Most COVID deaths are vaccinated because most people are vaccinated, not because vaccines don't work
Vaccines reduce your chances of getting COVID by 2-6x and dying of COVID by 2-6x
Earlier this week, WaPo writer McKenzie Beard published an article titled "Vaccinated people now make up a majority of COVID deaths". Conservatives absolutely loved this headline.
But it shouldn't surprise you, and it's a terrible argument against vaccination. Vaccinated people make up a majority of COVID deaths for much the same reason that "seatbelt wearing people now make up a majority of traffic deaths": Both are protective, but neither makes you immortal.
What did conservatives say?
Conservatives loved this headline. None bothered to read the article beneath it.
Actor James Woods, 2.6m followers, writes: "There you have it." (57k likes)
Actors Keith and Kevin Hodge, 1.1m followers, write: "the vaccinated account for a majority of Covid-19 deaths. So, is it ok to say now that the vaccine was a money grab for the pharmaceutical companies?" (42k likes)
Lawyer Laura Ingraham, 4.4m followers, writes: "Finally admitting the truth about the “vaccines”?" (13k likes)
None of the conservatives bothered reading the article. In fact, among posts mentioning "majority of covid deaths" with over 1000 likes, not a single one actually showed anything from inside the article.
In short: They like the headline, they didn't read the article, and they don't care about the facts.
What did the WaPo article actually say?
The original headline was clickbait. Since then, WaPo changed the title to "Covid is no longer mainly a pandemic of the unvaccinated." Here's how it opens:
It’s no longer a pandemic of the unvaccinated
For the first time, a majority of Americans dying from the coronavirus received at least the primary series of the vaccine.
Fifty-eight percent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, according to an analysis conducted for The Health 202 by Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
But reality doesn't stop at "most COVID deaths are among vaccinated people". The article goes on to explain why the proportion of COVID deaths slowly shifted toward vaccinated people:
Vaccinated people make up the large majority of Americans
Vaccinated people are likely to be elderly or infirm
Vaccines lose anti-viral efficacy over time
Aside: Many commentators compare these facts to seatbelts. In 2021, according to the NHTSA, about 90% of car users wore seatbelts, yet about 49% of deaths occur among seatbelted car users. This doesn't mean that seatbelts don't save lives! In fact, if you're in a crash, seatbelting decreases your chances of death by ~45%. But seatbelting is so common that car crashes still kill many seatbelted car users.
The WaPo article then explains, yet again, that vaccines -- and boosters, and updated boosters -- dramatically reduce the likelihood of death from COVID:
[In August], unvaccinated people aged 6 months and older died at about six times the rate of those who had received their primary series of shots.
People with one booster dose were even better protected. Unvaccinated people over the age of 5 had about 8 times the risk of dying from a coronavirus infection than those who received a booster shot.
Among individuals who were eligible to receive additional booster shots, the gap is even more striking. Unvaccinated people 50 and up had 12 times the risk of dying from covid-19 than adults the same age with two or more booster doses.
In short: Most COVID deaths now occur in vaccinated people, because most people are vaccinated, most high-risk people are vaccinated, and vaccines lose efficacy with time. Vaccines still dramatically reduce risk of COVID death, especially when boosted.
Where are my pretty graphs?
A picture is worth a thousand words. Massive right-wing accounts clearly don't bother reading the articles they promote, so let's make them some pretty pictures instead.
Question 1: Recently, have most COVID deaths occurred in vaccinated people?
Figure 1: Yes -- because most people are vaccinated!
Question 2: Do vaccinated people have lower rates of infection from COVID?
Figure 2: Yes! 190 of every 100,000 unvaccinated people got COVID this September, against 72 of every 100,000 vaccinated people -- that's 2.6 times lower!
Question 3: Do vaccinated people have lower rates of death from COVID?
Figure 3: Yes! 1.8 of every 100,000 unvaccinated people died of COVID this September, against 0.3 of every 100,000 -- that's 6 times lower!
Question 4: Why are COVID death rates lower among vaccinated people? We know that they are less likely to get infected (graph 2). Are they also more likely to survive COVID, if they do get infected?
Figure 4: Do vaccinated people have higher survival rates (lower case fatality rates) from COVID? Yes! 5 of every 1000 unvaccinated COVID cases this September died, against 2 of every 1000 vaccinated COVID cases -- that's 2.5 times lower!
In short: Even with the rise of new variants and declining immune response over time, vaccines still significantly protect against COVID -- reducing your chance of infection by ~2.5x and death from that infection by ~2.5x.
Summary
In short: The fact that most COVID deaths occur among vaccinated people occurs for much the same reason most car deaths occur among seatbelted people: Both vaccines and seatbelts are protective, but both are so common that they see a majority of deaths.
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Data sources
All graphs above use the CDC's living (continually updated) dataset, "Rates of COVID-19 Cases or Deaths by Age Group and Vaccination Status". For those interested in looking at booster shot efficacy, see "Rates of COVID-19 Cases or Deaths by Age Group and Vaccination Status and Booster Dose".
To download either dataset: Click "Export", then click "CSV":
Also see the CDC's COVID Data Tracker for "Rates of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths by Vaccination Status", which produces some excellent graphs of its own:
Go to Epoch Times which has articles based on many doctors' evidence of major problems with Covid vaccination. I think the fact that many people with the Covid vaccination not only are re-infected but many die from causes directly or indirectly from the vaccination shows a major problem with it. Finally, how vaccine was rolled out was not scientific because the most vulnerable people were the elderly which was proved by the negligence of Democrat Governor Cuomo who allowed thousands of infected Covid patients into nursing homes in New York state killing about 15,000 elderly nursing home residents. Why did Cuomo do it? Not to give credit to President Trump and others who provided temporary hospitals to treat Covid patients. Often elected Democrats have no integrity.
In a country with a functioning legal system for elected politicians and their appointees Cuomo would have been indicted and the same applies to Biden-accepting bribes from Communist China using his son as a front man and Pelosi using insider trading with her husband doing the stock trades.