82% of New Hospitalizations are Fully Vaccinated
ME CDC, Press Herald continue to dishonestly misrepresent Breakthrough Data
On Tuesday, Maine CDC updated the data relating to Breakthrough cases, hospitalizations and deaths. This update showed increase from 4/15 to 4/26. During this 11 day span, the data showed the fully vaccinated made up 72% of New Cases (2182 of 3016), 82.6% of New Hospitalizations (38 of 46) and 5 of 6 newly reported deaths.
So how is this being reported in the local media?
To no-ones surprise, it’s not.
Both Dr. Shah and local news media have reported the rise of COVID-19 related cases and hospitalization over the last week. In fact they have done so on several occasions.
Joe Lawlor of the Portland Press Herald reported on rising COVID-19 hospitalizations on Monday in his most recent article. There are many examples of poor journalism to choose from Maine’s largest newspaper, but this particular article twists numbers and facts with great efficiency.
Let’s take a look.
Lawlor starts by reporting the current number of hospitalizations, 130 as of Monday morning. This is, indeed a sharp increase from Friday’s count, which stood at 103.
Although the aforementioned Breakthrough Data had not been updated yet for this week, Lawlor chooses reference the total hospitalizations, “since vaccines be came readily available.”
Mr. Lawlor’s above statement is false. ME CDC does not track the number of unvaccinated hospitalizations. They track the number of breakthrough and the total number of hospitalizations. The difference of these 2 categories includes the Unvaccinated and the not fully vaccinated. There is no source available to show the number of the unvaccinated that have been hospitalized in Maine.
His math is correct, but the ME CDC data set misrepresents the impact of breakthrough hospitalizations.
Let’s break this down.
Using these numbers as presented by the ME CDC, Mr. Lawlor’s math is correct. It shows that since Maine residents could become fully vaccinated, 67% of hospitalizations associated with COVID-19 are not fully vaccinated (3249 total hospitalizations - 1065 breakthrough hospitalizations = 2,184 not fully vaccinated hospitalizations).
To be fair, Lawlor is only presenting the data in the same way that the ME CDC does. The Breakthrough cases, hospitalizations and deaths data is presented in cumulative totals. In order to see any recent increases, one must track each data update (click here to see my breakthrough data log of all updates). The data set compares a running total breakthrough cases, hospitalizations and deaths with all total cases, hospitalizations and deaths, “..since Maine residents could be fully vaccinated.”
Here’s the running total through the 4/15 update, referenced by Mr. Lawlor.
There’s just a small problem with this data presentation, which speaks not to Mr. Lawlor’s honesty (maybe his ignorance) but to the outright misrepresentation of data from Dr. Shah’s office at ME CDC.
The ME CDC did not start reporting on Breakthrough Hospitalizations and Deaths until August 11, 2021. Up until this point, they only reported on total breakthrough cases (see screenshot below).
A few days later, on August 6, a new category appears showing all, “Cases, Hospitalizations and Deaths since Maine Residents could be fully vaccinated.” This gives the appearance of comparing breakthrough data within the context of all data.
This is disingenuous at best. Considering the importance of this data to determine real world vaccine efficacy, it’s seems foolish to consider that this is anything other than an intentionally misleading presentation of data. (In my opinion, it’s fraud.)
Determining the start date for Total Cases, Hospitalizations and Deaths
On August 6, 2021, a total of 901 Maine residents had died since the start of the Pandemic in March 2020. Counting backwards from this date using the “deaths since first date Maine residents could be fully vaccinated” number of 234, we can determine that the first death counted in this total occurred sometime in late February of 2021.
At that time, only 8% of Maine residents were fully vaccinated, at about the same time that Governor Mills announced the Age Based Vaccine Rollout Plan.
The ME CDC Breakthrough Data is presented in a way that compares breakthrough hospitalizations and deaths starting August, 2021 with all hospitalizations and deaths starting in February, 2021.
Like I said. It’s fraud.
Joe Lawlor and the team at Portland Press Herald either know this (and don’t care) or they should know and are ignorant.
Since ME CDC first started reported breakthrough hospitalizations and deaths on August 6th, the fully vaccinated have represented 47.3% of cases, 43.2% of hospitalizations and 43.2% of deaths.
More than 77% of Maine residents are now fully vaccinated. Hospitalizations are now at the similar levels to September of 2021. If the efficacy of the vaccines is so robust against hospitalizations and deaths, then why are hospitalizations rising (again) and overwhelmingly made of up fully vaccinated Maine residents?
Here’s the last 6 weeks of reports, dating from March 11 to April 26.
Bonus - PPH reported Joe Lawler goes on in this article to use quotes from Dr. Laura Blaisedell, pediatrician and consultant for combating vaccine hesitancy. Check out her consultant website here. Be sure to notice what local news paper she has listed as a client.