January 28, 2023

Vaccines are great but I'd caution that they are not absolute protection

and that each variant that gains dominance is more infectious than the last, both for the unvaxxed and for the vaxxed. I keep that in mind when I do have to go out grocery shopping or whatever -- being fully vaxxed/boosted I'm maybe 3X lower risk of infection than the unvaxxed, but OTOH this thing keeps getting more and more infectious, so I don't really know what my risk of infection is compared to the early (pre-vax) days, but my guess is that it's not much different. Only that the consequences of an infection are much less than in the early days.

As an over-65 year old with at least one additional risk factor, I do worry about the consequences. If I was middle-aged or younger and healthy, I'd probably be a lot less worried.

NY Times U.S. page, as viewed 1/28/23
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

Scroll to the "Rates for vaccinated and unvaccinated" section with the average daily cases and average daily deaths graph

CASES: latest is Dec 18-24: Unvaxxed has 3X (2.76X if one does the math with the incidence rates that pop up) the risk as fully vaxxed. (For much of 2022 it ranged from 2X to 3X in rounded numbers)

DEATHS: latest is Nov 27-Dec 3, unvaxxed have 5x (5.2X if one does the math) the risk as fully vaxxed

Number in ()'s are the ratios I calculated at the end point from the pop-up that pops up.

See below for the CDC covid-data-tracker page --

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CDC Covid tracker rates by vaccine status - https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status - as viewed 1/28/23

Scroll down to the graph. Realize that on the left side are two radio buttons where one can choose "deaths" or "cases"

The incidence rates below (CDC) are WEEKLY rates (i.e. cases per 100,000 per WEEK), in contrast to the NY Times numbers which are average DAILY rates. Whichever is used doesn't affect the relative risk of vaxxed vs. unvaxxed etc., but when looking at the incidence rates per 100k, the CDC numbers look much higher than the NY Times. This is why).

LATEST ON CASES (age 5 and older) is 12/18/22: Incidence per 100,000 population: Unvaxxed 271, Vaxxed w/o updated booster: 98, Vaxxed with updated booster: 82. So relative to vaxxed with updated booster: Unvaxxed: 3.30 X, Vaxxed w/o updated booster: 1.20 X.

LATEST ON DEATHS (age 5 and older) is 11/27/22: Incidence per 100,000 population Unvaxxed 1.79, Vaxxed w/o updated booster: 0.35, Vaxxed with updated booster: 0.16. So relative to vaxxed with updated booster: Unvaxxed: 11.2 X, Vaxxed w/o updated booster: 2.20 X (so get that bivalent booster -progree).

The box below the graph says: In November 2022, people ages 5 and older and vaccinated with an updated (bivalent) booster had:

12.7X lower risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to unvaxxed people and 2.4X lower risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to people vaxxed without the updated (bivalent) booster.