March 24, 2023
IT'S ALWAYS GOOD TO BE PURITAN:
Why America was uniquely vulnerable to COVID (Tina Reed, 3/24/23, Axios)
"What is clear from our study is that COVID-19 exploited and compounded existing local racial inequities, health disparities, and partisan politics," co-lead author Thomas J. Bollyky, director of the Council on Foreign Relations' Global Health Program in the USA, said in a statement. The combination of local factors increased the burden of disease and the likelihood of poor outcomes, he said.By the numbers: States with higher poverty, lower rates of educational attainment, less access to quality health care and lower levels of interpersonal trust saw disproportionately higher rates of COVID infections and deaths.When adjusting the data to account for age and comorbidities, Arizona saw the highest COVID death rate (581 deaths per 100,000 people) in the nation. Washington, D.C. (526 per 100,000) and New Mexico (521 per 100,000) were the second and third worst.On the flip side, Hawaii had the lowest adjusted COVID death rate with 147 COVID deaths per 100,000 people. It was followed by New Hampshire 215 per 100,000) and Maine (281 per 100,000), respectively.
New England resembles Scandinavia in social trust, so, similarly, citizens took protecting each other upon themselves.
Posted by Orrin Judd at March 24, 2023 7:17 AM