Healthcare

Fmr FDA Chief: ‘The case fatality rate is going down’

Published

1 year ago

July 5, 2020

Staff Writer

Former FDA Commissioner, Doctor Scott Gottlieb was on ‘Face the Nation’ on CBS News on Sunday to discuss recent spikes of Covid-19 cases.

“The President has tweeted yesterday that the media is focused too much on these growing number of cases, and he is making the point that deaths and the all-important mortality rate is going down, and we’re not hearing enough about that. How do you understand what is happening with deaths and mortality?” asked host Margaret Brennan.

“Well, we need to separate the number of deaths going down from the actual case fatality rate, how lethal is this? The case fatality rate is going down, although we’re not able to measure it right now because we’re able to save more people who are hospitalized and get critically ill because of advances in care,” responded Dr. Gottlieb.

“The number of deaths has gone down because the number of infections went down for a period of time. And more of the new infections right now are in younger people. And we’re protecting more vulnerable populations like people in nursing homes. But the total number of deaths is going to start going up again as the number of hospitalizations starts to spike again. So we’re going to see deaths creep up. And I wouldn’t be surprised in the next two weeks to see deaths go over a thousand. That doesn’t mean the case fatality rate, the actual death rate isn’t declining. But when you have more infections, even if the death rate is declining, you’re going to get more deaths tragically. So if we cut the death rate in half, if we make this half less lethal than it was, but we double the number of infections, we’re going to get more deaths. And I think we’re going to start to see that. So we shouldn’t just focus on the crude mortality rate, the number of deaths to tell the story of what’s happening medically. Medically, we are improving. But we just have so much infection around this country, we’re going to see, unfortunately, a lot of lethalities.”

Healthcare

American and Southwest stand by vaccine mandate, despite Abbott’s ban

Published

2 months ago

October 13, 2021

Staff Writer

American Airlines and Southwest Airlines are still planning to comply with President Biden’s executive order regarding the COVID-19 vaccine. The order requires all their employees to be vaccinated by Dec. 8t. As a result, they will be ignoring Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s ban on vaccine mandates.

Folks, vaccination requirements work. pic.twitter.com/XuBsOQxGaN
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 9, 2021

Abbott announced his own executive order, effectively banning mandates even from private employers, on Tuesday. “In another instance of federal overreach, the Biden Administration is now bullying many private entities into imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates, causing workforce disruptions that threaten Texas’ continued recovery from the COVID-19 disaster,” Abbott said. “The COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective, and our best defense against the virus, but should remain voluntary and never forced.”

Yet both airlines are requiring their employees to be vaccinated by Nov. 24. This comes despite Southwest’s impromptu cancellation of over 2,000 flights over the weekend. At the time, the airline blamed the cancellations on air traffic control and weather conditions. However, SaraACarter.com was unable to verify that any other airline had to cancel near as many flights for the same reasons. This has left many to speculate that Southwest actually cancelled flights due to their employees walking out as a direct result of the mandate.

Just got passed this flyer from a Southwest employee #FreedomFlu pic.twitter.com/Q5gXGhxoma
— Handbrake Poso (@JackPosobiec) October 13, 2021

Reporter Jack Posobiec tweeted out a flyer circulating among the anti-vaxx Southwest employees. Currently, they are planning a protest outside of Southwest headquarters next Monday. The protest will be called “Freedom Not Force.”

Southwest told Reuters it “would be expected to comply with the President’s Order to remain compliant as a federal contractor.” In addition, American similarly said Abbott’s order does not change anything.

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism.