5, according to the World Health Organization, while a Japanese child born that year had a life expectancy of 84.5, Belgians lived to 81.4 and Swedes lived to 82.4.

...

The 2021 decline was the second consecutive drop for the United States and the continuation of a trend that began in the middle of the last decade, when “deaths of despair” — those caused by drug oerdoses, suicide and alcoholism — rose markedly.

It also contrasted with rebounding life expectancy rates in some other nations as they brought the covid pandemic under greater control with vaccines and masking. A study of 29 countries published in August in the journal Nature Human Behavior found that eight experienced significant life expectancy “bounce backs” in 2021.

Mortality in the United States, 2021 NCHS Data Brief No. 456, December 2022 Jiaquan Xu, M.D., Sherry L. Murphy, B.S., Kenneth D. Kochanek, M.A., and Elizabeth Arias, Ph.D.

In 2021, a total of 3,464,231 resident deaths were registered in the United States—80,502 more deaths than in 2020. The number of deaths for which COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death increased 18.8% from 350,831 in 2020 to 416,893 in 2021. The age-adjusted death rate for the total population increased 5.3% in 2021 from 2020 after an increase of 16.8% from 2019 to 2020 (1). The decrease in life expectancy for the total population of 0.6 year from 2020 to 2021 was lower than the decline of 1.8 years from 2019 to 2020 (2). Age-specific death rates from 2020 to 2021 increased for each age group 1 year and over. Age-adjusted death rates decreased in 2021 from 2020 for Hispanic males and non-Hispanic Black males, remained unchanged statistically for non-Hispanic Asian males and non-Hispanic Asian females, and increased for all other race and ethnicity groups for both males and females.

Of the 10 leading causes of death in 2021, 9 remained the same as in 2020. Heart disease was the leading cause of death, followed by cancer and COVID-19. Age-adjusted death rates increased for 8 leading causes and decreased for 2. Life expectancy at birth decreased 0.6 year from 77.0 in 2020 to 76.4 in 2021, largely because of increases in mortality due to COVID-19, unintentional injuries, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, suicide, and homicide.

In 2021, 19,920 deaths occurred in children under age 1 year, which was 338 more infant deaths than in 2020. The change in the IMR from 2020 to 2021 was not statistically significant. Among the 10 leading causes of infant death, the decrease in IMR for one cause (low birth weight) was significant.

Data and findings in this report are based on final mortality data and may differ from provisional data and findings previously published.

Death by Party

Jacob Wallace, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham & Jason L. Schwartz, "Excess Death Rates for Republicans and Democrats During the COVID-19 Pandemic," NBER Working Paper 30512 ttp://www.nber.org/papers/w30512

Political affiliation has emerged as a potential risk factor for COVID-19, amid evidence that Republican-leaning counties have had higher COVID-19 death rates than Democrat- leaning counties and evidence of a link between political party affiliation and vaccination views. This study constructs an individual-level dataset with political affiliation and excess death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic via a linkage of 2017 voter registration in Ohio and Florida to mortality data from 2018 to 2021. We estimate substantially higher excess death rates for registered Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states. Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats. Post- vaccines, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats widened from 1.6 pp (22% of the Democrat excess death rate) to 10.4 pp (153% of the Democrat excess death rate). The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available.

Test Scores Plunged During the Pandemic

Mark Schneider, Director of IES: 

Mounting evidence shows just how much damage the COVID-19 pandemic and related school closures wreaked on our nation's students. The recently released results for NAEP's Long Term Trend (LTT) assessment for 9-year-old students adds depth to an already dismal picture.

LTT has been administered to 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students for decades. Focused on core skills, LTT in reading was first administered in 1971 and math in 1973, giving us a very long trend line. But for now, I am interested in a much shorter (2 year) time frame. NAEP administered LTT for 9-year-olds between January and March in 2020—the data collection ended within days of the nation's schools shutting down. LTT was administered again in January through March of 2022, making it a nationally representative sample of student performance right before the pandemic and (hopefully) at the end of the nation's misery.

What does LTT show?

To paraphrase an old saw and repeating my comments on other NAEP results: If there wasn't bad news, there would be no news at all. Between the pre-pandemic assessment in 2020 and the post-pandemic assessment in 2022, overall scores went down 7 points in math and 5 points in reading—an unprecedented decline. Tapping into LTT's extraordinarily long trend line, math scores this low were last seen in 1999 and reading scores this low in 2004. Decades of progress wiped out in 2 years.

Life Expectancy Drops Again

Kate Sheridan at STAT:

Americans born in 2021 can expect to live for just 76.1 years — the lowest life expectancy has been since 1996, according to a new government analysis published Wednesday. This is the biggest two-year decline — 2.7 years in total — in almost 100 years.

The Covid-19 pandemic is the primary cause of the decline. However, increases in the number of people dying from overdoses and accidents is also a significant factor.

American Indian and Alaskan Native people have experienced a particularly precipitous drop in life expectancy since 2019, going from 71.8 to 65.2 years. This kind of loss is similar to the plunge seen for all Americans after the Spanish Flu, said Robert Anderson, the chief of the mortality statistics branch of the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

...

This year’s life expectancy figure is 0.9 years lower than last year’s. Covid-19 accounted for about half of the decline, and a category encompassing accidents and unintentional injuries is responsible for another 16%. That category includes overdoses; in fact, about half of the unintentional injury deaths in this analysis were due to overdoses.
...

Not every demographic group saw the same changes, the researchers found. Asian-Americans have the highest life expectancy of any group — 83.5 years — and only saw a 0.1 year decline from 2020. Meanwhile, Black Americans lost 0.7 years between 2020 to 2021.

But American Indian and Native Americans saw the largest loss of life expectancy of all — 1.9 years less than 2020’s life expectancy, and 6.6 years less than 2019’s. They also had the lowest life expectancy among the groups studied. (Historically, Native Americans’ life expectancy has been staying level even in years when the life expectancy of the entire population did increase, one recent study found.)

Origins of COVID

Michael Worobey and colleagues have an article in Science titled: "The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic." The abstract:

Understanding how severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in 2019 is critical to preventing zoonotic outbreaks before they become the next pandemic. The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, was identified as a likely source of cases in early reports but later this conclusion became controversial. We show the earliest known COVID-19 cases from December 2019, including those without reported direct links, were geographically centered on this market. We report that live SARS-CoV-2 susceptible mammals were sold at the market in late 2019 and, within the market, SARS-CoV-2-positive environmental samples were spatially associated with vendors selling live mammals. While there is insufficient evidence to define upstream events, and exact circumstances remain obscure, our analyses indicate that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 occurred via the live wildlife trade in China, and show that the Huanan market was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Atlas Shrugged at COVID Death

From the House the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis:

For the past two years, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis has been investigating the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic to ensure the American people receive a full accounting of what went wrong and to determine what corrective steps are necessary to ensure our nation is better prepared for any future public health crisis.1 To those ends, the Select Subcommittee has conducted an exhaustive investigation into the extent to which senior Trump Administration officials undermined the federal public health response in an attempt to advance former President Donald Trump’s perceived political interests.

This report is the first installment of the Select Subcommittee’s findings showing that the Trump Administration’s political interference was rampant and degraded every major facet of the nation’s public health response during the first year of the pandemic. It is based on a series of transcribed interviews with senior officials involved in the federal government’s pandemic response, including White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Robert Redfield, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Brett Giroir, and Special Advisor to the President Dr. Scott Atlas, as well as a review of thousands of pages of internal correspondence and other documents obtained by the Select Subcommittee.

This installment chronicles the Trump Administration’s embrace of a dangerous and discredited herd immunity via mass infection strategy as they failed to curb the spread of the coronavirus. New evidence obtained by the Select Subcommittee and released for the first time today reveals that support for this herd immunity strategy in the Trump White House was deeper and more wide-reaching than previously known. The embrace of this strategy enabled Trump Administration officials to convince themselves that they were right to do nothing to limit the spread of the virus in the second half of 2020 and likely resulted in many deaths that would have been prevented by an effective national mitigation strategy. 

... 

As the country was entering into the deadly fall and winter 2020 surge, Dr. Atlas continued to advocate against proven mitigation measures under the misguided premise that most regions of the country had already achieved sufficient disease-acquired herd immunity to prevent future surges.122 Despite an attempted intervention by multiple doctors on the White House Coronavirus Task Force with Vice President Pence’s office in November or December 2020 to warn about the deadly consequences if the Trump Administration did not take meaningful action to mitigate the virus’s spread, it appears that White House officials—after months of absorbing the “Atlas Dogma”—were largely unresponsive to these concerns. During the period from November 2020 through February 2021—as the deadly fall and winter surge swept across the country while the Trump Administration did little to curb its impact—the United States saw the most coronavirus deaths recorded in any four-month period throughout the entirety of the pandemic. 

The Trump Administration’s flagrant disregard for proven mitigation measures in those months resulted in a federal response that differed little from the implementation of a deliberate herd immunity strategy. Administration officials used the “Atlas Dogma” to justify their downplaying of the virus before the November presidential election and their continued deprioritization of the crisis as they worked to overturn the election results. The Administration’s embrace of this ill-advised approach not only impaired the nation’s ability to respond effectively to the pandemic at a critical juncture before the deployment of vaccines and widespread availability of effective treatments—it also helped to lay the foundation for a wide swath of the public to persistently reject other vital tools to combat the virus, including coronavirus vaccines.

Atlas predicted that COVID would take 10,000 lives.  He was off by a factor of 100.  The actual death toll has dropped one million and counting. 

One Million COVID Deaths in the US

 Carla K. Johnson at AP:

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 reached 1 million Monday, a once-unimaginable figure that only hints at the multitudes of loved ones and friends staggered by grief and frustration.

The number of dead, as tallied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, is equivalent to that of a 9/11 attack every day for 336 days. It is roughly equal to how many Americans died in the Civil War and World War II combined. It’s as if Boston and Pittsburgh were wiped out.

“It is hard to imagine a million people plucked from this Earth,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, who leads a new pandemic center at the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, R.I. “It’s still happening and we are letting it happen.”

Three out of every four deaths were people 65 and older. More men died than women. White people made up most of the deaths overall, but Black, Latino and Native American people have been roughly twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as their white counterparts.

Australia's death rate is only one-tenth as great.  Damien Cave at NYT:

In global surveys, Australians were more likely than Americans to agree that “most people can be trusted” — a major factor, researchers found, in getting people to change their behavior for the common good to combat Covid, by reducing their movements, wearing masks and getting vaccinated. Partly because of that compliance, which kept the virus more in check, Australia’s economy has grown faster than America’s through the pandemic.

But of greater import, interpersonal trust — a belief that others would do what was right not just for the individual but for the community — saved lives. Trust mattered more than smoking prevalence, health spending or form of government, a study of 177 countries in The Lancet recently found. And in Australia, the process of turning trust into action began early.

...

During the toughest of Covid times, Australians showed that the national trait of “mateship” — defined as the bond between equal partners or close friends — was still alive and well. They saw Covid spiral out of control in the United States and Britain, and chose a different path.

Compliance rates with social distancing guidelines, along with Covid testing, contact tracing and isolation, held steady at around 90 percent during the worst early outbreaks, according to modeling from the University of Sydney. In the United States, reductions in mobility — a key measure of social distancing — were less stark, shorter and more inconsistent, based in part on location, political identity or wealth.

In Australia, rule-following was the social norm. It was Mick Fanning, a surfing superstar, who did not question the need to stay with his American wife and infant in a small hotel room for 14 days of quarantine after a trip to California. It was border officials canceling the visa of Novak Djokovic, the top male tennis player in the world, for failing to follow a Covid vaccine mandate, leading to his eventual deportation.

It was also all the Australians who lined up to get tested, who wore masks without question, who turned their phones into virus trackers with check-in apps, who set up food services for the old, infirm or poor in lockdowns, or who offered a place to stay to women who had been trapped in their homes with abusive husbands.

Two COVID Americas

Michael A. Stoto  ,Samantha Schlageter ,John D. Kraemer "COVID-19 mortality in the United States: It’s been two Americas from the start," PLOS One.  The abstract:

 During the summer of 2021, a narrative of "two Americas" emerged: one with high demand for the COVID-19 vaccine and the second with widespread vaccine hesitancy and opposition to masks and vaccines. We analyzed “excess mortality” rates (the difference between total deaths and what would have been expected based on earlier time periods) prepared by the CDC for the United States from January 3, 2020 to September 26, 2021. Between Jan. 3, 2020 and Sept. 26, 2021, there were 895,693 excess deaths associated with COVID-19, 26% more than reported as such. The proportion of deaths estimated by the excess mortality method that was reported as COVID-19 was highest in the Northeast (92%) and lowest in the West (72%) and South (76%). Of the estimated deaths, 43% occurred between Oct. 4, 2020 and Feb. 27, 2021. Before May 31, 2020, approximately 56% of deaths were in the Northeast, where 17% of the population resides. Subsequently, 48% of deaths were in the South, which makes up 38% of the population. Since May 31, 2020, the South experienced COVID-19 mortality 26% higher than the national rate, whereas the Northeast’s rate was 42% lower. If each region had the same mortality rate as the Northeast, more than 316,234 COVID-19 deaths between May 31, 2020 and Sept. 26, 2021 were "avoidable." More than half (63%) of the avoidable deaths occurred between May 31, 2020 and February, 2021, and more than half (60%) were in the South. Regional differences in COVID-19 mortality have been strong throughout the pandemic. The South has had higher mortality rates than the rest of the U.S. since May 31, 2020, and experienced 62% of the avoidable deaths. A comprehensive COVID-19 policy, including population-based restrictions as well as vaccines, is needed to control the pandemic.

Guns: Leading Cause of Death among Children and Adolescents

Jason E. Goldstick, Ph.D. Rebecca M. Cunningham, M.D.  Patrick M. Carter, M.D at The New England Journal of Medicine:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released updated official mortality data that showed 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the United States in 2020 — a new peak.1 Although previous analyses have shown increases in firearm-related mortality in recent years (2015 to 2019), as compared with the relatively stable rates from earlier years (1999 to 2014),2,3 these new data show a sharp 13.5% increase in the crude rate of firearm-related death from 2019 to 2020.1 This change was driven largely by firearm homicides, which saw a 33.4% increase in the crude rate from 2019 to 2020, whereas the crude rate of firearm suicides increased by 1.1%.1 Given that firearm homicides disproportionately affect younger people in the United States,3 these data call for an update to the findings of Cunningham et al. regarding the leading causes of death among U.S. children and adolescents.

 The previous analysis, which examined data through 2016, showed that firearm-related injuries were second only to motor vehicle crashes (both traffic-related and nontraffic-related) as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents, defined as persons 1 to 19 years of age.4 Since 2016, that gap has narrowed, and in 2020, firearm-related injuries became the leading cause of death in that age group (Figure 1). From 2019 to 2020, the relative increase in the rate of firearm-related deaths of all types (suicide, homicide, unintentional, and undetermined) among children and adolescents was 29.5% — more than twice as high as the relative increase in the general population. The increase was seen across most demographic characteristics and types of firearm-related death (Fig. S1 in the Supplementary Appendix, available with the full text of this letter at NEJM.org).

In addition, drug overdose and poisoning increased by 83.6% from 2019 to 2020 among children and adolescents, becoming the third leading cause of death in that age group. This change is largely explained by the 110.6% increase in unintentional poisonings from 2019 to 2020. The rates for other leading causes of death have remained relatively stable since the previous analysis, which suggests that changes in mortality trends among children and adolescents during the early Covid-19 pandemic were specific to firearm-related injuries and drug poisoning; Covid-19 itself resulted in 0.2 deaths per 100,000 children and adolescents in 2020.1

Although the new data are consistent with other evidence that firearm violence has increased during the Covid-19 pandemic,5 the reasons for the increase are unclear, and it cannot be assumed that firearm-related mortality will later revert to prepandemic levels. Regardless, the increasing firearm-related mortality reflects a longer-term trend and shows that we continue to fail to protect our youth from a preventable cause of death. Generational investments are being made in the prevention of firearm violence, including new funding opportunities from the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, and funding for the prevention of community violence has been proposed in federal infrastructure legislation. This funding momentum must be maintained.

Leading Causes of Death among Children and Adolescents in the United States, 1999 through 2020.



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COVID Has Infected 60% of Americans

Andrew Joseph  and Elizabeth Cooney at STAT:

Nearly 60% of people in the United States, including 3 in 4 children, have now been infected with Omicron or another coronavirus variant, data released Tuesday show.

The new findings, which go through February 2022, highlight just how widely the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread in the country. On Tuesday, the virus even reached into the White House, with Vice President Kamala Harris reporting that she had tested positive. She has shown no symptoms, a spokesperson said, and would work outside the White House, at her official residence, until she tested negative.

Before the Omicron variant took off in the United States in December, the portion of the population that had been infected was about 1 in 3, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

The updated figures come from a study that has been measuring the so-called seroprevalence of the coronavirus at various points throughout the pandemic. The study relies on testing blood samples from participants for particular antibodies that are generated only by an infection; they are different from the antibodies that Covid-19 vaccines elicit. This is the first time that the population seroprevalence is over 50%.

Attitudes Toward Government

 At AEI, Karlyn Bowman and Samantha Goldstein report on attitudes toward government:

Key Points

• While the public is ambivalent about government, Americans generally favor a smaller government than a larger one. When taxes are included in the question wording, Americans favor smaller government more strongly.
• In the early days of COVID-19, many Americans said they wanted the government to do more.
• At the turn of the century, when the economy was performing well, around 10 percent said they were angry with the way the federal government works. Since 2010, two in 10 or more have given that response.
• Pollsters should regularly revisit public views about government’s role, size, and responsibilities and public levels of satisfaction with it.