?A terrible price?: As US mourns 1 million COVID deaths, preventable losses among unvaccinated a major regret

In early May, as it pushed for Congress to fund the battle against the virus, the Biden administration warned that up to 100 million Americans could get infected in the fall and winter.Despite that, vaccine hesitancy remains a major issue.Dr. Eric Cioe-Peña, director of Global Health at Northwell Health, said he has encountered it frequently while doing clinical work in Long Island, New York, hearing countless “heartbreaking stories of people learning too late what a vaccine-preventable disease this is."He said often patients about to go on a ventilator ask if vaccination would help, and he explains the shots take time to prime the body to fight the virus before an infection. Those 12 and older who were not inoculated were 20 times more likely to die of the disease than boosted Americans.Anastas, 52, said her mother “was big into the politics of COVID,” and her views were colored by what she heard on Fox News and read on Facebook, frequent sources of vaccine misinformation. As her condition deteriorated, DuBay-Crupi told her daughter she should have listened and gotten vaccinated.FREE AT LAST: Shanghai residents now allowed outside as COVID-19 lockdown restrictions easeHer mother’s death left Anastas shocked and frustrated, and she reached out to COVID Survivors for Change – a community of people impacted by the disease – to help her cope with the loss.“It wasn’t just that my mom passed away at 72," Anastas said. “If he had just stayed out of the issue, we would have done much better, but he poisoned the well in how he approached it, diminishing how important this pandemic was during the first five months."During that initial phase of the pandemic, workers who could not perform their jobs remotely – often people of color such as the legions of immigrants employed in the meatpacking industry – were frequently exposed to the virus when vaccines were not available.A Kaiser Family Foundation report that adjusted for age found that, as of Nov. 30, 2020, Hispanic, Black and Native American people were nearly three times more likely to die of COVID-19 and four times as likely to get hospitalized as their white counterparts. “The reason they don’t have health care is because the United States doesn’t have a philosophy of access to health care as a human right, and we paid a terrible price for that during this pandemic.”Underserved communities regardless of skin color or ethnicity are the focus of CORE – Community Organized Relief Effort – a nonprofit that has established vaccination sites in several parts of the nation, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Oakland, California, the Navajo Nation and much of Georgia.MIXING IT UP: Those who got J&J;'s COVID-19 vaccine should seriously consider a Pfizer or Moderna booster, experts sayAnn Lee, CEO of CORE, said its workers found an erosion of trust in the message about vaccines, and opposition was so strong that some had stones thrown at them. Even if they haven't resulted in a major surge, many parts of the country are reporting increased infection rates, sending a warning not to get complacent about COVID-19, especially at a time when mitigation measures like mask mandates have been largely dropped.Partly to prevent another wave fueled by BA.2, the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC in late March authorized a fourth vaccine shot, or second booster, for everyone age 50 and older.“Are things better?