Kentucky Sports Radio is spending a week on the road in low-vaccinated counties to promote coronavirus immunization

Matt Jones talks with sidekicks Drew Franklin and Shannon "The Dude" Grigsby on the first stop of their "Shots Across the Bluegrass" tour, Dinosaur World in Cave City, on Monday. (Photo by Tyler Glick)

He's not counting the number of jabs, but Matt Jones of Kentucky Sports Radio is waving the vaccination banner at stops in the southern half (and lesser vaccinated part) of Kentucky this week.

"Shots Across the Bluegrass" is the theme of Jones's tour to Cave City, Greensburg, Paducah, Manchester and London, in which he does a remote broadcast from 10 to noon ET and vaccinators stand ready to jab audience members from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. local time, without tickets or appointments. Friday he will be at Wildcat Harley Davidson, 575 E. Hal Rogers Parkway in London.

The tour is going mainly to counties with low coronavirus-vaccination rates, Jones said in an interview Thursday, because for "a lot of our audience, especially in the rural parts of the state, we might be one of the few voices they hear really promoting the vaccine. . . . At this point, people are kind of done modifying their behavior, so the best thing you can do is vaccination."

Jones said he hasn't been tallying the shots, but "I've had a lot of people write and say that through it, they’ve gone and gotten and it somewhere else."

He said in a press release, “Getting the shot was one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time. It gave me peace of mind because not only am I protected, but I’m helping to protect others.”

The host said he and his three sidekicks -- Ryan Lemond, Drew Franklin and Shannon "The Dude" Grigsby, have all been vaccinated, and are "happy we did it," which helps because their listeners are accustomed to hearing them disagree.

Their tour is sponsored by the Kentucky Association of Health Plans, a trade group of companies that provide health insurance in the state. Its press release said its members are using "a range of tactics to promote vaccine access and acceptance such as digital and radio ads, member incentives, coordinated transportation for plan members, pop-up clinics, homebound vaccination visits, text and email campaigns, yard signs, billboards, outbound calls to members prioritized by risk tier, personalized assistance from advocates with sign-ups and digital site navigation, letters, and follow-up on second dose appointments if a plan is alerted that a member has not received the second dose based on claims data."

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'Only in our anti-truth hellscape could Dr. Anthony Fauci become a super-villain,' says headline on Washington Post column

By Margaret Sullivan
The Washington Post

Right-wing commentators are pretending that thousands of newly released emails from Dr. Anthony S. Fauci represent some kind of smoking gun against the government’s top infectious-disease expert, whom they have recently decided to try to destroy.

I haven’t been nearly as excited by the emails, which are mostly full of mundane correspondence. But there’s at least one line in them that stands out.

“I genuflect to no one but science and always, always speak my mind when it comes to public health,” the normally even-tempered scientist wrote in March of last year, to an epidemiologist who had accused a number of public health officials of appeasing the science-challenged President Donald Trump.

Dr. Anthony Fauci

At 80, Fauci has served in Republican and Democratic administrations since the Reagan era. And until recently, he has garnered widespread respect. The reason is in that email: He’s really not a political animal, but someone who is all about the science. For decades, that has served him well. But not anymore.

These days, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is the right’s latest excuse for outrage-mongering.

Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York wants Fauci fired immediately. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri expressed shock at the supposed revelations in Fauci’s emails and called for a full congressional investigation. Tucker Carlson wants a criminal investigation. His Fox News colleague Steve Hilton claimed last weekend that Fauci lied to Congress about ties between a Chinese lab and the Obama administration. And the fringe Gateway Pundit website published a story blaming Fauci for millions of deaths. It featured a deranged headline that recalled the fake miracle cures for covid-19 that Trump used to tout: “They CONSPIRED to Disqualify Hydroxychloroquine as a Covid treatment.” (Editor's note: Sen. Rand Paul has also been a leading public critic of Fauci, going back months. Rep. Thomas Massie has co-sponsored the "Fire Fauci Act" and accused him of hiding and skewing data.)

But the campaign against Fauci has dramatically intensified recently — especially since BuzzFeed and the Post released his email trove last week.

And in a twisted way, it makes sense. After all, today’s right-wing politics and media require a villain. With solid approval ratings and an apparently indelible reputation as a moderate, President Biden isn’t turning out to be much of one. Vice President Harris? A little more promising given how much some trolls enjoy race-baiting, but still a less-than-ideal target.

But Fauci is a different story. He established himself as an annoyance to Trump early in the pandemic, when he was forced to publicly correct the president’s many dangerous assertions about the disease.

In a right-wing culture so often opposed to verifiable reality, who better to target than a person who stands for science and facts?

“During the Trump administration, many on the right unfortunately learned the lesson that they could make up almost anything and people would believe it,” said Laura Helmuth, editor in chief of Scientific American (and a former colleague of mine at the Post). “But science is a challenge to that.”

Which makes someone like Fauci, who genuflects only to science, a real problem and an ideal target. At times, he has been left vulnerable by his devotion to the scientific data at hand, which is never perfect or complete.

Fauci was wrong when he advised against routine mask-wearing early in the pandemic. And he may prove to be wrong about his belief that the virus originally spread to humans from a wild animal, rather than because of a Chinese government lab leak. He says he’s keeping an open mind — waiting for more data.

But let’s be clear. There’s very little in the released emails that’s shocking, other than the immense patience with which Fauci politely and helpfully responded to thousands of emails, many from strangers.

When CNN’s John Berman brought up his errant guidance on mask-wearing, Fauci said that he did the best he could with the limited knowledge he had. Would he have offered different advice given what we now know about asymptomatic transmission of the virus and about the effectiveness of masks?

“Of course,” he responded, with a touch of exasperation. “That’s so obvious.”

Is it entirely logical, in a culture intent on rejecting facts, that a career public servant devoted to science should be under vicious attack?

Of course. That’s obvious, too.

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Rural and conservative congressional districts, in Kentucky and the nation as a whole, have lower coronavirus vaccination rates

Map from Harvard University study; click here for the interactive version.

More conservative and more rural Americans – and Kentuckians – are more likely to remain unvaccinated against the coronavirus, and the divide is growing.

"All but one of the 39 congressional districts where at least 60 percent of residents have received a coronavirus shot are represented by Democrats, according to a Harvard University analysis that presents one of the most detailed looks yet at the partisan split behind the nation’s diverging vaccination drive," Dan Goldberg and Alice Ollstein report for Politico. "By contrast, Republicans represent all but two of the 30 districts where fewer than one-third of residents have received a shot."

The 14 least fully vaccinated districts are all Republican and rural (or have a rural population of at least 40%). Missouri, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates of any state, took the bottom four spots. Appalachian Kentucky's Fifth District shows up 38 spots up from the bottom, with 29.23% of residents fully vaccinated. The state's next most rural district, the First, follows shortly thereafter with 29.82%.

As of June 1, Kentucky's overall vaccination rate was 39.1%, the same as the nationwide average for metropolitan areas; among rural Kentuckians, the rate was 31.4%, just above the national rural average of 31.1%, Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. The Yonder, which has an interactive map with county-level vaccination data, notes that the nationwide metro vaccination rate is growing more quickly than the rural rate. Three weeks ago, the rural-urban vaccination gap was 7.2 percentage points, but two weeks ago it was 8 points.

The rural-urban gap stems partly from ideological sentiment, but also problems of access. "House members representing districts with low vaccination rates and public health experts, discussing their efforts to reach the unvaccinated, described what essentially has become two distinct conversations," Goldberg and Ollstein report. "One is aimed at chipping away at vaccine hesitancy among conservative white Republicans, while the other is centered around reducing socioeconomic barriers to vaccination for poorer populations and communities of color."

Screenshot from Harvard University study; for a larger version of the image, click on it.

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End of Beshear's Covid-19 press briefings Friday will signal, if not the end of the pandemic, the turning of a page and moving on

Beshear at a briefing the first week of the pandemic, with interpreter

Virginia Moore at left and Health Commissioner Steven Stack at right.

(Photo by Michael Clevenger, Louisville Courier Journal)

Gov. Andy Beshear's regular press conferences about the coronavirus "provided a steady source of information, comforted some people and annoyed others and inadvertently spawned memes, merch and 'Govern Me, Daddy' jokes that caught fire online," writes Morgan Watkins of the Louisville Courier Journal. "But through it all, they also gave a grim, running tally of the virus' death toll in Kentucky. Beshear read out the latest deaths, day after day, and in brief moments those losses choked him up with a grief he didn't hide."

And it's almost over. Beshear says Friday's pandemic press briefing will be his last. It will coincide with the end of the mask mandate he started 11 months ago, but "This is probably the most significant — from a perception point of view — sign that it’s over," said state Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer of Georgetown, one of the Democratic governor's leading Republican critics.

Beshear "started the briefings with two main objectives: to inform Kentuckians how to keep themselves and others safe, and to encourage people to come together and not panic," Watkins reports. He told her, "I think, in the very least, it was an informative, calming collective experience for all of us."

Thayer and Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, a Republican who may run against Beshear in 2023, "contended his briefings served a purpose at first but lasted far longer than they should have," Watkins reports. Quarles "indicated Beshear's talk of unity, exemplified by catchphrases like 'We will get through this together,' gradually grated on some people who were hurt by his executive orders or upset by his lack of cooperation with GOP officials."

"For at least the past half-year, the 'Team Kentucky' rhetoric that you hear every day at the press conferences did not match reality," Quarles said. "Team Kentucky" was the motto of Beshear's 2019 election campaign and will remain the branding device for weekly press conferences to come.

Beshear gave briefings daily at first, prompting reporters to call them "Andy Time," then less frequently. He slowed too late, Thayer said: "He actually became more irrelevant because there was no urgency … There wasn’t news every day. Frankly, he became like the teacher in Charlie Brown’s classroom — just a lot of noise that nobody was really listening to."

Beshear "dismissed the notion that the briefings were politically motivated," Watkins writes, quoting two public-health researchers at the University of Kentucky who gave the governor high marks.

Sarah Vos, a lecturer in the College of Public Health, "indicated Beshear's briefings were pretty effective at providing useful data," Watkins reports. "She said he gave out the latest numbers on coronavirus cases; modeled the behavior he was asking people to adopt, such as mask-wearing; and explained his reasoning for various decisions."

Anna Hoover, a UK public-health professor, said Beshear did the best job of any governor she saw in following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's six principles of crisis and emergency risk communication: Be first; be right; be credible; express empathy; promote action; and show respect.

Hoover said Beshear's events "did an especially good job of expressing empathy by acknowledging the myriad ways people were hurting and the lives lost," Watkins writes. "While Beshear's press conferences generally stayed centered on Covid-19, Hoover noted it wasn't unusual for them to address unrelated topics. (To be fair, sometimes that was because reporters asked about other issues)."

Hoover said, "The further afield the press conferences got from the Covid issues, the focus got a little blurry sometimes. And it also opened those press conferences up to, I think, more criticism from other folks that perhaps they were being used for ways other than public-health information."

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Study finds rural seniors less likely than urban ones to follow Covid-19 prevention advice, especially social distancing

Rural adults 65 and older were less compliant than their urban peers when it came to following some of the suggested strategies to slow the spread of the coronavirus, especially social distancing.

So says a recent study published in The Journal of Rural Health, which looked at whether "community dwelling" seniors (those not living in assisted living, nursing homes or other congregate settings) had adopted preventive measures recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to slow the spread of the virus.

Following the CDC's advice is especially important for seniors because they have a higher risk of dying from Covid-19 if they get it. 

In Kentucky, 91.4% of all Covid-related deaths were in people 60 and older. And in December, WFPL reported that per-capita cases and deaths were higher in Kentucky's rural counties than its urban ones. 

The study researchers used self-reported data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study, conducted from June to October 2020, which asked about eight different risk-mitigation behaviors. The survey included nearly 3,000 community-dwelling urban and rural seniors.  

The researchers found that seniors' compliance with each of the eight behaviors to limit the spread of Covid-19 was high, but rural seniors were less likely to report compliance on five: social distancing, limiting gatherings, avoiding restaurants and bars, not touching their faces, and avoiding contact with those outside their households. 

However, after the data were adjusted for demographic characteristics, only maintaining a six-foot distance remained lower among rural seniors to a statistically significant degree. There were no rural-urban differences when it came to mask wearing, handwashing and limiting shopping.

Still, the researchers said their findings suggested the need for rural-specific messaging when it comes to such public-health emergencies.

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As vaccinations slack off, mutant variants of virus still threaten us

Kentucky Covid-19 vaccinations slacked off considerably last week, falling below 10,000 a day.
Chart of CDC data by The Washington Post, updated with latest 7-day average by Ky. Health News

If you think the pandemic is over, you're wrong; we must still prepare for the worst, because of mutated versions of the coronavirus that can spread quickly among unvaccinated people, retired physician Kevin Kavanagh of Somerset writes for the Louisville Courier Journal.

"Similar to the flu, immunity to last year’s strain does not guarantee immunity to next year’s," Kavanagh writes. "The reinfection may be lessened, but unlike the flu, even a mild to moderate Covid-19 infection is of concern since this virus can have lasting effects on almost every organ of the body."

Think natural immunity from having Covid-19 will help you? It's a matter of degree and time, and neither are known, Kavanagh warns: "No one knows what level of immunity will provide substantial protection for an infection, and even mild to moderate infection of this virus can pose significant harm."

That means even people who have had Covid-19 should get vaccinated, 90 days after their last symptoms, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises. "The plan is to boost your immunity to the wild type (original) virus to a much higher level," Kavanagh explains.

Kevin Kavanagh, M.D.

While currently available vaccines offer varying levels of protection against variants, some do not, Kavanagh notes, quoting Senate testimony from Dr. Anthony Fauci: “In the South African study conducted by Johnson & Johnson, they found that [unvaccinated] people who were infected with wild type were exposed to the variant in South Africa, the 351. It was as if they had never been infected before. They had no protection.”

Last fall, in Brazil, the Amazon River metropolis of Manaus reached 76 percent herd immunity, "but over the winter holidays, the city was crushed again by an even larger wave caused by the P.1 immune escape variant," Kavanagh writes. . . . A recent study of blood donors from Manaus reported to have found that one in six of those infected with the coronavirus were reinfected with the P.1 variant, suggesting reinfections are all too common."

The fewer people who are vaccinated in an area, the better chance it has of becoming a source of a Covid-19 variant outbreak. The relatively low vaccination rates in states south of Kentucky pose such a threat, health experts warn. "We have the knowledge to avoid another devastation by this virus," Kavanagh writes. "Simply, become vaccinated."

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CDC says recent increase in hospitalization of young people for Covid-19 shows need for their age group to get vaccinated

Amy Kreutziger, 14, got a shot in New Orleans in May.
(Photo by Kathleen Flynn, Reuters, via Washington Post)

After decreasing early this year, hospitalizations of adolescents for Covid-19 increased during March and April, illustrating the need for them to get vaccinated against the disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said, “I am deeply concerned by the numbers of hospitalized adolescents and saddened to see the numbers of adolescents who required treatment in intensive care units or mechanical ventilation. . . . “Much of this suffering can be prevented.”

In the 14 states in the study reported Friday, the rate of Covid-19 hospitalization for youth aged 12 through 17 "peaked at 2.1 per 100,000 [residents] in early January 2021, declined to 0.6 in mid-March, and rose to 1.3 in April," CDC reports. Among those who were hospitalized, nearly a third went into intensive care and 5 percent required mechanical ventilation.

"Researchers suggest that the increased hospitalization among adolescents in March and April may be related to several factors, including more transmissible and potentially more dangerous virus variants; larger numbers of youths returning to school; and changes in physical distancing, mask-wearing and other prevention behaviors," The Washington Post reports.

The states in the study were California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee and Utah.

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