CDC director Rochelle Walensky told Good Morning America (1/7/22) that it was “really encouraging news” that the vaccinated people dying from Covid were mostly “people who were unwell to begin with.”
Asked on ABC‘s Good Morning America (1/7/22) about “encouraging headlines that we’re talking about this morning, this new study showing just how well vaccines are working to prevent severe illness,” CDC director Rochelle Walensky responded:
The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities, so really these are people who were unwell to begin with. And, yes, really encouraging news in the context of Omicron; this means not only just to get your primary series but to get your booster series, and, yes, we’re really encouraged by these results.
As the hashtag #MyDisabledLifeIsWorthSaving began trending on Twitter, disability rights activists like Ady Barkan were asking, “Are our deaths less tragic? Are our lives less valuable? Are we less human?”
Because they were picked up by right-wingers as proof that Covid concerns are overblown, media outlets like CNN (1/12/22) went into factcheck mode to explain that Walensky’s comments were distorted and taken from context.
CNN‘s factcheck (1/12/22) focused on the false claim that Covid-19 is not a real threat—and not on the genuine implication that it’s “really encouraging” when mostly people with health issues die from Covid when they’re vaccinated.
Crucial seconds were missing from the tape, you see, which would clarify that Walensky was referring specifically to the results of a study that found that a majority of deaths among the vaccinated involved comorbidities, not deaths overall. The subtext seemed to be that it’s a confusing time and, just maybe, some people might be looking for something to be offended by.
Yeah, no. Information may certainly be unclear or shift with time, but priorities and attitudes remain—and those reflected in a statement that, within whatever subgroup, fatalities affecting primarily those with preexisting health issues are “good news” is disturbing. (For what it’s worth, some of the things the CDC defines as comorbidities: diabetes, high blood pressure, Down’s syndrome, cystic fibrosis, obesity, pregnancy and asthma.)
Susan Henderson of the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund did not misunderstand the context of Walensky’s comment. She wrote in an open letter that the message from the CDC was not only
abhorrent, it perpetuates widely and wrongly held perceptions that disabled people have a worse quality of life than nondisabled people and our lives are more expendable.
When physicians hold these beliefs, and they do…the outcomes for disabled people, especially during a pandemic such as we are living through, can be fatal.
Messages from the head of the CDC must convey that all lives are valuable, and the loss of any life from COVID-19, whether it is the life of a person with a disability, an older adult, or a 32-year-old with no known disabilities, is a tragedy.
As Barkan said:
We live in the wealthiest country in history. We can afford to give healthcare to everyone. We can afford enough masks, tests and medical staff to keep everyone safe. But that requires seeing the full humanity of each of us.
News media could aid that effort if they would set aside the frame of back-and-forth political gotchas, and assume the value of all human beings, and our right to live full lives, as not a talking point but a premise.
Let ‘er RIP, as policy HIDES vaccinated breakthroughs in kids vectoring >R0-6 Delta & exponential Omicron to loved ones, teachers, caregivers, drivers; PASC and inflammatory circulatory damage (which are now listed as co-morbiduties; as chronically PASC “essential workers” we’d cheered 21 months ago, ARE her critical/ fatal vaccinated breakthrough statistics! That which did not kill us from D614g mutated & infected ~half of us now? “Vaccine only” was to force poor workers back into lethal 1099 gigs (necessitating millions of kids exposed to life-long debilitating disease, or nasty death; since all they’ve learned, is how to hide the bodies, hoodwink DNC™ LLC churls, making a fortune monitizing yet another Catastrophe Capitalism feeding frenzy?
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2020.605908/full
https://mobile.twitter.com/Andre__Damon/status/1482069977826009092
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/01/15/nyt–j15.html
https://inthesetimes.com/article/biden-blame-unvaccinated-patent-waiver-global-south-public-health
I honestly don’t know if this is true, but it really feels like we’re being told to make our peace with covid for a long time, because the alternative is Biden takes Moderna’s patent, and that’s a big matzoh ball for the elite media to stomach.
There’s a new vaccine in Texas that is being shipped to India, though. We’ll see how that goes.
It’s the verbatim ubiquity of our conditioned response; both FOX & Amy Goodman apparently rip & reading what we BELIEVE, word for word, that’s the lethal pandemic? Long COVID symptoms among us “essential workers,” exposed to all sorts of toxins at home and work, little kids, vectoring Delta & now omicron & sick with MIS-C & life-long circulatory & organ damage. Each time a new variant infects us: we’ll have to work, infect each other, go ever deeper into debt & accumulate lethal comorbiduties. Plague OVER, back to WORK, peon!
Uh no offense but your writing style can use work. “Good prose is like a windowpane” – George Orwell.
Was it commas, or the big werdz?
The word verbatim there doesn’t make sense.
Here’s a tip. Say what you mean in simple terms so that people can understand you. You will look just as smart if not smarter, I promise.
Kinda academic. Just here, to cite apropos links, now apparently blocked? I’d thought, she’d meant; “everybody, saying the exact same BS tropes, word-for-word, over and over,” but didn’t want to take the entire thread?
https://scheerpost.com/2022/01/18/hedges-americas-new-class-war/
https://khn.org/news/article/as-patients-fell-ill-with-covid-inside-hospitals-government-oversight-fell-short/
https://inthesetimes.com/article/billionaire-side-hustle-market-inequality-daniel-ochs
https://www.dailyposter.com/weekend-reader-hospitals-covid-secrets/
Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm ‘crisis is a terrible thing to waste’ oncologist brother’s “Let ‘er RIP” response to COVID; that’s killed more, mostly poor workers than the US Civil War has EVERY media source & blog all repeating how we must “live with” endemic COVID, mandated snake oil & await our fate. Like firestorm, forever wars, murderous cops, AGW storms, drought, famine and disease (usurious debt from each) living with or dying from seems a black & white dichotomy. We’re ALL in this TOGETHER, appears to ignore how half the HAVES have no intention of shutting down a perfect storm of RACE to the bottom PhARMA and FIRE Sector Polio Party prole feeding frenzy?
jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2787944
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-you-cant-see-the-most-important-omicron-hot-spots-in-the-u-s-on-a-map/
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/34/e2024358118
I do not take the science lightly. I take all precautions to do the best I can to protect myself and others from covid.
One thing I notice is that only “Americans” ie US people, which we know does not really include the poor and people of color, or those going into the “defense forces” for want of decent jobs and healthcare, are important. How many Africans or others in the world has the USA helped to get even one dose of vaccine against covid-19?? The attacks and sanctions on so many nations the USA decides are “enemies” cause so many deaths and so much destruction, while “Americans” are given draconian measures to protect certain members of the population.
this looks more and more than they are eliminating the defective people under the guise of the greater good/protecting the population
Eugenics might explain why those receiving social security payments are so disposable.
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-deaths-american-older-population-cdc-data-2021-12
Another day, another grievance in the annals of identity politics.
However inartful she may have been, nowhere does Wallensky assert the “wrongly held perceptions that disabled people have a worse quality of life” or that the disabled (are we still allowed to use that word) are “expendable”.
Who would have ever guessed that what will bury the left in the U.S. isn’t raising the matter of class, an appeal to which even Republicans are receptive, but its speech prohibitions and its idealization of group identity. And, of course, its passion to locate new grievances and identity new reprobates. Salem lives on…..
What are the odds that the lives of the disabled (forbidden word?) might be better served by pushing for universal health insurance and social supports, than policing speech and punishing thoughts?
Wallensky does, however, state that it’s “encouraging” that the majority of people who’ve died despite being vaccinated had comorbidities that would otherwise not have been fatal in and of themselves, at least not anytime soon. As a person who is more vulnerable to Covid-19 despite vaccination and all other precautions I think that may betray a mindset that people who are already “unwell” are more expendable.
Caring for people who are having a particularly tough time isn’t a bad thing and often includes pushing for universal health care and other social supports. I hope you’re aware of Ady Barkan’s work in that regard.
This idea that it’s fine if old and sick people die was part of the anti lockdown/pro wall street line. I remember it from talk radio in late 2020. FAIR has the meaning correct. You’re expendable if you’re in the way of profits.
Your “inartful”(sic) failure to address the possible targeting of certain groups is odd.
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-deaths-american-older-population-cdc-data-2021-12
Long-term fiscal benefit would be derived by the elimination of certain populations.
If you’re determined to feel aggrieved, or aggrieved on behalf of others (this strange, new passion), you’re sure succeed. So many opportunities….
OTOH, what’s the point of assuming the worst intent in every instance? You really think Wallensky wants the disabled to die or rejoices in these deaths?
And for every play to the choir — twitter celebrates! –you alienate dozens who don’t delight in grievance harvesting. This sort of thing works great in religion — we possess the divine truth, and don’t care who it offends — but not so well in a democracy, where you need votes.
In this light, the cultural left resembles the more retrogression elements of the Democratic party, which is perfectly content being a minority party. All the perks of office and the podium, but no obligation to actually govern and no need to answer for policy.
When I’m supposed to get sick or die, and watch hundreds of thousands also die, because hey the stock market is more important, yeah I feel aggrieved. I feel very aggrieved.
Rather than rant incoherently, why not research which groups are being sacrificed?
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-deaths-american-older-population-cdc-data-2021-12
The spin I got from Right Wing media was that Covid was vaccines are unnecessary for normal people because it only kills very old / sick people. I did not even hear that vaccines made any difference in the population of who was dying.
I did not hear ‘disabled’ in any of the stories I heard. Someone who is more likely to die from Covid needs to be more cautious, not an issue of blaming them.
Sure, some wording was off. It wasn’t as bad as listening to the Laura Ingraham show where the body language and tone of voice confirms the ill intent.
Hope you’ll be just as accepting when (if ever), your own social group is marginalized.
Like; once we’re all infected a few more times; forced to work, school & “live with mild” mutant strains then develop co-morbiduties: heart, lung, circulatory, kidney damage & are lumped in with all of her Lebensunwertes Leben? Someone tell Len & Fred what that means?
At the start of the pandemic, before vaccines, didn’t they say 90%+ of deaths had comorbidities? Regardless with 40% of Americans being overweight or obese, 20% have diabetes numbers will be high. We even have 650K deaths annually due to heart disease.
Indeed they could and should see all humans as equal with equal rights to live.
But then let us face what even left-wingers forget. So many, including far left outlets, were all for massive vaccination in the USA, in Europe etc. Poorer continents…well…a lot of lip service. Then the EU even blocked Bidens half-honest and belated idea to give Africa, Asia and southern America the means to build vaccines themselves. So – Indonesia wanted a vaccinate-all as a law – but got no vaccines… Africa had horribly low amounts, and our posh western Twitter-shitstormers were very quiet on this…
Add to that manic – 99% western – aviation. There is science that shows that Covid was spread into so many countries unprepared for a pandemic thanks to luxurious flights, while 80% of all humans do not share this climate-killing luxuries. Well… As long as we got super-rich pop stars boasting with their “cool poly-local” life-styles, like Michael Stipe with his New York Berlin and what not, and 800 millions of people seeing their “right to fly for the 127th time around the world” as more important than trying to save lives….
This is reality, too. Covid showed that also all too many of the Left are far more market-radical as we would like to admit.
The # of jabs are as good as a band-ad on a deep cut. It helps some but you’re going to need stiches. The dreamers who are a true group of cowards. Looking to the shy to see if any more acorns will hit their heads. They bash others yet can’t look at themselves. Their world of UTOPIA ( Which comes from the Greeks) meaning Nowhere. Is closing in on them. This was the plan of the true Leftist. The head being BG wanting population control and force feeding the gullible with “The Jab will set you Free”! Well EVERYONE, regardless of how many Jabs, will catch this new Omicron, EVERYONE. So do what you can. No one is getting off this rock alive, and everyone who eats carrots are going to die. Smoke em if you got em.