Breaking: High-vaxxed Vermont releases numbers... and we have questions

87% of the state has 1+ shots but 95 vaxxed deaths is raising eyebrows

The bottom line from this data: the CFR of fully vaccinated individuals in Vermont is significantly higher than national numbers and the CFR for unvaxxed. This probably should be a warning to reset expectations for vaccination performance but also problems with stats across the country.

From our esteemed colleague, Don Wolt:

Vermont, the most highly vaxxed state (87% with ≥1 dose), reports 95 deaths among 9277 vaxx breakthrough infections for a BTI CFR of 1.02%. Compare this to an overall pandemic CFR of 0.81%, an Overall CFR for 2021 (the vaccine period) of 0.57% or an Unvaxxed 2021 CFR of 0.45%.

While, VT vaxx rates are high across all but the very youngest (<12) age cohorts, the vaxxed population probably still has a significantly higher avg age than the unvaxxed. So, perhaps we'd expect the BTI (Vaxxed) CFR to be higher than the CFR of the Overall or Unvaxxed groups.

Note, however, that Vermont's BTI CFR (1.02%) is 2.3X that of the Unvaxxed CFR (0.45%) for 2021 - the period in which vaxxes became available. Did we expect the difference to be quite so big? Those who raised age-based CoV2 risk differences pre-vaccines were scolded for doing so.

If the reason for the big variance in CFRs is that the Unvaxxed are mostly young who suffer very few severe outcomes, why are we then pushing vaccines on younger & younger age groups, especially when we know that their protection against infection is only fleeting?