Jimy Sohns, lead singer of the 1960s garage-rock band The Shadows of Knight, died Friday after suffering a stroke earlier in the week. He was 75.
Sohns’ death was announced by the band’s official Facebook page, which shared a note from Sohn’s daughter, Rachael, that reads, “My dads is gone at 5:10pm! He wired for me to go outside and left us! Fly high my rock n roll [ruler].”
Conor Mahoney, who manages the Shadows of Knight Facebook page, added, “Absolutely devastated. My thoughts go out to Jimy’s family and friends at this time. My best friend is gone, and I will miss running this page with him. His legend will live on forever.”
The Shadows of Knight are best known for their hit cover of the Van Morrison-penned 1964 Them classic “Gloria,” which reached #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966. The Chicago-based band also scored a top-40 hit with their follow-up single, a cover of Bo Diddley‘s “Oh Yeah.”
The band released three albums during its original 1960s heyday. Sohns continued to lead various lineups of the group over the years.
In 2006, The Shadows of Knight took part in the “Little Steven” Van Zandt-organized Underground Garage Tour with The Romantics and also released a new studio album called A Knight to Remember.
In 2020, The Shadows of Knight released a new single — “Wild man”/”I Ain’t Got You” — on Little Steven’s Wicked Cool Records label that featured Sohns recording with the band’s early guitarist Jerry McGeorge for the first time since the ’60s.
In March, Sohns released his first solo single, a collaboration with former Pretty Things keyboardist Jon Povey and the Italian psychedelic group Technicolour Dream.
Nichelle Nichols, one of the original cast members of Star Trek, has passed away at age 89, according to a Facebook post by her son, Kyle Johnson.
“I regret to inform you that a great light in the firmament no longer shines for us as it has for so many years,” he began. “Last night, my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to natural causes and passed away.”
He added, “Her light however, like the ancient galaxies now being seen for the first time, will remain for us and future generations to enjoy, learn from, and draw inspiration. Hers was a life well lived and as such a model for us all.”
Nichols was a groundbreaking performer, sharing American television’s first scripted interracial kiss — with Star Trek‘s Captain Kirk, William Shatner, in the 1968 episode “Plato’s Stepchildren.”
Nichols also used her celebrity to shed light on the civil rights struggle in the ’60s.
In fact, it was Martin Luther King Jr. who convinced Nichols not to leave Star Trek at the height of the civil rights movement. In an interview with StarTrek.com, Nichols explained that during a chance encounter at a fundraiser, King urged her to remain on the show rather than leaving for Broadway.
“When we see you, we see ourselves. And we see ourselves as intelligent, and beautiful and proud,” she recalled King telling her. The following Monday she rescinded her resignation to show creator Gene Roddenberry.
In 2016, she spoke to ABC Audio about how she lent her star status to NASA decades later to encourage diversity in its ranks of real-life space travelers.
“NASA recruited me, hired me to recruit women and minorities for the space shuttle program. And until that time there were no people of color even considered,” she explains, adding with a laugh, “And after that, we were all over the place!”
“I interviewed quite a few young women that were interested in that and simply didn’t think they had a chance. And one interview with me and they knew they did.”
Through her years, Nichelle attended countless fan signings at Trek conventions and found many people you might not expect — from King to former President Barack Obama — were Trekkers.
She with a laugh of meeting said fans, “I’m used to it. And I’m not used to it.”
(WASHINGTON) — As Senate Democrats push a major economic, health and environmental proposal, “much of what they’re saying about this bill is just not true,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., contended on Sunday.
“It may be disinflationary by causing a recession,” Cassidy told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl. “They’re interjecting an incredible amount of uncertainty into the economy. … I think this is going to lead to a worse recession.”
The Inflation Reduction Act was announced Wednesday after months of negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. The bill would pay down about $300 billion from the national debt and invest about $370 billion in energy and climate programs over the next 10 years, the lawmakers said, with revenue raised from increasing corporate taxes and enhancing IRS enforcement.
The legislation would also lower some prescription drug prices by allowing Medicare to negotiate and expand federal health care subsidies.
On “This Week,” Cassidy took another view of the proposal.
“They are raising taxes. According to [Congress’] Joint Committee on Taxation, taxes will be raised almost $17 billion in the first year on those who are making less than $200,000,” he said, citing an analysis that Democrats say excludes cost-saving measures, like those on prescription drugs. In an earlier interview on “This Week” Sunday, Manchin insisted there is “not a tax increase” in his bill.
Karl noted that just prior to that package’s announcement, legislation to boost domestic production of crucial computer chips passed through the Senate with 17 Republican votes — including Cassidy.
Republican Sen. John Kennedy, who represents Louisiana along with Cassidy, claimed this was a slight on the GOP lawmakers who backed the chip bill thinking Democrats’ spending proposal was dead, telling Politico, “Looks to me like we got rinky-doo’d.”
“Is he right?” Karl pressed. “Did you guys get hood-winked by Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer?”
“Schumer pulled a fast one on the American people,” Cassidy countered.
But he stood by supporting the bill, which spends some $52 billion out of an overall $280 billion to promote semiconductor production, arguing the ability to manufacture the chips domestically is vital for U.S. interests; right now, China is an enormous exporter of the technology.
“This is all about national security,” Cassidy said. “I’m a China hawk. If you’re comfortable with China … this bill, maybe you don’t vote for. If you’re a China hawk like I am, if you’re about national security, by golly you support this bill.”
GOP senators also came under fire from advocates last week after changing course on a bill to help veterans who were exposed to toxic “burn pits” during their service.
Comedian Jon Stewart, who appeared on “This Week” on Sunday in a separate interview, has been strongly lobbying for the bill’s passage, telling Karl that “nothing changed” in the text between votes in June and July — but Republican senators changed their votes.
Karl questioned Cassidy about the switch. Cassidy maintained that it was a temporary, bureaucratic delay and blamed Democrats.
“The bill will pass, and I strongly support it. We have to stand by our veterans who have been exposed to these chemicals. There was a drafting error,” he said. “A $400 billion drafting error that Democrats promised Republicans would get a vote on an amendment to fix.”
He was referring to what conservatives called an effort to free up existing funds already being used for veterans by shuffling the money inside the budget to use for unrelated purposes.
“But, to be clear, you did vote for it in its current form in the Senate,” Karl pressed.
“Yes, and I’ll vote for its final passage, too,” Cassidy said.
(FRANKFORT, Kentucky) — The death toll in the devastating flooding that hit eastern Kentucky is continuing to rise as more rain threatens the region, according to officials.
A total of 26 people have been confirmed dead, but that number is expected to increase again, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear announced Sunday morning. The death toll includes at least four children, Beshear said on Saturday.
The death toll in the devastating flooding that hit eastern Kentucky is continuing to rise as more rain threatens the region, according to officials.
A total of 26 people have been confirmed dead, but that number is expected to increase again, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear announced Sunday morning. The death toll includes at least four children, Beshear said on Saturday.
More rain is forecast in the area on Sunday and Monday as search and rescue teams continue to look for those who are unaccounted for. The additional precipitation could potentially cause water levels to rise again, with 2 inches to 4 inches of rain possible in the same area that experienced the catastrophic flooding that began with heavy rains on Wednesday.
More than 600 people have been rescued by aircraft and boat since the flooding began, Beshear said.
The destruction in Kentucky is the latest extreme flooding event to take place in the U.S. in less than a week.
Heavy downpours caused flash flooding in Las Vegas on Friday, with rising waters seen on roadways and parking garages in busy parts of Sin City.
The megadrought has caused the soil in the region to become so dry that it could not absorb the heavy rains, which helped to contribute to the flooding.
Earlier in the week, a flash flooding emergency occurred near St. Louis, which had a record-breaking 8.56 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. One person was found dead in a car on Tuesday after the water began to recede, officials said.
Kentucky is working to establish shelters, Beshear said, asking those who want to help to donate cleaning supplies or water. Last week, President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration.
“Let us wrap our arms around eastern Kentucky and pray for those impacted,” Beshear said.
ABC News’ Matt Foster, Kenton Gewecke and Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — On ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin again declined to speculate about backing President Joe Biden in 2024 and said he was hopeful fellow Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema will come on board with a deficit reduction, climate and energy bill he negotiated.
Manchin’s new spending deal, brokered with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, would close corporate tax loopholes and levy a 15% corporate minimum tax, invest billions in clean energy and reducing emissions, lower prescription drug costs via Medicare and expand health care subsidies.
In an interview with “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl, Manchin touted the package’s provisions — which will need to earn the support of all 50 votes in the Democratic caucus given widespread Republican opposition.
A key vote will be Arizona’s Sinema, who has previously opposed closing the so-called carried interest tax loophole. Manchin and Schumer’s bill limits but doesn’t remove that exception.
“Sen. Sinema is my dear friend. I have all the respect for her, she’s extremely bright and works very, very hard. She has an awful lot in this piece of legislation, the way it’s been designed as far as the reduction of Medicare — letting Medicare go ahead and negotiate for lower drug prices,” Manchin said.
“She’s very involved in that and I appreciate that,” he told Karl. “Also, basically, when she said … ‘we’re not going to raise taxes,’ I agree with that.” (Sinema has not yet weighed in on the proposal.)
Karl pressed Manchin on his assessment that the Senate legislation would help lower inflation, noting that a budget model from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania showed the bill would initially — slightly — add to inflation.
“I understand the difference of opinion,” Manchin said. “We’re basically investing in reliable energy, making sure that we use our fossil fuels cleaner than anyplace else in the world. But we’re basically aggressively producing more energy to reduce the prices of gasoline and energy costs at your house and everywhere else. And basically, we’ve invested in new technologies to bring more manufacturing back, such as batteries … So all of this, they’re not factoring any of that in.”
Manchin, one of the Democratic Party’s most conservative lawmakers, has previously declined to answer questions over his potential support for Biden in 2024.
Karl asked for clarity on Manchin’s view, noting it was a “simple question.”
Manchin said he wasn’t “getting involved that.”
“Everybody’s worried about the election. That’s the problem. It’s the 2022 election, 2024 election. I’m not getting involved in that,” Manchin said, adding, “I’m not getting into the 2022 or 2024. Whoever is the president, that’s my president. Joe Biden is my president right now.”
“You can’t even rule out voting for a Republican for president?” Karl asked
“I’m not getting into the 2024 election,” Manchin responded.
His comments come amid continued speculation over whether Biden will run for reelection in two years given political challenges such as stubbornly high inflation, which helped push his approval rating down into the 30s, according to FiveThirtyEight. Democratic voters have said in some recent polls they want another 2024 nominee; Biden says he intends to run if he’s healthy.
Manchin did credit Biden with helping bless the deficit-reduction bill he negotiated with Schumer, D-N.Y.
Manchin also defended working on the bill in secret with Schumer after earlier negotiations faltered several times, with Manchin citing his concerns about the historic inflation.
“I understand all the frustration, and the reason for that, I don’t want them to go through that again. I didn’t know if we could get a deal. I did not know if we can come to an agreement. So why would I put people through this, all this drama? I’ve been through this for eight months. I tried. I kept trying,” Manchin said of the bill, which would pass through the budget reconciliation process requiring only 50 votes in the Senate.
Manchin rebuffed Republican senators who said they felt deceived by the surprise announcement last week that legislative text had been agreed to between Schumer and Manchin, maintaining he had consistently sought to find a deal with the rest of the Democratic caucus.
“They all knew where I was on that,” Manchin said.
(MESA, Arizona) — Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers may lose his Republican primary for an open state senate seat this week, after he testified to the Jan. 6 committee about the pressure campaign from former President Donald Trump and his associates to undo the presidential election results in the state.
Bowers has drawn the ire of the Arizona GOP, who censured him earlier this month, and of former President Trump. But he’s unapologetic about his congressional testimony and his decision not to overturn the Arizona’s results.
“If we want to base a party and an authority and move people to solve problems, you can’t base it on a lie. Ultimately, that falls apart,” he told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl in an exclusive interview at his home in Mesa, Arizona.
Bowers faces Trump-endorsed candidate David Fansworth in an Aug. 2 primary that makes Bowers the first Republican to face voters after testifying before the Jan. 6 committee.
“I’ve had people walk up and say, you know, just cold turkey, ‘I’m ashamed of you,'” he told Karl.
Bowers says he’s also been called a “traitor” and has been told that “the price of treason is hanging.”
In his June testimony, Bowers detailed several conversations with former President Trump and his then-personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, asking him to replace Arizona’s electors with ones who would say Trump won the 2020 election.
Biden won Arizona in 2020 by almost 11,000 votes.
“Did you ever consider going along with it?” Karl asked Bowers.
“I said, this is new to me. The idea of throwing out the election of the president is like, okay, so what part of Jupiter do I get to land on and colonize?” Bowers said.
Giuliani “never” provided any evidence to back up claims that thousands of dead people voted in Arizona, Bowers said.
“You asked [Giuliani] for evidence of fraud?” asked Karl.
“Over and over, and he said, ‘yes, yes.’ And he never gave us anything. No names, no data, nothing.”
Bowers, who is term-limited in the state house, previously said it would take a “miracle” for him to win his bid for state senate. He told Karl “the demographics of my race are heavily Trump.”
In an unusual move for a state legislature race, former President Trump has campaigned against Bowers in Arizona.
“Rusty Bowers, he’s a RINO [‘Republican in name only’] coward who participated against the Republican party in the totally partisan unselect committee of political thugs and hacks the other day, and disgraced himself, and he disgraced the state of Arizona,” he told a crowd in Prescott Valley, Arizona, on July 22.
In response, Bowers told Karl, “I have thought at times, someone born how he was, raised how he was — he has no idea what a hard life is, and what people have to go through in the real world. He has no idea what courage is, and the last place on Earth that I would want to do evil would be the state of Arizona.”
A fifth-generation Arizonan, Bowers has held state public office for 17 years. Bowers has, like other Republicans who have broken with the former President, faced harassment and threats.
“How do you explain the hold that he has, though, on, on Republicans, including a lot of Republican leaders right here in Arizona?” Karl asked Bowers.
“Well, those leaders in Arizona are an interesting group in and of themselves. They rule by thuggery and intimidation,” Bower said. “So, you know, they, they found a niche, they found a way and it’s fear. And people can use fear, demagogues like to use fears as a weapon. And they weaponize everything. That’s not leadership to me to use thuggery.”
After his testimony, Bowers faced criticism for telling a reporter that he would vote for Pres. Trump in 2024. He told Karl that’s absolutely not the case.
“So, just to clarify, you’re not supporting Trump again?” Karl asked.
“I’m not,” said Bowers. “My vote will never tarnish his name on a ballot.”
“You’re never again gonna vote for Donald Trump?” Karl reiterated.
“I’ll never vote for him,” Bowers replied. “But I won’t have to, because I think America’s tired. And there’s absolutely forceful, qualified, morally, defensible, and upright people. And that’s what I want. That’s what I want in my party. And that’s what I want to see.”
When asked if former President Trump could ever be trusted in a position of authority again, Bowers said, “I would certainly hope not. I certainly don’t trust that authority that he would exercise.”
Bowers echoed the words of Jan. 6 House committee vice chair, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who was one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump after the Capitol riot.
“Liz also said that ‘the reality that we face today as Republicans is we have to choose to be loyal to Donald Trump, or to be loyal to the Constitution.’ And you can’t be both,” Karl said.
“I don’t see a question at all there. No question. The Constitution was designed to last and be the light of freedom to the whole world. That’s not a legacy that I would want to play with,” said Bowers.
Bowers also told Karl he hasn’t been contacted by the Justice Department, which is conducting its own investigation into the Capitol attack, but would cooperate if asked to do so.
“I have nothing to hide and I want to tell the truth,” he said.
(SEOUL, South Korea) — A unicorn start-up company based in South Korea is offering office spaces for rent for companies wanting to go completely paperless and relocate to a more sustainable and affordable space—the metaverse.
Zigbang launched the virtual office program ‘Soma’ in May. Inside this metaverse known as the ‘Soma World’ stands the main building for working, a convention center that can accommodate up to 3,000 people, a networking hub, and the Zigbang headquarters. As the physical restraints of an offline workspace are gone, employees who work for an office inside the Soma can log in from any city or country with an internet connection.
“[Working inside Soma] is basically like meeting in the real world, but actually virtual. So there’s the convenience of being far apart but still being together,” David Kim, Business development manager of Soma, told ABC News.
More than 2,000 people work inside the PropTech Tower, a 30-story building leased to 20 global and domestic companies. Users can work in their office with their colleagues, spend time in a shared lounge to network with other companies, or even take a virtual stroll by the deck.
Zigbang is not the only company investing in the futuristic working environment. Tech giants Meta and Microsoft are working on future workspaces using Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality technology. Online world pioneers like Teamflow and Gather also provide a means of work calls and work discussions in the virtual space.
But Zigbang says Soma has an edge on the rivals by offering the most realistic office setting possible for its users. While getting rid of the physical restraints of commuting to work, Soma offers a working environment that makes everyone feel engaged. Avatars would have their walk to office spaces rather than jumping from room to room with a single click. Instead of sending instant chats, employees casually talk to each other with their own voices as they would in an actual office.
“Soma also has great strength in ESG management, a recent global issue. It can greatly help protect the environment by implementing a paperless working environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from commuting,” Sunwoong Lyuh, Zigbang’s Vice President, explained to ABC News.
Zigbang, sponsored and partially funded by South Korea’s Ministry of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Startups, has also become an example as part of the government’s initiative to support beginning enterprises to meet ESG goals set by the United Nations.
“A company based in the metaverse dramatically reduces the carbon footprint of a workplace that may include everything from transportation used during the commute to work to office supplies like pen and paper in everyday office life,” the Ministry of Environment’s global media spokesperson Minjo Chun told ABC News.
As of now, companies that are based inside Soma are not obliged to pay rent or maintenance fees to Zigbang.
“Soma is not charging any rent to the companies leasing space inside the Soma world,” Lyuh told ABC News. “Our focus is on providing the new working experience of ‘face-to-face remote work’ to as many companies as possible.”
ABC News’ Eunseo Nam and Hyerim Lee contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — The story of a 10-year-old rape victim traveling from Ohio to Indiana to receive abortion care captured headlines earlier this month, illustrating what impact the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe V. Wade, a landmark decision which established a federal right to abortion, has had on access to abortion for people around the country.
While many attempted to discredit reporting surrounding the case, the identity of the suspected rapist was ultimately revealed when charges were filed against him. But still, it remained unclear how common abortions are among young people, especially minors.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health policy research organization, there were 4,460 pregnancies among people ages 14 and younger in 2017. The institute estimates that around half of those pregnancies, 1,960, ended in abortion.
The institute gathers its data by conducting a census of all known abortion providers in the U.S. every few years, but its most recent publicly released national data is from 2017.
While data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2019 is more recent, the data is incomplete as not all states mandate reporting from all their health facilities and not all states report their data to the agency, Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a researcher at Guttmacher, told ABC News.
Lauren Ralph, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, told ABC News in an interview that she believes the CDC’s abortion data is an underestimate by about 1/3.
Abortions in minors represent about 4% of all abortions in the U.S. every year, Ralph said, speaking of data gathered by the Guttmacher Institute.
The Guttmacher data shows that abortions among people between the ages of 15 and 17 account for 3.4% of abortions in the U.S and abortions among people under the age of 15 account for 0.2% of abortions in the U.S.
Ralph estimates that there are around 1,800 abortions in people under the age of 15 in the U.S. every year.
An abortion provider in Indiana told ABC News in an interview that it is relatively common to see patients who are minors.
“These patients exist, this was not a one off type of situation. Instead, this is something that every abortion provider has seen and has taken care of, and has experience with,” Katie McHugh, an abortion provider in Indiana said.
McHugh works at three abortion clinics, and said just one of those clinics saw 400 patients last month. She said the two other clinics each see between 300 and 350 patients, per month.
“It is certainly not the majority of the cases that I take care of but, when I queried my clinics where I work, we estimated that between 3 and 5% of our patients are minors,” McHugh said, calling it a rough estimate of the number of minors they see.
McHugh said about half or so of those patients report that the pregnancies were as a result of rape.
McHugh’s most recent case of a young girl was a pre-teen patient around the age of 12 or 13, who she was able to provide abortion care.
Before the Supreme Court ruling, McHugh said she had begun seeing some patients from Kentucky, where some abortion restrictions limiting access to abortion were being put in place. But, since the Supreme Court ruling, McHugh said more than half of the patients she has seen are from Kentucky and Ohio.
She also said she has been seeing a fewer number of patients coming from as far away as Alabama, Texas, Tennessee and Oklahoma.
“We’ve seen more people have younger ages, but we’ve just seen more people in general,” McHugh said, speaking of patients she has seen after Roe was overturned.
But even before the Supreme Court decision, experts said minors faced more barriers to abortions than adults.
Some states, including Indiana, have laws requiring minors, generally people under the age of 18, to get legal consent from their parents to get an abortion, or go through judicial bypass and get a judge to sign off on getting the procedure.
According to Guttmacher, 36 states require parental involvement, either parental consent or parental notification, in a minor’s decision to get an abortion and 21 states require parental consent.
“The system is so challenging to navigate and to try to do so as a minor who can’t drive themselves, who can’t pay for things themselves, because they’re too young to legally work and yet, they’re having to face these kinds of major health care decisions on their own, is so tragic to see,” McHugh said.
McHugh said the judicial bypass system in Indiana runs relatively smoothly in the state, but said it is designed to be “cumbersome” and to “place burden on patients.”
“It works very well to do those things where it puts up lots of barriers, especially for minors and for the very young minors,” McHugh said.
“Because of legal requirements to either have parental consent, or to go through the court system, to prove to a judge that the person is competent enough to make a decision like this on their own, there is a significant delay in care,” she added.
McHugh called the system “ridiculous,” saying that delaying care could possibly increase a patient’s risk for more complicated abortion care depending on what stage of the pregnancy they are in.
In young girls, carrying a pregnancy to term is riskier than getting an abortion, when compared with adults, McHugh said.
“When we look at studies, [young patients are] at a higher risk of developing medical problems like diabetes and high blood pressure. They’re at a much higher risk, especially in very young patients, of needing a C-section, simply because their bones and their joints are not developed enough to accommodate a vaginal birth,” McHugh said.
C-sections also come with their own risks, including the possibility that the patients would need the procedure again in the future, McHugh said.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden has tested positive again for COVID-19, according to a letter from White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor.
O’Connor said Biden’s antigen test came back positive late Saturday morning after he tested negative Tuesday evening, Wednesday morning, Thursday morning and Friday morning.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Health officials have warned since the beginning of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout that areas with lower inoculation rates are at greater risk of higher cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
In fact, studies have shown areas with low vaccination rates had as many as 2.4 more new COVID-19 infections per 100,000 people compared to areas with high vaccination rates.
But states — and counties — with little vaccine uptake are not just facing the cost of more severe complications from the virus.
There’s also the cost to the healthcare system with staff needing to call out if they get infected and not able to serve other patients due to a surge of COVID-19-related admissions.
Families living in low vaccinated areas may also suffer a cost. This could mean adults have to miss work, and potentially lose wages, because they or their children test positive for COVID. Children who also have to miss school can fall behind on their lessons.
“I think most people want to make an informed decision [about vaccination] and they have a hard time identifying the information that describes the real situation,” Dr. Jennifer Dillaha, the Arkansas Department of Health’s director for immunizations, told ABC News. “I know it’s possible for people to downplay the seriousness of the illness that they or their family members or their community could experience.”
The strain on the healthcare system
In the U.S., 67.2% of the population is fully vaccinated as of Friday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the rates between states vary starkly.
Some states have broken the 80% mark. Others have barely hit 55%, data shows.
As of Friday, in Arkansas, only 55.3% of residents are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data. Dillaha said low rates put a strain on hospitals, especially during surges.
“We did see that with both the delta and the omicron surges that we had in our state, the hospitals had to take steps to increase staffing so they could take care of more people who needed hospitalization,” she said. “And it made it difficult for people who needed hospitalization, for other reasons that were not related to COVID, to get a hospital bed.”
A similar situation existed in Alabama, where only 51.9% of the population is fully vaccinated, as of Friday.
“What we saw in our hospitals is an inability to deliver routine care,” Dr. Wes Stubblefield, district medical officer for the Alabama Department of Public Health, told ABC News. “During the height of some of these pandemic peaks, we saw hospitals that were closing elective orthopedic, outpatient surgeries, elective screening procedures, other things like that, that just couldn’t be done because of the sheer volume of patients that were there.”
Health officials say patients missing preventive care visits, general medical appointments, elective surgeries, or other care could increase the risk of an illness worsening or of death from conditions that were otherwise preventable or treatable.
The CDC estimates since the pandemic began there have been 1.1 million excess deaths, or deaths that exceed the numbers of people expected to die over the same period.
Additionally, hospital costs increased because administrators had to pay their staff higher wages, according to the health departments.
Because of staffing shortages — particularly of nurses — whether because there were not enough nurses to treat the number of COVID-19 hospitalized patients or because nurses fell ill themselves and there were not enough to cover shifts, many hospitals relied on traveling nurses.
Dillaha said that because states were competing for traveling nurses, Arkansas hospitals were offering higher wages to incentivize them to work there. She said this created a disparity between the wages of traveling nurses and the full-time staff nurses that had to be addressed.
“The hospitals had to address that by increasing the amount they paid for people who did not travel in order to encourage them to stay on the job,” she said.
Stubblefield said Alabama hospitals that had trouble paying staff competitive wages after paying high wages for nursing staff saw many people resign from their jobs.
“Having to pay very high rates for temporary nursing staff, we’ve seen turnover in the hospitals,” he said.
The cost to families
Doctors also stressed that families living in areas with low vaccination rates can suffer a cost — financially and emotionally.
Adults who contract the virus are forced to miss work, which can result in lost wages for those who are paid hourly and are not salaried.
“Where I live, we have a fair number of jobs where they really don’t have a lot of capacity to miss work,” Stubblefield said. “These jobs are very hard to come by. They pay relatively well for that kind of a job, but then they don’t get a lot of time off and getting sick can be very difficult for them.”
If they identify as one of the one in five Americans who develop long COVID, which is when symptoms last more than four weeks after recovering, that can also result in lost wages from missing time off work.
“If you have persistent symptoms over a long period of time, which makes it difficult or impossible for them to go back to work or go back to school, that is a hardship for families as well,” Dillaha said.
Parents may also be forced to miss work if they have a child who gets sick and can’t attend school or daycare, or if their classroom or school closes due to an outbreak and they must switch to remote learning.
To drive up vaccination rates — and prevent as many days lost of school and work as possible — Stubblefield said it’s important to try to have individual conversations with those who are vaccine hesitant, something he did as a pediatrician for 14 years before joining the health department less than a year ago.
“There’s a lot to be said about not trying to get into a long debate,” he said. “The main thing is we would talk about our own personal experience, how we would do this for our own families, and we wouldn’t do anything, or suggest or recommend anything, that we wouldn’t recommend for ourselves or our own families.”
He continued, “Hopefully they would have a relationship with us so that we could have a conversation, a civil conversation, and we could come to an agreement and whether that agreement is to reconsider [vaccination] at the next visit or then to make that decision [to vaccinate] and move forward.”
