Im-Politic: Omicron Looks Fairly Mild – Except Against a Key Biden Virus Claim

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Anthony S. Fauci, Biden, Biden administration, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, hospitalization, Im-Politic, Omicron variant, vaccination, vaccines, Wuhan virus

I was struck by the statement made by Anthony S. Fauci on Tuesday that the Omicron variant of the CCP Virus is so hyper-infectious that it will “ultimately find just about everybody.” I wasn’t struck by the words of President Biden’s chief medical adviser because Omicron has found me healthwise. Instead, I was struck because the pandemic keeps finding my blogging – even when I don’t intend to write about it.

And so it’s been today. I started out planning to post an item about the Ukraine crisis and globalization (which I will definitely turn to), but Mr. Biden’s latest virus-related remarks have jerked me right back to the pandemic. Specifically responsible was his claim that unless many more Americans become fully vaccinated, Omicron’s rapid spread will mean that the nation’s hospitals will be crowded with resisters who contract unusually severe cases, leaving “little room for anyone else who might have a heart attack or an injury in an automobile accident or any injury at all.”

This point makes perfect sense. Even if Omicron’s effects are relatively mild for most victims, if the absolute numbers of cases are high enough, even a relatively small percentage of infections serious enough to require hospitalization would be enough to overwhelm the hospital system. And if, as Mr. Biden and so many others insist, the overwhelming majority of those hospitalized are unvaccinated individuals, then the case for mandatory vaccination would look open and shut.

But to use one of the President’s favorite phrases, “Here’s the deal.” Even if every American was fully vaxxed and boosted, if Fauci is right about Omicron’s eventual reach, then the hospital system will get overwhelmed anyway. Just do the math.

The whole U.S. population is a little above 330,000,000. If everyone gets Omicron, that’s 330,000,000 cases. How many are resulting in hospitalizations? The President says that unvaccinated Americans are “seventeen times more likely to get hospitalized” from the CCP Virus than the vaxxed.

This figure seems to come from the latest data kept by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which finds that for every 100,000 American adults, 67.8 “Covid-19-Associated Hospitalizations” take place each week, versus a rate of only 3.9 hospitalizations for the fully vaccinated. That’s a big difference. But if you project those numbers out to the full 330,000,000 population rather than a sample of 100,000, you get 12,870 fully vaxxed hospitalizations each week.

That figure is a lot smaller than the number of “staffed (operational) acute care beds” in America (534,964, according to the latest count from the American Hospital Association). It’s also a lot smaller than the number of intensive care unit beds (96,5960).

But all by itself, it seems to be enough greatly to stress the heathcare system, given that (as the President noted), it’s got many other responsibilities; given that the 12,870 figure represents the number of new hospital patients added each week; and given that many of these fully vaxxed CCP Virus patients are going to stay hospitalized for a certain period even as new patients in this category keep coming in. 

At the same time, the CDC data on fully vaxxed Covid hospital patients surely creates an understatement for one big reason: They only go up to the week of last November 20. Therefore, they predate the recording of the first U.S. Omicron case (last December 1.)

The United States still lacks comprehensive nation-wide statistics on Omicron-related hospitalizations of the fully vaxxed. But some preliminary numbers indicate that their impact on hospitals will be catastrophic. For example, for the week of last December 27 (more than a month after the latest CDC numbers but just as the first Omicron case was reported), New York State found that 4.59 out of every 100,000 city residents who had been fully vaccinated were hospitalized for the CCP Virus.

That’s a positively infintestimal number. But multiply it out by the total 330,000,000 U.S. population, and that’s more than 1.5 million virus-related hospitalizations of the fully vaxxed. And even if you doubt that these numbers would hold for the entire country (because the United States is big and diverse), a breakthrough hospitalization rate only half that high would still produce more than 750,000 such cases.    

Some more recent figures are even more alarming. As of January 6, the Las Vegas, Nevada area experienced 27,205 breakthrough virus cases (e.g., number of infections of the fully vaxxed), of which 873 were hospitalized. That’s 3.21 percent. Ohio’s official Covid-19 dashboard says that of 53,819 state residents counted as “Covid-19 Hospitalizations,” since January 1, 2021, 2,991 have been  fully vaccinated. That’s 5.56 percent.

According to this January 6 post, in Connecticut, “The overall percentage of fully vaccinated people hospitalized with COVID has also risen to 32 percent, from about 20 percent early last week.”

Massachusetts has reported that as of early January, the state’s hospitals were treating 2,970 patients with confirmed cases of the CCP Virus. Of these, 1,348 were fully vaccinated. That’s more than 45 percent!

In fact, once again, if these numbers are too high by a factor of two, they still add up to overwhelmed hospital systems.

Help is on the way in the form of recently approved treatments (though it looks like due to Biden administration shortsightedness or caution, they’ll be kind of scarce for several months), and in the distinct possibilities that the Omicron wave will crest sooner rather than later, and that follow-on virus strains will be even less virulent. What’s more certain is that Omicron is making a complete – and unnecessarily divisive – mockery of Mr. Biden’s continuing “pandemic of the unvaccinated” claims.

Im-Politic: What Michigan’s Surge is Really Saying About the CCP Virus

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Biden, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, demographics, Grand Rapids, Im-Politic, Kent County, Michigan, New England, population, public health, The Washington Post, vaccination, vaccines, weather, Wuhan virus

The Washington Post has just unwittingly delivered some powerful blows to the widespread belief (propagated most notably by President Biden) that America’s latest CCP Virus-related woes are overwhelmingly a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” And all of them came in a single article focusing tightly on the recent surge of the virus in Michigan.

The first: The article’s stage-setting observation that “At least two dozen states have seen cases rise at least 5 percent in the past two weeks, with Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New Hampshire and North Dakota each recording per capita jumps of more than 60 percent. Some highly vaccinated states, including Vermont and Massachusetts, were also seeing steep rises in cases.”

As I’ve said before, case numbers are about the worst available indicator of the pandemic’s severity, because of huge complications like its heavy dependence on testing, and the related massive numbers of asymptomatic infections, which of course hold down the numbers of test-takers. But they’re constantly touted by the public health establishment and other vaccine zealots, so they’re fair game.

And what’s instructive about that Post sentence is not only its mention of states like Vermont and Massachusetts experiencing “steep rises in case” (despite full vaccination rates of 73 percent and 71 percnt, respectively, according to the paper’s own very convenient CCP Virus tracker), but the fact that Minnesota (62 percent), New Hampshire (65 percent), and New Mexico (63 percent) also boast full vaccination rates notably higher than the national U.S. average of 59 percent.

The second blow against the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” meme: The Post‘s report that in Michigan itself, “The unvaccinated made up about three-quarters of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the 30 days ending Nov. 5, according to the state health department.”

In other words, fully a quarter of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths (the latter two metrics being far better gauges of CCP Virus severity) have stemmed from vaccinated Michiganders. These figures indicate that breakthrough cases and really bad breakthrough cases are a lot more common than the nation has been told (especially given my previous point that Americans and their government have literally no idea of the share of their unvaccinated compatriots get sick enough from the virus to be hospitalized and die – as opposed to their absolute numbers – because of the testing/asymptomatic spread complications.)

A third blow against the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” narrative comes from the data for the Michigan counties depicted by the Post as being especially hard hit by mounting hospitalizations – which are a good leading indicator of mortality, and which of course threaten the health care system’s ability to provide its vital services against the full range of medical problems Americans suffer.

According to reporters Brittany Shammas and Paulina Firozi, one of the state’s regions where the hospitalization situation is especially dire is Grand Rapids. But Kent County, where the city is located, has one of Michigan’s higher vaccination rates – 57 percent.

Moreover, although the article adds that “A health-care coalition representing 13 counties in West Michigan [including Kent] warned last week that “hospitals and EMS systems were operating at extremely high capacity, describing the situation as being at ‘a tipping point,’ a look at these localities shows that vaccination rates look like pretty unimportant contributors.

Here are the relevant recent hospitalization statistics for these counties as of this past Friday. The left column shows the vaccination rates for their entire populations, the middle column the percentage change in daily new hospital admissions over the previous week, and the right column the seven-day change in absolute numbers of new admissions during that latest week-long period. (The county-specific vaccination rates come from The New York Times vaccine tracker feature and the hospitalization figures come from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website.)

Clare:               44 percent           40.00 percent         7

Ionia:                44 percent         -20.83 percent       19

Isabella:            42 percent          42.86 percent       10

Kent:                57 percent          20.15 percent     328

Lake:                55 percent                  n/a                  0

Mason:             57 percent          18.18 percent       13

Mecosta:          39 percent         -12.00 percent       22

Montcalm:       39 percent         -35.09 percent       37

Muskegon:      51 percent           44.19 percent       62

Newaygo:        42 percent           40.00 percent      21

Oceana:           51 percent                   n/a                 2

Osceola:          40 percent         100.00 percent        2

Ottawa:           53 percent             7.69 percent      70

The anomalies should be apparent right away. There’s Kent County’s odd combination of high vaccination rates and strong (but not super strong) hospitalization increases. There are the identical and much lower vaccination rates of Clare and Ionia counties – and hospitalization rates going in the opposite direction, and dramatically so. There’s the equally strange pair of Mecosta and Montcalm counties, with their identical and really low vaccination rates, and their significantly falling hospitalization rates.

Anomalies like this can often be explained by differing demographic characteristics (e.g., more and more densely populated areas are typically worse virus hot spots). That’s one reason why it’s foolish to support a one-size-fits-all vaccination policy – let alone one that imposes major penalties on the unvaccinated. But even population doesn’t explain many of the all-over-the-place results for these mainly rural, thinly populated Michigan counties. (Michigan population-by-county data come from here, and the population density statistics from here.) 

For example, Kent is by far the most populous of the 13 counties, and by far the most population-dense – which surely accounts for much of its hospitalization increase. At the same time, its hospitalization situation proportionately is much worse than the next most populous county (Ottawa – which is also next door). 

Moreover, although Montcalm and Mecosta, as noted above, have identical (and very low) vaccination rates, the former is somewhat more densely populated than the former, but its hospitalization rate is falling more than three times faster.

And as always, very small absolute numbers can skew the percentage changes. Thus Osceola has the second smallest population of the 13, and its population density is one of the lowest – as is its vaccination rate. New hospitalizations have doubled in percentage terms over that last data week. But in absolute terms that means they’ve risen from one to two.

There’s still another way, though, that the Post piece — more wittingly — debunks the cookie-cutter approach to vaccinations, and that’s in the list of states, whatever their vaccination rates, where cases are up the most lately.  Except for New Mexico, they’re all in the upper Midwest and New England, and guess what happens in those regions at this time of year? Yes, it gets cold. And generally colder sooner than in other parts of the country.  Weather also is why, as the article reports, “previous southern state hot spots, like Florida and Texas, saw marked declines in cases.” 

The real message of the article, therefore, is that the CCP Virus, like most respiratory diseases, is a generally seasonal phenomenon, and where and when it’s not seasonal (as in Florida this summer), it comes (and goes) in waves regardless of changes in public policy. As a result, as has been clear once the first wave passed last year, the most public officials can do is concentrate on protecting the most vulnerable, keep the economy and broader society largely open for the rest (in order to minimize the collateral damage from sweeping lockdowns, school closings, stay-at-home orders, and other indiscriminate responses), and count on immunity from whatever source (vaccines as well as natural immunity) to become widespread enough to turn it into something like a bad flu.           

Im-Politic: So the Vaccines Work…Except in Europe?

Tags

CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Europe, Im-Politic, infections, lockdowns, mortality, vaccination, vaccine mandates, vaccines, Washington Post, Worldometers.info, Wuhan virus

There’s no doubt about it: Europe is having a terrible time with what looks like a severe new CCP Virus wave. Not made nearly as clear by the coverage – this new wave is rising despite high vaccination rates in most of the countries being hit. As this post will show, two key trends are casting serious doubt on broad claims of vaccine effectiveness claimed by the U.S. public health establishment and others who have viewed it as the only reliable source of “The Science” on the pandemic and fighting it.

The first trend is in reported infection rates. As known by RealityChek regulars, I don’t take this metric especially seriously because it can be impacted by developments having little to do with the actual severity of the pandemic – like testing rates and numbers of asymptomatic infections. (The latter complicates the situation because people carrying the virus who are feeling no effects are relatively unlikely to take a test.)

But the public health establishment takes infection rates very seriously – and evidently in Europe as well as in the United States. So here are the relevant figures for eleven European countries – with their full vaccination rates as of November 22 on the left and the change in the seven-day moving average (7DMA) of daily new infections between November 15 and November 22 on the right. The vaccination rates come (with the exception noted below) from the Washington Post‘s virus tracker feature, and the infection rates from the worldometers.info website. And for comparison’s sake, I’m including the U.S. figures as well.

Netherlands:        73.0 percent*     +48.76 percent 

Germany:             68.0 percent      +30.62 percent

Belgium:              75.4 percent      +45.52 percent

Austria:                65.7 percent      +24.40 percent 

UK:                      69.1 percent        +9.06 percent 

France:                 69.6 percent      +81.76 percent 

Czech Republic:  58.6 percent      +39.58 percent 

Portugal:              86.9 percent      +48.04 percent

Denmark:             78.5 percent      +21.30 percent 

Spain:                   79.8 percent      +58.98 percent 

Italy:                     73.1 percent      +26.59 percent

USA:                    59.0 percent      +11.24 percent

*See here for the Netherlands vaccination rate   

It’s easy to see that there is absolutely no correlation between the two sets of numbers. Just look at the contrast in infection rate increases between the United Kingdom and France – even though their full vaccination rates are nearly identical. Also, how come highly vaccinated Spain and Portugal are seeing case numbers rise so quickly? Why are Italian case numbers rising much more slowly than those on the Iberian peninsula, even though it’s vaccination rate is somewhat lower? And why does the United States, with the second lowest vaccination rate (due to all those supposed kooks who won’t get vaxxed?) come in with the second lowest infection growth rate in this group?

But like I said, in my view, infection rates don’t deserve much relative attention. Death rates aren’t a flawless measure of virus severity, either, but they’re another matter – especially because so many inside and outside the public health establishment say that the main value of the vaccines is less their power to prevent infections than to prevent serious illness and death. That proposition holds more strongly for Europe, but as you’ll see, there are several big exceptions.

Below are the data comparing the same vaccination rates (on the left) and CCP Virus death rates (on the right) for the eleven European countries plus the United States. The death rate number is the change in the 7DMA between November 15 ad November 22 and is also from the worldometers.info site.

Netherlands:        73.0 percent*       +52.17 percent 

Germany:             68.0 percent        +22.35 percent

Belgium:              75.4 percent        +27.59 percent 

Austria:                65.7 percent        +27.27 percent

UK:                      69.1 percent           -5.80 percent

France:                 69.6 percent        +27.03 percent 

Czech Republic:   58.6 percent       +43.75 percent

Portugal:               86.9 percent       +30.00 percent 

Denmark:              78.5 percent       +50.00 percent

Spain:                    79.8 percent        -26.09 percent 

Italy:                      73.1 percent         +5.36 percent

USA:                      59.0 percent        +0.29 percent 

The lessons of this table are more difficult to draw for one main reason – the absolute numbers of deaths involved for most of these countries are extremely low. Meaning single or double digits low. And as known by RealityChek regulars, very low numbers can be highly volatile when it comes to percentage change terms, because only a tiny move in absolute numbers can produce huge relative moves. (For exampile, an increase of one to two in absolute terms equals a 100 percent increase.)

The three exceptions are Germany (where the daily deaths 7DMA have been growing recently by the high-100s), the United Kingdom (where they’re rising by the mid-100s), and the United States (where daily growth still exceeds 1,000). Even taking these disparities into account, it’s interesting that the U.S. daily death rate has been stable lately and in fact has come way down since August; and that in the United Kingdom, with its average vaccination rate, mortality is declining.

And in relative terms, on this front, both countries have been out-performing Germany – whose vaccination rate is a bit lower than the United Kingdom’s but a good deal higher than the United States’. It’s true that death rates are lagging indicators (because CCP Virus victims typically take a while to pass away). But the different directions in this indicator in these three countries don’t seem to have much to do with their vaccination rates.

As for the high vaccination countries, the rates of mortality increase are indeed worrisome, and simply because of their often-soaring infection rates could worsen. But the absolute numbers are still so low that the only reasonable conclusion is “Wait and see.”

That’s why even though tight virus-related restrictions are reappearing all over Europe (see, e.g., here, here, and here), it seems panicky at best to close down entire economies and societies – especially given all the collateral damage that would result. Sweepingly linking employment opportunities to vaccination status, as the Biden administration has sought seems equally unreasonable in light of these mounting signs that the jabs simply aren’t the panacea that was initially advertised.

An announcement yesterday by the President’s coronavirus response coordinator that “We can curb the spread of the virus without having to in any way shut down our economy,” indicates that Mr. Biden is learning the first lesson. A more targeted approach toward vaccinations and other responses, focusing on the most vulnerable, would be a welcome sign that he’s learning the second.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! Vaccine Derangement Syndrome

Tags

Associated Press, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Delta variant, Glad I Didn't Say That!, Mainstream Media, MSM, vaccination, vaccines, Wuhan virus

“Tens of millions of Americans have refused to get vaccinated,

allowing the highly contagious delta variant to tear through the

country….” 

– Associated Press, October 2, 2021

 

“Virus surge hits New England despite high vaccination rates”

– Associated Press, October 3, 2021

 

(Sources: “COVID-19 deaths eclipse 700,000 in US as delta variant rages,” by Tammy Webber and Heather Hollingsworth, Associated Press, October 2, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-dead-us-milestone-80209c66802902e42adfbe075ff5272b and “Virus surge hits New England despite high vaccination rates,” by Wilson Ring, Associated Press, October 3, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-pandemics-vermont-d25aae90b2dda65b3d1c2c0d5d00156c)

Im-Politic: Anti-Pandemic Economy Clamps Could Be Strengthening Just as the Virus Threat is Weakening

Tags

Andrew Jackson, Battle of New Orleans, Biden, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, data, hospitalizations, Im-Politic, Jobs, lockdowns, mortality, OurWorldinData.org, stay-at-home, vaccination, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, vaccines, War of 1812, Washington Post, Wuhan virus

What a stunning and thoroughly depressing point the U.S. fight against the CCP Virus may be at. Governments at all levels, private businesses, and non-profit institutions of all kinds are imposing all sorts of vaccination mandates on employees that could result in significant layoffs for the recalcitrant (including those with natural virus immunity) and equally important damage to the economy. And at the same time, the most reliable data now show that the virus’ destructive impact – recently renewed by the highly infectious Delta variant – is easing once again, and for reasons that look completely unrelated to vaccination rates.

Not that the most reliable CCP Virus data are incredibly reliable. As I’ve previously written, there are some awfully dubious definitions of “Covid-related deaths” being used across the country, and major holes in the coverage achieved by the official record keepers. In addition, serious problems have been revealed even in the hospitalization numbers – which I’d considered the most accurate gauge of the virus’ effects on human health.

All the same, the proverbial statistical curve for both indicators is now bending down for the first time since Delta began dominating the American virus scene in mid-summer.

As often the case, my source for the death and hospitalization figures are the Washington Post‘s very user-friendly CCP Virus databases. For this post, I’m also using some hospitalization figures for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website. Unless otherwise mentioned, the specific numbers here are changes in seven-day averages (7DA), which smooth out random fluctuations that tend to occur on a day-to-day basis.

Regarding mortality, the 7DA for daily reported covid-related deaths bottomed out on July 6 at 209 and it had plummeted by nearly 30 percent during the previous week. And through July 27, the 7DA stayed below 300. But by August 16, it hit 651 and thereafter began soaring rapidly.

By the 18^th, the 7DA average had jumped by nearly 32 percent week-on-week, and the rate of increase continued surging until it peaked on the 24^th at an appalling 77.90 percent. But thereafter, these increases dropped dramaticaly. A week later, they were down to just over 21 percent. That is, consistent with the “bend the curve” criteria, the problem kept worsening, but it was worsening much more slowly, which counts as welcome progress.

This encouraging development continued through September 9, by which time the 7DA was rising on a weekly basis by just 3.17 percent. In other words, it nearly stopped rising altogether. But this fall-off proved to be a head fake. Almost immediately, the weekly increases in the 7DA for covid-related mortality bounced back, and reached a discouraging 27.49 percent in less than a week (by the 15^th).

Yet another decline has followed, and this one has been considerably deeper. By September 21, the weekly 7DA increase was back below ten percent, and just four days later, hit zero for the first time since the second half of July.

Since then, and through yesterday, the 7DA has not only been decreasing on a weekly basis. It’s been decreasing faster and faster. Yesterday, the decline stood at 6.74 percent.

The hospitalization story has been somewhat different, and brighter, especially since early September. The 7DA for daily new hospital admissions for CCP Virus-related reasons bottomed out on June 25 at 1,824 and at that point, it was down on week by just under 5.20 percent.

By August 9, the situation had turned around completely – and then some. The 7DA had soared by 34 percent. Afterwards, however, came a consistent decline. By the 20^th, the weekly rate of increase in the 7DA had fallen to ten percent, and by September 1, the increases had stopped. The weekly 7DA registered its first weekly decline on September 6 (down two percent), and its first double-digit decrease on the 21^st (ten percent).

Since then through the 30^th, it’s fallen by ten percent or more twice, and the weekly decrease in the 7DA hasn’t dipped below seven percent.

Given the mushrooming of vaccine mandates and widespread claims – including by President Biden – that the nation is now facing a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” you’d think that the above improvements stemmed overwhelmingly from increased vaccination rates. But the data – in this case, from the OurWorldinData.org website, provide no support for this conclusion.

Specifically, on August 24, when the 7DA of daily covid-related deaths was skyrocketing at that awful 77.90 percent weekly rate, 51 percent of Americans were fully vaccinated against the CCP Virus, and 9.1 percent were partly vaccinated. By yesterday, these figures were only 55 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively.

On August 9, when the 7DA for covid-related hospitalizations was growing by 34 percent week-on-week, half of Americans were fully vaccinated and 8.5 percent were partly vaccinated. Through yesterday, those numbers hadn’t changed dramatically, either.

Could mask-wearing be responsible? Trouble is, I haven’t seen any figures on how this practice has changed in recent months. (If you have, let me know.) As far as I’m concerned, the real reasons for this good CCP Virus news have to do with rising levels of natural immunity (especially important given Delta’s virulence), the distinct possibility that the CCP Virus is one of those pathogens whose lethality wanes as it mutates (an important Delta consideration, too), and the nation’s better treatment record – due to a combination of more experienced doctors and new therapeutics.

In early 1815, then-General Andrew Jackson led American forces to a great victory over the British in the Battle of New Orleans. But due to that era’s painfully slow communications, the triumph came about two weeks after the United States and Great Britain signed the treaty ending the War of 1812.  It makes me wonder how long the U.S. public and private sectors — which don’t have the communications excuse — will keep threatening the economy’s recovery with redoubled anti-virus measures just as the pandemic tide appears to be turning.   

Im-Politic: More Evidence That the Vaccines are No Cure-All

Tags

Biden, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, death rates, hospitalizations, Im-Politic, public health, vaccination, vaccines, Washington Post, Wuhan virus

Time for a CCP virus update with a focus on the effectivnes of vaccines. And the big takeaway? Good luck to you if you can detect any evidence for the popular view (including President Biden’s) that the United States has been seeing a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” lately – and especially during pandemic phase dominated by the highly infectious Delta variant.

Full disclosure: I’m fully vaxxed and have been since late April. I got the shots as soon as I could make an appointment (not easy back then in my state of residence, Maryland). I’ll probably get a booster – and certainly have no inherent objections to these jabs.

But I’m 67 years old and have some underlying conditions that make me more vulnerable than other young seniors (although my physicians tell me I’m still  healthy overall). So I concluded that getting vaccinated made good sense for me. For anyone else? As always, the only medical advice I’m qualified to give is “Use your judgment in consultation with your doctor(s).”

In other words, I’m no anti-vaxxer. Instead, my main concern continues to be the often confusing advice given by public health authorities on dealing with the pandemic, their regular habit of departing from “The Science” in their recommendations, and – especially important – their willingness to push aggressively for policies with major implications for both other public health issues and crucial non-health-related issues based on highly questionable data. (The latest potential problem revealed concerned the hospitalization figures, which I and many others viewed as the most reliable measure of the pandemic’s status and the severity of the virus – though far from perfect.)

Here’s what I’ve just done. I’ve looked at the statistics for the states and territories that have fully vaccinated the highest percentages of their populations and the lowest percentages of their populations, and compared the changes in newly reported deaths and numbers of CCP Virus-related hospitalization rates over the last week as of this morning. My source, as often the case, is the Washington Post‘s very well-designed and thus very convenient interactive virus database. The results are below:

Top 10 vaxxed states   Full Vax rate  new deaths last week  new hospns last week

National average:         54.2 percent        +26 percent                   -6 percent

Vermont:                       68.8 percent      +100 percent             +26.5 percent

Connecticut:                 67.5 percent      +33.3 percent               +4.4 percent

Puerto Rico:                  67.4 percent       +8.3 percent                 -15 percent

Maine:                           67.2 percent            0 percent               +3.1 percent

Massachusetts:                 67 percent     +44.4 percent             +14.5 percent

Rhode Island:                66.5 percent        +50 percent              -11.8 percent

Guam:                            65.1 percent     +200 percent               not available

New Jersey:                   63.1 percent    +12.5 percent               +2.6 percent

Maryland:                         63 percent    +23.1 percent                     0 percent

New York:                      62.1 percent    -29.4 percent               -14.6 percent

Bottom 10 states for vaccination rates

National average:           54.2 percent      +26 percent                    -6 percent

West Virginia:                   40 percent   +91.7 percent                +9.3 percent

Wyoming:                      40.4 percent    +100 percent                 -9.4 percent

Idaho:                            40.5 percent     +120 percent              +10.3 percent

Alabama:                      40.7 percent     +110 percent                -14.5 percent

Mississippi:                  41.7 percent     -15.4 percent                -15.1 percent

North Dakota:              42.9 percent            0 percent                 +7.4 percent

Virgin Islands:             43.1 percent             0 percent              +16.7 percent

Georgia:                       43.5 percent     +50.6 percent               -10.2 percent

Louisiana:                    43.8 percent     +10.4 percent               -17.8 percent

Tennessee:                   43.8 percent      +28.3 percent              -12.2 percent

Before proceeding, another data caution shouldn’t be forgotten. Because most of the states in each group have very small populations, changes in both deaths and hospitalizations are often infinitesimal in absolute terms, which means that even tiny increases or decreases in those terms can produce huge percentage change results. Indeed, in places like Vermont and Wyoming and the Virgin Islands, these changes are only in the single digits in absolute terms.

All the same, as for some of the most obvious comparisons:

The number of top ten vaxxed states whose CCP Virus-related deaths rose during the past week is eight. For the bottom ten, it’s only seven.

The number of top ten vaxxed states where such deaths fell during that week is one. None of the bottom ten saw falling deaths.

The number of top ten vaxxed states whose hospitalizations rose over the last week is five. The comparable figure for the bottom ten vaxxed states is four.

The number of top ten vaxxed states whose hospitalizations fell over the last week is two. For the bottom ten vaxxed states? Six.

If anything, the bottom ten vaxxed states recently have been doing slightly better than the top ten according to these measures.

Also peculiar – and tough to square with the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” claim: Within these two groups, there are some big death and hospitalization variations between states with identical or very similar vaccination rates. Indeed, the fully vaxxed range in the top ten group is between 68.8 percent and 62.1 percent. Yet the trends for New York and Massachusetts, for example, are going in exactly the opposite directions – and very strongly so. Moreover, the top ten state with the best record on both counts combined by far is New York, even though it’s the least fully vaxxed state in this group.

Using the national average as the bar doesn’t produce a better story for the highly vaxxed states.

In that group, the number whose deaths rose faster than the national average is five. For the lowest vaxxed states, the number is six.

As a result, five states in the top ten category saw deaths rising more slowly than the national average, versus four in the bottom ten category.

Turning to hospitalizations, six of the top ten vaxxed states experienced worse changes than the national average, and data were unavailable for Guam. The comparable number for the bottom ten states was the same.

Therefore, three states in the top ten group experienced better hospitalization change results than the national average, versus four in the bottom ten group.

One possible reason for still taking the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” claim seriously: Many of these results might be explained by the fact that in the top ten vaxxed states, absolute levels of deaths and hospitalizations are starting from very low levels. So as explained just above, their apparently worsening records in many cases can be dismissed as a statistical illusion, and the focus should remain on how good their records in absolute terms remain.

And the converse for the bottom ten: Seeming improvements in their records may stem from death and vaccination rates that stood at very high absolute levels, and remained high despite impressive-looking percentage change drops.

But another possibility deserves at least as much attention: These supposed statistical illusions actually show that the virus is advancing and retreating in waves in many instances – and that to some extent, the results mean that the worst vaxxed states are seeing significant improvements in their numbers, and the best are seeing significant deterioration, for reasons having little to do with vaccinations, and much more to do with the nature of viruses and their natural life cycles.

One particularly notable example is Florida, which has received so much attention because Governor Ron DeSantis has so strongly opposed many mandatory mitigation measures. Its full vaccination rate is now a little higher (55.6 percent) than the national average of 54.2 percent, and actually has been rising somewhat faster.

Its death rate initially rose much more strongly than the U.S. rate as a whole, and has stayed considerably higher (1.69 daily new deaths measured by the seven-day average per hundred thousand residents, versus 0.59 for the nation as a whole). But over the last week, its daily deaths have risen much more slowly (seven percent versus 26 percent).

Similarly, Florida’s hospitalization rate is still higher than the national average (with 45 residents per 100,000 versus 29 per 100,000 for the entire United States). But over the last seven days, Florida daily hospitalizations are down 19 percent, versus six percent for the nation as a whole.

It’s become a commonplace to observe that viruses don’t care what your politics are, or where you live, or what your vaccine views are.  That’s all true.  But it looks like, except for considerations that have long been known, like age and race, certain they care much less about whether you’re vaxxed than where you happen to live at any given time as they appear, surge, and fade (to varying extents) as they always have.    

Im-Politic: So You Think Biden’s Vaccine Mandates Reflect “The Science”?

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Anthony S. Fauci, Biden, CCP Virus, CNN, coronavirus, COVID 19, Im-Politic, immunity, Mainstream Media, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, public health, RealClearPolitics.com, vaccination, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, vaccines, Wuhan virus

Can we just finally stop pretending that the Biden administration’s approach to mitigating the CCP Virus has anything to do with “The Science.” And don’t take my word for it. Take the word of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, longtime director of the federal National Institute of Allergy and Chief Medical Advisor to the President.

As the President insisted emphatically, and even angrily, in his speech Thursday, “This [now] is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” and this situation is entirely the fault of Americans who aren’t “doing the right thing” to protect themselves “and those around you — the people you work with, the people you care about, the people you love”; and of “elected officials actively working to undermine the fight against COVID-19.”

So in order to prevent vaccine hesitancy for whatever reason “to stand in the way of protecting the large majority of Americans who have done their part and want to get back to life as normal,” he decided to impose a series of sweeping vaccine mandates for both federal government workers and large numbers of private sector employees.

As I pointed out this past Wednesday, the (big) problem with this strategy is that it completely ignores the huge numbers of Americans who don’t need vaccines because their exposure to the virus has left them immune. I should have added that, consequently, they can’t spread it to others unless they themselves get reinfected. As a result, the Biden strategy threatens to deprive tens of millions of Americans of their livelihoods, and the U.S. economy of production and demand that it still urgently needs, for no good medical reason at all.

And guess what? Fauci clearly agrees with me (and the others who have made the same point). Yesterday, during a CNN appearance, he was asked about

“a study that came out of Israel about natural immunity, and basically, the headline was that natural immunity provides a lot of protection, even better than the vaccines alone.

“What do people make of that? So as we talk about vaccine mandates, I get calls all the time, people say, I’ve already had COVID, I’m protected. And now the study says maybe even more protected than the vaccine alone. Should they also get the vaccine? How do you make the case to them?”

Fauci’s answer?

“You know, that’s a really good point….I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that. That’s something that we’re going to have to discuss regarding the durability of the response.

“The one thing that paper from Israel didn’t tell you is whether or not as high as the protection is with natural infection, what’s the durability compared to the durability of a vaccine? So it is conceivable that you got infected, you’re protected, but you may not be protected for an indefinite period of time.

“So, I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously, because you very appropriately pointed out, it is an issue, and there could be an argument for saying what you said.”

But it seems Fauci didn’t “sit down and discuss seriously” this complication with Mr. Biden. Or maybe the President decided to ignore input from someone who’s supposed to have personified “The Science” lately, and steam ahead anyway.

Of course, this would be a great subject for the Mainstream Media (MSM) to investigate. (Forget about Congress as long as it’s controlled by the Democrats.) But that’s not where the smart money is. After all, if you Google some obvious search terms like “Fauci” and “a really firm answer” and as of this writing (a little after 3 in the afternoon today, EST), and no MSM hits come up. But searchers are told that “It looks like these results are changing quickly. If this topic is new, it can sometimes take time for results to be added by reliable sources.” Oh.

Speaking of “reliable sources, however, Fauci’s admission isn’t even featured on CNN’s own website! Here’s what its search engine tells you: “Your search for Fauci ‘a really firm answer’ did not match any documents.” I was only able to find the transcript because I’d read about Fauci’s remarks on a decidedly not mainstream news site, and as the link above shows, finally came across it on the RealClearPolitics.com news aggregator site.

Maybe Fauci himself will speak up, before the vaccine mandates actually begin, or before they beging inflicting real economic damage on unvaccinated Americans and an entire economy that relies heavily on them? After all, he felt pretty free to contradict or correct President Trump when he felt the need. (Google “Fauci contradicts Trump.”)  But I wouldn’t bet on that, either, since he was already praising Mr. Biden even before the election.

In all, this information loop seems to be closed, at least till the 2022 Congressional elections, which could create the possibility of at least one house of Congress checking and probing the Executive Branch. For now, though, what word describes the fix in which this leaves the country better than “sickening”?           

Im-Politic: The Case Against Sweeping Vaccine Mandates and Passports

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CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Delta variant, healthcare, hospitalizations, Im-Politic, immunity, mortality, natural immunity, Nature, public health, unvaccinated, vaccination, vaccine hesitancy, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, vaccines, Worldometers.info

It’s approaching the status of a reliable rule of thumb: The longer the CCP Virus pandemic lasts, the weirder, and more unnecessarily harmful on balance, the actual and potential official responses get. The most important example nowadays has to do with the ever lengthening lists (a) of vaccine mandates and passports that have already been created by governments and businesses and universities around the country; and (b) increasingly irate calls for more – including demands that the unvaccinated be denied medical care or (seemingly more reasonably) affordable health insurance.

Given the large numbers of Americans remaining unvaccinated, and apparently likely to stay unvaccinated, the risks of mandates and passports per se should be obvious. Despite the U.S. economy’s strong recovery so far from the initial virus- and lockdowns-induce recession, new laws denying, say, employment to this population and barring them from patronizing businesses could deeply depress demand and output, and put the economy uncomfortably close to Spring, 2020 square one.

More troubling, even though these restrictions are still far from common, virus uncertainties generated by the highly contagious Delta variant seem to have already undercut hiring dramatically, and are widely forecast to weaken growth going forward. (See, e.g., here.)

But even if the virus was remotely as lethal or otherwise dangerous healthwise as Ebola or the Black Death (which it’s not), today’s insistence on universal vaccination and penalties for holdouts badly flunks the common sense test. The main reason: It completely ignores the existence of both natural and acquired immunity.

In fact, not only has the phenomenon of immunity not exactly been a secret to “The Science” – at least ever since disease began to be systematically studied. It’s likely reached gargantuan scale in the United States today. For example, a study just published in the respected science journal Nature and funded in part by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences contended that as of the end of last year, 103 million Americans had been infected with the virus. That’s about a third of the total population, and about five times the numbers of recorded cases at that point. Also during 2020, according to the reliable Worldometers.info website, just shy of 366,000 had succumbed to the disease.

Therefore, as of the end of 2020, more than 102 million Americans acquired immunity by recovering from infections that were either asymptomatic or too mild to report. And an unknown (but surely large) number of Americans were never infected to begin with because they were naturally immune.

All of these figures, of course, cover the period months before Delta arrived. Since it’s so infectious, the numbers of those with natural or acquired immunity nowadays must still be at least as big and possibly much bigger. The full vaccination of nearly 177 million Americans as of this latest CDC update of course complicates the estimation process, because so many with natural immunity undoubtedly have gotten such protection.

Another big complication: Vaccines have only been available since the very end of last year, and the numbers of fully vaccinated Americans took a while to become significant both because of roll-out delays and vaccine hesitancy. As a result, there’s not much data yet on whether either form of immunity is more protective than that offered by the jabs – which of course bears vitally on the core assumption behind the calls for vaccine mandates and the like.

After all, if either natural or acquired immunity is comparably effective to vaccination in warding off the virus (the study described here indicates they’re at worst not far off), or if both are, the case that the jabs are medically necessary for all the unvaccinated – either to safeguard the health of the unjabbed themselves, or to prevent them from spreading the malady – simply falls apart.

In addition, the paucity of great data is a problem in and of itself. Unquestionably, there could still major risks, especially long-term, to leaving the unvaccinated unvaxxed. But as noted, the risks of indiscriminate mandates and penalties are impressive as well. Consequently, what should be foremost on Americans’ minds when it comes to mandates-like questions is that in these circumstances, barreling ahead with sweeping measures and sanctions – many of whose effects, particuarly like joblessness and lost income, won’t take long to appear – would be the height of recklessness. As for those who would deny medical care to all of the unvaccinated on this fatally flawed basis (except those who can cite medical exemptions?), that seems the height of arrogance and self-righteousness – not to mention morally disgusting.

And in case you think that the common observation that the unvaccinated comprise nearly all recent CCP Virus-related deaths and hospitalizations clinches the case for mandates, these immunity points shred that idea, too. The problem is not with the claim of high correlation between unvaxxed status and mortality and  hospitalization. The problem is with assuming that a noteworthy share of these virus victims – or even the vast majority – had any form of immunity. In principle, large numbers of the unvaccinated immune could be coming down with dangerous virus infections anyway, or are likely to – and consequently should be coerced into getting jabbed and punished for refusing. But I haven’t seen that argument made; have you? And it’s surely missing in action because immunity is undeniably a thing.

So absent evidence to the contrary, the only reasonable conclusions are that getting the non-immune unvaxxed vaccinated should be a top priority, and that vaccination campaigns should be focused tightly on them. The immune unvaxxed, however, should be allowed to continue their lives as normal.

More than enough American live have been lost or ruined during the pandemic. Unless and until it’s discovered that all of the unvaccinated pose dangers to themselves and/or to others – whether because natural or acquired immunity is completely mythical, or is much weaker than the vaccines-produced variety – indiscriminate vaccine mandates, passports, and penalties will only needlessly lengthen the list of casualties.

Im-Politic: Why Delta Looks Like a Wave (in the Best Sense)

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CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Delta variant, health, Im-Politic, lockdowns, pandemic, public health, The New York Times, vaccination, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, vaccines, Washington Post, Wuhan virus

I hate to break up the CCP Virus panic party that’s been held lately due to the surge of the Delta variant in recent weeks.

Actually, as known by RealityChek readers, I don’t hate to break it up, since I’ve been writing that it doesn’t portend the end of days, or anything close – much less a development serious enough to justify a return to economic and behavioral curbs in the United States. But even I was surprised to see how strongly the U.S. data support my confidence that Delta’s a wave in the most encouraging sense: It’s something that’s going to come down about as fast as it went up, both nation-wide and state-wide. Moreover, contrary to the almost universal claims, differences in vaccination rates don’t seem to have much to do with these trends.

These conclusions are based on data showing recent changes in hospitalization rates in states that have seem to have been hardest hit by the overall national increase in recorded virus cases since late June. As I’ve pointed out, case numbers are a deeply flawed measure of the virus’ impact on the nation, largely because so many infections are asymptomatic or very mild. Therefore, such victims typically don’t bother to report them. By the same token, however, their prevalence indicates that the pandemic’s dangers to Americans generally speaking are limited.

Hospitalization rates suffer major flaws, too – mainly because of sloppy definitional practices – but they’re better than case numbers. And what the numbers make clear is that in handful of states widely described as the Delta and overall new wave epicenters (see, e.g., here and here), the hospitalization curve is bending down big time. That is, the weekly numbers of new hospitalizations have slowed dramatically.

Here are the actual figures, with the percentage changes new hospitalizations over the last two weeks shown on the left side (and based on The New York Times‘ interactive CCP Virus tracker) and the percentage changes over the last week shown on the right side (and based on the Washington Post‘s tracker). I needed to use two sources here because I couldn’t find a single source that presented all this information in one place.

U.S.:                      +90 percent            +34 percent

Florida:                +111 percent            +17 percent

Texas:                  +102 percent            +19 percent

Lousiana:             +136 percent            +32 percent

Arkansas:               +45 percent              +4 percent

Missouri:                +27 percent              +5 percent

Mississippi:          +166 percent            +26 percent

In addition, as well known by now, the full vaccination rates in all of these states have lagged the national average of about 50 percent as of today.

Florida:      49.6 percent

Texas:        44.5 percent

Lousiana:   37.6 percent

Arkansas:   37.6 percent

Missouri:    42.1 percent

More evidence of the relatively modest role played by the vaccines in slowing hospitalization rates can be seen in the below table presenting, as above, the changes in weekly hospitalizations over the last two weeks and over the last week for the ten states with the highest full vaccination rates (shown in parentheses).

                                   over the last two weeks            over last week

US (50.1 percent):              +90 percent                       +34 percent

Vermont (67.9 percent):    +577 percent                     +260 percent

Mass. (64.4 percent):          +78 percent                       +25 percent

Maine (64.2 percent):         +29 percent                          -8 percent

Connect. (63.9 percent):     +90 percent                       +14 percent

R.I. (62.1 percent):               -29 percent                      +89 percent

Maryland (59.5 percent):     +77 percent                      +23 percent

N.J. (59.0 percent):              +60 percent                      +14 percent

N.H. (58.6 percent):             +45 percent                     +13 percent

Wash. (58.6 percent):           +60 percent                     +21 percent

N.M. (57.8 percent):            +89 percent                     +23 percent

The first observation to be made is that nation-wide, the increase in hospitalizations has slowed significantly – for which everyone should be thankful. The second point worth noting is that the two week changes for the high- and low-vax states don’t differ to any great extent, though both display significant variation. And the third point I’d emphasize is that the slowdowns mostly have been much faster in the low-vax states. So since we’re examining all these states during the same timeframes, it’s difficult to understand the insistence that vaccination is so vital to stopping the spread. (Incidentally, I’d ignore the Vermont data, since the absolute numbers are so small.)

The only other explanation I can think of is that the high-vax states tend to be states that are densely populated, whereas the low-vax states are much less so. But logically, that would seem to argue most strongly for more energetic vaccine efforts to be made where people are most crowded together, not for villifying the vaccination laggard states (especially when, as in the cases of Florida and Texas, they’re not trailing by that much).

And nothing apparent about the Delta variant so far changes what’s been the most sensible formula for contending with the CCP Virus since the pandemic’s first (understandably) panicky months of 2020:  Don’t treat it like the nation’s only health problem, much less its only problem; don’t ignore its wave-like dynamics or its highly differentiated health effects; therefore keep social and economic life as normal as possible, and focus protective efforts (including vaccines) on the highly vulnerable.