I live in British Columbia, Canada, so I’m mostly looking at statistics here. Another Story here has pointed out that the CDC has simply said that the probability of hospitalization and death is “over 10x” for unvaccinated vs unvaccinated. My stats hunting seems to indicate that it is much more than that. So much so that I’m wondering if the CDC is hiding the precise numbers because they seem so extreme that anti-vaxers might just reject them as manufactured.
I’m happy to say that BC is in a much better shape than much of the US, in terms of percent vaccinated:
Percent vaccinated
eligible people 12 and older |
4,634,100
|
|
received first dose |
3,962,256
|
85.5% |
received second dose |
3,614,503 |
78.0% |
But despite unvaccinated people being a clear minority, they’re still a huge majority of the load on BC’s hospital system.
Past two weeks cases hospitalized (Aug. 26-Sept. 8)
Not vaccinated: |
292 |
81.6% |
Ratio |
Partially vaccinated: |
18 |
5.0% |
16.2 |
Fully vaccinated: |
48 |
13.4% |
6.1 |
But remember that only 14.5% percent of the population is vaccinated! This means that, if you put these stats in terms of cases and hospitalization per 100,000 people, it gets a lot worse for the unvaccinated:
cases per 100,000 population (Sept. 2-8)
|
Value |
ratio |
Vs Partial |
Not vaccinated: |
301.2 |
|
|
Partially vaccinated: |
88.7 |
3.4 |
|
Fully vaccinated: |
26.1 |
11.5 |
3.4 |
Now, right here, you can see that the ration is much higher than the CDC numbers. (11.54 vs 5). I’m going to put this down to the fact that the medical system in Canada is much more accessible than it is in the US. Testing is easy and free — and people are used to the medical system being easy and free to access — and there are income supports for people who need to be uaranteed. Both of these factors may just make people more likely to get tested.
I also can’t ignore the fact that the ratio for people with one shot vs unvaccinated is exactly the same as the ration cases for partially vaccinated (one shot) vs fully vaccinated (2 shots). That’s not a typo. You have to go to 3 digits to see a (small) difference. This may be an accident, but you’ll see a similar bit of magic in hospitalizations.
Hospitalizations per 100,000 population (Aug. 26-Sept. 8)
|
Value |
ratio |
Vs Partial |
Not vaccinated: |
39.5 |
|
|
Partially vaccinated: |
6.7 |
5.9 |
|
Fully vaccinated: |
1.1 |
35.9 |
6.1 |
Notice that ratio (35.9) which puts the CDC headline of “greater than 10” to shame.
You’ll also notice that the ration of hospitalization for 0 doses vs 1 is roughly the same as it is for 1 dose vs 2. This seems to make the anomaly in the previous table seem like less than a coincidence. Unfortunately, I don’t have the resources to investigate this more fully.
I also don’t have the statistics for deaths (un)fortunately the numbers of deaths in BC are relatively low. There were only 11 deaths over the three days from Friday to Monday, so that would extrapolate to about 50 deaths (or less) over the last 2 weeks. It’s hard to get significant ratios with numbers like that, but I would predict that the ratios would be more severe than we see for hospitalizations.
I want to add another point that is obvious, but has an anecdote. People who refuse to vaccinate don’t just put themselves at risk. One of the headlines in BC this weekend was a woman who died after waiting in line at the emergency ward for 6 hours. (Yes, a 6 hour wait in emergency is considered scandalous here in Canada. I’ve heard the horror stories from down south).
The point is that this happened in a hot spot for COVID in BC — which also ‘just happens’ to be the health region in BC with the lowest vaccination rate. The hospital where the woman died was over-stressed dealing with COVID patients, and the emergency ward suffered as a result. If more people in the Kamloops area had been vaccinated (and therefore not hospitalized), chances are that the woman who died would have gotten proper care long before she died.
This is part of the reason why refusing to get vaccinated is much more than ‘just a personal choice’, when you’re in the middle of a deadly pandemic.