With the current news articles asking, “What will it take to get people vaccinated”, I thought now would be a good time to readdress this topic. It is obvious from reading the articles on main stream media, that they are beating the drum to get to 100% vaccination. One article stated that vaccinations have dropped from a high of 3.2 million doses per day to a trickle at just 2.1 million doses per day. My first question is when does 2.1 million doses a day count as a trickle. But yes, it does show a decrease in demand. So what will it take to get those who are waiting, to act?
Attempts to bribe people to get the vaccine will not work. Those who are skeptical will only be more skeptical if you start bribing them. Vaccine passports will not work. Again, those who are skeptical will see the push as evidence that the vaccine is not good for them. Assuming that these people are basing their decisions on what many consider to be conspiracy theories, these methods will just be seen as proof that the conspiracy exists. So what will work?
Well, how about some evidence that the vaccine works? Sure, we have the research paid for and administered by the vaccine makers themselves that show a 90 to 95% effective rate. But some of us see a possibility that these studies may have been biased. I know, hard to believe that a company and it’s employees would have any bias while administering a study that would mean a lot of profit for them if the study shows their vaccine to be safe and effective. But still, I want to see some other evidence that the vaccine is stopping the virus. Any evidence would do. And right now, I am looking at the CDC’s own data at https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home in an attempt to find that evidence.
So what does the data say? I will start with the case and death rate data. The data is divided by age, sex, and ethnicity. The main point I want to make here, is that regardless of the division or individual grouping, the peak in cases occurred between 1-9 January. After that cases dropped precipitously until 20 February. Cases then leveled off, and slightly rose through 24 April. After that, cases drop quickly again, but there is reason to believe from the graphs that this is due to the data not being complete, rather than an actual drop. However, I will hope that the drop is true, as that would be a good sign. Deaths follow a similar pattern, however deaths do continue a slow decline between 2o February and 24 April, instead of a slight increase. But all demographics shared this same pattern, with magnitude being the main difference.
While that is my major point with the data, I would like to mention a few things that are highlighted by the divisions. The data is expressed per 100,000 population, so it is valid to compare the groupings. First, men and women have been affected very similarly with their plot lines often being undistinguishable from each other. I was kind of surprised that they only plot 2 sexes, and that nobody has complained about that. When looking at the plots by age, the case rate patterns are all very similar to each other. But when looking at the death rate plots, the 80+ age group is very dominant on the graph. You can tell that the 65-79 and 55-64 age groups follow a similar pattern, but on a much smaller scale. All the other age groups have lines that are so close to 0 that you cannot distinguish the line patterns on the graph. Finally, when looking at ethnicity, the common argument that certain races are being disproportionately affected does not seem valid.
Now lets turn our attention to the vaccination levels, looking at the three timeframes mentioned above. First week of January for a peak, 20 February for the bottom of the drop, and 24 April being the last data that seems to be complete. At the peak, about 1% of the population had 1 shot, and the percentage fully vaccinated was near 0%. By 20 February, those numbers were 12.9% and 5.5%. On 24 April, those numbers were 42 and 28 percent. This 500% increase in fully vaccinated people resulted in a slight rise in cases and only a slight decrease in deaths during that timeframe. When looking by age, the highest 2 age groups (65 and older) which account for the vast majority of deaths, were slightly below the average at the peak, but were up to 35 and 47 percent having a single shot with 11 and 18 percent being fully vaccinated by 20 February, At the April 24 mark, the fully vaccinated rate for both of those groups was slightly over 66%. Again, going from about 15% fully vaccinated to 66% fully vaccinated in the group with the majority of deaths showed only a minor decrease in the number of deaths.
Lets take a minute to summarize what this data means. While case and death trends have followed very similar curves for every demographic division, the vaccination trends have been very different for those demographics. And the case/death trends have leveled while vaccinations have increased dramatically. It is really not possible to draw any valid correlation between the case/death number trends and the vaccination trends. The closest you can come is to state that cases/deaths were higher before vaccination started that they are now. While correlation does not prove causation, a lack of correlation argues against any causation. Therefore, we can state at least that the CDC data does not show that the vaccine is causing a reduction in cases. Now, if vaccines are working at all, with the current rates of vaccination, we would expect to see at least discernable correlation between cases/deaths and vaccinations. In addition, I think we can all agree that if the CDC was going to distort the data, it would do so in a matter to provide correlation between cases/deaths and vaccination. So I would state that although we have not proven that the vaccine is not working, we have shown that the best evidence available does not indicate that the vaccine is working.
I will state one advantage that I have seen from the vaccine. It has proven to be at least a partial cure for one part of the pandemic. It is helping to cure the fear that has been instilled by the media during the last year. And in so doing, it opens up the possibility that the lockdowns and restrictions, that might actually be the worst part of the pandemic, may be behind us.
Of course, this story is not complete yet. There will be more data coming in over the next year, and I will continue to monitor the data. That data could show that the vaccine works. It could show that the pandemic is over and the vaccine is no longer needed. Or it could show that we are just in a lull, the vaccine does not really work, and another deadly round is headed our way probably 5 to 8 months from now. I hope that the new data will show either that the vaccine works or that the pandemic is over. Time will tell. And I will continue to add to this blog as that story continues to be written.