An Epidemic of the Vaccinated

Hysteria over covid vaccination continues, with unvaccinated people being barred from many venues and discriminated against in various ways. In several reported cases, people have been denied life-saving surgery because they were unvaccinated. Liberals generally blame the unvaccinated for the fact that covid continues to spread–recently, according to the Centers for Disease Control, faster than ever.

And yet the CDC also tells us that 80.1% of Americans five years of age and older have now had at least one shot of vaccine. The obvious reality is that today’s rapid spread of covid is occurring primarily among the vaccinated.

Data from the Minnesota Department of Health (which runs around one month behind) shows 63% of covid cases among the fully vaccinated, with that percentage rising rapidly. Thirty-eight percent of hospitalizations and 32% of deaths, as of a month ago, were among the fully vaccinated.

The numbers are even more striking with regard to those 65 years old and older, which is where nearly all the risk lies:

In this age group, over 70% of cases are “breakthrough” cases, as are 46% of hospitalizations and 42% of deaths. As the numbers converge, it seems likely that soon, covid rates among the vaccinated will equal those among the unvaccinated.

The MDH data confirm, as one would hope, that even if vaccination does not prevent one from contracting covid, it does give some protection against severe disease. But the protective effect is quite modest. Certainly it provides no basis for demonizing the unvaccinated or for imposing vaccination mandates.

As I have said many times, covid is with us to stay. As Dr. Fauci has acknowledged, pretty much all of us are going to get it sooner or later, much like the common cold. We would do well to intensify the search for effective treatments, especially since we may find that therapies that treat covid successfully will also work for colds and flu. A first step toward a focus on effective treatment would be to stop censoring discussion of covid treatments. Such censorship is one of the weirdest aspects of an epidemic that has had many weird features.

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