Thinking Citizen Blog — Police Vaccination Rates, Covid Deaths, and Suicides
Thinking Citizen Blog — Thursday is Health, Health Care, Health Insurance and Global Health Policy Day
Today’s Topic: Police Vaccination Rates, Covid Deaths, and Suicides
Last month there was an article in the Washington Post about an “epidemic” of police suicides. Last week, an article in the Boston Globe about the high rate of police Covid deaths as a result of low vaccination rates. Today a few details. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
THE POLICE SUICIDE “EPIDEMIC” — comparisons (second link)
1. In the first half of 2021, 89 officers nationwide committed suicide.
2. That compares with 71 Covid deaths and 38 from traffic accidents
3. 28 were killed by gunfire in line of duty.
NB: The suicides are not counted in the “line of duty” death statistics.
COMPARATIVELY LOW VACCINATION RATES — first link
1. Los Angeles Policy Department as of Aug 31: 51%
2. NYC as of Aug 24 (estimated): 47%.
3. Prison staff nationally: less than 50% (estimated)
DANGERS: welfare checks, arrests, jails (see third link)
1. “Every single day, police officers perform thousands of welfare checks in the homes of those who are elderly, sick, or disabled — people who are especially vulnerable to COVID-19.”
2. “They also arrest thousands of people — many unvaccinated — whom they then load into their police cars, typically process in local stations or lockups, and then transport in groups via vans to jails.”
3. “Once at jails, people wait in crowds indoors, in many cases caged tightly together in bullpens, to be processed and admitted to cellblocks where they then spend their days and nights in close proximity to others in poorly ventilated spaces.”
NB: “These conditions make epidemic control all but impossible. Indeed, one of the highest-known rates of coronavirus transmission documented anywhere in the world was observed in a U.S. jail.”
Perspective | Death by suicide among police is a quiet epidemic. It needs to be acknowledged.
For the last three years of posts organized by theme:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the most interesting thing you learned in the last week related to health, health care or health care policy — the ethics, economics, politics, history…. Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to health are or health care policy that the rest of us may have missed. Or just some random health-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your mind something really important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that matters.
