So under the rubric of “A picture is worth a thousand words”, here’s a picture that begs a question. Below is the graph of US COVID deaths since the beginning of this pandemic. Let’s take a look:
In the first wave, from about mid-March of 2020 through about the end of June 2020 we had a completely immune-naïve population and no vaccines.
In the second wave from about November of 2020 through March of 2021 we had between 0 and 20% of the population fully vaccinated.
In the third wave (the infamous “Delta” wave) from about August 2021 to December 2021 we had about 50% to 60% fully vaccinated folks. Remember that’s when it was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”.
In the fourth wave (the more infamous “Omicron” wave) from about the beginning of January 2022 to April of 2022 we have about 65% of the population fully vaccinated with about 30% boosted. We have been told in no uncertain terms, and it has in fact been substantiated in other countries, many with very little vaccination, that Omicron is much more contagious but much less lethal than Delta or other previous strains.
But looking at the graph one could ask “So where’s the benefit of the vaccine?” How EXACTLY can you say the vaccine “saved lives”? Look at the first curve, where over about three months with a completely virgin population and no idea how to treat the infection, and governors sending infected old people back into senior homes only to kill tens of thousands of vulnerable seniors, you have about 130,000 deaths. Now look at the last curve which also lasted about three months; they're essentially identical and you can count about 150,000 deaths. Again with a much less lethal variant and some 65% of the population vaccinated and two full years of population exposure.
Before you start yelling about how we “know” vaccines saved countless lives, I’m curious as to your data. None of that modeling crap which also told us how we “knew” masks slowed the spread and saved countless lives (they didn’t and they didn't), or how we “knew” lockdowns saved lives (they didn’t), but how EXACTLY do we “know” vaccines saved lives? I have shown you repeatedly through data from the United Kingdom that while the RATE of infection and death is higher in the unvaxxed, in terms of absolute numbers, almost everyone in the hospital or dead over at least the last six months (with fully vaxxed rates over 70%) was fully vaccinated and/or boosted.
Before you try to look at “cases” and show a much higher “infection fatality rate” in the first wave than in this most recent wave, remember we had essentially no testing at all in early 2020 and in early 2022 we tested everything that moved; often with crappy, self-administered home tests. And as I and others have been railing about for some two years now, a positive test does not a case make.
So as this thing has progressed, we have exponentially increased our testing which necessarily increased our “case” count but at the same time we have had more cases of less and less dangerous strains of the virus.
Now you can untwist your knickers because I’m not saying the vaccine did nothing (although you can look at any data set of deaths in the vaxxed vs. unvaxxed and see the actual difference in deaths is far, far below a one percent difference), but I’m asking how do you “know” the vaccine saved lives?
We cannot depend on case fatality rates, as the vagaries of testing bastardize the denominator. We cannot depend on modeling because that’s just crap. But we can count more actual deaths now over a similar time period than we had in the very beginning.
One last way to look at it:
First wave (April 2020 to July 2020; no vaccines): 130,000 deaths over three months = about 45,000 deaths per month.
Second wave (November 2020 to April 2021; 0-20% vaccinated): 330,000 deaths over five months = about 65,000 deaths per month.
Third wave (August 2021 to December 2021; 50-60% vaccinated): 170,000 deaths over four months = about 43,000 deaths per month.
Fourth wave (January 2022 to April 2022; 65% vaccinated): 150,000 deaths over three months = about 50,000 deaths per month.
It is obvious to even the most hard-core true believer that these vaccines do nothing at all to stem the spread of the coronavirus (and may even be responsible for making those vaccinated more susceptible to infection), but it is also apparent that they have done very little to actually prevent death. But if you have a different position I would appreciate an explanation of EXACTLY how death counts can be about the same throughout the pandemic while we went from zero vaccines to more than 65% of the country fully vaccinated (or boosted) at the same time we were seeing less lethal strains. Just shouting "Of course vaccines saved countless lives you moron!!" doesn't cut it.
And this doesn’t include the protection of natural immunity through prior infection which has been shown to be a stronger protectant than vaccination alone. And as I have written before, there a plenty of other countries with way lower vaccine rates and at the same time with way lower death counts. Still waiting for an explanation on that one. Just asking a question that I believe deserves an answer. We deserve to know what actually happened here.