Health

Always remember, that the strategy for beating this thing centers on something known as herd immunity. I’m sure you’ve heard that word by now. The is when the entire population is protected from the virus because enough of the general population has either been vaccinated or previously infected by the virus and developed natural antibodies. Needless to say, with a virus as deadly as COVID-19, we certainly don’t want to sit and watch enough folks get infected and hope enough of them don’t die to contribute to our herd immunity goal. That means we have to rely on the success of the vaccine campaign.

“While the Affordable Care Act has greatly reduced the number of older adults who are uninsured, coverage has remained unaffordable for far too many people aged 50-64, including many from multicultural communities,” said Edna Kane-Williams, Chief Diversity Officer of AARP.

Even though Willie Parish, Jr., pictured above, is tethered to the dialysis machine for four hours a day, three days a week, he leads a very full life as the head of Bread of Life Mission in Seattle’s Pioneer Square and spends as much time as possible with his four grandkids.

The City of Seattle is opening vaccination appointments between March 9 – March 13 at its Community Testing and Vaccination Hubs in Rainier Beach and West Seattle to 65 and older adults who live in Seattle with a focus on residents in West Seattle, South Seattle, and Central Seattle.

The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) and Governor Jay Inslee have set a date for advancing to the next phases of vaccine eligibility, making the life-saving shot available to more people in the coming weeks.

“We know that before the passage of the ACA, people of color accounted for 54 percent of the uninsured in the United States, even though they only make up 35 percent of the population. Black women and other women of color — who already face systemic barriers to accessing health care — were disproportionately impacted,” Howell determined.

“COVID-19 has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, and if adequate steps are not taken, this number will continue to grow. As we have seen, COVID-19 does not discriminate, it does not respect borders, and it does not behave according to our timelines,” said Dr. James Hildreth.

The United States could start letting the general public have access to Covid-19 vaccines in April, and the country may be able to inoculate most Americans by the middle or end of the summer, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday.

The extreme prices contribute to serious complications and death when people have to ration their life-saving drugs because they can’t afford to take them as prescribed. Many have failed to take the medicines at all because they simply don’t have the money to pay for them.

Mutations in viruses -including COVID-19 - are not new nor were they unexpected. All RNA viruses mutate over time, some more than others. We are all familiar with the how flu viruses change often, which is why you get a new flu vaccine every year. When viruses mutate, generally, they either kill the virus (a type of “virus-suicide”) or they can have no effect whatsoever on the normal behavior of the virus.