I’m not a fake news conspiracy nut. However, I’d wish we could get more factual data on two recent stories and then be able to make conclusions.
The news reports “Orange Man Bad.” They don’t say those words. But, they are between all of the lines of their stories.
The daily news cycle is not reporting the statistical data on the delta variant of COVID. The misleading headlines are “COVID cases are spiking.” Of course, if there were two cases last week and four instances this week, that would be a 100% increase. We don’t see the actual numbers. Just the headline “COVID cases spiking.”
I also hear the stories of the few vaccinated people who have died from COVID, the so-called breakthrough cases.
I had to do a lot of digging on the internet to get any actual data. I could not find cases, hospitalizations, and deaths broken down by vaccinated and not vaccinated. The Virginia Department of Health website COVID-19 In Virginia – Coronavirus https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/covid-19-in-virginia/ is only reporting total cases and not distinguishing between vaccinated and not vaccinated. I have heard that the VDH is working to report this information.
The August 4, 2021, Free Lance-Star reported that 17% of the new cases are breakthrough infections. However, 17% of hospitalizations are not breakthroughs.
The purpose of the vaccine was to reduce hospitalization and allow people to treat the virus at home, similar to the flu.
After reading about the 17%, I wore a mask while shopping on Wednesday. I’d prefer not to get sick as a lot of special events are coming up.
The Pfizer vaccine is supposed to be 96% effective, meaning 1 in 25 will catch COVID. Modera is slightly less effective. An initial report on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had it at 66% effective, meaning 1 in 3 will catch COVID. Since that report, there has been an increase in the effective percentage.
These percentages are coming from controlled tests. I’d rather see the collection of the actual number of cases of infected vaccinated people.
Here are some United States data from July 28, 2021.
163,868,916 people were fully vaccinated and 170,557,443 were not.
There had been 611,000 deaths related to COVID, and 800 were from breakthrough cases.
Using February 1, 2021, as the date the vaccine was available, there have been 178,000 COVID-related deaths since that date.
Doing the math, vaccinated people had a 0.00488% chance of dying from COVID. One in a thousand unvaccinated people have passed.
The peak day of COVID patients in hospitals was January 12, 2021, with 131,326. The July 28, 2021 number is 31,000 and Aug 3, 2021 number is 44,000, or about 25 to 35% of the peak. As of Aug 11, 2021 the number is 64,231 or about 50% of peak.
Forty-three hundred breakthrough patients have been hospitalized or a 0.00262% chance of being hospitalized.
The Maryland COVID site has removed historical hospitalization data. For my book “Go for 25“, I researched Maryland COVID data. The peak hospitalization was 1600 in April 2020 and current hospitalization is 492.
After more digging, the Johns Hopkins https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/hospitalization-7-day-trend site does provide time series hospitalization data graphicly. The data is broken down by vaccination status. I can’t find a download function to pull data into a spreadsheet. However, that site does confirm the data I had previously reported. Of the current outbreak, a little less than 20% of the hospitalizations are in Florida. Crisis there, yes. Virginia, no.
I’m going to continue wearing a mask while in indoor mass groups. I’m responsible for myself.
The second story deals with the January 6, 2021 incident at the US Capitol building and grounds. Congress has created a commission with the primary goal of proving “Orange Man Bad.” Testimony has been more about how the people on the grounds felt rather than documenting the detailed happenings.
We can develop a time-lapse map with our technology and all of the videos recorded by the people on the Capitol grounds.
The map could show the movement of people in one-minute increments, highlighting security, congress members, congressional staff, media personnel, and visitors.
Then, add buttons on each map to play the video with its POV recorded at that time.
Probably, the FBI has already produced this type of evidence. Until DOJ has completed all their court cases, the data may not be releasable.
It would be an interesting tool for the average person to decide what happened rather than accepting biased media reports.