Vaxx and non-covid deaths

The Quarantine Zone
1

There was an article in the Economist about how vaxxed people have a lower death rate than unvaxxed from things other than covid. This was based on a CDC report. The article is paywalled (I only read a summary) and I can’t find the CDC report. Can’t think of a good set of search terms.

Anyway, I thought it interesting. Although it’s most likely a correlation due to people who got vaxxed are also more likely to have lifestyles that have lower death rates. They take fewer risks, pay more attention to their health, things like that.

2

Except for those of us who got vaxxed because our “lifestyles” (in my case, my job), puts us at higher risk…

It could be that those who got vaxxed are more likely to make rational decisions, or safety-conscious decisions as opposed to the non-vaxx group where the irrational and reckless will wind up (along with a sub-set of rational/safety people who had other reasons for not vaxxing).

In other words, there may be correlation at work as well as/instead of causation, but perhaps not the correlation that first occurred to you.

3

Was it this?

4

Sure looks like it. I knew someone here would be able to find it and you proved me right. Thanks.

5

Covid vaccination rates correlate significantly with educational attainment, and so does life expectancy, so this doesn’t seem surprising. (It also suggests that we, as a society, should be taking a long, hard look at how education, health, and economic inequality intertwine, but since it’s a lot easier to blame people for their individual choices, I’m not very hopeful that we will.)

6

It’s a tough one. On the one hand, parents should be free to raise their children how they see fit. On the other hand, uneducated idiots tend to raise their children to also be uneducated idiots. For a stark example of this, in my area NextDoor is full of parents writing long posts about how horrible our education system is for forcing their children to wear a mask or get vaccinated, so they are pulling their kids out of the education system to homeschool them personally. Invariably these posts are full of spelling and grammar mistakes. So, great - you lack even a basic grasp of science and math (or you wouldn’t be so against the COVID response), you can’t spell or write for shit - and now you are going to be the only source of education for your kid? Yeah, that kid is fucked.

I don’t know that there IS a solution to this issue that doesn’t get into some weird and morally dubious social engineering. The only thing I keep coming back to is, it is a problem that our society values things like wealth, physical appearance, wealth, athletic ability, and wealth so much more than intelligence or education.

But that just gets us right back to where we started. Parents who lack education are less likely to value it highly, and why would they WANT to instill an appreciation for education when they themselves don’t value it? And as you point out, it’s not like they don’t value education because they’re horrible people who have personally failed; for the most part, people who don’t value education weren’t raised to value education, and now we’re having the same exact discussion one generation removed.

People don’t make choices in a vacuum. The choice to raise your kid to have the sorts of values that would be beneficial to our modern world requires that you value those things first; otherwise, why would you care?

7

This is getting into thread-hijack territory, but I’d actually argue that the life-expectancy gap is proof that we DO value intelligence and education very highly indeed – so highly that most of the rewards of being in a wealthy and technologically advanced society are reserved for those who have them.

8

I got the impression that this is basically what the OP meant by “lifestyles that have lower death rates.”

9

You are right, but I think we are having an interesting conversation, even if we’re talking past each other a bit - I started a new thread for this discussion:

10

There’s also the simple logic that people who are vaccinated against COVID are probably more likely to be vaccinated in general. They are more likely to have flu and pneumonia shots, and to get the adult DPT boosters. If they happened not to have gotten childhood shots, or gotten them irregularly, they are more likely to have made up for gaps in their records.

The last might be a factor of education, where education → affluence → access to healthcare, but the shots that are standard adult shots are not really. You can get them free or very cheap lots of places, Medicare pays for them, and many employers provide them-- some even encourage them in the strongest way possible, so that you have to be actively anti-vax, not just lazy or uninformed, not to get them.

Also, IIRC, when reading about anti-vax ideas and autism, being actively anti-vax is often something you find in educated people– as opposed to the “vaccine hesitant,” or those questioning vaccine mandates under “rights,” as opposed to the value of vaccines themselves. Generally though, educated anti-vaxxers are not people who are Nobel Laureates in medicine-- they will often be people with PhDs in folklore who are so convinced of their superior intellects, that they won’t listen to anything anyone else has to say-- especially someone with a mere bachelor’s degree, even if it’s in biochemistry.

However, surveys of people’s level of education often just look at the level of advancement, and not the relevance to whatever topic is being examined. That’s how you get something like “20% of college-educated people believe in creationism.” Sure. Because half of them went to “bible colleges,” and the other half majored in Theater, Physical Education, or Guitar Performance (all fine disciplines in themselves, but don’t require one to study the origin of life or the age and shape of the earth to graduate).

But your people with PhDs in folklore and Guitar performance, who decided not to get the COVID vaccine, while under some spell of Durning-Kruger, probably still get their colonoscopies and mammograms, and insist the vaccine is “a special case” [it isn’t]. They also have great insurance, so their kids don’t develop terrible chronic conditions from under-treated infections.

11

During December 2020–July 2021, COVID-19 vaccine recipients had lower rates of non–COVID-19 mortality than did unvaccinated persons after adjusting for age, sex, race and ethnicity, and study site.

Is there another possible explanation?
Unvaccinated people could be dying from causes related to COVID-19 that do not fit within the studies definition of COVID-19 related mortality.

Non–COVID-19 deaths were those that did not occur within 30 days of an incident COVID-19 diagnosis or receipt of a positive test result for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) via reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction or rapid test.