A Pandemic of the Unvaccinated?

During a White House press briefing last week, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, declared, “This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”  She continued, “And our biggest concern is that we are going to continue to see preventable cases, hospitalizations, and, sadly, deaths among the unvaccinated.”  Is there a rational basis to allow our war against the pandemic to devolve into a fight between vaccinated and unvaccinated citizens?  In this blog, I will use data found at the CDC’s website to outline what we know and what we don’t about vaccinations, infections, disease, and death.

What we know:

• SARS-CoV-2 infections have increased recently.  It’s easy to see this point from the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker.  Play with the graph a little.  By clicking any of the boxes (sex, age, ethnicity) under “Cases” on the upper left, you’ll see case trends of the entire pandemic.  Pass your cursor along the horizontal axis, and you’ll see the rate of cases each week of the pandemic.  The number of cases bumped up in the first two weeks of July.  But the recent increase is not yet close to levels of the surge last winter.   

• Deaths from COVID-19 are still going down.  Using the same graph, click on any of the boxes under “Deaths” on the upper right.  The last week deaths increased was May 8, and then only by a little bit.  There has not been a spike in COVID deaths since the winter surge.  Even as infections increased recently, deaths have not.

• Risk of death from COVID-19 increases with age.  Now look specifically at deaths by age.  Move your cursor along the horizontal axis and pay attention to the death rate as age increases.  It’s the old who die from COVID-19, not the young.   

• Vaccination rates are highest among those at greatest risk of death from COVID-19.  Now study another chart from the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker.  Notice that in increasing age groups, more and more people are at least partially vaccinated, more than 90% among 65–74 year-olds.  The old, who have the greatest risk of death from COVID-19, also have the highest vaccination rates.  

• Vaccination does not prevent COVID-19.  Breakthrough cases occur, and vaccinated individuals can spread the disease.  This last point is well known by everyone who follows Texas politics.

• Community vaccination rates correlate with reduction in COVID-19 spread.  For this point, study the CDC’s vaccination vs. covid heat map, showing lower rates of COVID-19 where vaccination rates are higher and vice versa.  This is the data Dr. Walensky points to when saying “This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”  However, unless she has private data not on the website, I do not see a similar correlation between deaths or even hospitalizations.  Death rates continue to decline, even among the unvaccinated.

• Vaccination is associated with significant adverse effects, including death. Guillain-Barré Syndrome, inflammation of the heart, blood clots, anaphylaxis—and these are just the labelled complications.  Expect more immune-mediated vaccine complications to emerge in the future.  

There are some things we don’t know, and we don’t know them because we don’t yet have good data.  For example, the CDC tracks COVID-19 deaths by sex, age, and ethnicity, but not by vaccination status.  That information would be very helpful to individuals deciding whether to take a vaccine.  So would age-adjusted vaccine complication rates.  The absence of such data makes it difficult-to-impossible for young people to determine their personal risk-benefit ratios for vaccination.  The VAERS website is good for its intended purpose as a reporting site for adverse events, but the data must be mined and analyzed to be meaningful.  

Good data is simply hard to come by.  Last week, Sir Patrick Vallance said in a press conference that 60% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the UK are fully vaccinated.  Later, he tweeted a correction, saying exactly the opposite.  The trouble is that it’s impossible to validate either statement with reliable, publicly available data.  

Science is a process, not a product.  For science to work, conventional wisdom must be questioned.  It is always okay to ask, “Why should I believe this?”  Dissent is a natural byproduct of science.  But dogmatism, coercion, ridicule, hyperbole, and fearmongering have no place among real scientists.  Not even the director of the CDC.