In Denmark we have now reached 90% vaccination rate. We have more infected, the same number of admissions in hospital and a 15% higher death rate than all of 2020. I really fail to see why we are blaming the unvaccinated and not Pfizer/Moderna.
Serious question. I wonder about vaxx effectiveness when I see these numbers. But the breakdown matters.
I live in Nova Scotia, Canada. Our breakdown from Mar 15-Nov 26 is[1]:
- Hospitalizations: 84.4% unvaxxed, 9.6% 1 shot, 6% 2 shots
- Deaths: 69% unvaxxed, 7.1% 1 shot, 23.8% 2 shots
Total admissions and death rate numbers don't tell the whole story - breaking them down by vaxxed/1shot/2shot will help unpack "who to blame".
In fact, you can dig deeper. My province doesn't release the numbers but from what I can tell the 2-shot people who die are generally older and/or infirm. So I believe the 2shot numbers are being thrown off by an atypical population... which means the general population has less to fear from covid if they're double vaxxed. My co-founder informed this is an example of "Simpson's Paradox"[2].
What kind of vaxxed/unvaxxed breakdown are you seeing in Denmark?
1 - https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/204d6ed723244dfbb76...
It'd be much more interesting to see a straight comparison over Oct-Nov, say, when the vaccination rate was stable and get the unvaxxed vs 1 shot vs 2 shot vs 2 weeks after 2nd shot vs booster numbers.
This same breakdown implies that vaccinating half of the currently unvaxxed would do a lot to reduce pressure on hospitals. That is, if you have 80% vaxxed, a mere 10% increase could halve the number of hospital beds needed. No wonder governments are going so hard on vaccinating the hesitant and antivax.
Is this true? My understanding is that the opposite is true, most people who are hospitalized are not vaccinated by a large margin.
This ignores the demographic differences between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. The elderly and those with conditions that made them high risk have a much higher vaccination rate as one would expect.
If you cut the number of vaccinated in half you won't cut hospitalizations in half because subgroups of the population being hospitalized are not present in the same ratios in the unvaxed.
Another really, really important piece of context is how human behavior has changed. In 2020, many people were very cautious about covid. For example, in liberal US cities like Seattle and Portland, many indoor activities were restricted pretty hard until 2021. People didn’t dine out in person, or didn’t attend the movies. In 2021, people have more or less returned to normal, less-cautious behavior. While masks are still worn, people are comfortable dining out and going to the movies and all sorts of activities.
My point is that this change in behavior is likely to “blame” for the increased cases. If people were behaving the same way a year ago as they are today, cases would have been significantly worse then.
In other words, vaccinations have allowed us to return to a mostly normal life while stopping cases from rapidly increasing. At the very least, anecdotally, in places with lower vaccination rates, a return to normal life has been accompanied by more covid scares.
I wonder how did they dine out :-)
But what's strange is out the US doesn't seem to reflect this.
There are states with fairly high vaccination rates where vaccinated people are ending up in the ICU at rates many times ours, and are only showing up as 2.5 or 3 times better protected than the unvaccinated for hospitalization.
I don't know how to explain this other than length of time since injection. But we're heading into 6-7 months here now in Ontario and I'm still not seeing this trend. Boosters will certainly help, I'm sure, but I don't feel it can be the sole cause.
It's so ridiculous just driving across the border... look at Vermont or New York compared to Ontario or Quebec in terms of daily case rates and hospitalization. (Or Maine compared to New Brunswick, etc.) The only way I can explain it is by masking, which is still rigidly followed here in most of Canada, but not as much in the US.
PS congrats on having perhaps the most competent governments in North America in terms of managing this disease. It's not the first time I've found myself browsing for real estate in Nova Scotia, but it certainly became more serious this past year...
85.6% of hospitalized in Denmark are either unvaccinated or "half vaccinated". See https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/aa41b29149f24e20a40... graph 2.
This means that if the vaccination rate grew from 90% to 100% the hospitalized number would drop to very manageable levels.
Even with a 90% fully vaccinated population, the remaining 10% are still enough to fill up the hospitals.
If you look at the raw numbers nearly twice as many of the hospitalized are vaccinated.
When taking the vaccination rate into account, the likelihood of hospitalization still seems to be a fifth after vaccination.
But even if the remaining population got vaccinated it wouldn't be enough to drastically reduce the hospital load.
This doesn't mean what you think it means. Imagine if 100% of the population were vaccinated, what percentage of the hospitalized would then be vaccinated?
If there's simply a large number of people in such situations as I suspect there are. It would be deceptive to extrapolate to the general population based on them.
People over 50 make up 1/3 of the population and 93% of covid deaths.
The overwhelming majority of people that die from this thing are older and/or infirm. It has nothing to do with an atypical population, that's just how this virus works.
The vaccine can only do so much. We need to stop pretending it's the "slam dunk" our experts advertised it as and get on with our lives.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-fully-vaccin...
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
[4] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
Given the exceptionally low incidence of death in the 12 and under group, it's debatable which figure should be given prominence.
On 2 and 3: The case rate is spiking significantly higher than it has ever before, and the death rate is on an upward trend. It is typically delayed behind the case rate, so we can't be certain that this will be as bad as it gets. It's still very possible for this wave to be more deadly than prior waves, even though the Case:Death rate is lower.
Instead of showing 2 & 3 separately, perhaps the combined chart [1] is a better visualization.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
- Denmark currently experiencing a massive new wave of infections
- Previous large wave of infections was last winter, with rate peaking on Dec 18
- Daily deaths peaked one month later at about 8 per 1000 daily infections
- Current daily deaths, accounting for lag, is also about 8 per 1000 daily infections
https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...
I'm not sure where you get the 15% higher death rate: any sources?
In .nl we are seeing the same numbers (but on a 3x population of denmarks). Hospitals are so full now, they are rejecting e.g. cancer-patients and other "plannable Intensive Care patients". Over half of the patients on those ICs are vaccinated; ergo, from a ratio of 10/90% the patients are 55/45%; ergo: they work. Certainly not fully and certainly less than (I) expected.
> I really fail to see why we are blaming the unvaccinated and not Pfizer/Moderna.
I’d blame both the unvaccinated and new variants that seem to be more lethal than before.
If it is the case that vaccinated are still passing the virus but not dying from it, then isolation of the unvaccinated saves their lives.
Also, the effective vaccination rate is usually lower than the average rate. Unvaccinated people tend to spend time with other unvaccinated people, and this is particularly true for kids. The people an infected individual encounters are more likely to be unvaccinated than the general population.
The numbers here in Ontario are clear. Case rates among the unvaccinated are far higher, and ICU admissions are far far far higher.
I never fell for any line that said vaccination would just make the disease go away. Frankly that was never said by medical experts, only implied by certain politicians.
The numbers in the Netherlands are similar but both a bit lower.
Source, the data on https://www.zeit.de
The number of hospitalized patients per 100K are as follows:
Unvaccinated: 24.7 Started vaccination: 10.5 Fully vaccinated: 5.9