Virginia Department of Health
According to the Virginia Department of Health’s count, just more than 400 fully-vaccinated patients have ended up in a Virginia hospital with a case of COVID-19, and 83 have died. This was the count for the period of January 17 to August 14 and represented five percent or less of the total hospital cases and deaths in that period. The percentages are even smaller when compared to the pool of 4.7 million fully vaccinated people.
So. being vaccinated is safer than being unvaccinated by a factor of about 20. Your odds of staying out of the hospital or morgue improve 20 to one. Out of every 100,000 vaccinated Virginians, nine ended up in the hospital and two died. Among the millions of unvaccinated and partially vaccinated, 164 per 100,000 went to the hospital and 55 died. Partial vaccination is not that useful.
The website is proving glitchy today, probably swamped with visitors. VDH had promised an update for this data set last Friday, but then delayed the release to today. As it is it is still a week behind, but weekly updates are promised. Death stats in particular are slow to arrive. Apparently, they are cross referencing with the state database of vaccinated individuals, and a previous Bacon’s Rebellion post raised other issues about that.
Changing minds on this is proving futile. Even the recent stories where the sick or dying express regret at refusing the vaccines are not moving the needle, with fewer than 15,000 shots per day being administered in Virginia. The unvaccinated are going to stay that way. Most will be fine, but far too many will be hospitalized or even die, and some will spread this to others who will die. At this point, about 95 percent of those deaths will now be classed as having been preventable.
VDH has no data showing on how many in any of the three categories suffered a previous COVID-19 infection. A conspiracy, I’m sure many will think.
— Steve Haner
