The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published updated data on the number of breakthrough cases, hospitalizations, and deaths caused by COVID-19 among vaccinated Americans. Despite the CDC changing its mask guidelines, Democratic-led cities (like Washington D.C) reimposing mask mandates, and mainstream media outlets giving an alarmist media coverage over the effect of the Delta variant in vaccinated people, the data shows (again) that the fears have been massively overblown and that vaccination remains the most effective tool to beat the virus.
A study made by NBC on the COVID-19 infection data obtained from 38 states shows that at least 125,000 Americans have tested positive for a COVID-19 breakthrough infection. Although that might sound like a big number, once you take into account that more than 164 million people have been fully vaccinated then the number is definitely not big, in fact, this represents only 0.077% out of the vaccinated population in America.
This data contextualizes the sensational and eye-opening (but highly irresponsible) headlines of many media outlets that highlight the number of fully vaccinated Americans who have got infected from COVID-19. Such as some infamous articles by the Washington Post and The New York Times, which were harshly criticized by a Ben Wakana, a member of the White House COVID-19 response team.
The verdict in favor of the effectiveness of the vaccines is even more clear when looking at hospitalizations and deaths in the vaccinated population. With CDC data showing that out of the more than 163 million people who have been fully vaccinated in the United States, only 6,239 have been hospitalized due to a breakthrough case of COVID-19 and 1,263 have died from the virus.
This data is not exclusive to the United States. Israel has saw its death rate from COVID-19 crashing dramatically after its successful vaccination rollout, and even if the country has seen a relative increase in its infection ate due to the Delta variant, its death rate has remained very low. This trend is also repeated int he United Kingdom, where a majority of the population is vaccinated, where the average death rate has remained extremely low despite the rise in confirmed cases.
In other words, only 0.004% of vaccianted Americans have been to the hospital and 0.001% have actually died from COVID-19. If we transform these percenetages to odds the picture is also very clear, your odds of getting hospitalized for COVID-19 after being vaccinated is 1 in 25,000 and the odds of dying are 1 in 100,000.
To put this into perspective, your odds of dying due to a car accident are 1 in 107, your odds for dying choking on your food are 1 in 2,535; you have a 1 in 58,669 chance for dying via bee stings; your odds of getting killed by a dog attack are 1 in 86,781.
Every decision people take require some degree of cost-benefit analysis, so here are a couple of useful data nuggets for those debating if they should take the vaccine or not: you are far more likely to be killed by an angry hornet than from COVID after you are vaccinated and, of course, you are more likely to get into a deadly car accident going grocery shopping at Publix than dying from COVID after getting the vaccine.
Protected from the worst?
The rise of the Delta variant has had one clear target: the unvaccinated. A study made by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that the brunt of the overall hospitalizations and deaths is shared by unvaccinated Americans. Take New Jersey for example, where 99.9% of overall hospitalizations and deaths come from unvaccinated Americans.
Even Alaska and Montana, the state where vaccinated have the highest share of hospitalizations and death respectively, show a similar picture: as only 5% of overall hospitalizations come from vaccinated Alaskians and 3.1% of the deaths from COVID in Montana coming from vaccianted Americans.
States with a lower percentage of their population vaccinated also are being hit hardest than those with a more inoculated population.For example Alabama, the state with one of the lowest percentage of vaccinated Americans, has a hospitalization daily average of 1,373 an 180% 14-day increase. In comparison, New York (which has almost five times Alabama’s population) has a 1,052 daily hospitalization average, only a 38% increase form two weeks ago.
Although the messaging over the effectiveness of the vaccines have been muddied, mainly due to a combination of mixed-messaging from the govemrent accompanied by fearmongering driven by much of the mainstream media, the data is clear: vaccinations are not only effective at preventing you to get infected but also they guard you from the worst of the virus.
Daniel is a Political Science and Economics student from the University of South Florida. He worked as a congressional intern to Rep. Gus Bilirakis (FL-12) from January to May 2020. He also is the head of international analysis at Politiks // Daniel es un estudiante de Cs Políticas y Economía en la Universidad del Sur de la Florida. Trabajo como pasante legislativo para el Representate Gus Bilirakis (FL-12) desde enero hasta mayo del 2020. Daniel también es el jefe de análisis internacional de Politiks.