The latest Covid info from the Oklahoma Department of Health is out and it is fairly encouraging.
95% of the deaths are in those over 50 years of age despite these folks being only one third of the cases, meaning the Delta variant is contagious but as the info will show below, Covid is basically affecting the elderly and perhaps taking out those that would likely die soon anyway.
The new cases are down 4.5% which is great and around 66% of all people are vaccinated with both doses or the single dose version of the vaccine.
The breakthrough cases, where vaccinated people come down with a case of covid, are low, only two tenths of a percent for the Moderna vaccine, three tenths of a percent for the Pfizer, and four tenths of a percent for the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. There are a lot of crazy people on Facebook claiming that the vaccine doesn't work, I would say less than one percent failure rate is pretty low for such a rushed vaccine. Yet this new faction of anti Trump/anti vaccine zealots is facing a headwind of condemnation and ridicule.
Compared to the unvaccinated, the breakthrough cases are under 5% of all cases, meaning around 95% of all cases are in the unvaccinated. Among the unvaccinated 83% of the hospitalized cases are between 36 years of age and 65 or older. Among the vaccinated 73% of the hospitalized cases are over 65 years of age.
If you catch Covid right now you have a 1.5% chance of dying from it. If you die from Covid there is a 56% chance you had one or more co morbidity.
And here is where it gets interesting, at the top of page 28 you see a graph comparing the estimated deaths that Oklahoma would have experienced regardless of any pandemic with the Covid deaths overlaid. The blue columns that project over the orange line are the actual Covid excess deaths, starting around May of 2020 and dropping off around March of 2021 when the vaccines started being freely available. There have been a few weeks where the actual Covid deaths dropped below what would have been expected or inevitable deaths, something I would think is due to people traveling less, practicing better sanitation, and simply being hyper vigilant of health issues.
Covid in Oklahoma continues to be a disease that is 95% in the unvaccinated population and we as a society have learned to treat it effectively to the point where Covid is taking the elderly that are in poor health, little different than a regular flue epidemic would do.
There is no need for shut down or masks nor should our schools subject the kids to extreme measures. The teachers ought to be encouraged to be vaccinated and the rest of us ought to go on about our lives at this point.
