Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

I'll show you the numbers, but first, when you thought the CDC's numbers proved a point you made, you had no problem citing them yourself. This was just eight day days ago.

Also, I never disputed that a disproportionate number of deaths would occur among the elderly and those with comorbidities. That's a strawman.

But even accounting for age using age-adjusted rates, the story remains the same:

Covid Deaths
Unvaxxed: 69% (184,999)
Vaxxed: 31% (82,531)

Percent of Population
Unvaxxed: 26% (51m)
Vaxxed: 74% (143m)
*Numbers are rounded

Data available here

Dataset covers April 2021 through August 2022 (last updated earlier this year), from 31 jurisdictions, comprising nearly 75% of the US population. This includes from Florida.

And before you accuse me of being deceitful--which I'm not--the numbers are not the full population of deaths or of vaxxed/unvaxxed status, but what's been reported.

The Crude IRR ("Incident Rate Ratios") and Age-Adjusted rates tell the same story (and similar to the UK!) that despite from March and August 2022, more absolute deaths occurred among the vaxxed compared to unvaxxed, rates of death among unvaxxed compared to vaxxed were far higher. This a conventional (read: proper) interpretation of data that anyone who understands a lick about statistics would not ever take issue with.

 

You would have to be an absolute fool to believe 2/3rds of the people who have died since April of 2021 were unvaccinated.

The cdc says to jab a healthy 6 month old apparently lied and makes this claim? But it is a total lie.

The few of you all really need to start looking at reality and ask why the cdc and government lied to you.

 

I think you just believe what the cdc says. Which is a problem. They say to jab a healthy 6 month old.

The US does not provide the hard numbers like the UK. If you think we somehow are completely the opposite of the UK…you are naive imo. You know that older people with comorbidities die with Covid. Regardless of vaccination status. Our government has $#!7 data. And while that could be a whole different conversation. There is no way in heck 2/3rds of our Covid related deaths were unvaccinated. If that were the case there would have been a massive rush of young healthy people to get the shot as it would mean that group was dying. And that group was not dying compared to the group that is over 90% vaccinated.

Do you really think the low risk group that we know is not dying from the disease is the main group dying?

 

We have almost 95% of the over 65 population vaccinated. Most with NI as well at this point. A good chuck with a booster or two/three/four/five depending how much fear they live in lol. And that has been that way for a while. And you think 2/3rds of the population is dying unvaccinated?!?!?!

LOL!!!

 

If the following seems exceedingly stupid to you, understand that it was entirely consistent with way that ‘Covid deaths’ were codified, especially at the height of panic, the headlong determination to ascribe any and all deaths to Covid. This from the intrepid Jennifer Haskins Cabrera, investigative reporter for the Alachua Chronicle. Read and marvel …

“Another case at Shands, a 35-year-old male, was listed as a Dade County death from COVID-19:
“[The decedent] was working on the roof of a home in Middleburg on 5/28. It started to rain and the decedent and his coworkers stopped working. Bystanders in the neighborhood and the workers on the roof observed a flash of lighting and heard a loud explosion, and several workers were thrown off of the roof. Immediately following the lighting strike, a worker on the roof observed the decedent collapse, fall off of the roof, and land facedown on grass. The decedent’s muscles were reported to be contracted and shaking, and caused the decedent’s body to roll over onto his backside. It was also reported by the workers that the decedent’s eyeballs were rolled back into his skull. Bystanders in the neighborhood observed the decedent on the ground, called 911, and started CPR until EMS arrived on scene. Following the lightning strike, the workers observed a large hole on the roof that appeared burnt. According to medical records, the decedent was transported via EMS to Orange Park Medical Center and was found to have spinal fractures with spinal cord transection, a skull base fracture, and pulmonary contusions. He was transferred on the same day to UF Health Shands Hospital for further management and was admitted to the surgical intensive care unit on mechanical ventilation. He tested positive for the COVID-19 virus on 5/29 and was transferred to the medical intensive care unit. In addition to acute hypoxic respiratory failure and neurogenic shock, he was found to have a subarachnoid hemorrhage, bilateral pulmonary contusions, C3 & C7 spinous process fractures, complete T4 spinal cord transection, a skull base fracture. Trauma surgery, neurosurgery, and neurocritical care continued to follow the decedent and the decedent’s condition did not improve. Examinations were consistent with severe hypoxic brain injury and his prognosis was poor. The decedent’s family elected to transition to full comfort measures on 6/9 and he was pronounced dead on 6/9.”

 

I posted hard data. And the conclusions anyone with half a brain would make from the data. Age adjusted, vaccinated are dying at lower rates from COVID than the unvaccinated.

In April, 2021, only about 40% of the UK population had been fully vaccinated. And like in the US, the elderly were among the first to get the jab. By May, 2021, the number was closer to 60%. Using a one month snapshot to tell an entire story is poor reporting. Over time, as more of the UK were fully vaccinated, death rates went down, and again, death rates for the unvaccinated were higher.

Which is exactly what the raw numbers are saying when you look at age and vaccination rates. And not just the UK. But every country.

 

Stop pivoting toward their recommendations. Maybe try reading what I wrote just a little more carefully. Anyway, I'll try to point-by-point your comment, though not in order.

1. The CDC's numbers are hard numbers. Now, it might be that the UK is able to collect more of data from their local jurisdictions given their different system (or maybe not, I don't know)...but both are hard numbers and both are in effect samples.

1a. Although there are differences in US and UK trends, both actually show an important similarity. Death rates for unvaxxed were higher than for vaxxed despite absolute number of deaths being higher for vaxxed than unvaxxed later on in the pandemic.
(You really need to understand this distinction and why it's important otherwise you'll continue flailing about making bad arguments based on the stats).

2. Literally no one has disputed that older people and those with comorbidities have died at higher rates. You've never seen me argue against it. It's why data include age-adjusted rates.

3. Again with the CDC data is poop? So...again...you had no problem citing CDC data when it suited you. Funny thing is that it could be that one data set isn't a very good one while another is, from the same organization. But simply calling it all poop makes no sense. That is not a valid way to determine the merit of the data.

4. That said, no data are perfect.

5. If there was no way that 2/3rds of deaths were unvaccinated, provide data that shows otherwise.

 

The CDC is a national embarrassment and public health beclowned itself.

 

It does not matter. The elderly died. Especially with comorbidities. Don’t lie and say the majority of deaths were unvaccinated when the majority were vaccinate. And it was a massive majority of vaccinated at that.

 

Tell me Mutz…who are the vast majority of people that died with Covid?

Then tell me of that group how many were vaccinated by say December of 2021 (we know it was very high in the months leading to Dec 2021 hence the UK numbers)?

Now tell me you believe that 2/3rds of those who died after April of 2021 with Covid were unvaccinated. I just cannot believe you honestly believe such a ridiculous statement. Maybe you do. I know you don’t believe a healthy 6 month old should be jabbed (at least I am pretty confident there). But really. Use some common sense. The UK data is spelled out. Sure we are two different countries. There is no way 2/3rds of deaths were unvaccinated since April 2021!

 

Let's go back to the Swiss data. Every age cohort 20 and older showed higher COVID mortality rate among the unvaccinated. So does the UK data. And the US data. And all data across the globe.

 

Except in Qland.

 

Since April 2021 are the vast majority who died with Covid vaccinated or unvaccinated?

Answer honestly!

 

I'll put it like this. I think you will not allow yourself to step back and look at this from an objective standpoint. I think you're caught up in the antivax, govt is only lying problem. Don't mean it as an insult, just that I don't know how else to get you to see what so many others here see clearly, which is frustrating to me not in the I want to win the argument sorta way, but because I've been teaching methods and stats for two decades, so I can't help but notice glaring errors in reasoning about and/or interpreting numbers.

Take the UK data.

It's true, read that again, it's true, based on their data, more vaxxed have died than unvaxxed.
See, I am agreeing with you on that point. That is what my calculations show, if they're correct.
And that number seems to be considerably more, 7x as many.

Scary large, right? On the surface, it looks that way

...but alas, looks can be deceiving.

It's not enough to just look at the counts because those counts are couched within different populations (not unlike why we adjust for age!). Dig into those numbers and you'll see that age-adjusted rates (what the UK calls ASMR) tell us a very different story--that unvaxxed have a higher rate of deaths...despite fewer unvaxxed actually dying.

And they use rates (again, also adjusting for age) because the population size difference needs to be standardized to account for the vastly different sizes in vaxxed vs unvaxxed populations, and they adjust for age because we know covid disproportionately affects older people.

And this is why you see UK publishing reports that focus on rates, not counts. It's not to hide the difference, it's because those counts can be very misleading.

 

Does Florida have the third most covid deaths in the country?

 

Vaccinated. But then, vaccination rates for those 60 and older are in the 90% plus rate. And yes, a vaccinated senior is at higher risk than an unvaccinated 20 something.

But let's look at 20 somethings. Who has a higher COVID mortality rate among 20 somethings? Unvaccinated or vaccinated? Be honest. Same question for 30 somethings, 40 somethings, and 50 somethings too.

This is why age adjusted data is important. We're not comparing a vaccinated octogenarian with an unvaccinated 20 something. We should compare vaccinated versus unvaccinated 20 somethings.

 

I understand the difference in age adjusted rates. And it does not mean much when it comes to Covid. It has been used to scare groups of people into unnecessarily taking a drug they did not need.

For at least a year and a half over 90% of those dying with Covid have been full vaccinated. Most probably had some form or NI as well. It was right around the start of 2022 when it became a constant over 90%. It was over 50% by June of 2021 (two months after April) that were fully vaccinated! Why? Because the high risk group was a majority that was vaccinated by then.

At the beginning I think some got a small therapeutic help from the shot. I thought it was worth the risk benefit for the high risk groups in the beginning. Now I think I was wrong for believing that. But I own that I supported it early for high risk groups.

If you want to know why so many never took the shot. They heard the BS like 2/3rds of those who died since April of 2021 were unvaccinated. I don’t mean to keep beating this claim by you. But in 2021 it was the lie about 95% of those in the hospital were unvaccinated. That was pure nonsense. As we saw with the UK data. Most people that were dying with Covid were vaccinated. You are not going to tell me that a majority hospitalized were unvaccinated when the majority dying are vaccinated.

I know you feel strongly that the shot was beneficial to you. That is fine. But this has been the absolute biggest boondoggle in the history of medicine what they did. They did not follow science. They did not follow medicine. They peddled a one size fits all approach that was a failure and has caused generational damage to medicine and the trust people have in it. Doctors deserve better than the fools in public health that let them down and continue to push the antithesis of medicine. These idiots in public health recommend a healthy 6 month old take these shots still. Big pharma on banks away in the process.

 

Florida is the third largest state in the country.

And guess what…the majority dying with Covid in Florida since April 2021 were fully vaccinated. It is too bad our country can’t put the data together to show it. But I can assure you that is the case based on almost 95% of the country being full vaccinated over 65.

 

So you do see why rates are more important than counts when working with groups of different sizes, good. Now apply that thinking to vaccination status and deaths.

 

It's this type of statement that you make that would be baffling if I didn't know the point from where you started.

You have pounded the drum about older people (who are thus likely to be suffering multiple comorbidities) dying of covid. Adjusting for age is one of those things that addresses this issue.

Now you're saying it's just being used to scare people?

BTW, I should add that the CDC and UK data also not only provide age-adjusted data, they provide data grouped by age for anyone who wants to drill down further.

I noticed that you responded to @philnotfil about Florida being the third largest state.

What are you implying in that response if not that population size matters?

...and thus that rates matter.

I don't know if you truly believed that at the beginning. But I suspect you're basing your belief that they don't work because you're looking at absolute numbers and not rates.

I don't know why you keep beating it either. You wont's accept (some) CDC data, but otoh, some you will. But the question is whether there is any evidence that the data are somehow fraudulent or fatally corrupted in some way (beyond known limitations)?

The 2/3rds comment came from the data. If you (or anyone else) thinks the it is bs, all I can say is download the data and run the numbers and see for yourself.

Please go back to the UK data and look at the rates. They provide a much better starting point in which to reason about this issue. It's why in their reports, the UK compares rates and not absolute numbers. Absolute numbers (i.e. raw count data), while true, are misleading.

This is not about what I feel was beneficial for me or not. It's about making sense of data and on that, they are clear in showing considerable rate differences between vaxxed and unvaxxed.

FWIW, I don't take issue w/you having concerns about CDC recs or about data collection and def not about objecting to infants getting vaccinated. I get the concern and hesitancy. Same time, raging about the CDC reccing it, seems way off the rails and histrionical, if I'm being honest.