With Almost 40% of Covid-19 Cases Among the Vaccinated in LA County, It's Hard to Justify Vaccine Mandates

November 8, 2021 - On Friday, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health released more data regarding Covid-19 infections and deaths among the fully vaccinated. Such data is only released sporadically and is not on the LACDPH Covid data dashboard. The numbers reveal a small increase in the number of fully vaccinated people catching Covid and a slightly larger percent of them dying of it, once infected.

As of November 5, 2021, the statistics from the LA County Department of Public Health show:

Total population of LA County: 10,014,009

Total number fully vaccinated: 6,366,404

Total Covid infections: 1,499,911

Fully vaccinated Covid infections: 68,780

Total Covid deaths: 26,719

Fully vaccinated Covid deaths: 379

The latest numbers show that incidence of death, once infected remains far less for the fully vaccinated than for the unvaccinated, at 1.78% compared to 0.55%. However, the gap between infections and deaths is slowly decreasing between the vaccinated and unvaccinated crowds. On October 18, vaccinated people were contracting Covid-19 at a rate of 0.97%, but on November 5, that had risen to 1.1%. On October 18, vaccinated people were dying from Covid-19, once infected, at a rate of 0.51%, but on November 5, that had risen to 0.55%. The increases are small, but they have been trending upward since the county first released vaccination infection numbers at the end of September. The death rate for fully vaccinated individuals is also over 5 times the death rate for the seasonal influenza, which is generally regarded as 0.1%.

The percent of all Covid-19 cases in the county constituting vaccinated individuals is rising at a steeper increment than the rest. On October 18, 32.7% of infections were among the vaccinated. On November 5 that number had risen to 38% of cases constituted vaccinated individuals. Both of these numbers indicate a fairly large proportion of Covid-19 cases are being generated by the vaccinated portion of the county, which is 63.8 % fully vaccinated. In other words, if you are fully vaccinated, your chance of escaping a Covid infection is only about 24% better than if you are unvaccinated. Of course, your chance of escaping death, once infected, is 3.24 times better if you are vaccinated than unvaccinated.

Those are the facts.

Here's the attitude.

Why are public officials instituting heavy-handed vaccine mandates? Why are they claiming the pandemic is among the unvaccinated? The above numbers show this is clearly not true. Vaccinated individuals are catching Covid-19 at numbers that, while less than for the unvaccinated, are not enough less to justify the wasteful, draconian measures being taken to exclude the unvaccinated from nearly every facet of ordinary life. Not only are such measures irrational and opposed to the facts on the ground, but they won't help society achieve the allegedly desired result: an eclipse of the disease. Clearly, Covid-19 is going to continue to stew among the vaccinated, even as unvaxxed individuals are excluded from bars, restaurant, museums, and so forth. The exclusion will not suppress the disease, which appears to move almost as freely among the vaccinated.

A 24% lesser rate of infection is not worth the economic and social damage done by setting up two different classes of people. Besides that, the rate of infection among the vaccinated is increasing all the time.

Injecting the populace with booster after experimental booster to attempt to attain some marginal improvement over these numbers will assist even less in extinguishing the disease, and some scientists believe it could even make matters worse by simultaneously boosting the strength of the virus. At the same time, the vaccines and boosters are not completely harmless. Though largely safe, serious side effects and even death do occur.

The unvaccinated are not driving the pandemic nor obstructing an unlikely complete extermination of SARS-CoV-1 virus. It is time to stop scapegoating them and face the unpleasant facts