In the comments of my 1st post on this topic, reader Nicholas asked whether the analysis would look different if we used the % of 65+ population vaccinated instead of 18+ population.
Anything significant about those three counties? Sometimes the outliers reveal more important information about the underlying factors than the norms do.
Kings County, NY looks strange as (per CDC), a higher % of 18+ are vaccinated than 65+ 🤔. Wayne County, MI is different from most places in that they had worse deaths in spring surges than winter, Spring '20 being really bad, but also Spring '21 being worse than Winter 20/21. So when comparing Winter 21/22 to Winter 20/21, the latter was relatively mild. When I look at Baltimore City, MD, it looks to me like perhaps there was a data dump of death numbers in Jan/Feb... there was a 2 week period in December with no reported deaths (or even cases!), and then a huge spike. Since I'm using peaks as my metric, this matters.
Epidemiology is a complex business. Like John Snow discovering cholera was being spread through the town's well, clues often lead to the correct answer circuitously. The investigations are pretty exciting. It's unfortunate they've been prohibited, but truth will out, and will set us free.
Great, thanks. But does this mean that vaccination had no effect at all on mortality? The YoY change depends on other factors, too, like the level in 2020 prior to vaccination (hard to improve if 2020 was mild), the timing and composition (delta/omicron) of the 2021/22 winter wave, and also the booster rate. What about the booster rate? :)
Anything significant about those three counties? Sometimes the outliers reveal more important information about the underlying factors than the norms do.
Kings County, NY looks strange as (per CDC), a higher % of 18+ are vaccinated than 65+ 🤔. Wayne County, MI is different from most places in that they had worse deaths in spring surges than winter, Spring '20 being really bad, but also Spring '21 being worse than Winter 20/21. So when comparing Winter 21/22 to Winter 20/21, the latter was relatively mild. When I look at Baltimore City, MD, it looks to me like perhaps there was a data dump of death numbers in Jan/Feb... there was a 2 week period in December with no reported deaths (or even cases!), and then a huge spike. Since I'm using peaks as my metric, this matters.
I examined each of these in the tab called "County Vax Time Series" in my published set of dashboards: https://public.tableau.com/shared/MT5BDTSSG?:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link
Epidemiology is a complex business. Like John Snow discovering cholera was being spread through the town's well, clues often lead to the correct answer circuitously. The investigations are pretty exciting. It's unfortunate they've been prohibited, but truth will out, and will set us free.
Great, thanks. But does this mean that vaccination had no effect at all on mortality? The YoY change depends on other factors, too, like the level in 2020 prior to vaccination (hard to improve if 2020 was mild), the timing and composition (delta/omicron) of the 2021/22 winter wave, and also the booster rate. What about the booster rate? :)
Great work, thank you!