4. The Politics of Health

More Americans than ever are willing to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, but a partisan divide remains.

This analysis is an update to a previous analysis conducted in September 2021. Using county-level data, we analyzed trends in COVID-19 vaccination rates in counties that voted for President Trump in the 2020 election compared to counties that voted for President Biden. We find higher vaccination rates for counties that voted for Biden. However, rates among those fully vaccinated that have received a booster are similar between the two groups.

Objective To estimate the direct and indirect effects of the covid-19 pandemic on mortality in 2020 in 29 high income countries with reliable and complete age and sex disaggregated mortality data. Design Time series study of high income countries. Setting Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, England and Wales, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United States. Participants Mortality data from the Short-term Mortality Fluctuations data series of the Human Mortality Database for 2016-20, harmonised and disaggregated by age and sex. Interventions Covid-19 pandemic and associated policy measures. Main outcome measures Weekly excess deaths (observed deaths versus expected deaths predicted by model) in 2020, by sex and age (0-14, 15-64, 65-74, 75-84, and ≥85 years), estimated using an over-dispersed Poisson regression model that accounts for temporal trends and seasonal variability in mortality. Results An estimated 979 000 (95% confidence interval 954 000 to 1 001 000) excess deaths occurred in 2020 in the 29 high income countries analysed. All countries had excess deaths in 2020, except New Zealand, Norway, and Denmark. The five countries with the highest absolute number of excess deaths were the US (458 000, 454 000 to 461 000), Italy (89 100, 87 500 to 90 700), England and Wales (85 400, 83 900 to 86 800), Spain (84 100, 82 800 to 85 300), and Poland (60 100, 58 800 to 61 300). New Zealand had lower overall mortality than expected (−2500, −2900 to −2100). In many countries, the estimated number of excess deaths substantially exceeded the number of reported deaths from covid-19. The highest excess death rates (per 100 000) in men were in Lithuania (285, 259 to 311), Poland (191, 184 to 197), Spain (179, 174 to 184), Hungary (174, 161 to 188), and Italy (168, 163 to 173); the highest rates in women were in Lithuania (210, 185 to 234), Spain (180, 175 to 185), Hungary (169, 156 to 182), Slovenia (158, 132 to 184), and Belgium (151, 141 to 162). Little evidence was found of subsequent compensatory reductions following excess mortality. Conclusion Approximately one million excess deaths occurred in 2020 in these 29 high income countries. Age standardised excess death rates were higher in men than women in almost all countries. Excess deaths substantially exceeded reported deaths from covid-19 in many countries, indicating that determining the full impact of the pandemic on mortality requires assessment of excess deaths. Many countries had lower deaths than expected in children 15 years. Sex inequality in mortality widened further in most countries in 2020.

Conspiracy theories about covid and vaccines once ran rampant on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. But months of purges of accounts that trafficked heavily in misinformation - especially after the baseless QAnon ideology helped fuel the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol - have driven adherents to the less visible but still virulent world of private groups on encrypted chat apps such as Telegram. Some groups have hundreds of thousands of users.

Is former MTV VJ-turned actor, podcaster, and comedian Russell Brand going off the deep end? His recent videos are really something.

A vaccinology expert explains why the number of breakthrough cases in Nova Scotia is a sign of just how effective COVID-19 vaccines are.

Concerns over waning immunity and SARS-CoV-2 variants have convinced some countries to deploy extra vaccine doses — but it’s not clear to scientists whether most people need them.

Massive UK study of COVID-19 cases shows that people who are jabbed have good immunity at first, but quickly become more vulnerable to the fast-spreading Delta variant.

Hundreds of scientists had worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the coronavirus pandemic brought a breakthrough.

Governments around the world are busily exploiting the coronavirus crisis to push for no-strings-attached corporate bailouts and regulatory rollbacks.

An interview on health and politics – Two physicians discuss the political economy of human well-being.

Researchers use AI – and witchcraft folklore – to map the coronavirus conspiracy theories that have sprung up

A damning new report shows that one of the leading COVID-19 vaccine makers appears to have played a role in restricting access to those very vaccines. The report, “Pfizer’s Power,” published this week by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, examines Pfizer’s contracts with the United States, United Kingdom, European Commission, Albania, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Dominican Republic and Peru. They offer a rare glimpse into the power Pfizer has to silence governments, throttle supply, shift risk and maximize profits in the middle of a public health crisis. We speak with Public Citizen researcher Zain Rizvi, author of the new report.

Prior research has focused on the negative reasons people are drawn to conspiracies, but there’s another side to the story

Recipients of jab while pregnant recall confusing advice and ‘vicious’ social media comments

Organisers of exhibition on history of British fascism say parallels can be drawn with current thinking

Social media companies profiting from anti-science misinformation during the pandemic, according to a new report

JP Sears is certainly not the only one moving Left or Right—politics infects everything these days. Where he landed is exactly the place he’s criticized for years: exploiting the wellness grift.

2020 has been a year that has exposed people's true intentions and character, especially within the New Age community.

After studying the origins and actions of several prominent Canadian anti-maskers, we can now offer you the definitive primer to becoming a conspiracy-baiting, immensely annoying influencer.

In 2020, menacing propaganda began streaming into the yoga and wellness worlds. Charismatic influencers read the room, and poured their talents for emotional exploitation into increasingly morbid…

Conservatives may be in power, but their interest in fringe ideas shows that some still feel like they're floundering.

A political binary touted by progressives has alienated huge numbers of people over the course of the pandemic.

Conversations and debates about vaccine mandates will continue well into next year as policy-makers balance individual freedom and public well-being.

COVID-19 vaccine mandates have worked extraordinarily well at getting more Canadians vaccinated, but they are increasingly hard to justify — not because of protests or political pressure but because they’re a victim of their own success.

Vaccination policies have shifted dramatically during COVID-19 with the rapid emergence of population-wide vaccine mandates, domestic vaccine passports and differential restrictions based on vaccination status. While these policies have prompted ...

Turning the question of mandatory vaccination into a wedge issue "may rub people the wrong way," warned one bioethicist in an interview with Global News.

The need to do something to control the pandemic may have blinded well-meaning policymakers to the costs of the policy

A study by the University of Edinburgh suggests Covid-19 did not originate in China’s Wuhan but evolved naturally in the bat population in northern Laos and China’s Yunnan province. The study, now published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell, challenges the ’lab-leak’ theory championed by US President Donald Trump. Here’s what it says

With genetic samples from the infamous Wuhan market, a new study makes the case that raccoon dogs are likely the animal that infected humans. Proponents of the lab leak theory are dubious.