FAQs 10/22

October 2022 Edition ... Last update: Monday 10/17/22 
This revised reference page presents four FAQs that everyone should have at their fingertips. These essential FAQs provide clear signals that it's OK for millions of younger people to return to normal living. But they also provide strong cautions to millions in the oldest age groups and to their younger caregivers to maintain high alert and stay boosted because for them the pandemic is far from over.

The CDC often updates its datasets, but the data does not greatly change from one update to the next. Therefore the editor will only update the tables and charts on this reference page once per month.

The page downloads lots of "stuff" from the Google cloud, so readers should wait at least 30 seconds before scrolling or clicking slowly through the FAQs. Thank you for your patience ... :-)

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

B. Who does COVID kill? 

 

 
A1. What percent of the U.S. population is in each age group?
Having a rough idea of the relative size of each age group, i.e., its percentage of the total population, is essential for understanding the subsequent charts and tables on this page. 
  • The population values in Table A1 were copied from the S0101 dataset of the U.S. Census Bureau 
  • The most important feature to notice in this table is the share of the 65+ age group, only 16.1 percent of the total population

Table A1
    


A2. What percentages of our oldest, most vulnerable age groups have been vaccinated and boosted?
  • The values in Table A2 were copied from a CDC dataset of U.S. vaccinations by age groups
  • Please note the low booster percentages in each group, indicators that millions of the nation's most vulnerable members are still not protected against severe illness and death from COVID. 
Table A2


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B. Who does Covid kill?
COVID rarely kills children. It mostly kills people in the oldest age groups. Chart B plots the deaths per 100,000 each week for different age groups from the beginning of the pandemic in the U.S in early 2020.

Comments about Chart B
  • The thick dark curve for the "very old" group (age 75+) shows the highest number pf deaths each week by a very wide margin because the very old are the most vulnerable to the virus.

  • The dashed curve for the "old" (65 to 74) shows the second highest number of deaths each week; while the dashed curves for "older middle age" (50 to 64) and "middle aged" (40 to 49) curves show the third and fourth highest deaths each week because these are the third and fourth most vulnerable age groups

  • By contrast, the curves for the younger age groups are barely visible because all of their deaths per week are so close to zero, i.e., the horizontal axis. The  youngest are the least vulnerable. Indeed, deaths among the youngest are rare events, even among those who are unvaccinated. 

  • The number of persons killed each week in January 2022 during the Omicron surge was about the same as the number who were killed each week during the original variant's first surge back in March/April 2020. And during all surges from March 2020 to September, the oldest age groups suffered the lion's share of the deaths each week. 

  • The number of persons severely ill enough from COVID to be hospitalized follows the same pattern as COVID deaths, the overwhelming majority being persons 65 and over. Charts that support this common sense anticipation are found on the CDC's "Rates of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations by vaccination status" page.
User note: To restore the curves to their original positions, press the search icon ("magnifying glass") between the plus and minus signs at the bottom of the chart.
    Chart B  
Source = CDC: "COVID-19 Weekly Cases and Deaths per 100,000 Population by Age, Race/Ethnicity, and Sex" ... Slide #8 "COVID-19 Weekly Deaths per 100,000 by Age Group"
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C. How many people has COVID killed?
Table C1 displays the nation's infamous benchmark ==> Over one million persons killed by the virus from the beginning of the U.S. pandemic until now.

Table C1         

Table C2 allocates the shares of U.S. COVID deaths to three age groups: young, adult, and elderly, i.e., 65+. The elderly have suffered about 78 percent of COVID deaths, despite their only having 16.1 percent of the population, i.e., almost five times the number of deaths as one might have expected.  On the other hand, only 4 percent of COVID deaths have occurred among persons under 45, even though they constitute almost 60 percent of the nation's population.
 
Table C2   

User note: To restore the Tables C1 and C2 to their original positions, press the search icon ("magnifying glass") between the plus and minus signs at the bottom of the table.
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D. How effectively have our vaccines and boosters protected the members of our oldest age groups?
The question to be answered in this section really means how well have the vaccinations and boosters administered so far reduced the levels of COVID deaths among their oldest recipients?

The good news, correction, the great news is that our vaccines and boosters have provided excellent protection against death for their oldest recipients during the first nine months of Omicron's dominance, even before the distribution of the new bivalent boosters, as will be seen from the data in Tables D1 and D2, but especially in Chart D.

What's in Table D1?
Chart B (above) answered the question: How many people did COVID kill in each age group every week. Table D1 (below) divides age groups into three subgroups: those who were unvaccinated, those who received a primary dose of vaccine but no booster, and those who received at least one booster shot.
  • Table D1 shows the weekly death rates per 100,000 by age groups from late December 2021 through September 2022

  • Four age groups appear again and again in the "Age Groups" column ... 12 to 17, 18 to 49, 50 to 64, and 65+, i.e., 65 and older. 
    (Note: Data for age group 5 to 11 does not appear in the CDC dataset until June in MMWR_week = 202223 when its members were authorized to receive boosters)

  • Each age group appears in its own row every week. The weeks are designated by the "Month" column and by the "MMWR Week" column.

    -- For example, the first four rows in the table show death rates for the last week in 2021, so the month is "Dec-21", and the MMWR Week is 202152, which denotes the 52nd week of 2021

    -- The "Unvaccinated Death Rate" for persons in the "Age 65+" row was 68.9; the "Primary Dose Death Rate" (but no booster) was 14.9; and the "Booster Death Rate" was 3.9 per 100,000. 

Note: The data in Tables D1 and D2 are from the CDC's dataset "Rates of COVID-19 Cases or Deaths by Age Group and Vaccination Status and Booster Dose" ... Updated Sept 20, 2022

Table D1.


Patterns in the data in Table D1
There are striking patterns within each week, i.e., within and among the four "Age Group" rows; and there are patterns between weeks, as in the rise of deaths in a surge, and the subsequent decline
  • Within each week and within each "Age Group" row one finds that the death rates are highest among the unvaccinated and lowest among the boosted

  • Within each week but between age group rows, one finds that death rates among the younger age group rows are lower than death rates recorded for older age group rows.

    -- For example, the unvaccinated in younger age groups had lower deaths per 100,000 than the the death rates among the unvaccinated members of older age groups.

    -- Indeed, the natural immunity to COVID among the unvaccinated youngest age group in the table, 12 to 17, is so strong that it causes this group's death rates to be lower than the death rates among boosted members of older age groups.

  • Perhaps the most striking patterns can be observed during surges, as occurred in January 2022. Death rates for the unvaccinated members of the 65+ age group soared above 100 per 100,000, but were capped at 0.1 per 100,000 for unvaccinated 12 to 17 year olds, i.e., as one in a million. Our unvaccinated teenagers were much safer than those who were 65+ and boosted, whose death rates reached 16.8 per 100,000, i.e., 168 per million.

What's in Table D2?
The data in Table D2 provides rough estimates of the number of lives saved each week in each age group by primary doses and by booster shots
  • Table D2 estimates the Lives Saved via Primary Doses" each week by calculating the difference between the unvaccinated and primary dose death rates for each "Age Group"

    -- For example, the death rate for the last week of December 2022 in Table D1 for unvaccinated persons in the "Age 65+" row was 68.9 per 100,000; whereas the death rate for persons who were vaccinated (but not boosted) was 14.9. So the number of lives saved per 100,000 = Lives Saved by Primary Doses = = Unvaccinated - Primary = 68.9 - 14.9 = 54.0 ... which is appears in the "Saved by Primary" column in the 65+ row in Table D2.

  • Table D2 estimates the Lives Saved by Boosters each week by calculating the difference between the primary death rates and the booster death rates for each "Age Group" row

    -- For For example, the death rate for the last week of December 2022 of Table D1 for vaccinated persons in the "Age 65+" row was 14.9 per 100,000; whereas the death rate for persons who were boosted was 3.9. So the number of lives saved per 100,000 = Lives Saved by Boosters = Primary Doses -  Boosters = 14.9 - 3.9 = 11.0 as shown in the "Saved by Boosters" column in Table D2.
Table D2.

Patterns in the data in Table D2
Table D2 is too long to fit into the short frame in which it is displayed, so most of the broad patterns in this table will be best perceived by viewing Chart D that plots its data. Chart D appears in the next section of this note.
  • For all age groups primary doses saved more lives than boosters every week, the gaps in effectiveness being largest during the surge in the weeks in late December 2021 through February 2022

    --     In every week, the gap in lives saved was smallest in the youngest age groups. The teens in these groups rarely died, even when they were unvaccinated

    -- In every week, the gap in lives saved was largest in the 65+ group, especially during the December through February surge.

  • Overall, our vaccines and boosters saved the most lives among the oldest, most vulnerable members of our society and saved very few lives among the youngest, least vulnerable members who rarely died even when they were not vaccinated.

What's on Chart D?
The chart only plots the lived saved curves for the two oldest age groups -- 50 to 64 and and 65+ -- because the values of the curves for the younger groups are all zeros or close to zeros, so the curves invisibly hug the zero line.
  • Chart D presents two pairs of curves:
    -- The solid, colored curves plot the lives saved per 100,000 by primary doses.
    -- The dashed black curves plot the lives saved by boosters
    -- Within each pair, the higher curve plots the lives saved by primary doses, the lower curve plots lives saved by boosters.

  • Two vertical black lines mark the peaks of Omicron surges:
    -- The line on the left marks the high peak of the strong surge, the peak occurring in the second week of January 2022, i.e. MMWR_Week = 202202
    -- The vertical line on the right marks the peak of the mild surge in the second week of July 2022, i.e. MMWR_Week = 202228 
User note: To restore Chart D to its original positions, press the search icon ("magnifying glass") between the plus and minus signs at the bottom of the chart.

Chart D. 

Patterns in Chart D
Whereas Chart B (Section B) succinctly presented the bad news about how many lives were lost to all variants of the virus, Chart D presents the good news about how many lives were saved by primary doses and booster shots during the current Omicron surge.
  • The curves in Chart D should leave no doubt that primary doses and boosters saved many lives among the two oldest age groups -- 50 to 64 and 65+
  • Primary doses and boosters saved far more lives among the oldest 65+ group than among those who were 50 to 64
  • The curves should also leave no doubt that primary doses and boosters did not save many lives among those under 50, and saved few, if any, lives among those who were under 18.

Conclusions
  • The facts presented in this note's tables and charts suggest that the highest priority should be given to facilitating and persuading as many of the millions of older U.S. residents who are still unvaccinated to become vaccinated as soon as possible.

  • More broadly, other data not included in this note's tables and charts suggest that highest priority access to new boosters should also be given to younger persons made vulnerable by underlying health conditions, e.g., diabetes and immunocompromised.

  • And if new boosters really reduce the transmissibility of the virus, highest priority should be extended to younger caregivers (family, friends, and paid professionals) who have frequent face-to-face interactions with persons made vulnerable by old age or underlying health conditions in order to reduce the likelihood of their transmitting the virus to the vulnerable recipients of their care.

  • Much lower priority should be given to persuading members of the youngest age groups who do not have underlying health conditions to become boosted, or even vaccinated, because primary doses and boosters have saved very few lives among these groups.

  • Finally, the tables and charts in the current edition of these FAQs say nothing about who COVID does not kill in the short run, but seriously disables in the long run. The FAQs say nothing about who is most vulnerable to the disparate collection of disabilities known as "long COVID", and what can be done to reduce the risks of developing these disabilities. The current edition says nothing because at this time very little is known. Hopefully, current research will yield actionable insights in the coming months.
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