Covid-19

A 41-year-old Florida veteran regrets avoiding the vaccine after he and his wife became ill with the coronavirus.

James Owen, of Jacksonville, thought he had a hangover after hosting a Fourth of July party, but he quickly became too sick to breathe and wound up in the hospital, where he remains a week later, reported WJAX-TV.

Stephen Colbert couldn't help but crack up at Republicans who have finally decided to get vaccinated since the COVID-19 has become a red state disease.

Referring to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as "a condom filled with baby food," Colbert played the clip of the GOP leader saying that people should get vaccinated. For the first time possibly ever, Colbert said that he agrees with McConnell.

On Wednesday, the Tennessean reported that Republican lawmakers in the Tennessee state legislature privately met with officials in the state health department and advised them on their controversial move ending all vaccine outreach to children.

"This behind-the-scenes meeting appears to have appeased members of the conservative supermajority, who just last month accused the Department of Health of pressuring teens to get vaccinated and proposed dissolving the agency," reported Brett Kelman. "Since then, the health department instructed staff to end all outreach about adolescent vaccinations – not just coronavirus, but for all diseases – and cancelled COVID-19 vaccination events on school property or intended specifically for teenagers."

An discussion between MSNBC's Ari Melber and CPAC leader Matt Schlapp took a dangerous turn when Schlapp claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine wasn't really necessary anymore, because there are so many therapeutics that can save people now.

Melber played Schlapp a clip of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) encouraging people to get vaccinated and to stop believing misinformation on vaccines.

Under mounting pressure to stop the spread of medical disinformation, Facebook has announced that it is banning the use of the #VaccinesKill hashtag — fully two years after it banned the same hashtag on Instagram.

But sensing a crackdown, anti-vaccine groups are adapting to evade detection — and according to NBC News' Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny, they are developing their own coded language to discuss anti-vaccine propaganda that moderation cannot detect.

Several high-profile Republicans this week have started actively pushing for more Americans to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus.

The push comes as cases are once again surging in the United States and are resulting in an increase in hospitalizations among unvaccinated Americans.

Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker's new book I Alone Can Fix It contains some stories about former Attorney General Bill Barr using surprisingly blunt language to convince former President Donald Trump to stop doing daily coronavirus briefings.

"I feel you are going to lose the election," Barr told Trump in April 2020 as the virus was killing more Americans, according to the reporters. "I feel you are actually losing touch with your own base."

A California woman is begging people to get vaccinated after losing her husband to COVID-19, KCRA reports.

According to Mia Vinnard, she and her husband Brad were hesitant to get vaccinated, but now it's too late. They were married for 12 years.

New Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data out Wednesday shows that life expectancy in the U.S. fell by one and a half years in 2020, a decline fueled in large part by the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

"U.S. life expectancy at birth for 2020, based on nearly final data, was 77.3 years, the lowest it has been since 2003," reads a new report (pdf) from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. "Mortality due to Covid-19 had, by far, the single greatest effect on the decline in life expectancy at birth between 2019 and 2020, overall."

A mother whose adult daughter died from COVID-19 is begging people to get vaccinated.

"Love yourself enough to take care of yourself and get the vaccine. That's all I ask," Kimberle Jones told KMOV.

Average US life expectancy fell by 1.5 years in 2020, a sharp decline driven by the Covid-19 pandemic affecting males and communities of color the most, new data showed Wednesday.

Life expectancy at birth for the total US population was 77.3 years, down from 78.8 in 2019, and the lowest it has been since 2003, said a report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

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Gov. Greg Abbott says he will not impose another statewide mask mandate, despite COVID-19 cases being on the rise again.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) suggested on Wednesday that Dr. Anthony Fauci is responsible for using "disgusting evil science" to create the COVID-19 pandemic.

Greene made the remarks after Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) grilled Fauci during a Senate hearing on Tuesday.