Vermont prioritises BIPOC over white people for COVID-19 vaccine

[Metaphor]

I forget. Where did you get your training as an epidemiologist? Public policy? Public health? Virology? Any background in any of those?

I forget. Since when did a reverse appeal to authority constitute an argument?

I'm just trying to clarify. You seem to be asserting that you have greater expertise with how to manage mass distribution of limited vaccine to an entire population in a timely and orderly fashion. I was wondering if you had any relevant background.

I am not asserting it any more than you are, or anyone else in this thread is.

 

[Metaphor]

This is the sort of casual statistical analysis that makes people question your credentials.

For example, just how Asian does someone have to be to meet your criteria?

As Asian as the people who were marked "Asian" when Vermont produced their sickness and death statistics.

If somebody's Mom is a Chinese doctor and her dad is a white college professor, she'd qualify as Asian. Nevertheless, her socio-economic status would put her in a super low risk group.

You appear to be making my case for me. Asian people are as low or lower risk than white people in sickness and death from COVID. Yet Vermont's policy would prioritise this super-low-risk Asian daughter! Imagine she's 19 - she'd qualify for the vaccine over her 45 year old white father!

Similarly, would a trans man qualify as male? You seem to think males should be prioritized due to a higher death rate.

Trans men are women, so no. But trans women are male, so trans women would qualify under the male prioritisation.

And then there's the question of why men have a higher rate of death. If it's because men in the high priority categories, aged or infirm or BIPOC, die at much higher rates than similar women then the most at risk males are already in the high priority categories.

That's definitely a good question. If all of the higher death rate from COVID experienced by men versus women can be "explained" (I mean, statistically explained) by factors that would already have put them in another eligibility/priority category, then there would be no good reason to add 'male' as an additional risk category.

I actually had an exchange with Toni about this. I pointed out that many of the same features that make men more at risk (higher incidence of type 2 diabetes, higher blood pressure, obesity) would also be driving what makes black and indigenous (not Asian) people more at risk. So, if all the additional risk was explained by the 'other' eligibility/priority categories, then there is no good reason to prioritise the remaining black and indigenous people.

Some posters pointed out that some of the reasons black and indigenous people might be more at risk would not apply to men as a group (distrust of state medical authority, lack of access to medical treatment due to socioeconomic circumstances). And maybe, even if those things were equalised, there is simply a brute race/ethnicity effect that cannot be accounted for by social circumstances (the same could be true for the sex effect of men versus women).

Personally, I'm inclined to assume that the health authorities are doing their best to make a speedy response to a crisis. A temporary crisis at that, as the supply of vaccine reaches the demand there won't be any more(imperfect) categorizing issues. Apparently, that will be by the end of the month.
Tom

And I think political values have played a bigger role than they ought have.

For example, I asked Toni why Vermont should not prioritise men over women, and she said that in Vermont, the death rate from COVID appeared to be not as uneven as it is elsewhere. So I assumed that meant she would support a priority rule for men over women in say, California, where the male death rate from COVID is much higher than the female death rate.

But Toni then started arguing about 'granularity' - how the higher death rate might be explained by other factors that might have been accounted for in other eligibility categories. Yet, she did not seem to think this same logic ought be applied to the racial prioritisation.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Only by sticking your head in the sand about the age risk. Since nobody on the left seems capable of verifying what we are saying, here's the data:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/201...s-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html

Quit trying to sacrifice people on the altar of racism.

Did you seperate those death rates by race? No. So you cannot make that determination.

According to this Stanford Medicine study the disease is significantly more deadly to blacks and hispanics

The claim was 2.4x the risk. Look at the table I linked.

Besides, it looks like it's the same problem we've seen elsewhere with blacks and healthcare: Hospitals with less money don't provide as good care.

“Interestingly, more of the variations in mortality were explained by the site of the care than by race or ethnicity,” Rodriguez said. “We need to understand more about differences between hospitals. Is it different treatment protocols that are rapidly evolving during the pandemic? Or perhaps minority-serving hospitals have different resources? This is an active area of research within the registry used for this study as we enroll more sites across the country.”

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I am in constant awe at your ability to construct such bullshit straw men so consistently.

Calling it bullshit doesn't make it go away. Even if the racial risk is real the age risk is far greater than the racial risk.

The information contained in the OP link indicate that all Vermonters 40 years of age and older are eligible for vaccination. It's the very first group listed in the Who can get vaccinated now? tab. So I don't understand why people are arguing over it.

Metaphor says he does not object to some Vermonters being vaccinated before others. His one quibble appears to be that young adult non-whites became eligible for vaccination before Whites of the same age. The evidence of greater need of vaccination for non-whites due to measurable differences in mortality and outcomes apparently doesn't matter, just the Constitutional question.

I'm not a Constitutional scholar but I do know that Alaska gave priority to vaccine distribution in Native communities, and pretty much everyone around here said "That makes sense".

No. What he's objecting to is non-white youngsters being given the same priority as white 40+. That means they're competing for the same shots--but the 40+ has 5x the risk even if the racial pattern is true.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No, the problem is that you are okay with dividing up by socio-economic class but not race while both are constitutionally protected if either is in this context. Therefore your argument is hypocritical. Please present a cogent argument of what you actually want to do.

I'm ok with dividing on factors that are relevant. When we look at supposed "racial" discrimination it almost always actually is socioeconomic and I see no reason to think this isn't more of the same. Lower socioeconomic class = more likely to be in a job that can't work from home = higher covid risk. The answer is to prioritize the riskier jobs, not the race.

As always, assuming racism.

Racism isn't an assumption, it is an historical fact.

And when did you stop beating your wife?

There's no road to hell here...it's a nuance and it's already being done by age across the whole country. People only started hysterically screaming about it when a very small state with a low rate of covid and a small minority population agreed to include race into their system of triage... Because it saves more lives than otherwise not doing it.

The age difference poses far more risk than the supposed "racial" risk.

Yes, the protected class of age has more risk than over certain sub-populations which is why I wrote the following: "the vaccine could be worth .005 lives to a senior citizen, .002 lives to a 30 year old Native American, .001 lives to a 30 year old African American, and .0005 lives to a 30 year old White American ON AVERAGE." See how age is the primary component since being a senior citizen (OF ANY RACE) has more value to the vaccine than all racial breakdowns of non-senior citizens. And this is exactly what the Vermont plan does because in the first phase they have 75+ getting vaccinated, then 70+, and so on etc etc with more age brackets, up to a particular age bracket point where they allow BIPOC, then continue with more phases of age brackets. Why does this make sense? It's because at the high-end of age, age is far more of a risk than race, but at a mid-level point they are closer risks, and at a low age, race is a bigger factor.

You, on the other hand, are arguing out of both sides of your mouth, on one side saying race being discrimination because you agree with Metaphor, and on the other side of your mouth saying it should be done by age and socio-economic class, even though those would also both be discrimination, if race is.

What the fuck? Please explain this discrepancy.

I'm saying to prioritize based on risk. Look at what the numbers say. Age is far bigger a factor than race.

 

[ZiprHead]

The claim was 2.4x the risk. Look at the table I linked.

I did look at your table. it doesn't take age AND ethnicity into account. Therefore, unless you can find some chart or other data that does so, you're just baselessly speculating.

 

[ZiprHead]

The information contained in the OP link indicate that all Vermonters 40 years of age and older are eligible for vaccination. It's the very first group listed in the Who can get vaccinated now? tab. So I don't understand why people are arguing over it.

Metaphor says he does not object to some Vermonters being vaccinated before others. His one quibble appears to be that young adult non-whites became eligible for vaccination before Whites of the same age. The evidence of greater need of vaccination for non-whites due to measurable differences in mortality and outcomes apparently doesn't matter, just the Constitutional question.

I'm not a Constitutional scholar but I do know that Alaska gave priority to vaccine distribution in Native communities, and pretty much everyone around here said "That makes sense".

No. What he's objecting to is non-white youngsters being given the same priority as white 40+. That means they're competing for the same shots--but the 40+ has 5x the risk even if the racial pattern is true.

Blacks are only 2% of the population. How many spaces can they take.

 

[ZiprHead]

I'm saying to prioritize based on risk. Look at what the numbers say. Age is far bigger a factor than race.

More speculation.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And as I've said about a hundred times now, the risk of age dwarfs the race risk by orders of magnitude. Not a single 19 year old without medical conditions should have been put ahead of a 45 year old without medical conditions. The eligibility of age cohorts should have been pushed forward instead of prioritising healthy BIPOC people.

EDIT: And, even if you did prioritise some non-white people, Asians should not have been included. Asians are either at the same or lower risk from COVID compared to white people. The only reason for their inclusion is the political category "BIPOC".

I forget. Where did you get your training as an epidemiologist? Public policy? Public health? Virology? Any background in any of those?

Try Google. Looking up the age-based risk is trivial.

 

[Toni]

And as I've said about a hundred times now, the risk of age dwarfs the race risk by orders of magnitude. Not a single 19 year old without medical conditions should have been put ahead of a 45 year old without medical conditions. The eligibility of age cohorts should have been pushed forward instead of prioritising healthy BIPOC people.

EDIT: And, even if you did prioritise some non-white people, Asians should not have been included. Asians are either at the same or lower risk from COVID compared to white people. The only reason for their inclusion is the political category "BIPOC".

I forget. Where did you get your training as an epidemiologist? Public policy? Public health? Virology? Any background in any of those?

Try Google. Looking up the age-based risk is trivial.

I’ve googled! And in fact have been following the trends for most of this past year, keeping a close watch on emerging data. More than that, I’ve looked at Vermont’s site to see what can be learned from the metrics they’ve posted and looked at CDC recommendations, trends in other countries, in various states and so on.

I am not making any assertions about how racist Vermont’s priority list is: Metaohor is. But without sharing with us any particular expertise he has aside from his opinion.

I asked what expertise he has. If it is merely what he reads on the internet, then I definitely think that is worth considering when assigning weight to his opinion.

 

[Metaphor]

I am not making any assertions about how racist Vermont’s priority list is: Metaohor is.

No, I did not call it racist. I said Vermont was discriminating by race. It is.

But without sharing with us any particular expertise he has aside from his opinion.

My expertise is that I can read information and process it, an ability I'm certain you also claim for yourself.

I asked what expertise he has. If it is merely what he reads on the internet, then I definitely think that is worth considering when assigning weight to his opinion.

I think you should be able to discern claims of fact for yourself without knowing anything about my background.

For example, white people make up 93 per cent of the population of Vermont, but are 97 per cent of the deaths from COVID-19 in Vermont. That's a fact you should be able to see for yourself without trusting my 'credentials' or 'expertise'.

Of course, the 'raw' association is not the end of the story. Perhaps it isn't being 'white' that causes increased likelihood of death from COVID in Vermont. It's probable that the white population has an older age profile than non-white populations, and we know that age is an extremely good predictor of COVID sickness and death. And that is a claim of fact that can be investigated also.

It seems to me that instead of answering or countering my points, Toni simply made a reverse appeal to authority. Now, I feel Toni has the brains to process my claims rationally, whether I'm an epidemiologist or not.

 

[Toni]

No, I did not call it racist. I said Vermont was discriminating by race. It is.



My expertise is that I can read information and process it, an ability I'm certain you also claim for yourself.

I asked what expertise he has. If it is merely what he reads on the internet, then I definitely think that is worth considering when assigning weight to his opinion.

I think you should be able to discern claims of fact for yourself without knowing anything about my background.

For example, white people make up 93 per cent of the population of Vermont, but are 97 per cent of the deaths from COVID-19 in Vermont. That's a fact you should be able to see for yourself without trusting my 'credentials' or 'expertise'.

Of course, the 'raw' association is not the end of the story. Perhaps it isn't being 'white' that causes increased likelihood of death from COVID in Vermont. It's probable that the white population has an older age profile than non-white populations, and we know that age is an extremely good predictor of COVID sickness and death. And that is a claim of fact that can be investigated also.

It seems to me that instead of answering or countering my points, Toni simply made a reverse appeal to authority. Now, I feel Toni has the brains to process my claims rationally, whether I'm an epidemiologist or not.

Do you know when Vermont established their vaccination criteria and priorities? Do you know if these have been revised? Do you know anything at all about the various categories of persons? For example, what in what part of Asia did most of Vermont’s Asian population originate? BTW, this matters. Some Asian Americans fare much less well in this pandemic than others, and this is very much related to the region of Asia they or their family originated. Other things that matter: socioeconomic status, occupation, occupation of family members/cohabitants, type of community, emerging patterns of infection and severity of disease. All of those

The timeline for when Vermont established their vaccination scheme matters very much. You wish to go back and re-legislate based on what YOU READ ON GOOGLE rather than using the data and information and guidance that Vermont had when they established their vaccination priorities. You are asserting that you know more than theVermont state epidemiologists and health department officials who acted based on information emerging from their state and information from the CDC.

Because you read a thing on google.

Wow.

 

[Metaphor]

No, I did not call it racist. I said Vermont was discriminating by race. It is.



My expertise is that I can read information and process it, an ability I'm certain you also claim for yourself.

I asked what expertise he has. If it is merely what he reads on the internet, then I definitely think that is worth considering when assigning weight to his opinion.

I think you should be able to discern claims of fact for yourself without knowing anything about my background.

For example, white people make up 93 per cent of the population of Vermont, but are 97 per cent of the deaths from COVID-19 in Vermont. That's a fact you should be able to see for yourself without trusting my 'credentials' or 'expertise'.

Of course, the 'raw' association is not the end of the story. Perhaps it isn't being 'white' that causes increased likelihood of death from COVID in Vermont. It's probable that the white population has an older age profile than non-white populations, and we know that age is an extremely good predictor of COVID sickness and death. And that is a claim of fact that can be investigated also.

It seems to me that instead of answering or countering my points, Toni simply made a reverse appeal to authority. Now, I feel Toni has the brains to process my claims rationally, whether I'm an epidemiologist or not.

Do you know when Vermont established their vaccination criteria and priorities? Do you know if these have been revised? Do you know anything at all about the various categories of persons? For example, what in what part of Asia did most of Vermont’s Asian population originate? BTW, this matters. Some Asian Americans fare much less well in this pandemic than others, and this is very much related to the region of Asia they or their family originated. Other things that matter: socioeconomic status, occupation, occupation of family members/cohabitants, type of community, emerging patterns of infection and severity of disease. All of those

The timeline for when Vermont established their vaccination scheme matters very much. You wish to go back and re-legislate based on what YOU READ ON GOOGLE rather than using the data and information and guidance that Vermont had when they established their vaccination priorities. You are asserting that you know more than theVermont state epidemiologists and health department officials who acted based on information emerging from their state and information from the CDC.

Because you read a thing on google.

Wow.

The above is such a ridiculous gross mischaracterisation of what I've written I'm not going to respond to it sentence by sentence.

 

[Toni]

Do you know when Vermont established their vaccination criteria and priorities? Do you know if these have been revised? Do you know anything at all about the various categories of persons? For example, what in what part of Asia did most of Vermont’s Asian population originate? BTW, this matters. Some Asian Americans fare much less well in this pandemic than others, and this is very much related to the region of Asia they or their family originated. Other things that matter: socioeconomic status, occupation, occupation of family members/cohabitants, type of community, emerging patterns of infection and severity of disease. All of those

The timeline for when Vermont established their vaccination scheme matters very much. You wish to go back and re-legislate based on what YOU READ ON GOOGLE rather than using the data and information and guidance that Vermont had when they established their vaccination priorities. You are asserting that you know more than theVermont state epidemiologists and health department officials who acted based on information emerging from their state and information from the CDC.

Because you read a thing on google.

Wow.

The above is such a ridiculous gross mischaracterisation of what I've written I'm not going to respond to it sentence by sentence.

Excellent plan. The first step when you find yourself at the bottom of a hole is to stop digging.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Try Google. Looking up the age-based risk is trivial.

I’ve googled! And in fact have been following the trends for most of this past year, keeping a close watch on emerging data. More than that, I’ve looked at Vermont’s site to see what can be learned from the metrics they’ve posted and looked at CDC recommendations, trends in other countries, in various states and so on.

I am not making any assertions about how racist Vermont’s priority list is: Metaohor is. But without sharing with us any particular expertise he has aside from his opinion.

I asked what expertise he has. If it is merely what he reads on the internet, then I definitely think that is worth considering when assigning weight to his opinion.

The additional risk of being BIPOC was given. Compare it to the age risk.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Try Google. Looking up the age-based risk is trivial.

I’ve googled! And in fact have been following the trends for most of this past year, keeping a close watch on emerging data. More than that, I’ve looked at Vermont’s site to see what can be learned from the metrics they’ve posted and looked at CDC recommendations, trends in other countries, in various states and so on.

I am not making any assertions about how racist Vermont’s priority list is: Metaohor is. But without sharing with us any particular expertise he has aside from his opinion.

I asked what expertise he has. If it is merely what he reads on the internet, then I definitely think that is worth considering when assigning weight to his opinion.

The additional risk of being BIPOC was given. Compare it to the age risk.

This appears to have been a decision that was made mid-stream where the government looked at the numbers and saw a BIPOC gap in vaccination. So not only was the decision based on the narrow risk of mere infection survival but also in addressing the gap and lag. Therefore, you are narrowly defining risk in terms of infection survival and not including the additional risks from all the lag of not getting the vaccine, nor the impact of community-specific lag on other members of the community. So, for example, you are comparing age group N for race 1 and race 2, but the lag of BIPOC means the brunt are being vaccinated much later than when the age bracket opens, so you ought to be comparing white age group N versus BIPOC age group M+N, which we do not quite know or at least has not been computed. You haven't yet even proved your case with your narrow risk but you also need to broaden risk because risk is bigger than you imagined.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The additional risk of being BIPOC was given. Compare it to the age risk.

This appears to have been a decision that was made mid-stream where the government looked at the numbers and saw a BIPOC gap in vaccination. So not only was the decision based on the narrow risk of mere infection survival but also in addressing the gap and lag. Therefore, you are narrowly defining risk in terms of infection survival and not including the additional risks from all the lag of not getting the vaccine, nor the impact of community-specific lag on other members of the community. So, for example, you are comparing age group N for race 1 and race 2, but the lag of BIPOC means the brunt are being vaccinated much later than when the age bracket opens, so you ought to be comparing white age group N versus BIPOC age group M+N, which we do not quite know or at least has not been computed. You haven't yet even proved your case with your narrow risk but you also need to broaden risk because risk is bigger than you imagined.

The community-specific lag is irrelevant to the issue under discussion.

The change put people at 2.4x the baseline risk at the same priority as those at 11x the baseline risk even before considering whether it was socioeconomic rather than racial in the first place.

 

[SimpleDon]

This effect of the prioritizing BIPOCs, 2% of the population of a very small state, (which shouldn't even be a state according to some here who deny Washington DC statehood because they have such a low population even though it is larger than Vermont and Wyoming), resulting in the deaths of a handful of white people is totally dwarfed by the number of white people who died and who continue to die because they watch Fox News.

According to News Corpse and the Washington Post,

Fox News became the central point of infection to spread disinformation and deliberate lies that can now be shown to have directly contributed to the nation’s tragically high fatality rate. Along with Donald Trump’s negligence, incompetence, and purposeful malfeasance, Fox News deceived dimwitted Americans into volunteering the lives of themselves, their families, and their communities, in the service of partisan political power and the ego of a malignantly narcissistic president.

The Washington Post is reporting that – not one, not two – but three recent studies confirm the role that Fox News played in exacerbating the harm of the coronavirus. [NOTE: the first of these studies was reported here on News Corpse in April, revealing that higher rates of coronavirus deaths could be linked to watching Sean Hannity] Fox News, along with other right-wing media (i.e. Rush Limbaugh, OANN, Breitbart, etc.) distorted and/or invented narratives that downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic. They portrayed it as equivalent to the common flu and mocked health experts who advised cautionary behavior such as social distancing and wearing face masks. According to the Post:

There are many reasons our response to the pandemic tied to more than 120,000 U.S. deaths has faltered, experts say, including the lack of a cohesive federal policy, missteps on testing and tracing, and a national culture emphasizing individualism.

In recent weeks, three studies have focused on conservative media’s role in fostering confusion about the seriousness of the coronavirus. Taken together, they paint a picture of a media ecosystem that amplifies misinformation, entertains conspiracy theories, and discourages audiences from taking concrete steps to protect themselves and others.

The end result, according to one of the studies, is that infection and mortality rates are higher in places where one pundit who initially downplayed the severity of the pandemic — Fox News’s Sean Hannity — reaches the largest audiences.

I touched on this in my thread Libertarianism kills people. Rather than concerning ourselves with the relatively few white people dying in Vermont, our time would be better served by naming Fox News and others as being public health hazards and shutting them down.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This effect of the prioritizing BIPOCs, 2% of the population of a very small state, (which shouldn't even be a state according to some here who deny Washington DC statehood because they have such a low population even though it is larger than Vermont and Wyoming), resulting in the deaths of a handful of white people is totally dwarfed by the number of white people who died and who continue to die because they watch Fox News.

Definitely. The effect of Vermont's racism will be small. That doesn't mean it isn't racism, though. Do we overlook it because there are other wrongs in the world?

 

[Arctish]

This effect of the prioritizing BIPOCs, 2% of the population of a very small state, (which shouldn't even be a state according to some here who deny Washington DC statehood because they have such a low population even though it is larger than Vermont and Wyoming), resulting in the deaths of a handful of white people is totally dwarfed by the number of white people who died and who continue to die because they watch Fox News.

Definitely. The effect of Vermont's racism will be small. That doesn't mean it isn't racism, though. Do we overlook it because there are other wrongs in the world?

Ya know, for all your arguing that correlation is not causation when it comes to race and class issues, you sure do seem willing to assign causation to correlation when it comes to public health issues.

I was listening to an All Things Considered report earlier tonight that said vaccination rates are lagging while illness and death rates are elevated in Amish communities. Suppose Vermont made vaccinating Amish teenagers the same priority as vaccinating BIPOC teens. Would you then be arguing that Vermont was engaging in religious discrimination?