A two-day hearing on COVID-19 held by Arizona Republican lawmakers at the state Capitol this week, aimed at investigating the state’s reaction to the pandemic, repeated incorrect information about remedies and prevention.
While taking a momentary look at how Arizona has responded to the pandemic is a valid idea, the Republicans’ Southwest Intergovernmental Committee on the Novel Coronavirus overlooked key facts and recirculated conspiracy theories.
The speakers were not among the speakers in Arizona nor any of the leaders of local hospitals or fitness systems with direct involvement in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The event was called a call to others who in QAnon conspiracy theories because of his call and was partially funded through The America Project, which promoted a multitude of baseless election plots.
Speakers included cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, who earned a reputation for spreading incorrect information about the pandemic, and Dr. Peter McCullough. Lela Lewis, an OB/GYN from Arizona who is part of an organization called Liberty and Health Alliance, which provides resources to people. . who need vaccine exemptions. Writing about the occasion Thursday, Rolling Stone noted that Lewis produced a YouTube video in which he described the public fitness reaction to the pandemic as “Satan’s holistic fitness plan. “
Arizona has one of the highest COVID-19 death rates in the country. As of May 20, another 33,502 people in the state have died from the virus, according to state surveillance data.
Here are five facts about the pandemic that weren’t included in the two-day Republican hearing:
Republican leaders at the May 25-26 hearing in Arizona lamented “prolonged stay-at-home orders” and other measures that did not respect people’s private ideals or medical autonomy. However, Arizona was among the states with the least restrictive COVID-19 pandemic policies, and the Arizona legislature has already limited the type of government reaction allowed to a pandemic with a law signed last year by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.
Ducey, who is a Republican, issued a “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” directive on March 30, 2020, after governors in at least 25 other states took similar action. Other “essential activities,” however, did not come with any real application for citizens.
Arizona is among a minority of states that have never imposed a statewide mask mandate and the pandemic, Ducey introduced a grant program that funneled federal dollars to schools that rejected COVID-19 fitness protocols.
In October 2021, Ducey threatened the people of Tucson with fraudulent consequences for giving employees the COVID-19 vaccine, and on December 15 of that year he signed an executive order prohibiting local government entities from issuing vaccination orders.
In April 2022, Ducey signed a bill to prevent any government point that receives taxpayer money from requiring a COVID-19 vaccine. It included an exception for fitness centers. In May 2022, Ducey signed a law saving the state from requiring the COVID-19 vaccine in schoolchildren.
While some participants at the hearing stated that Arizona’s policies were as strict as those of several other states, such as California, they mentioned that Arizona had a higher COVID-19 death rate than many states with more restrictive COVID-19 measures, adding that California. . .
Critics of Ducey’s pandemic policies say his leadership has contributed to soaring COVID-19 death rates in Arizona, though other points are likely at play as well, adding poor timing and incorrect information about the pandemic that has spread through some elected officials.
Arizona’s age-adjusted COVID-19 death rate was 321. 7, equivalent to another 100,000 people as of May 25, according to the CDC. The national rate of 282. 7, equivalent to another 100,000 people, and California’s rate, of 242. 7 equivalent to another 100,000 people, according to CDC data.
A study published March 23 in The Lancet found that Arizona had the highest cumulative standardized COVID-19 death rate in the United States over a period from January 1, 2020, to July 31, 2022. The study normalized death rates by adjusting death rates by state for age profile and prevalence of chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes and smoking rates. The authors of the review included researchers from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and the Council on Foreign Relations.
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The Southwest Intergovernmental Committee on the Novel Coronavirus is chaired by state Sen. Janae Shamp, R-Surprise, a registered nurse who said she lost her nursing job because she refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Much of the audience led the COVID-19 vaccine.
Evidence-based studies, which aggregate knowledge about vaccine outcomes, consistently show that while the COVID-19 vaccine carries some risks, its benefits outweigh the harm it causes.
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A January 2022 investigation from the Arizona Department of Health Services showed that unvaccinated people were 180 times more likely to die from COVID-19 and 67 times more likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19 than a vaccinated and reinforced person.
“Billions of other people have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Getting vaccinated is one of the most important things you can do for yourself against COVID-19, help end the pandemic and prevent new variants from emerging,” says El Mundo. Health Organization.
The CDC has a Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting (VAERS) formula, which allows whoever won a vaccine to report “adverse events” related to that vaccine. Not all formula reports are verified and do not identify a cause-and-effect link. , however, the formula has still led some critics of the COVID-19 vaccine to misread the data.
“The vaccine is spectacular,” Dr. Bob England, acting director of the Arizona Immunization Association, told The Arizona Republic this week. “We are incredibly fortunate to live in a time when, within a year, we produce a pandemic vaccine. . . . But we also live in a time when we are so divided that other people are willing to pursue conspiracies and put other people in danger for their lives for political purposes. “
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Prolonged COVID refers to new or worsening symptoms that persist for 4 weeks or more after a COVID-19 infection. Some of the most common symptoms of prolonged COVID are fatigue, mental confusion and dizziness.
“People who are not vaccinated are more likely to contract a prolonged COVID than a vaccinated user who ends up having an advanced infection,” said Dr. Sairam Parthasarathy, a professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson and co-author of a study on prolonged COVID published May 25 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“This is precisely what the study shows. In the pre-omicron era and in the omicron era, we found that vaccinated people are less likely to have long COVID, while unvaccinated people are more likely to have long COVID. “
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New evidence shows that early in the pandemic, Democrats were hardest hit by COVID-19 in terms of deaths, most likely because the virus struck first in urban spaces populated by a higher percentage of Democratic voters.
However, after the advent of the COVID-19 vaccine, spaces with a majority of Republican voters began to record higher death rates, according to some research.
“Overall, the COVID-19 death rate in all counties won through Trump in 2020 is particularly consistent with that of counties won through Biden (as of February 2022, 326 consistent with 100,000 in Trump counties and 258 consistent with 100,000 in Biden counties), ” says a March 3, 2022 Pew Research Center research mortality knowledge compiled through the New York Times.
“Among the vast majority of counties for which reliable vaccination knowledge exists, counties that supported Trump in the upper margins have particularly lower vaccination rates than those that supported Biden in the upper margins. “
Similarly, in an ongoing September 2022 paper that studied the electorate in Ohio and Florida, researchers at Yale School of Medicine found that the top number of deaths from the pandemic was 76% higher among Republicans than among Democrats in those states. Excess deaths refers to the difference between the number of deaths that occurred in a given era and the number of deaths expected for that same era.
“We estimate particularly higher excess mortality rates for registered Republicans compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference concentrated in the era after vaccines became widely available in our study states,” the authors wrote.
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On its online page, the U. S. Food and Drug Administration has said nothing to do so. The U. S. Census Bureau has a page stating that the federal firm does not have ivermectin legal or approved for use in the prevention or remedy of COVID-19 in humans or animals. Ivermectin is approved for human use to treat infections caused by certain parasitic worms and lice and skin conditions such as rosacea, the online page says.
The misuse of ivermectin has led to the poisoning of Arizona residents — at least seven hospitalizations, executives at Phoenix-based Banner Health told The Arizona Republic in September 2021.
The use of ivermectin has been promoted on social media, through other people who oppose the COVID-19 vaccine and believe that classical medicine and the government spare it its use as a cure for COVID-19.
But many well-controlled clinical studies have failed to demonstrate the efficacy of ivermectin in treating COVID-19 and several other studies on ivermectin have been retracted due to flaws, according to Retraction Watch.
A May 2022 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine indicates that a trial of 3,515 symptomatic COVID-19 patients in Brazil, randomized to obtain ivermectin, did not reduce the incidence of medical admissions to a hospital due to progression. of infection or spread in the emergency department.
The effects of a randomized clinical trial of 1,591 outpatients with COVID-19 who were treated with ivermectin or placebo were published on October 21, 2022 by American researchers in the Journal of the American Medical Association and gave effects to the Brazilian study.
“These findings do not support the use of ivermectin in outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19,” the authors wrote.
Republic writer Ryan Randazzo contributed to this report.
Contact journalist Stephanie Innes at Stephanie. Innes@gannett. com or 602-444-8369. Follow her on Twitter @stephanieinnes.