Dr. Fieseher: 1 million COVID deaths highlights need to deal with deadly misinformation

Several media sources reported on May 16 that the US reached 1 million known deaths from COVID.  That’s a million deaths in 2 years.

Embedded in that million-death number is a statistic that is rare, if not unique in medical history.  According to those same news sources, people who voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election were twice as likely to die from COVID than their Democratic counterparts. Since diseases are apolitical, the death rate should not be associated with who you voted for. Therefore, it becomes important to understand why this disparity occurred especially now that infection rates are rising with the new Omicron variants.

Vaccine hesitancy, the waning use of face masks, and lack of physical distancing are all reasons that the rates of both infection and death are as high as they are. But those same factors may also account for the higher number of Republican deaths. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) tracking poll in early December 2020, 42% of Republicans said they would not get vaccinated against COVID, compared with only 12% of Democrats. Those numbers have improved since then, but there is still a broad gap in vaccine hesitancy rates between the two groups.

A follow-up poll by the KFF published April 12, 2022, indicates that 22% of Americans received no vaccines, accounting for 60% of COVID related deaths (between June 2021 and March 2022).  That represents 234,000 preventable deaths.

The same report also indicates that those 22% unvaccinated individuals account for 85% of COVID-related hospitalizations, or 690,000 hospitalizations during that same time. In dollars, those excessive hospitalizations amount to $13.8 billion. No wonder private insurance companies are threatening to drop their coverage of COVID hospitalizations.

COVID is a deadly, communicable disease: it spreads from person to person, it is highly contagious (especially the mutated variants), and its effects can overwhelm a person’s immune response causing severe complications. If an individual has a pre-existing condition such as old age, diabetes, heart disease, or chronic lung disease, it is likely that COVID will complicate those conditions to the point of fatality.  Historically, pandemics cause a high number of deaths, but a million deaths in the US is beyond acceptable.

Consider the fact that we have spent billions of dollars to develop highly effective vaccines that greatly reduce the severity of complications from all COVID variants.  Vaccinated individuals have 5-times the reduction rate of infection, over 10-times the reduction rate of hospitalization and over 10-times the reduction rate of death (Mortality Weekly Report 2021;70:1284-1290.DOI).  We also know that face masks and physical distancing will greatly reduce the rate of transmission. So why have so many people, especially Republicans, been so reluctant to take these simple life-saving measures?

Well, for some, it may be a lack of access to health care. Rural communities often lack basic access to immunization sites and supplies. But a much larger factor has been the high degree of misinformation and disinformation, to which Republican voters seem to be more susceptible.

Disinformation is information that is blatantly false and is intentionally disseminated by individuals who know the truth but spread lies in exchange for some personal gain.  When then President Trump passed over Dr. Fauci in favor of Dr. Scott Atlas as the spokesperson for COVID information, he (Dr. Atlas) promoted bogus preventative measures such as the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin even though neither drug has any effect on the coronavirus, and both have the potential of harmful side effects. Similarly, several prominent Fox News commentators were “warning” people about “vaccine dangers” despite knowing those dangers didn’t exist. They were telling their viewers not to get vaccinated despite being vaccinated themselves. This intentional misinformation elevated both their ratings and the death rate among their viewers.

Misinformation turns out to be an even larger factor in turning people away from those measures that could have prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths and an even larger number of hospitalizations.  Misinformation comes from well-meaning individuals who disseminate incorrect information they thought was true. These individuals trusted news sources that proved unreliable.  With social media at everyone’s fingertips, this is a more potent cause of vaccine hesitancy.

The conflicting factual and false messages presented a problem for most Republicans and gave them the impression that COVID did not have to be taken as seriously as it should have been.  This may account for one of the reasons that so many NH Republican lawmakers thought that protecting the health and safety of Granite Staters was an “option” and failed to promote legislation that would have preserved lives and the economy.  However, because of their responsibility as leaders, it is incumbent upon those same Republican lawmakers to get the facts right and ensure the public that they are reacting to verifiable data and not the harmful fiction that has put so many Granite Staters at risk.

The COVID vaccines are safe and effective.  More recent data suggests that the vaccines may not prevent us from contracting COVID, but those vaccines will likely save us from hospitalization, bankruptcy, and death. Passing the million-death milestone is an opportunity to renew our efforts to correct misleading information that has taken so many members of our communities.  Republican lawmakers should enact legislation based on verifiable facts and fight against COVID rather than against measures to fight COVID.  This is also a time when Democrats can reach out to their Republican neighbors with honest information in a sympathetic and non-judgmental manner to promote the health and safety of our communities.

We can all save lives by toning down the partisan rhetoric, much of which is based upon social media hype, and work together to keep our loved ones free from the death and long-term disabilities associated with COVID.  We have over a million reasons to do so.

James Fieseher MD, of Dover is a recently retired family physician.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Dr. Fieseher: Misinformation contributed to 1 million US COVID deaths