Trumpanzee News - Why Americans Would Be Mad To Allow Trump Back In The White House

From mass deportations to huge tariff hikes, here’s what Trump’s economic program would do to the US and Australia

With Kamala Harris's star beginning to wane after shining brightly for the first few weeks after she replaced Biden as the Democratic candidate in the 2024 presidential election, bookmakers are now giving odds of about 50:50 for a Trump win.

But what are the dangers for America and the rest of the world from having a criminal with an acute narcissistic personality disorder running the world’s largest economy, let alone the world's largest nuclear arsenal.

A criminal moreover who's idea of economic management is to lie, cheat and steal from anyone fool enough to lend him money, leave his subcontractors unpaid, then when he can fend off his creditors no longer, have himself declared bankrupt, leaving them to whistle for their money, then start over again with more borrowed money. He is the only business man ever to bankrupt a casino! How do you bankrupt a casino where the odds are stacked in your favour and people queue up to give you money!. His idea of a university is to charge large fees to students them leave them without tutors and pocket the money!

He would undoubtedly turn the Whitehouse back into the organized crime syndicate HQ it was last time he was there, and would revel in the immunity from accountability SCOTUS has granted him to commit whatever crimes he likes, and he can always pardon himself for any crimes and misdemeanors just to be on the safe side.

In the 2012 election against Hillary Clinton, Trump's team came close to arguing that it was safe to vote for him because he wouldn't keep his promises anyway. This time, it really would be better if he didn't. It would be even better if he didn't have the chance to keep them.

He has three populist planks to his platform, none of them intended to make America Great Again, and all three of them guaranteed to make Americans' poorer, and smaller both economically and in the eyes of the rest of the world. They are nothing more than populist appeals to the xenophobic, racist, white supremacist right in the USA, centred on his obsession with China, which is always pronounces in a characteristically exaggerated, deranged way, 'Chay-na!' They can be summed up in two words - xenophobic isolationism.

In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, Peter Martin, a Visiting Fellow at Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, cites the non-partisan Peterson Institute for International Economics which says that Trump's package would "[do] more damage to the US economy than to any other in the world", but there are other world economies, not just the target, China, that would be damaged by them: The article is reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Unfit For Public Office - Why Donald Trump's Nephew Will Be Voting For Kamala Harris

‘Fake news of the highest order’: Donald Trump team refutes racism revelations in new family memoir

Donald Trump, that darling of white evangelical Christians, is a heartless racist who thinks disabled children should be left to die, according to a new book by his nephew, Fred C. Trump III.

Atheism - Eight Things You Probably Didn't Know

8 facts about atheists | Pew Research Center

Atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of any god or gods, nothing more and nothing less. This position is based on the self-evidence fac that the only intellectually honest basis for belief is evidence and the equally self-evidence fact that there is not (and cannot be) any definitive evidence for the existence of anything supernatural because, by definition, nothing supernatural can be detected. All there is, is the material universe and anything beyond that has nowhere and no time to exist in and could not interact with or influence events in the material universe, so is indistinguishable from nothing. Belief in anything supernatural is thus a superstition for which there is no supporting evidence.

Atheism is a belief position, not a knowledge claim. Since again the only intellectually honest position is that all knowledge has a degree of uncertainty, atheism is not Agnosticism since Agnosticism allows for the possibility of Atheism being wrong, but any assessment of the probability of the existence of any god must be subjective since there can be no observations to base it on. So, an Agnostic cannot express that probability without it becoming a belief position. As it is, Agnosticism is a pedantic knowledge claim which has no measurable probability of being different to Atheism, in the accuracy of its claim.

Recently, the Pew Research Center published 8 facts about Atheism based on its opinion polling in the USA and elsewhere. Most of them refer to Atheism in the USA, where Atheists make up 4% of U.S. adults, according to their 2023 National Public Opinion Reference Survey. That compares with 3% who described themselves as atheists in 2014 and 2% who did so in 2007.

That figure of 4% for the USA lags someway behind the UK (12%), Netherlands (17%), Sweden (18%), France (23%) and even once staunchly Catholic countries of Spain (10%) and the Republic of Ireland where 14.2% gave Atheist/No religion, as their religion, (if any) in the 1922 census (an increase of 187% since 2011). However, with a great deal of stigma still attached to Atheism in the USA and pressure to conform with regular church attendance, the true figure for Atheism is probably very underestimated and hidden within the large and growing 'Nones, which currently stands at 28% in the USA.

Pew Research Center's eight fact about Atheism are:

Trust in The Clergy Falls To An All-Time Low in USA

Joel Osteen

Church of the Almighty Greed

Ethics Ratings of Nearly All Professions Down in U.S.

According to the latest Gallup Poll, trust in the ethical standards of almost all identified professional groups in the USA has declined in the four years up to 2023 with trust in the clergy reaching an all-time low at 32 percent of those polled rating their trust in them as very high or high. The clergy now rank alongside chiropractors and psychiatrists in the public perception of their ethical trustworthiness.

All the 5 major professions in the USA fell steadily between 1976 when polling began but the profession which fell furthest and fastest was that of clergy. in 1977, 61 percent of adult Americans polled, gave their trust in clergy as very high or high; this has now fallen to 32 percent, a 29 percentage points decline to almost half what it was in 1977.

And this downward trend has accelerated since 2012, declining by an average of slightly over 1.8 percentage points per year, against an average of just over 0.38 percentage points between 1977 and 2012. This represents about a four-fold increase in the rate of decline which, projected forward, if this rate continues, no-one in America will rate the ethical trustworthiness of clergy as very high or high by mid-2032.

Trumpanzee News - Success of The MAGA Cult's Self-Inflicted Genocide With COVID-19

Trumpanzee News

Success of The MAGA Cult's Self-Inflicted Genocide With COVID-19

Excess death gap widens between U.S. and Europe, study finds: U.S. has an increasingly high proportion of excess deaths compared to five European countries -- ScienceDaily

Figures published in PLOS a few days ago point to an astonishing success rate for the self-inflicted genocide campaign waged by the MAGA/Trumpanzee cult during the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2021.

Probably as a result of the antivaxx campaign and the evangelical Christian and Repugnican-led campaign against the measures to impede the spread of the virus and lower pressure on health services such as social distancing, prohibiting indoor gatherings and wearing face-masks, the 'excess deaths' gap between Europe and the USA grew even wider.

Trumpanzee News - Trumpanzees CAN be Nicer People

Trumpanzees resorting to violence because they lost the election.

Conspiracy Theorists Are Nicer After Thinking Things Through | Psychology Today

A characteristic of Trumpanzee cultists, is their almost complete dependence on conspiracy theories to sustain their patently absurd belief in Donald Trump as some sort of divinely inspired saviour sent by God to engage with Satanic figures running the 'Deep State'.

These Satanic figures are, of course, because the only important things that happen in the world, happen in America, Democrat politicians, scientists and billionaires such as Bill Gates, led by Hilary Clinton, Barak Obama and assorted cannibalistic paedophiles. The conspiracy Trump was fighting gets ever more lurid, the more preposterous it becomes.

The 'Paedophile Deep State' conspiracy of course involved all the election officials in states where Joe Biden won in 2020, because they helped 'steal' the election from the rightful winner, Donald Trump, and all the judges who refused to overturn the result on the 'spurious' grounds that Trump's advocates could not find any evidence to support their claim, other than Trump's claim that he won really.

Another aspect of this 'Paedophile Deep State' conspiracy is the belief that the COVID-19 pandemic was fake and a pretext for injecting people with mind-controlling vaccines developed by Bill Gates, or as an excuse to stop people going to church, or that wearing face coverings was an attempt at population control because people can't breathe properly with a face covering and die of asphyxia. Of course, government health officials like Anthony Fauci, America's leading epidemiologist, were part of the conspiracy and faked the statistics such as the case numbers and deaths.

The third aspect of Trumpanzeeism is the belief that demands by black people to be treated the same as white people by the police is a conspiracy by political extremists such as anti-fascists [sic], to deprive white Christians of their rightful position as the middle and upper class of a stratified society. A society in which the poor (and Black) only have themselves to blame, welfare is a scam whereby the white middle class is robbed through taxation to subsidise fecklessness and drug dependence, and health care should be preserved for those who can afford to pay for it, the way God intended, in White Christian America.

And we shouldn’t forget the notion that Mexicans are all drug-dealing criminals and rapists who want to destroy America.

But just holding whackadoodle beliefs is itself harmless. What is harmful is the antisocial behaviour that can come from holding them, such as discouraging people from getting vaccinated against a lethal virus, encouraging them to attend super-spreader events where social distancing and wearing face coverings were seen as a disloyal political statement, and such as trying to overthrow a democratic government in a violent insurrection.

Previous research has shown that holders of conspiracy theories are more likely to indulge in criminal activities and other anti-social behaviour and less likely]y to conform to prosocial norms, often regarding laws and social norms as part of the conspiracy.

But there is some hope that at least the more anti-social consequences of holding conspiracy theories, such as those adhered to by Trumpanzees, according to the results of an interesting study by four researchers at the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen, Germany, led by Lotte Plummerer, a PhD candidate.

As described in Psychology Today by Craig Harper Ph.D.:

Decline of the Fundamentalists - How the 'Nones' are Taking Back US Politics for Democracy

Americans who aren't sure about God are a fast-growing force in politics – and they're typically even more politically active than white evangelicals

GSS study showing increase in American rious “Nones”
('Black Protestant' and 'Jewish' subsumed into 'Other faiths' to give 'Other affiliation'
'No religion' includes Atheists, Agnostics and spiritual but not affiliated to any religion).

With the raucous jabber of evangelicals drowning out other, quieter, more measured voices in American politics, a non-American like me could be forgiven for thinking they are the major force in US politics, and they have had some, hopefully short-term, successes such as getting Trump elected in 2016 and him then stuffing SCOTUS with right-wing Christian extremists who promptly overturned Roe vs Wade. But there are more measured and thoughtful voices also beginning to exert a moderating and humanitarian influence, especially in the Democratic Party. They are the growing number of 'Nones', or people with no religious affiliations.

Of course this include Atheists/Agnostics, but it also includes people for whom religion is a personal thing that doesn't require affiliation to any one organised religion, although studies have shown that 'None' tends to be a half-way house between religious and Atheist as the loss of group affiliation tends to free the individual to look dispassionately at the (lack of) evidence, free from peer-pressure, and draw the rational conclusion - there is no evidential reason for religious belief.

The evidence is that the 'Nones' could have been behind Biden's win in 2020, helping to secure swing states, since 1 in 5 Americans adults and more than 1 in 3 Democrat voters are now 'None', and since 'Nones' tend to be generally more informed, it would be surprising if they weren't having an effect on US politics.

In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency, Ryan Burge, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Eastern Illinois University, USA, gives his assessment of the impact the 'Nones' are now having on American politics. The original article can be read here:

The Trumpanzees are Losing it.

US midterms: America appears to have passed 'peak Trump'

This is beginning to look like the end times for Donald Trump and his Trumpanzee cult.

The mid-term elections which were supposed to deliver a 'red wave' of Repugnican candidates as Trumpanzees took control of both houses, failed to materialise and scarcely even resembled a dribble. It looks like the Democrats will retain control of the Senate and very many of the candidates publicly endorsed by Trump either lost or won by slim margins. To make matters worse for Trump personally, his arch rival for both the Repugnican choice for the 2024 presidential election and as leader of white right extremism, Ron DeSantis, won the gubernatorial race in Florida by a landslide, setting him up for a run at the presidency.

How Science Works - Discovering the Unexpected History of the First Americans

The Alcobaça archaeological site, in which the skeletal remains of Brazil-12 (northeast Brazil) were unearthed.

Photo credit: Henry Lavalle, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco
and Ana Nascimento, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco)

FAU | Ancient DNA Analysis Unravels the Early Peopling of South America

Despite the claims of Creationist frauds, scientific papers are not, like Creationist articles on Creationist websites, vetted to ensure they simply regurgitates the approved orthodoxy. Indeed, science would stagnate just like Creationism if that were the case. Instead, science progresses by discovering the unorthodox and revealing the unknown.

Sometimes, as in the case of this paper by scientists from Florida Atlantic University in collaboration with researchers from Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA it turns what we think we know on its head and causes us to rethink things. Like deconstructing part of jigsaw puzzle and throwing the pieces into the air.

The research concerns the origins of the native people of South America. The consensus view was that modern humans crossed from Siberia when sea levels were lower, and what is now the Bering Strait, between Siberia and Alaska, known as Beringia was habitable. From there, they spread south into North America and continued down the Pacific coast, over the Central American isthmus and into South America. Previous genetic studies had seems to support this showing a connection with ancient people from the Altai region of Siberian Central Asia.

However, the genome of two ancient individuals from two different sites in Northern Brazil, at Pedra do Tubarão and Alcobaça, using powerful algorithms and genomic analyses, shows a different story. They show that, not only had there been interbreeding between the ancestors of these people and Neanderthals, but that they also discovered more Denisovan than Neanderthal ancestry in ancient Uruguay and Panama individuals. This is not inconsistent with the Beringia migration theory, of course, but it is the discovery of what happened next, and where this other hominin species DNA came from where the surprise it.

They also found a mysterious and as yet unexplained strong genetic signal linking Australasian (Australia and Papua New Guinea) to an ancient genome from Panama.

Lastly, unexpectedly, they found evidence that there was a northward migration from South America up the Atlantic coast after people had become established east of the Andes.

As the Florida Atlantic University News release explains:

Using DNA from two ancient human individuals unearthed in two different archaeological sites in northeast Brazil – Pedra do Tubarão and Alcobaça – and powerful algorithms and genomic analyses, Florida Atlantic University researchers in collaboration with Emory University have unraveled the deep demographic history of South America at the regional level with some unexpected and surprising results.

Not only do researchers provide new genetic evidence supporting existing archaeological data of the north-to-south migration toward South America, they also have discovered migrations in the opposite direction along the Atlantic coast – for the first time. The work provides the most complete genetic evidence to date for complex ancient Central and South American migration routes.

Among the key findings, researchers also have discovered evidence of Neanderthal ancestry within the genomes of ancient individuals from South America. Neanderthals are an extinct population of archaic humans that ranged across Eurasia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic.

Results of the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. (Biological Sciences), suggest that human movements closer to the Atlantic coast eventually linked ancient Uruguay and Panama in a south-to-north migration route – 5,277 kilometers (3,270 miles) apart. This novel migration pattern is estimated to have occurred approximately 1,000 years ago based on the ages of the ancient individuals.

Findings show a distinct relationship among ancient genomes from northeast Brazil, Lagoa Santa (southeast Brazil), Uruguay and Panama. This new model reveals that the settlement of the Atlantic coast occurred only after the peopling of most of the Pacific coast and Andes.

Our study provides key genomic evidence for ancient migration events at the regional scale along South America’s Atlantic coast. These regional events likely derived from migratory waves involving the initial Indigenous peoples of South America near the Pacific coast.

Michael DeGiorgio, Ph.D., co-corresponding author
Associate professor
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
College of Engineering and Computer Science
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA

Researchers also found strong Australasian (Australia and Papua New Guinea) genetic signals in an ancient genome from Panama.

There is an entire Pacific Ocean between Australasia and the Americas, and we still don’t know how these ancestral genomic signals appeared in Central and South America without leaving traces in North America.

Andre Luiz Campelo dos Santos, Ph.D., first author
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
College of Engineering and Computer Science
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA

To further add to the existing complexity, researchers also detected greater Denisovan than Neanderthal ancestry in ancient Uruguay and Panama individuals. Denisovans are a group of extinct humans first identified from DNA sequences from the tip of finger bone discovered around 2008.

It’s phenomenal that Denisovan ancestry made it all the way to South America. The admixture must have occurred a long time before, perhaps 40,000 years ago. The fact that the Denisovan lineage persisted and its genetic signal made it into an ancient individual from Uruguay that is only 1,500 years old suggests that it was a large admixture event between a population of humans and Denisovans.

John Lindo, Ph.D., co-corresponding author
Assistant professor
Department of Anthropology
Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

Previously at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil, dos Santos and colleagues uncovered the remains of the two ancient humans from northeast Brazil, which date back to at least 1,000 years before present, and sent them to Lindo for DNA extraction and subsequent genomic sequencing and analyses. Raw data were then sent to FAU for computational analysis of the whole genome sequences from northeast Brazil.

This groundbreaking research involved many different fields from archaeology to biological sciences to genomics and data science. Our scientists at Florida Atlantic University in collaboration with Emory University have helped to shed light on an important piece of the Americas puzzle, which could not have been solved without powerful genomic and computational tools and analysis.

Stella Batalama, Ph.D.
Dean, College of Engineering and Computer Science.
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA

Researchers compared the two newly sequenced ancient whole genomes from northeast Brazil with present-day worldwide genomes and other ancient whole genomes from the Americas. As of the publication date of the article, Lindo says that only a dozen or so ancient whole genomes from South America have been sequenced and published, in contrast to hundreds from Europe.

Apart from the occurrence of mass burials in the sites that yielded the samples from northeast Brazil, Uruguay, southeast Brazil and Panama, there is no other evidence in the archaeological record that indicate shared cultural features among them. Importantly, the analyzed ancient individuals from southeast Brazil are about 9,000 years older than those from northeast Brazil, Uruguay and Panama, enough time for expected and noticeable cultural divergence. Moreover, northeast Brazil, Uruguay and Panama, though more similar in age, are located thousands of kilometers apart from each other.

---

Genetic profile at key sites (left). Migration routes (right)

This research suggests that the people who eventually made it to South America, came from a people who had interbred extensively with Neanderthals and even more so with Denisovans, but how the Australasian DNA got to Panama remains to be discovered. The intriguing thing here is that the Australasians themselves have a high proportion of Denisovan DNA and Denisovans are assumed to have been present over much of east and south-east Asia, including the Altai area of Siberia where the first Denisovan remains were found.

As for the creationist claim that only scientific orthodoxy is permitted in peer-reviewed journals, papers like this that cast considerable doubt on the consensus view and raise so many unanswered questions, give the lie to that claim, but it is typical of Creationists that they accuse others of doing what they themselves do, as though accusing others of their own dishonesty somehow absolves them of responsibility for it.

Creationists who publish through sites like Answers in Genesis, or anyone who receives funding from the ICR or the Deception Discovery Institute, must sign an oath that they will never publish anything which isn't in full accord with a literal interpretation of the Bible in general and Genesis in particular. What ‘peer-review’ there is in Creationist circles is merely checking that the oath has been kept.

The Creationist Oath

As I said at the beginning, if Creationist accusations were true, science would be as stagnant as Creationism, never moving away from the handed-down orthodoxy of cult leaders. But as anyone who knows anything about science will know, science is a dynamic, evolving and expanding body of evidence-based knowledge that is responsible for modern technologies like electricity, radio and telephone communications, computers and modern transport systems as well as medicines, modern buildings, clean water and food production.

Without religion, all we would have is some people with nothing to do on holy days and having to take responsibility for their own beliefs and attitudes with nothing to blame and no excuses to justify their antisocial behaviour; imagine life without science.

Declining Religion in USA - Latinos Are Leaving the Catholic Church

New poll finds 4 in 10 non-Catholic Latinos were once Catholic and left

Tucked away on page 15 of the NBC News/Telemundo National Survey report conducted over Sept. 17-26, 2022 by Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies, is a table that should spread despondency in the US Catholic Church, which had been pinning its hopes of avoiding the haemorrhage of members experience by other Christian churches in the USA, by the immigration of Hispanic people, assumed to be overwhelmingly Catholic.

Religious Bigotry News - Now Judaism is Exempt From Laws Protecting LGBTQ Rights, Thanks to SCOTUS

Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Blocked order forbidding Orthodox Jewish University from discriminating against LGBTQ students

By Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States, Steve Petteway Source - http://www.oyez.org/justices/sonia_sotomayor (direct link), Public Domain, Link

High court blocks recognition of LGBTQ campus at Yeshiva U

I wrote recently about how the American Methodists, and the Australian Anglican churches are both splitting over whether they should be continuing to victimise, demonise and generally discriminate against LGBTQ people or not. Now we have an Orthodox Jewish university in New York winning the right to discriminate on 'religious grounds'.

Yeshiva University, an Orthodox Jewish University in New York had appealed against a New York Judge’s ruling that their refusal to recognise an LGBTQ campus club violated New York City ‘s Human Rights Law, which bars discrimination based on sexual orientation, and ordered the university to recognise it as an official student club.

The University appealed to SCOTUS on the grounds that, as a religious organization, it was exempt from the non-discrimination law, by virtue of the First Amendment right to freely exercise religion. Justice Sonia Sotomayor agreed with them and issued a temporary blocking order against the NY judge's ruling. The surprise is, that Sotomayor, who hears emergency applications from the state of New York on behalf of SCOTUS, is considered to be a liberal in SCOTUS with its 6:3 majority of conservative justices, courtesy of Donald Trump who rewarded his supporters on the far right by stuffing SCOTUS with partisan religious conservative.

Now, it seems, even the liberal justices are coming into line with the highly partisan SCOTUS. There is little doubt that this ruling will be confirmed by SCOTUS with a majority of at least 7:2 and will have the effect of giving any religious organisation the right to victimise anyone with whom they disagree and the right to pick and choose which laws to comply with. The problem is, the legal definition of a 'religion' in the USA is so nebulous that such a ruling would give carte blanche to any organization or group, formal or informal, to declare itself to be a religion and ignore any law it disagrees with on the same grounds that Sotomayor ruled constitutional.

The US Dictionary of Law entry on 'Religion' reads:

Covidiot News - Massive Success for the Pro-Trump, Self-Genocide Campaign

Covid-19: U.S. Life Expectancy Continued to Decrease in 2021, Study Finds - USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology

More evidence of the astonishingly stupid, but highly successful pro-Trump antivaxx campaign against the COVID-19 vaccinations was produced today in the form of evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic death rate in the USA produced a significant fall in life-expectancy in 2021, continuing a sharp fall in 2020. It also showed how there were persistent disparities in life expectancy by race and ethnicity.

The antivaxx campaign came about in support of the then president, Donald Trump, who, realising he was out of his depth with the science, but due to his narcissistic personality disorder, was incapable of admitting it, panicked and set about politicizing the pandemic, threatening and vilifying scientists who tried to advise him and pressurizing officials to supress bad news and provide disinformation.

He first declared the pandemic to be a hoax, then to be a mild illness that would be over by April (2020) and which could be prevented with wackadoodle, untested 'preventative' chloramphenicol. This subsequently turned out to not only be ineffective in preventing infection or minimising the symptoms but was positively dangerous.

At one point, in a comical pretence of medical expertise that would have been funny if it hadn’t been so seriously stupid, the fool even suggested drinking surface disinfectants or inserting a UV light source into the body to cure the disease. Soon, wearing face-covering and social distancing became political acts, as did getting vaccinated when the vaccines were produced. Evangelical preachers preached against face-masks and for the right to continue to hold super-spreader events in their churches, and Trump's election rallies in which face-coverings were discouraged, became serious super-spreader events in their own right.

Consequently, when the Omicron wave hit, the death toll became overwhelmingly of unvaccinated people in Republican-leading areas of America, to the extent that some commentators referred to it as a self-inflicted genocide of the most gullible, as the Republicans Party became possibly the first political party in history with policies seemingly designed to kill their own supporters and with supporters who believed that risking the lives of themselves, their families and society at large was the patriotic thing to do.

All to save the orange buffoon’s face.

God the Great Abortionist

Most human embryos naturally die after conception – restrictive abortion laws fail to take this embryo loss into account

Religious fundamentalists in the USA recently scored what might turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory in the struggle over a woman's right to choose whether to allow her body to be used to grow a new person or not. In a historic ruling, the right-leaning Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), recently stuffed with Republican placemen and women ruled that since there was no traditional right to an abortion, the states were free to regulate and restrict abortions.

This has led to about a third of American women losing the right to have an unwanted pregnancy terminated, in some states regardless of how the pregnancy occurred or the effects continuing with it might have on the health of the woman. So, in these states, for example an underage girl who was raped or the victim of incest will be obliged to carry the baby to term, and some states are even attempting to make it illegal to get help in another state where abortion is still decriminalised.

But what is this objection to abortion and the right of women to control their own bodies based on?

As we might expect with beliefs that lead to limitations on human rights, it is based on Christian fundamentalism and two things in particular:

Donald Trump's Narcisistic Personality Disorder Should Disqualify Him from Public Office

Is narcissism a mental health problem? And can you really diagnose it online?

There are very real fears in the civilised world that Donald Trump could stand and even win again in 2024. The fear is that his behaviour is dangerously unpredictable because he is given to bouts of paranoid anger and a desire for revenge for imagined wrongs, or even for failure to acknowledge his expertise on everything.

He is psychologically incapable of accepting that he isn't the best at everything and that there really are people who know more than he does and understand things better than he does, and whose advise he should be listening to.

This manifested early on in his presidency when he obsessively undid everything his predecessor, Barak Obama, had achieved, including the measures to combat climate change, the 'nuclear' deal with Iran, the Affordable Care Act, the disastrous dismantling of the provisions for a possible pandemic, and later, in his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He not only rejected the advice of the scientists but launched a campaign of abuse and vilification of those who tried to give him advice on the handling of it because it wasn’t the advice he wanted. Instead, he encourages the view that the virus was a hoax and not very serious, as he advocated untried and dangerous quack medicine he had heard about from far-right fruitloop sources, and even suggested drinking bleach to kill the virus.
But is that a symptom of an all-controlling narcissistic personality disorder?

According to the symptoms of narcissism described in this article by Paula Ross, a psychology lecturer at the Australian Catholic University and Nicole Lee, a professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University, Australia, he might well have. The article is reproduced here under a Creative Commons license and has been reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be read here.

Is narcissism a mental health problem? And can you really diagnose it online?

Source: Unsplash/Laurenz Kleinheider, CC BY

Paula Ross, Australian Catholic University and Nicole Lee, Curtin University

It’s not uncommon these days to hear someone – such as an ex romantic partner or a politician – described as a “narcissist”.

Singer Robbie Williams recently told an interviewer he took an online test to see if he was one. He revealed the test suggested a “mild indication of narcissistic personality disorder”.

But what is narcissism, when is it a problem and can an online test really provide a reliable diagnosis?

A fixation on oneself

According to the Greek myth, a beautiful young man called Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. He stayed staring at it for the rest of his life. His name gave rise to the term “narcissism”, characterised by a fixation on oneself.

Narcissism is a cluster of traits along a range of severity. At one end of the spectrum, people may be confident, charming and well-adapted.

In the middle of the spectrum, people may be overly focused on seeking out status, success and admiration at work or in their social lives. They can have a need to appear perfect, special or superior to others in order to feel OK about themselves.

At the very extreme end, it may become a disorder in which people can be self-centred, grandiose and destructive.

Narcissus as painted by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, circa 1597–1599.

Source: Wikiart

---

Read more:
Narcissists: there's more than one type – and our research reveals what makes each tick

---

What’s ‘narcissistic personality disorder’?

“Narcissistic personality disorder” is a mental health diagnosis given to people with extremely narcissistic traits. These traits have reached the point where they start to impact on the person’s ability to function at work or socially.

Narcissistic personality disorder is relatively rare. It is estimated around 1% of the population has a diagnosable form of the condition.

Men tend to be more narcissistic than women. There is no evidence that young people are more narcissistic than previous generations at the same age.

Their symptoms are described as “pervasive”, meaning they are obvious across all of a person’s activities, not just in specific situations. So, on the face of it, pop star Robbie William’s insistence his score on the quiz reflected only his narcissistic personality on stage is not quite accurate.

People with narcissistic personality disorder tend to overestimate their abilities and exaggerate their achievements. And they are surprised or angry when others don’t notice their accomplishments.

They need constant confirmation of their value, specialness or importance. They may have fantasies about power, success, having perfect lives or relationships, believing these are not only achievable but deserved.

When narcissists see that good things are happening for you, it triggers their self-hatred and many insecurities. They can’t stand to see targets/victims winning and progressing because they need others to be suffering and failing to feel better about their own mediocrity.

— Narcissist Facts 101 (@narcissistfacts) August 22, 2022

Specialness by association

People with narcissistic personality disorder might talk a lot about how people in their lives are extra special in some way – such as being the very best at something or leaders in a particular field – because it increases their own sense of specialness by association.

When their status or superiority is challenged they can respond with extreme anger, rage or belittling the person and their opinion. They find it difficult to tolerate the thought they may be flawed or vulnerable in some way.

In relationships, they can have exceedingly high expectations of devotion from partners and friends, but may themselves be low in empathy and lack of awareness of others’ needs. They may be envious of and unable to celebrate the success of others, and respond by devaluing them.

They are often unaware of the impact of their behaviours on others.

---

Read more:
'Impulsive psychopaths like crypto': research shows how 'dark' personality traits affect Bitcoin enthusiasm

---

How is it diagnosed?

Diagnosis should only be made by a mental health professional. Trying to diagnose yourself or someone else with an online quiz may give you results that are misleading and unhelpful.

Narcissistic personality disorder is a cluster of symptoms on a continuum and many diagnoses share similar symptoms. For a proper diagnosis, a clinician needs to assess which cluster of symptoms is present, how far along the continuum they are, and which other diagnoses to exclude.

But a symptom checklist might help you work out whether you should consider seeing a mental health professional for further assessment or support.

People with extreme narcissism can be demanding and destructive.

Credit:Pexels, CC BY

---

Read more:
Before you judge personality tests, consider what they don't judge

---

How do people get this way?

We don’t know exactly what causes narcissistic personality disorder.

There is probably a genetic component. Traits such as aggression, poor emotional regulation and low tolerance to distress tend to be high in people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.

Certain experiences in childhood are also more likely to lead to narcissistic personality disorder. These might be either particularly negative, such as trauma or rejection, or overly positive, such as excessive praise or being constantly told you have extraordinary abilities. Parenting styles that are either very neglectful or overly protective are also associated with the development of narcissism.

People with narcissistic personality disorder often have other mental health conditions, particularly mood disorders. They also have a high rate of suicide. These conditions may have a common cause or they may be a result of the difficulties people with narcissistic personality disorder have with social interactions.

Can it be treated?

Narcissistic personality disorder is a lifelong condition that is considered manageable but not curable. There is no standard medicine or psychological treatment for narcissistic personality disorder.

Psychological treatment aims to reduce the severity of symptoms, improve mood, manage impulses, and build communication and relationship skills. One of the main goals of therapy is to develop more realistic expectations of others.

Medicines that help with other mental health problems like anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder may also help reduce some symptoms.

People are more likely to seek help for another mental health condition, such as depression. Getting treatment for these conditions can also positively impact on personality disorder symptoms.

Paula Ross, Sessional psychology lecturer, Australian Catholic University and Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University

That then is a general description of narcissistic personality disorder. The help judge whether this is what causes Donald Trump's bizarre behaviour in (and out) of office, this is another article from The Conversation, originally published on January 5, 2021, the day before he officially left office, having lost to Joe Biden and updated on January 7, 2021, the day after Trump had incited an attempted coup d’état to reverse the election result. The article is by Steven H. Appelbaum, Professor of Management, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. It is reproduced here under a Creative Commons license. The original article may be read here.

Trump’s dangerous narcissism may have changed leadership forever

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe as president on Jan. 6, 2021, in which he successfully incited a mob to storm Congress.

Creadit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Steven H. Appelbaum, Concordia University

Donald Trump and his narcissistic style of leadership will soon vacate the political stage, despite his recent attempt to cajole elected officials into illegally changing the outcome of November’s presidential election and inciting a mob of supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol.

But what about those who aspire to key leadership positions who have been inspired by Trump? Will they perpetuate this new model of dangerous leadership without understanding that the potential fallout could be viral and spread to their organizations and employees?

American psychologist and author John Gartner, formerly of Johns Hopkins University, sounded the alarm about Trump three years ago, calling on him to be removed from office because he was “psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of president.” The petition garnered thousands of signatures.

Narcissism can be described as a grandiose sense of self-importance. A healthy dose of narcissism can be an integral part of a mature adult’s psyche. It can foster positive traits such as confidence, creativity, humour and wisdom.

These are of course important qualities that many of the world’s genius artists, business people and scientists possess.

But there’s a flip side to this coin, since pathological narcissism may leave people extremely isolated, distrustful and lacking in empathy. Perceived threats can easily cause pathological narcissists to fall into fits of rage.

How narcissism affects leadership styles

Their confidence and larger-than-life attitude, after all, have propelled them to the top. Narcissistic leaders often emerge during times of crisis where followers seek the leadership of a charismatic, confident and creative chief.

To the outside world, narcissists appear self-assured, charming and likeable upon first glance. For this reason, they often emerge as leaders. However, important research has shown the thin veneer of these qualities becomes apparent over time, and there’s often a stark contrast between a narcissist’s perceived leadership abilities and their actual abilities. The narcissistic leader’s weaknesses come to the surface.

Trump stands in the Oval Office in December 2020.

Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

While their hunger for power and admiration may yield positive results in the beginning, in the long run, narcissistic leaders are bound to leave damaged systems and relationships in their wake.

Identifiable negative traits of narcissists include sensitivity to criticism, poor listening skills, lack of empathy, intense desire to compete, arrogance, feelings of inferiority, need for recognition and superiority, hypersensitivity, anger, amorality, irrationality, inflexibility and paranoia. Some of these traits seem to fit Trump.

‘Destructive tyrant’

A leader who was perhaps once seen as a visionary slowly but surely transforming into a destructive tyrant can have grave consequences for organizations that are helmed by narcissists. Narcissistic leadership can negatively affect job satisfaction and morale while fuelling chaos of the type we saw at the U.S. Capitol as well as employee turnover.

First lady's chief of staff and former WH press secretary Stephanie Grisham resigns over violent protests https://t.co/eRdMo4tpKN

— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) January 7, 2021

As time goes on, their insecurities, domineering nature and disregard for the feelings and needs of others lead to employees’ emotional exhaustion, burnout and withdrawal from the organization. In essence, only the leader’s beliefs, experiences and knowledge count. This was evident when Trump publicly stated he knew more than his generals and even in his recently revealed phone call to Georgia officials, when he attempted to browbeat and threaten them to “find” more than 11,000 votes.

Indeed, there is no more relevant or obvious example of the damaging effects of excessive narcissism on leadership ability than Trump. His chaotic leadership style is useful to study since very few of us are trained to deal with this type of behaviour and this type of person.

Before he was elected president, Trump had made a name for himself in the mainstream media and turned his public persona into a lucrative brand. His 1988 book, The Art of the Deal, and later his NBC show, The Apprentice, garnered a large following of admirers, many in leadership positions.

A Trump supporter stands near the president’s vandalized star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in July 2018.

Source: AP Photo/Reed Saxon

Of course, Trump floundered at times, declaring bankruptcy six times, but he always managed to save himself and threaten his naysayers until they disappeared.

We’ve experienced signs of the destructiveness of his behaviour on the world stage. Rather than knowing the “art of a deal,” a president and any other leader should know the art of diplomacy, empathy and service. Unfortunately, these are words that aren’t part of Trump’s vocabulary.

What’s more, his erratic behaviour seems to have had a detrimental effect on his team members, who can never seem to control his outbursts. This should serve as a warning to organizational leaders flirting with this type of leader.

Can the narcissist be managed?

In today’s uncertain market, more and more companies are becoming comfortable with this type of unpredictable and chaotic leadership style, hoping for big gains and magic.

It’s critical to understand that it’s possible for businesses to reap the benefits of a narcissistic leader as long there’s a trusted sidekick or No. 2 who can anchor their grandiose ideas and help control them. This is tricky to do and not common in contemporary organizations as they attempt to eradicate any perceived competition or control.

Any type of controlling influence has been absent in the Trump administration as he operates without guardrails, creating great fallout.

The issue for followers is it never ends well. We have seen this real-time case study play out for the past four years of the Trump presidency.

The challenge is: How will current and future organizational leaders accept or reject the type of narcissistic and damaging leader who is determined to win at any cost? Steven H. Appelbaum, Professor of Management, Concordia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

There is little doubt in Professor Appelbaum's mind that Trump does have a narcissistic personality disorder, or that this was the cause of the chaos during his presidency as he made policy in response to the fake news in the far right news media, encouraged the wildest conspiracy theories, sacked anyone who dared to disagree with him, or even failed to admire him sufficiently, made an international laughing stock of the USA, attacked and tried to undermine American democracy because it didn't deliver the result he demanded, and in the end came to personify a lying, corrupt, incompetent would be dictator that all reasonable people who hadn't been suckered into his personality cult, were glad to see the back of.

It would probably be the end of American democracy if he is re-elected in 2024. It would certainly be dangerous for the rest of the world. Having one paranoid , psychotic narcissist with nuclear weapons, in the shape of Vladimir Putin of a resurgent Russia, who is almost a clone of Donald Trump, is dangerous enough, without adding another one to the mix.

I hate to Say it, But I told You So!

Kansas votes to protect abortion rights in state constitution | US news | The Guardian

Back in mid-July when the SCOTUS decision overturning Roe vs Wade was announced, I said it looked like a Pyrrhic victory for the forces of American Christo-fascism and a wake-up call for the forces of democracy, human rights, and female bodily autonomy, as about two thirds of American adults supported the right of women to choose and were in favour of decriminalised abortions.

Now the stunning victory for the pro-choice cause in Kansas, that most conservative of states which has voted Republican in every election since the mid-1960s, vindicates everything I said in that article - SCOTUS now represents only a small, vociferous minority of Americans to whom Donald Trump effectively handed control of the US judiciary by stuffing the Supreme Court with fundamentalist Christo-fascists.

According to this article in The Daily Yonder, the result is even more impressive when analysed in detail. Although the rural parts of Kansas voted 'Yes' (to allow the prohibition of abortions in the state) by 58% to 42%, the swing away from the pro-Trump vote in the same areas was about 17%. Across the state, the result was 58% to 42% against the proposal in a state which voted 56% to 42% for Trump and against Biden. The pro-abortion position was even more popular than Biden, showing that what was thought to be a core Republican issue is in fact a major vote loser for them.

On Abortion Referendum, Kansas Rural Voters Shifted Further from 2020 Presidential Results

by Tim Marema and Bill Bishop, The Daily Yonder
August 4, 2022

Kansas voters in small cities and rural areas swung further from the Republican Party vote just two years ago than their more urban counterparts in Tuesday’s defeat of an anti-abortion state constitutional amendment.

Statewide, the amendment, which would have removed abortion rights from the Kansas Constitution, failed by about 16 percentage points, 42% to 58%.

Voters in large and medium-sized metropolitan areas defeated the amendment 2 to 1. Voters in small metropolitan areas split evenly over the amendment. And rural (nonmetropolitan) voters favored the anti-abortion amendment 58% to 42%.

But the bottom-line vote is only part of the picture. Another story arises from how much the anti-abortion amendment underperformed compared to Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. And by that measure, Kansas’ small-city and rural voters shifted further away from the Republican Party than voters in bigger cities.

Republican Trump won Kansas by 14 points, 56% to 42% in the 2020 presidential election. (The total percent is less than 100 because it doesn’t include third-party candidates.)

The anti-abortion constitutional amendment was thought to be a bedrock Republican issue. The Kansas party initiated the referendum and scheduled it for the August primary, as opposed to the November general election, thinking a highly motivated base would make up a larger proportion of the turn out and get the amendment passed.

The strategy didn’t work. Turnout was extremely high – double the last midterm election. The anti-abortion vote shifted 30 points away from the support Trump received in 2020. And the amendment failed.

Across the state, the pro-abortion vote outperformed Biden’s vote in 2020. In other words, the issue of abortion rights was far more popular than the Democratic candidate.

And the anti-abortion amendment was far less popular than the Republican presidential candidate.

Small metropolitan and rural areas had the greatest shift away from the 2020 Republican vote. The pro-abortion rights vote was about 19 points more popular than Biden in 2020 in these smaller communities (see graph above). And the anti-abortion vote was about 17 points less popular than Trump (see graph at the top of the story).

From this data, we may be able to draw a couple conclusions. One is that politicians can’t assume small-city and rural voters are in lock-step behind banning abortion. And, two, voters behave differently when they have the chance to vote straight issues without party labels. The proposed constitutional amendment was nonpartisan.

One caveat is that turnout affects elections. The high turnout means there were likely some different types of voters than the ones who typically go to the polls for a relatively low-key midterm primary.

The abortion vote in Kansas will certainly inform party strategy in the general election in November. Democrats are concluding that the Kansas vote means they should be campaigning more on abortion rights. And others think the Supreme Court’s dismantling of Roe v. Wade may motivate a different type of turnout in the November election to blunt some of the Republican momentum in congressional elections.

This data tells us that the vote in small cities and rural areas is also up for grabs.

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Americans now need to follow up this magnificent victory for secular, human rights values, in the mid-terms with a similar vote for Democrats and against the largely pro-life, (read, anti-choice), minority opinion the Repugnican Party now represents.

American women, supported by fair-minded American men, can take back control of their bodies from the extremist Christian minority that SCOTUS handed it to.

Endemic US Racism News - Black and Hispanic Areas of USA Were Less Likely to Get COVID Vaccine Supplies

Table 1. Disparities in United States COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution

Figures provided a few days ago by investigators from the University of California San Diego, show that health care facilities serving underrepresented, rural and hardest-hit communities in the USA were less likely to administer COVID-19 vaccines in the early phase of the vaccine rollout and that the reason could well have been the lower availability of sites having vaccines to administer, rather than vaccine hesitancy or distrust, as has previously been suggested.

In particular, there were significantly fewer vaccination facilities in rural counties that were predominantly black or Hispanic and even where the mortality figures for COVID-19 were highest.

As the UC San Diego press release explains:

Proportion of facilities serving as COVID-19 vaccine administration locations.

When reports showed COVID-19 vaccination rates were lower among racial/ethnic minority groups, most discussions focused on mistrust and misinformation among these populations or their reduced access to health care facilities. But new research from University of California San Diego and collaborating institutions has identified an additional barrier to equity: whether or not each health care facility actually received and administered vaccines.

[…]

In a study published July 28, 2022 in PLOS Medicine, researchers demonstrated that health care facilities serving underrepresented, rural and hardest-hit communities were less likely to administer COVID-19 vaccines in the early phase of the vaccine rollout.

Led by Inmaculada Hernandez, PharmD, PhD, associate professor of clinical pharmacy at Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of California San Diego, the study is the first to quantify disparities in the early distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to health care facilities across the country.

Previous studies of vaccine accessibility have not distinguished whether lower access in underserved neighborhoods was a product of the lower concentration of health care facilities in these areas or of inequities in the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to each health care facility.

To answer this question, Hernandez and colleagues tested whether the likelihood of an eligible health care facility administering COVID-19 vaccines varied based on the racial/ethnic composition and urbanicity of the local county. The team focused on the initial phase of vaccine rollout, using data from May 2021 when states were officially required to make vaccines available to the public.

At that time, 61 percent of eligible health care facilities and 76 percent of eligible pharmacies across the U.S. provided COVID-19 vaccinations. When researchers began comparing these rates with the socioeconomic features of the county each facility was located in, several patterns emerged.

Both the national policy and public opinion agreed that vaccine distribution should prioritize disadvantaged communities and those hit hardest by COVID-19, but the data shows that is not what happened.

Dr Inmaculada Hernandez, PharmD, PhD, lead author
Associate professor of clinical pharmacy
Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

Facilities in counties with a high proportion of Black people were less likely to serve as COVID-19 vaccine administration locations compared to facilities in counties with a low proportion of Black people. This was particularly the case in metropolitan areas, where facilities in urban counties with large Black populations had 32 percent lower odds of administering vaccines compared to facilities in urban counties with small Black populations.

To achieve health equity in future public health programs, including the distribution of booster shots, it is crucial that public health authorities review these early COVID-19 distribution plans to understand how and why this happened.

Dr Jingchuan (Serena) Guo, MD, PhD, senior author
Assistant professor
University of Florida, FL, USA

Facilities in rural counties and in counties hardest hit by COVID-19 were also associated with decreased odds of serving as a COVID-19 vaccine administration location. In rural counties with a high proportion of Hispanic people, facilities had 26 percent lower odds of administering vaccines compared to facilities in rural counties with a low proportion of Hispanic people.

Further research is necessary to identify the reasons why vaccines were not equitably distributed to all health care facilities and how the involvement of these facilities evolved across subsequent phases of vaccine distribution, the authors said.

The following charts show the researchers' findings (click the buttons for greater clarity):

Fig 1. Adjusted odds ratios of facilities serving as COVID-19 vaccine administration locations, main effects.
The figure shows the results of logistic regression models fitted with generalized estimating equations for the primary outcome of a healthcare facility (or a pharmacy) serving as a COVID-19 vaccine administration location. The model only included main effects. All healthcare facilities included pharmacies, FQHCs, RHCs, and HODs. The circles represent the point estimate for the odds ratio, and the whiskers represent the 95% confidence interval. COVID-19, Coronavirus Disease 2019; FQHC, federally qualified health center; HOD, hospital outpatient department; RHC, rural health clinic.

---

Fig 2. Adjusted odds ratios of facilities serving as COVID-19 vaccine administration locations, interaction for proportion non-Hispanic Black population and urbanicity.
The figure shows the results of logistic regression models fitted with generalized estimating equations for the primary outcome of a healthcare facility (or a pharmacy) serving as a COVID-19 vaccine administration location. All healthcare facilities included pharmacies, FQHCs, RHCs, and HODs. The model adjusted for all covariates listed in Fig 1. Additionally, the model constructed for all healthcare facilities included an indicator variable for facility type (pharmacy vs. others). The circles represent the point estimate for the odds ratio, and the whiskers represent the 95% confidence interval. COVID-19, Coronavirus Disease 2019; FQHC, federally qualified health center; HOD, hospital outpatient department; RHC, rural health clinic.

---

Fig 3. Adjusted odds ratios of facilities serving as COVID-19 vaccine administration locations, interaction for proportion Hispanic population and urbanicity.
The figure shows the results of logistic regression models fitted with generalized estimating equations for the primary outcome of a healthcare facility (or a pharmacy) serving as a COVID-19 vaccine administration location. All healthcare facilities included pharmacies, FQHCs, RHCs, and HODs. The model adjusted for all covariates listed in Fig 1. Additionally, the model constructed for all healthcare facilities included an indicator variable for facility type (pharmacy vs. others). The circles represent the point estimate for the odds ratio, and the whiskers represent the 95% confidence interval. COVID-19, Coronavirus Disease 2019; FQHC, federally qualified health center; HOD, hospital outpatient department; RHC, rural health clinic.

Copyright: © 2022 The authors.
Published by PLoS. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

More detail is given in the abstract and authors' summary in the team's open access paper in PLOS Medicine:

Abstract

Background

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly called for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine equity. The objective our study was to measure equity in the early distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to healthcare facilities across the US. Specifically, we tested whether the likelihood of a healthcare facility administering COVID-19 vaccines in May 2021 differed by county-level racial composition and degree of urbanicity.

Methods and findings

The outcome was whether an eligible vaccination facility actually administered COVID-19 vaccines as of May 2021, and was defined by spatially matching locations of eligible and actual COVID-19 vaccine administration locations. The outcome was regressed against county-level measures for racial/ethnic composition, urbanicity, income, social vulnerability index, COVID-19 mortality, 2020 election results, and availability of nontraditional vaccination locations using generalized estimating equations.

Across the US, 61.4% of eligible healthcare facilities and 76.0% of eligible pharmacies provided COVID-19 vaccinations as of May 2021. Facilities in counties with >42.2% non-Hispanic Black population (i.e., > 95th county percentile of Black race composition) were less likely to serve as COVID-19 vaccine administration locations compared to facilities in counties with >12.5% non-Hispanic Black population (i.e., lower than US average), with OR 0.83; 95% CI, 0.70 to 0.98, p = 0.030. Location of a facility in a rural county (OR 0.82; 95% CI, 0.75 to 0.90, p < 0.001, versus metropolitan county) or in a county in the top quintile of COVID-19 mortality (OR 0.83; 95% CI, 0.75 to 0.93, p = 0.001, versus bottom 4 quintiles) was associated with decreased odds of serving as a COVID-19 vaccine administration location.

There was a significant interaction of urbanicity and racial/ethnic composition: In metropolitan counties, facilities in counties with >42.2% non-Hispanic Black population (i.e., >95th county percentile of Black race composition) had 32% (95% CI 14% to 47%, p = 0.001) lower odds of serving as COVID administration facility compared to facilities in counties with below US average Black population. This association between Black composition and odds of a facility serving as vaccine administration facility was not observed in rural or suburban counties. In rural counties, facilities in counties with above US average Hispanic population had 26% (95% CI 11% to 38%, p = 0.002) lower odds of serving as vaccine administration facility compared to facilities in counties with below US average Hispanic population. This association between Hispanic ethnicity and odds of a facility serving as vaccine administration facility was not observed in metropolitan or suburban counties.

Our analyses did not include nontraditional vaccination sites and are based on data as of May 2021, thus they represent the early distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Our results based on this cross-sectional analysis may not be generalizable to later phases of the COVID-19 vaccine distribution process.

Conclusions

Healthcare facilities in counties with higher Black composition, in rural areas, and in hardest-hit communities were less likely to serve as COVID-19 vaccine administration locations in May 2021. The lower uptake of COVID-19 vaccinations among minority populations and rural areas has been attributed to vaccine hesitancy; however, decreased access to vaccination sites may be an additional overlooked barrier.

Author summary

Why was this study done?

• Equity in the distribution of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine is of major relevance.
• It is unknown whether there were differences in the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to healthcare facilities depending on the demographic composition of the population.

What did the researchers do and find?

• We tested whether healthcare facilities serving minority or disadvantaged neighborhoods were less likely to administer COVID-19 vaccines in the early phase of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout process.
• We found that healthcare facilities in counties with higher Black composition, in rural areas, and in hardest-hit communities were less likely to administer COVID-19 vaccines in May 2021.

What do these findings mean?

• There were disparities in the early distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to healthcare facilities across the country.

Hernandez I, Dickson S, Tang S, Gabriel N, Berenbrok LA, Guo J (2022)
Disparities in distribution of COVID-19 vaccines across US counties: A geographic information system–based cross-sectional study.
PLoS Med 19(7): e1004069. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1004069

Copyright: © 2022 The authors.
Published by PLoS. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

From these figures it is clear that there was a differential in the availability of vaccines between the wealthier, white and less deprived areas of the USA and the predominantly black, deprived areas and that even differences in mortality rates did not reverse that trend. It is also clear that there was a differential based on voting patterns in the 2020 presidential elections.

More research is now needed to determine whether this was due to political/racial prejudice on behalf of the suppliers or on behalf of the local authorities responsible for requesting supplies of the vaccine and providing facilities for their administration, and to what extent Donald Trump's disastrous lead in downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic to cover for his own incompetence, played a part in this disparity.

But, whatever the cause, it is clear that, in the early phase of the vaccine roll-out, there was not equitable distribution of the vaccines and that racial minorities and people in deprived areas of the USA and in Trump-supporting counties were least likely to get them.

---

Thank you for sharing!

Tweet Link