I thought I would follow up on my last post with some additional thoughts and number calculation breakdowns. If you haven’t read Part 1, you can do so here.
One of the arguments used to explain the high percentage rate of vaccinated breakthrough cases in a population is that we should expect to see a higher percentage of vaccinated cases because a higher percentage of our population resides in this group – 4,303,743 people or 71.5% of our population is vaccinated in Maryland versus 1,741,937 people or 28.5% of our population is unvaccinated.
I agree, this argument does hold validity. However, when looking a bit further into the overall data, this does not provide a full explanation . We have 71.5% of our population accounting for 93.3% of our total cases in December and 28.5% of our population accounting for 6.7% of our total cases in December. In addition, we would also expect to see the same percentage of positive cases coming from each group. In December, 129,494 vaccinated people tested positive – 3% of all vaccinated individuals in our population. During this same time period only 9,309 unvaccinated individuals tested positive – 0.5% of all unvaccinated individuals in our population. This indicates that vaccinated individuals were testing positive 6 times more often than their unvaccinated counterparts.
Unfortunately, the hospitalization data does not allow for the same extrapolation. However, we can confirm a few things and hypothesize what we would expect to see currently by diving into some of the historical data available.
Understanding the number of unvaccinated hospitalizations is of extreme importance. We are currently being told that by being vaccinated, our chances of becoming hospitalized or dying are greatly reduced. Our expectation then would be the majority of our hospitalizations would be in the population that is unvaccinated.
Governor Larry Hogan stated on December 21, 2021, “…Marylanders who are not vaccinated make up more than 75% of COVID-19 hospitalizations. If you would like, you can read the article in its entirety here.
But the numbers provided on the MD Covid Dashboard historically do not support this statement. The bar graph of hospitalizations detailing the breakdown between vaccinated and unvaccinated, indicates a sharp increase in vaccinated hospitalizations beginning in June 2021, however, it is only updated through November 2021. I have compiled the information into one table for easy comparison. The percentage of COVID hospitalizations represented by vaccinated and unvaccinated groups are as follows:
| MONTH 2021 | UNVACCINATED HOSPITALIZATIONS | VACCINATED HOSPITALIZATIONS | % OF TOTAL MONTHLY HOSPITALIZATIONS VACCINATED | % OF TOTAL MONTHLY HOSPITALIZATIONS UNVACCINATED |
| January | 756 | 0 | 0% | 100% |
| February | 2,514 | 9 | 0.36% | 99.64% |
| March | 2,911 | 51 | 1.72% | 98.28% |
| April | 3,297 | 141 | 4.1% | 95.9% |
| May | 1,220 | 117 | 8.75% | 91.25% |
| June | 287 | 60 | 17.29% | 82.71% |
| July | 499 | 130 | 20.67% | 79.33% |
| August | 1,737 | 522 | 23.11% | 76.89% |
| September | 1,720 | 710 | 29.22% | 70.78% |
| October | 1,239 | 583 | 32% | 68% |
| November | 1,201 | 587 | 32.83% | 67.17% |
As we can see, unvaccinated hospitalizations haven’t been near 75% since August 2021. Furthermore, it seems from the data above that unvaccinated hospitalization percentages are declining as vaccinated hospitalization percentages are increasing. Interesting trend.
But let’s just say Governor Hogan’s December 21st number of 75% of hospitalizations are unvaccinated is correct and apply it to the overall December 2021 data. After all, one would believe that the Governor of Maryland has access to much more data than any of us.
Therefore, we can all agree that if a statement is made that 75% of hospitalizations are unvaccinated, then 25% of hospitalizations are vaccinated. By adding up all the vaccinated hospitalizations from January 2021 – November 2021 provided in the MD Covid Dashboard bar graph, we arrive at 2,910 total vaccinated hospitalizations for that time period. The total vaccinated hospitalization number from January 2021 – December 2021 has updated and now sits at 6,085. We can now extrapolate our December vaccinated hospitalization number: 6,085-2,910 = 3,175 vaccinated hospitalizations for the month of December.
Per Governor Hogan’s statement, 3,175 should equal 25% of total hospitalizations for the month of December. Indicating that total hospitalizations (vaccinated and unvaccinated) for the month of December would be around 12,700 overall. Using this calculation, we can subtract 3,175 (25%) from 12,700 (100%) to find the indicated number for unvaccinated hospitalizations in December – 9,525 (75% of total hospitalizations).
There is just one problem, though. The total number of unvaccinated CASES for the entire month of December is 9,309. This would mean that not only would every single unvaccinated positive COVID case in December need to have resulted in being hospitalized, but also an additional 216 unvaccinated cases that never even existed. We know hospitalization rates are not 100% in the unvaccinated, in fact they are not even close. We also know that cases which do not exist, can also not be hospitalized.
Although the MD Covid Dashboard does not show December data for either group in the bar graph, we still have the data for January 2021 – November 2021. I thought perhaps if I took a look at the percentage of each group’s monthly total cases that resulted in hospitalization it may provide some insight. Again, I have put this into a table format for easier comparison and personally calculated percentages.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | June | July | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | |
| Vaccinated Cases | 4 | 73 | 416 | 971 | 595 | 316 | 2,028 | 8,920 | 10,116 | 8,318 | 9,725 |
| Vaccinated Hospitalizations | 0 | 9 | 51 | 141 | 117 | 60 | 130 | 522 | 710 | 583 | 587 |
| % of Vac. CasesHospitalized | 0% | 12.4% | 12.4% | 14.5% | 19.8% | 19% | 6.4% | 5.85% | 7% | 7% | 6% |
| Unvaccinated Cases | 8,682 | 26,843 | 31,315 | 33,414 | 9,620 | 1,952 | 5,653 | 22,239 | 25,205 | 17,041 | 17,953 |
| UnvaccinatedHospitalizations | 756 | 2,514 | 2,911 | 3,297 | 1,220 | 287 | 499 | 1,737 | 1,720 | 1,239 | 1,201 |
| % of Unvac. CasesHospitalized | 8.7% | 9.5% | 9.5% | 9.87% | 12.7% | 14.7% | 8.8% | 7.8% | 6.8% | 7.25% | 6.7% |
Another interesting trend can be found when the information is presented in an easy format, conducive to comparing data. I wonder why this hasn’t been done on the MD Covid Dashboard. If it is meant to serve its actual purpose of transparency and informing Marylanders, you would think it would be presented in a very easy to read, user-friendly format.
It would seem somewhere around September 2021 the percentage of cases resulting in hospitalization began to become just about even for both Vaccinated and Unvaccinated individuals, although overall total case counts were much higher in the unvaccinated. But that was November and we now know by studying the numbers and performing some simple arithmetic that for December this trend changed. So lets recap what we know…
For the month of December:
Total Vaccinated COVID positive cases – 129,494
Total Vaccinated cases resulting in Hospitalization – 3,175
Percentage of Vaccinated cases resulting in Hospitalization – 2.45%
Total Unvaccinated COVID positive cases – 9,309
Total Unvaccinated cases resulting in Hospitalization – Unknown
Percentage of Unvaccinated cases resulting in Hospitalization – Unknown
Looking at the table above, we can see that while the percentage from each group is almost even, the unvaccinated hospitalizations were about .25% – .7% higher. We can use this information and apply it to what we know.
If 2.45% of vaccinated cases resulted in hospitalization, then we have a number to begin with. Let’s use the higher number of .7% for the unvaccinated cases resulting in hospitalization and add it to the vaccinated percentage of 2.45%. 2.45% + .7% = 3.15%. If December data follows the same trend in the months previous, in spite of the spike in overall vaccinated case count, then we can expect that 3.15% of total unvaccinated cases resulted in hospitalization: 3.15% x 9,309 = 293.23. Therefore, we would expect the number of unvaccinated hospitalized individuals to be around 293.
We know 3,175 vaccinated individuals have been hospitalized, and we now have a hypothesized number for unvaccinated individuals hospitalized of 293. This would result in a total hospitalized number of 3,468. Indicating that 91.5% of all hospitalizations in December were vaccinated and 8.5% of all hospitalizations were unvaccinated. Even if the percentage of unvaccinated remained the same for December as it was in November at 6.7%. The resulting hospitalizations would only equal 624.
But please, enlighten me again about the selfish, inconsiderate, unvaccinated people filling up our hospitals and causing the increase in cases.
Honestly, I don’t care if you are vaccinated or unvaccinated at this point. My heart will never wish sickness upon anyone. It is no one’s fault if they become sick. It is no one’s fault if they require hospitalization from any illness. It is an unfortunate part of life, but no matter the circumstances which lead anyone to a hospital bed, we should always offer nothing but medical care and compassion. To suggest otherwise, is cruel and inhumane. To have national and local leaders not only contribute to this treatment but provoke it, is a complete dereliction of duty to the people they have been tasked to serve, oversee and protect. To do it intentionally, knowing the numbers do not prove the accusation, is a special kind of evil.
May God have mercy on your souls.
P.S. To our leaders, you can keep trying to hide numbers by making it confusing for the average person to find and compare. I’ve got time to dig and I am just bat shit crazy enough to keep spending hours sifting through numbers even though I hate math, just to expose and hold you accountable to the people you were elected to serve.
Your move.
shannonarmenis.com 
Great work!
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