With the High Transmission Among the Vaccinated, There is No Excuse for Vaccine Mandates

January 6, 2022 - As of the end of December, the percent of new Covid cases occurring among the vaccinated population of Los Angeles County was 66.4%, as calculated by the Observer using County Health Department data. This nearly aligned with the vaccinated percentage of the population as a whole at 68.5% at that time.

In other words, the vaccinated are becoming infected with Covid-19 at approximately the same rate as everybody else. Given the prevalence of Covid - within the last 7 days a full 1.57% of the county's population caught the disease - it is obvious that the vaccinated must be spreading Covid as freely as anybody else. It is no safer to be in a work place, a restaurant, a concert, or a house party with the vaccinated than it is with the unvaccinated if your goal is to avoid infection.

The only possible justification for imposing vaccine mandates that exclude the unvaccinated from work and public places would be in the interest of public health. That means, the health of the public as a whole. If it were true that unvaccinated individuals alone were capable of transmitting Covid-19, then there might, potentially, be a legitimate justification for excluding such individuals from places where they might infect others who would not otherwise have faced such a risk. (Although, if vaccines are supposed to prevent infection, then the question arises as to why vaccinated individuals would need to worry about anything or anyone).

But it false to claim that vaccinated people cannot transmit Covid-19. And this has been admitted, both explicitly and implicitly by LA County health officials. On January 4, the LACDPH admitted that vaccines were not protecting against infection. "...cases have increased among vaccinated people over the past few weeks," the press release stated. Instead of claiming vaccination would prevent infection, officials moved toward emphasizing the protection from severe disease they could provide. "We are seeing that vaccines are doing what they were intended to do, which is protect people from getting severely ill due to Covid.

Odd. My impression was that vaccines were intended to create herd immunity and shut down the virus. In fact, this was part of the stated rationale for vaccine mandates, to coerce the public to each do his or her part to end the pandemic.

Now it turns out that hadn't been the purpose of the vaccine. Who knew?

But if herd immunity hadn't been the purpose of the vaccine, and if the vaccine is not, in fact, preventing transmission, then why are vaccine mandates still in place? Why can only vaccinated individuals work for the sheriff's department or the fire department or in hospitals? Why are only vaccinated individuals allowed to sit at Starbucks in Los Angeles? Since the rate of transmission is nearly identical between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed, this separation does not do one single thing to prevent community spread. Not. One. Single. Thing.

Though LACDPH continues to extol the benefits of vaccination, even the claims of preventing serious disease are starting to falter. In the January 4 press release, they pointed to the 21.3 times "rate ratio" between the unvaxxed and vaxxed regarding ICU admissions. In other words, it is 21.3 times more likely to end up in the ICU for the unvaxxed than the vaxxed.

But why only ICU admissions? Why not hospital admissions altogether? Perhaps the difference between those numbers was not as high. And that is, in fact, the case. As of December 25, the rate of hospitalization, once infected, for the vaxxed as 2.44%. For the unvaxxed, it was 7.3%, making a rate ratio of only 3.

The health department has shifted its emphasis away from a heavy push for vaccination and toward the need to wear better grade masks for protection. The inescapable conclusion is that vaccines are not doing anything to stem the current surge in infections.

Vaccine mandates have to go. Immediately. Needed workers in all sectors have been unnecessarily shut out of their positions at a time when vaccinated workers are quarantining with Covid-19. For public health, we must halt all vaccine mandates right now.