What Colin Powell ’s COVID-19 Death Says About the Current State of the Pandemic

The death of Colin Powell, an 84-year-old former four-star general who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State under President George W. Bush and is perhaps best known for his role in bringing the U.S. into its second war in Iraq, is a high-profile reminder of a grim reality: COVID-19 is not just a pandemic of the unvaccinated, as current president Joe Biden likes to say, but a pandemic of the elderly, too. From early on in the pandemic, we’ve known the virus disproportionately kills older people, and the overall data make that pretty clear: About 543,200 people 65 or older have died with COVID-19 in the U.S. so far, per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), or about 76.2% of the country’s total death toll, despite making up just 16.5% of the pre-pandemic population. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] When vaccinations began to roll out in the beginning of this year, it became evident almost immediately that people who received a full course of a vaccine—including the elderly—were less likely to become gravely ill from COVID-19. Before the Delta variant took hold in the summer, those 65 and over who had been fully vaccinated were hospitalized at a rate of less than 5 people per 100,000 on average, compared to about 40 per 100,000 among their unvaccinated peers. Read more: Colin Powell and the transformative power of owning your mistakes As the Delta vari...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news