I’m not sure why this is, but a quick look at the death statistics shows that it is no lower today than it was a year ago. Vaccines seem to help the individual, but they don’t seem to do much for society as a whole.
That the death rates are the same as last November is bad, especially since one major effect of COVID has been to wipe out nearly all our old folks, decreasing the lifespan of US men by 2-3 years. With a 70% vaccination rate (adults, 60% overall), and few old people, you ‘d expect our death rate this year would be lower than last.
Currently, at least, the trend-line looks positive, but that’s likely a mirage. It is common to add more deaths to the tally, retroactively a few weeks out as many deaths take weeks to report and more weeks to be counted as COVID. For what it’s worth, I’m vaccinated, two shots and a booster. I also take aspirin, and have gotten a pneumonia shot. I think it helps. What do I know?
Robert Buxbaum, November 18, 2021
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I found this interesting. The article discusses some of the many issues involved in comparing country statistics.
https://www.bbc.com/news/52311014
The unvaccinated population today is about half the total population a year ago. The preponderance of deaths now is among the unvaccinated population, plus the Delta mutant is more infectious (though not more mortal) than the mutants that dominated year ago. Perhaps, to a first approximation, these two effects (smaller unvaccinated population vs. a more virulent mutant) balance each other out. If this is right, then, by the same approximation, if nobody had ever been vaccinated, deaths today would be double what they are now.