do you think it could offer unvaccinated a false hope or would it give them an excuse not to get vaccinated? it really is one of those things. i think we in the united states became very obsessed with just the death count, unfortunately, and it is unfortunate. when we think about 700,000 people dying, we haven t had that much death as far as a.i.d.s. in the united states since the 1980s and this happened within 18 months but when we talk about covid-19, there are more consequences than just hospitalization and death, and it comes in the form of long covid, of which we re estimating 1 in every 3, 1 in every 4 people who become infected with covid-19 will have long standing, at least six months to a year, of permanent organ dysfunction, and what does that do to you body? we know that viruses have been linked in the past to different forms of cancers. will we see that covid-19 also is linked to cancers like hpv? we know that hpv virus is linked to cancer. we know that we have e.d.d. vir
united states of america died. that s 1 in every 34 seconds and if you think about an average nba game, lebron james, that was 265 americans who died during that 2.5 hours that we were playing basketball. that s the weight of what this hesitation can cost and if you re thinking about the stapled center, 700,000 americans now dead, well, the staples center holds 19,000 people. fill it up 37 times with women, men, children, old, young, poor, rich, republican, democrat, fill it up 37 times and that s the number of people that have now died from covid-19. it is not worth the hesitation. we have to be very, very confident when we tell people that we have to take the vaccine and do what we can do to mitigate the spread. dr. ebony hilton, that analogy, pretty incredible about the staples center. thank you so much. if you want to know what may have motivated some haitian migrants to risk their very lives to come to this country,
today a staggering new figure on the toll coronavirus has taken on americans. more than 700,000 people have died from covid here in the u.s. nearly 100,000 people passed away since mid-june, months after vaccines were available to adults. joining me is dr. ebony hilton, associate profess in anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the university of virginia. doctor, that is a staggering statement i just had to say about those who died, right? it s since the vaccine were available. new york times, in fact, reporting it. people who died in the last three and a half months, they were concentrated in the south. that is a region that has certainly lagged in vaccinations and in august, every age group under 55 had its highest death toll of the pandemic. what is your reaction to this? why is the south being hit so hard? why are younger people dying? the reaction is, it s very sad. because what we know is that when we had these numbers of
4,000 or 2,000 people dying a day back in the wintertime, we didn t really have a choice. we didn t have a vaccine. but now we do and we see the consequences of politics. we see the consequences of misinformation. that is truly hitting the south in a way that i anticipated this back in march of 2020 when i said what happens in new york city, new york city, you have 62 hospitals. in the deep south, like south carolina, there are literally 8 counties without a single hospital. we cannot afford to have a massive uprising of people getting infected and what we see the consequences of that is that people die and it truly is unfortunate. well, here s something that may be a glimmer of hope, certainly, the drug maker, merck, says its experimental pill for people with covid reduced hospitalizations and deaths by about half. mercking on tested on unvaccinated individuals but fda regulators may now consider authorizing it for people with breakthrough covid symptoms and in your mind, how promis
vaccinated earlier this month and hopefully will get vaccinated for covid at halloween and me being a nice mom not wanting them to get two shots in one day if i can avoid it. dr. ungerleider, i want to ask you a question here. right now nearly 183 million americans, fully vaccinated, but there are rising concerns about the breakthrough cases breakthrough cases like we talked about apparently at the view. this is michael asking how often does a person who has a breakthrough covid infection have long-term symptoms? we ve seen the infection in unvaccinated individuals is 30% of those individuals continuing to have long haul covid symptoms. a small israeli study recently showed evidence that breakthrough infections could lead to long covid symptoms although this was a small study and a larger british one found