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Despite vaccines, more Texans died of COVID-19 in 2021 than in first year of pandemic
Greg Abbott has failed Texas
Link to tweet
The climbing death toll, public health experts said, is almost entirely driven by people who are unvaccinated. From mid-January through October, just 8 percent of Texas virus deaths were among inoculated residents.
Dr. James McCarthy, chief physician at Memorial Hermann, said it makes sense there would be more virus deaths in 2021, the first full year of the pandemic, though the highly transmissible delta variant coupled with a low vaccination rate and the decline of safe practices made fatalities worse than they otherwise would have been. And as the ultra-contagious omicron variant spreads rapidly in Houston, the pattern could continue.
“The real reason it’s worse this year is we stopped all the mask-wearing protection activities we had with a large portion of the population still unvaccinated and vulnerable to infection, hospitalization and death,” McCarthy said. ....
Texas administered more than 1 million vaccination doses weekly in March and April of this year, shortly after most adults became eligible. The growth in the vaccination rate has slowed significantly since June, however, and stagnated further after reaching 50 percent in late September. Vaccinations became a highly charged political issue, with Republican elected officials in Texas and other states suing to block vaccine mandates and conservative news networks raising questions about the safety of vaccines and attacking public health leaders in Washington.
Dr. James McCarthy, chief physician at Memorial Hermann, said it makes sense there would be more virus deaths in 2021, the first full year of the pandemic, though the highly transmissible delta variant coupled with a low vaccination rate and the decline of safe practices made fatalities worse than they otherwise would have been. And as the ultra-contagious omicron variant spreads rapidly in Houston, the pattern could continue.
“The real reason it’s worse this year is we stopped all the mask-wearing protection activities we had with a large portion of the population still unvaccinated and vulnerable to infection, hospitalization and death,” McCarthy said. ....
Texas administered more than 1 million vaccination doses weekly in March and April of this year, shortly after most adults became eligible. The growth in the vaccination rate has slowed significantly since June, however, and stagnated further after reaching 50 percent in late September. Vaccinations became a highly charged political issue, with Republican elected officials in Texas and other states suing to block vaccine mandates and conservative news networks raising questions about the safety of vaccines and attacking public health leaders in Washington.
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