COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

"While the initial surge of Covid-19 deaths skipped over much of rural America, where roughly 15 percent of Americans live, nonmetropolitan mortality rates quickly started to outpace those of metropolitan areas as the virus spread nationwide before vaccinations became available, according to data from the Rural Policy Research Institute. Since the pandemic began, about 1 in 434 rural Americans have died from Covid, compared with roughly 1 in 513 urban Americans, the institute’s data shows."

"There is a national disconnect between perception and reality when it comes to Covid in rural America. We’ve turned many rural communities into kill boxes. And there's no movement towards addressing what we're seeing in many of these communities, either among the public, or among governing officials."

"Are you suggesting that there were too many Indian names in that group?"

"It makes perfect sense. We don’t want any doses wasted, period."

"Experts say it's expected many will feel angry with returning mask measures. It's very hard to pull the finish line away from somebody when it feels like they finally have the ribbon at the end in sight," American Psychological Association chief science officer Mitch Prinstein told CNN. "I think we can also understand the anger in the context of exhaustion, anxiety, uncertainty, and you know, a serious division of ideology too," Prinstein added. "These factors are very real and very concerning right now.""

"The sectors most adversely affected by the pandemic have improved in recent months, but the rise in COVID-19 cases has slowed their recovery."

"June 15: At some point, this stuff goes away. And it's going away."

"May 15: It’ll go away — at some point, it’ll go away."

"COVID IS THE FLU WITH A BETTER PUBLICIST (Jan 2, 2021)"

"Epidemiologists generally consider rural Americans more vulnerable to the pandemic than urban Americans. Higher proportions of elderly persons, higher smoking usage, higher prevalence of certain chronic diseases, and lower proportions of persons covered by health insurance contribute to this vulnerability."

"America is heading into a summer dramatically different from last year’s summer. A summer of freedom. A summer of joy. A summer of get-togethers and celebrations. An all-American summer that this country deserves after a long, long dark winter that we have all endured"

"Having my mum and dad in hospital fighting COVID at the same time is the scariest thing I’ve experienced in my life"

"Call Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham the spiritual heirs of Lord Jeffery Amherst, the British military commander who in 1763 wrote to an underling, “Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians?” As the New York Times put it with characteristic mildness, “Mr Carlson, Ms Ingraham and guests on their programs have said on the air that the vaccines could be dangerous; that people are justified in refusing them; and that public authorities have overstepped in their attempts to deliver them.” Newsweek was more blunt, quoting Ingraham herself saying that the vaccine was an attempt to push an “experimental drug on Americans against their will – threatening them, threatening to deprive them of basic liberties, if they don’t comply.” The goal was to rile up the audience – and prevent them from getting vaccinated, while the evidence was clear that the vaccines prevent both disease in the vaccinated and the spread of disease. Vaccines are, incidentally, how smallpox was eliminated worldwide. There is of course another angle to the conservative response to the pandemic. In far-right ideology, freedom – for white men especially – is an absolute goal. Even recognizing the systems in which we are all enmeshed might burden the free person with obligations to others and to the whole. Science itself is a series of descriptions of our enmeshedness: of how pesticides travel beyond the crops they’re sprayed on, of the way that fossil fuel emissions contribute to health problems and climate change, of how the spread of disease can be prevented by collective action. Rightwing ideology, after all, has emphasised the right to own and carry a gun over the right to be free of being menaced or murdered by guns, as thousands are in the US every year."

"Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said the ac-tions might be “too little, too late,” and warned that Americans opposed to vaccination might dig in and bristle at being told what to do. The American Hospital Association was cautious, warning of the possibility of “exacerbating the severe work force shortage problems that currently exist.” But Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, likened the vaccination re-quirements to military service in a time of war. “To date, we have relied on a volunteer army,” Dr. Schaffner said. “But particularly with the Delta variant, the enemy has been reinforced, and now a volunteer army is not sufficient. We need to institute a draft.”"

"March 6: It’ll go away."

"What would the Founders say?"

"March 30: It will go away. You know it — you know it is going away, and it will go away, and we’re going to have a great victory."

"April 7: It did go — it will go away."

"Aug. 31: It's going to go away."

"Oct. 24: It is going away; it’s rounding the turn."

"On Wednesday January 6, many members of the House community were in protective isolation in room located in a large committee hearing space"

"As of January 31st, 2021, 99% of rural counties in America had reported positive COVID-19 cases and 96% had reported one or more deaths. More than 3.7 million rural residents have tested positive for COVID-19 and 69,405 deaths among rural Americans have been attributed to the disease."

"In this longitudinal analysis, Republican-led states had fewer per capita COVID-19 cases, deaths, and positive tests early in the pandemic, but these trends reversed in early May (positive tests), June (cases), and July (deaths). Testing rates were similar until September, when Republican states fell behind Democratic states. The early trends could be explained by high COVID-19 cases and deaths among Democratic-led states that are home to initial ports of entry for the virus in early 2020. However, the subsequent reversal in trends, particularly with respect to testing, may reflect policy differences that could have facilitated the spread of the virus. Adolph et al. found that Republican governors were slower to adopt both stay-at-home orders and mandates to wear face masks. Other studies have shown that Democratic governors were more likely to issue stay-at-home orders with longer durations. Moreover, decisions by Republican governors in spring 2020 to retract policies, such as the lifting of stay-at-home orders on April 28 in Georgia, may have contributed to increased cases and deaths. Democratic states also had lower test positivity rates from May 30 through December 15, suggesting more rigorous containment strategies in response to the pandemic. Thus, governors’ political affiliation might function as an upstream progenitor of multifaceted policies that, in unison, impact the spread of the virus. Although there were exceptions in states such as Maryland and Massachusetts, Republican governors were generally less likely to enact policies aligned with public health social distancing recommendations."

"As of January, more than half of all Black, Hispanic and Asian fourth-graders were learning in a fully remote environment, the data shows. By comparison, a quarter of white students were learning fully remotely, and instead nearly half of white students were learning in person, full time. And for those learning remotely – the majority of whom were students of color – many were receiving two hours or less of live instruction. In fact, 5% of fourth graders and 10% of eighth graders were receiving no live instruction whatsoever in their remote learning. For school leaders, standardized data has been difficult to come by due to a lack of federal guidance for how states, counties and school districts tracked COVID-19 cases, which led to a patchwork of reporting requirements – some of which were publicly available, others not – that stymied efforts to draw any concrete conclusions to help city and school officials make complicated and contentious decisions about reopening and closing schools. The Trump administration didn't simply shy away from tracking data on school districts and their reopening strategies. DeVos and White House officials said it was not her responsibility or that of the federal government – even though education leaders across the country had been all but begging for a comprehensive database to help them navigate the pandemic. In fact, it wasn't until December – nearly 10 months after the virus first shuttered schools – that researchers had finally amassed enough data from the various state and county public health databases and directly from school districts themselves to draw more informed conclusions about whether and how the virus spreads in schools, whether schools are significant drivers of infection rates and what conditions may allow for schools to safely and successfully reopen for in-person learning."

"COVID-19 arrived in America at a vulnerable moment in the nation’s history. The country was undergoing a wrenching political realignment, brought to a head by the 2016 election of Donald Trump, whose policies on trade, deficit, alliances, and immigration were at odds with traditional Republican conservativism. His election pulled the country further into a cataclysm of identity politics, shrinking the GOP into a pool of aging white voters who felt disparaged, resentful, and left behind. The #MeToo movement had ignited an edgy dialogue between the sexes. As the stock market soared, long-delayed questions of income disparity and racial justice were pressing forward. Every dissonant chord among the parties, the races, and the genders was amplified within the echo chambers the fractured communities had made of themselves. Into this turbulent, deeply troubled, but prideful society, the coronavirus would act as a hurricane of change, flattening the most powerful economy in the world, leveling not the physical cities but the idea of cities, strewing misfortune and blame and regrets along with the tens, the hundreds, the thousands, the hundreds of thousands of obituaries. No country would escape the destruction the virus inflicted, but none had as much to lose as America."

"Wealth and power breed hubris, and perhaps Covid-19 was the force that America needed—to be humbled, to reckon with itself, to once again attempt to create the democracy it had always intended to be. On the other hand, America’s moment at the forefront of history might have passed, and Covid-19 was a blow it was no longer strong enough to fend off. Rival powers—with China at the top—were competing for control of the new millennium. This was a challenge to democracy, which was America’s cause in the world. The alternative to American preeminence was not a globe full of mini-Americas but a world dominated by tyrants. Freedom was at stake, as it always is, but America had tied itself into a political knot. The cyclonic forces of fascism and nihilism gained in power as the center weakened. The only thing that kept democracy from winding up in a suicidal brawl of self-interest was a sense of common purpose, but the pandemic exposed that the United States no longer had one."

"Several experts, including Kuppalli, think the CDC’s new masking guidance should have gone a step further, skipped the geographical contingencies, and asked all vaccinated people to resume covering up indoors—as the agency’s internal document called for. That would’ve generated some whiplash, too, Kuppalli told me, but it would have at least been more straightforward, and might have felt less wishy-washy; it might have signaled a more collective movement, toward a common goal. As it stands, the agency’s new guidance is murky and riddled with contingencies: Even vaccinated Americans in low- and moderate-transmission areas, it states, should consider masking up indoors if they or someone in their household is immunocompromised, at risk for severe disease, or unvaccinated."

"Call Jared Kushner the spiritual heir of the army besieging the city of Caffa on the Black Sea in 1346, which, according to a contemporaneous account, catapulted plague-infected corpses over the city walls. This is sometimes said to be how the Black Death came to Europe, where it would kill tens of millions of people – a third of the European population – over the next 15 years. A Business Insider article from a year ago noted: “Kushner’s coronavirus team shied away from a national strategy, believing that the virus was hitting Democratic states hardest and that they could blame governors.” An administration more committed to saving lives than scoring points could have contained the pandemic rather than made the US the worst-hit nation in the world. Illnesses and casualties could have been far lower, and we could have been better protected against the Delta variant. At the outset of the pandemic, as Seattle and New York City became hard hit, Republicans apparently imagined that the pandemic would strike Democratic states and cities first, and certainly in 2020 Black, Latinx and indigenous people were disproportionately affected. To put it clearly, Republicans enabled a campaign of mass death and disablement, thinking it would be primarily mean death and illness for those they regarded as opponents."

"HHS will determine the amount of product each state and territory receives on a weekly basis. State and territorial health departments will subsequently identify sites that will receive product and how much."

"Floridians who are getting this treatment, they’re people who need it. We’re proud of this rollout and proud of Gov. DeSantis for leading on it and raising the profile of this treatment throughout the country.”"

"There is a lot we don’t know about this new COVID-19 variant, but scientists in the United Kingdom are warning the world that it is significantly more contagious. The health and safety of Coloradans is our top priority and we will closely monitor this case, as well as all COVID-19 indicators, very closely. We are working to prevent spread and contain the virus at all levels. I want to thank our scientists and dedicated medical professionals for their swift work and ask Coloradans to continue our efforts to prevent disease transmission by wearing masks, standing six feet apart when gathering with others, and only interacting with members of their immediate household."

"Warning, this is a bit of a rant"

"60 million Americans are subject to a stay at home order or curfew."

"11 million are right here in Ohio."

"March 10: Just stay calm. It will go away."

"March 12: It’s going to go away."

"March 31: It’s going to go away, hopefully at the end of the month. And, if not, hopefully it will be soon after that."

"April 3: It is going to go away… It’s going — I didn’t say a date. … I said ‘it’s going away,’ and it is going away."

"July 19: I will be right eventually. You know, I said, ‘It's going to disappear.’ I'll say it again."

"Aug. 5: This thing's going away. It will go away like things go away."

"Sept. 15: It is going away. And it's probably going to go away now a lot faster because of the vaccines."

"Oct. 10: It's going to disappear; it is disappearing."

"The number of cases and deaths of the China Virus is far exaggerated in the United States because of @CDCgov’s ridiculous method of determination compared to other countries, many of whom report, purposely, very inaccurately and low. “When in doubt, call it Covid.” Fake News!"

"While I was disappointed in my colleagues who refused to wear a mask, I was encouraged by those who did. My goal, in the midst of what I feared was a super spreader event, was to make the room at least a little safer."

"This is enough vaccine to vaccinate 300 million Americans by end of summer, early fall"

"Multiple lines of evidence indicate that B.1.1.7 is more efficiently transmitted than are other SARS-CoV-2 variants."

"All the deaths in the nursing homes and hospitals were always fully, publicly and accurately reported. We should have done a better job of providing as much information as we could as quickly as we could. No excuses: I accept responsibility for that."

"“This kind of excess mortality is representing structural inequalities that have existed for a long time that increase both the risk of exposure to virus and the risk of dying from the virus"

"Governors’ party affiliation may have contributed to a range of policy decisions that, together, influenced the spread of the virus. These findings underscore the need for state policy actions that are guided by public health considerations rather than by partisan politics."

"[T]he high incidence of cases and low vaccination rates don’t fully capture why mortality rates are so much higher in rural areas than elsewhere. Academics and officials alike describe rural Americans’ greater rates of poor health and their limited options for medical care as a deadly combination. The pressures of the pandemic have compounded the problem by deepening staffing shortages at hospitals, creating a cycle of worsening access to care."