A Tale of Two Societies

[RiverDog]

Time for a new Covid thread. I read an interesting article in the Washington Post about how if you factor out those that have been vaccinated, that the pandemic is raging as bad as ever amongst those that are unvaccinated:

The rosy national figures showing declining case numbers led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to loosen mask recommendations two weeks ago and President Biden to advise people to take off their masks and smile.

But adjustments for vaccinations show the rate among susceptible, unvaccinated people is 73 percent higher than the standard figures being publicized. With that adjustment, the national death rate is roughly the same as it was two months ago and is barely inching down. The adjusted hospitalization rate is as high as it was three months ago.

The adjusted rates in several states show the pandemic is spreading as fast among the unvaccinated as it did during the winter surge. Maine, Colorado, Rhode Island and Washington state all have covid-19 case spikes among the unvaccinated, with adjusted rates about double the adjusted national rate. The adjusted rates of Wyoming, West Virginia, Oregon, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania are slightly lower than the highest states.

Unvaccinated young adults in Maryland have the same infection rate as they had in the January surge, according to a state analysis. Even worse, the risk of hospitalization among the infected has more than doubled, possibly because of widespread coronavirus variants, said Ted Delbridge, executive director of the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems.

Washington state has been publicizing the extreme threat of hospitalization for unvaccinated people. It said unvaccinated seniors are 11 times as likely to get hospitalized than seniors who got the shot. For unvaccinated people age 45 to 64, the chance of covid-19 hospitalization is 18 times higher.

Shah, the (WA) state secretary of health, worries people are being left behind while others feel the pandemic is past.

“I hope this does not become a tale of two societies,” he said. “The people who are vaccinated and are protected can resume their lives, taking off their masks.

“The people who are not vaccinated are the ones who are not wearing a mask or washing their hands. Those are the very people who often times will socialize and be around similar like-minded people. You’re going to have the pandemic continue in those clusters.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/i ... ed-people/

To be fair, the methodology has some problems. For one, they are making the assumption that 85% of all Covid cases are people that are unvaccinated. There is no statistic available that details what an infected or hospitalized person's vaccination status is, and hospitals and providers are not allowed to disclose it. Nevertheless, the fact that there's been a dramatic decline in infections and hospitalizations in places like Israel, England, and now the US, where over half the population is vaccinated, the 90+% efficacy claim is pretty much an accepted fact.