I have not posted for a while on the Coronavirus. I noticed on my twitter that people have posted the following stats on COVID from the CDC (Center for Disease Control):
Mortality Rates:
Unvaccinated: 6.1 deaths per 100K
Vaccinated: 0.5 deaths per 100K
Boosted: 0.1 deaths per 100K
I went to their websites and tried to find the stats from the original source, but couldn’t find the magic button that led me to the magic stats, so I will just go with what I saw on twitter. After all, that is the data that is being transmitted through the aether.
Now I gather around 62% of Americans are partially or wholly vaccinated. 38% have taken no vaccines.
Now, there are a mere 331,893,745 people in the U.S. (2021 estimate).
So, 62% of 331,893,745/100K x 0.1 = 206 deaths
In this case, I am assuming that those vaccinated will be boosted.
And, 38% of 331,893,745/100K x 6.1 = 7,693.
In this case, I am assuming these 38% will not get vaccinated. I would not be surprised if up to half of them do.
Does this really mean we are at the point that the total additional cost of the Coronavirus in the United States is less than 10,000 more lives? I find that hard to believe. In the last 28 days we have lost 35,492. Last week we lost 8,442 people.
To date, we have lost 812,283. This is out of a reported 51,564,141 cases. This calculates at a mortality rate of 1.575% or 1,575 deaths per 100K. This is much higher than 6.1 per 100K. There seems to be a disconnect here.
1. Are the CDC statistics as transmitted by twitter incorrect (I first saw them on Anthony Scaramucci’s feed, but have seen the statistics repeated on other feeds. It was labeled “Latest CDC statistic on deaths from known COVID cases”)?
2. Is the mortality rate of the Delta and Omicron variants much lower than the original virus?
3. Is this just the statistical anomaly created by the most vulnerable people having been vaccinated (or worse) and the unvaccinated are mostly younger and healthier, with a much lower mortality rate?
4. Did I make a math error here somewhere?
Chris,
Related to your numbers, there is an article that appeared in Nature “The pandemic’s true death toll: millions more than official counts” found at:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00104-8.
Cheers,
Rosser