Our pandemic of the elderly -- dead unvaccinated, dead vaccinated, and dead boosted

Last update: Thursday 7/21/22 

The long table in this blog note demonstrates two points: (1) Super majority percentages of the deaths from coronavirus variants in the U.S. have been inflicted on our nation's oldest residents, i.e., age 65+. Although older residents are less than 20 percent of the U.S. population, they experience more than 70 percent of COVID deaths; (2) This disproportionate share of deaths is growing even larger under Omicron and its sub-variants. 

Source: Rates of COVID-19 Cases or Deaths by Age Group and Vaccination Status and Booster Dose
Updated July 15, 2022

A. Columns in the table

The first two columns identify the data's position in the time series

• Column 1 -- month and year
• Column 2 -- mmwr week epidemiological year and week [YYYYWW format; e.g. 202101] ... First CDC data included in the table in this note is last week in December 2021 (mmwr = 202152) when Omicron became dominant in the U.S.  ... Latest data entry in the CDC dataset is last week in May 2022 (mmwr = 202221)

The next four columns contain data about age and death that were extracted from the CDC dataset

• Column 3 -- Age Group = 12-17 years; 18-49 years; 50-64 years; 65+ years; all ages
  
• Column 4 -- Weekly count of individuals vaccinated with a full primary series and at least one booster dose with outcome = "death"; CDC events whose outcome = a living "case" were not included in this table
• Column 5 -- Weekly count of individuals vaccinated with a full primary series with outcome = "death"
• Column 6 -- Weekly count of unvaccinated individuals with outcome = "death" ... Note that persons who only received one of two jabs in a primary series are regarded as "unvaccinated"
  

The last two columns were calculated using the CDC data

• Column 7 -- Total Death equals the total number of people in each age group who died each week = boosted + full primary + unvaccinated
• Column 8 -- Percent of all Death equals 100 * Total Death for each age group / Total Death for the "all ages" group ... so the percent for the "all ages" group each week always = 100

Readers should note that the table contains death counts, not the usual deaths per 100 thousand. The advantage of death counts is that death counts are what doctors, nurses, and other medical staff actually see; and what they actually see underlies their comments in the media. So throughout 2021, medical staff often lamented that the pandemic had become a pandemic of the unvaccinated. 

However, there is a paradoxical downside to using death counts instead of death rates that will be discussed in a subsequent section of this note. 

 

B. Comments about the table ... a scroller's guide ... :-)

• The reader is advised to start at the top of the table, then scroll down slowly. Notice that there are usually four weeks in each month, and each week requires five rows of data, one for each of the five age groups.
  
  
• The 65+ row is highlighted each week, first with bold lettering, then with bold and red. This row is highlighted because it is the focus of our discussion. For example, the first week of rows in the table are for the last week in December 2021 (mmwr = 202152), which is usually regarded as the beginning of Omicron's dominance. During that week the 65+ group suffered a total of 6,079 deaths. As shown in the last column of that row, this represented 72.4 percent of the 8,400 deaths, shown in the fifth row, for all ages during that week.
  
  
• As expected, unvaccinated members of the 65+ group suffered the largest number of deaths, 3,451 during that first week (mmwr = 202152); but unlike what occurred throughout most of 2021, this was not an overwhelming majority. Many breakthrough deaths occurred among those who were boosted or just fully vaccinated. Indeed, substantial numbers of breakthrough deaths also occurred in the 50-64 group. As measured by death counts, the pandemic was no longer a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
  
  
• Scrolling down the table, the reader will see that the total number of deaths for all groups kept rising until the Omicron wave peaked in the second week of January 2022 (mmwr = 202202), then declined each week until it bottomed out at 385 in April (mmwr = 202215).  Nevertheless, the 65+ share of total deaths continued to rise every week throughout this period of overall decline. Indeed the 65+ share of total deaths reached 80 percent during the week of lowest total deaths and stayed above 80 percent for seven out of the last eight weeks in the table.
  
  
• The reader should note that the 65+ row is highlighted in bold and red for week mmwr = 202215 in order to call attention to the fact that the sum of its breakthrough deaths (boosted 100 + full vax 65 = 165) was greater than its unvaxxed deaths (143). Indeed, the 65+ rows for all of the remaining weeks in the table are also highlighted in bold and red for this reason.  
  
  
• Finally, the reader should note that a third unexpected trend began in week mmwr= 202212 and continued for the remaining weeks in the table: There are more deaths among the boosted than among those who only received the full primary dose. This anomaly is flagged by the green color of the boosted cells.

C. Three surprise endings of the Omicron train wreck

Each of these unexpected endings might be the result of data errors:

• Errors in the CDC dataset. 
  The editor of this blog thinks this is highly unlikely. This dataset has been downloaded over 20,000 times. If the data was erroneous somebody would have noticed and filed their concerns with the CDC
  
  
• Errors in the editor's handling of the CDC dataset
  This is far more likely than a CDC error, so the editor of this blog will continue to double check every line of code in his R scripts that extracted the data and performed the necessary calculations. He will issue a revision of this blog note together with apologies to his readers if he identifies any errors. 

Now let's examine some alternative explanations of the unexpected endings.

1. The share of COVID deaths increased substantially during the Omicron surge, then remained at the elevated level

This result is only surprising at first glance. Second thoughts quickly discern that the same logic applies here that explained Omicron's capacity to infect, hospitalize, and kill more people in less time than Delta, even though Omicron is less lethal than Delta. In this case Omicron's speed of transmission enabled it to find and kill the most vulnerable members of the most vulnerable age group faster than it could find and kill the most vulnerable members of the less vulnerable, younger age groups. A study reported by the NY Times also documented this increased share of deaths among the nation's oldest age group.

• "During the Omicron Wave, Death Rates Soared for Older People", Benjamin Mueller and Eleanor Lutz, NY Times, 5/31/22

Perhaps the 65+ group's share of deaths remained higher than 80 percent after the initial surge subsided because the virus could still find weaker members of the oldest age group faster, a capacity that was enhanced by the rise of sub-variants that were far more transmissible than the original Omicron variant. 

2. More breakthrough deaths than unvaccinated deaths

The final weeks in the table show that the number of boosted and fully vaccinated seniors who died was larger than the number of unvaccinated seniors who died. Once again, this result is only stunning at first glance; second thoughts reveal that this situation is inevitable, so the only question is whether it should have occurred now. 

• On 7/16/22, the CDC's Data Tracker stated that almost 92 percent of the nation's seniors were fully vaccinated. About 8 percent of the nation's seniors are unvaccinated. While 92 percent is a high bar, we should expect it rise even higher in the months ahead. 
  
  
• Now imagine that all seniors were vaccinated except for, say 10; millions of others would be vaccinated.  If a surge in the virus killed 5, it is hard to imagine that the surge would fail to kill far more than 5 of the vaccinated millions. In other words, as the percentage of vaccinated seniors rises, larger and larger percentages of seniors killed by the virus will be vaccinated seniors.
  
  
• On the other hand, the nation has been far more successful in providing primary doses than booster shots to seniors. The CDC's Data Tracker also reported that only 70 percent of the seniors who had received primary doses had received one booster shot; worse still only 35 percent of seniors who had received their first booster had received their second booster.
  
  In other words, nowadays there are far more seniors who received primary doses and boosters a long time ago, i.e., back in 2021 but who had not been boosted since then, far more than the number of seniors who have never been vaccinated. These 2021 boosters are highly vulnerable because their doses have lost most of their effectiveness in preventing severe illness and death.

3. More deaths among boosted seniors than seniors who only received primary vaccine doses 

The third and final anomaly is the most readily explained. Let's call it the "Biden Effect". (Regular readers of this blog know where this is headed). For the rest of you, here's a hint: a link to the most recent note that the Neoskeptics editor posted on this blog.

• "Has President Biden been infected by Omicron yet? Yes,  on 7/21/22", Last update: 7/21/22

The crucial clues to understanding the flip-flop whereby more boosted seniors died than unvaccinated seniors are the conditions under which it happened. The first flip-flop occurred in March, during mmwr week = 20221, when the total weekly death tolls had declined from peak values above 12,000 per week down to less than 1,000 per week. This which was about the same time that new, even more transmissible Omicron sub-variants began to appear.

Dr. Fauci's prediction that sooner or later everyone would be infected by Omicron now took a meaner turn as people who were doubly boosted became infected again ... and again. Infections pose substantial risks to seniors, the older they are the greater the risks, even if they are vaccinated and boosted. Indeed, when Dr. Fauci himself became reinfected, he declared his belief that his quick access to Paxlovid pills kept him out of the hospital

• "Fauci says he believes Paxlovid kept him out of the hospital, even though he tested positive again.", Sheryl Gay Stolberg, NY Times, 6/29/22

All of the weeks in the table in which boosted deaths are highlighted in green show that the differences between the deaths of seniors who were boosted and seniors who had only received primary doses were relatively small, usually less than 100. This small difference would not require that "all" seniors engage in risky behavior, or even a simple majority. 

Only a small minority of the nation's seniors would have to start acting like the nation's risk tolerant, 79 year old, First Senior, President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr, while the most transmissible Omicron sub-variants sloshed all around them. Maybe just 10 or 12 percent would have to take their cues from their president by not wearing N95 masks in indoor spaces while leaning their heads to within inches of other people's heads, other heads that were not wearing any kind of mask ... :-(

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Links to related notes on this blog:  

• "Has President Biden been infected by Omicron yet? Yes, on 7/21/22", Last update: 7/21/22