Omicron odds: Unvaxxed still more likely to die

The percentage of people who haven't been vaccinated being hospitalized or dying from COVID is many times higher than for those who have

Why do people vaccinated — and even boosted — still get sick with COVID19? Why do some end up in hospital and even die?

It’s a common question.

The answer is not “because COVID vaccines don’t work,” as anti-vax trolls with Google degrees in epidemiology shout so persistently.

That logic — I use the word loosely — argues that unless something works all of the time, it works none of the time. Which is nonsense. Consider seatbelts. Will a seatbelt prevent injury or death in every crash? No. Does that mean seatbelts don’t work. Of course not.

Anyway, enough Logic 101. Earlier this month, Nova Scotia began posting data — on their online COVID dashboard — about vaccination status in deaths where COVID-19 was a contributing factor.

(Bottom righthand corner, after scrolling past hospitalization data).

There are two slides. One covers deaths since March 15, 2021, when public vaccinations first ramped up. The other looks at deaths after Dec. 8, when Omicron hit. Both are current to Jan. 31, 2022.

In the first, the unvaccinated made up 46 per cent of deaths. In the second, 27 per cent — just under a third — of deaths were unvaccinated.

I asked Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Robert Strang, what those numbers tell us.

Only about seven per cent of eligible (five years old and above) Nova Scotians remain unvaccinated, he said.

Meanwhile, the percentage of unvaccinated people being hospitalized or dying from COVID is many times higher.

“What that tells me is that, and this is consistent with what we’re seeing from across the country and around the world, there is a disproportionate amount of both hospitalizations and deaths coming from those who remain unimmunized,” Dr. Strang said.

It’s true that COVID vaccines haven’t been as effective against Omicron as they were against old variants such as delta. That’s shown in the data.

But here’s the key takeaway — not AS effective. Being vaccinated is “still better than not having any vaccine at all,” Dr. Strang said.

The numbers back that up. The unvaccinated represent seven per cent of the eligible population, but make up 27 per cent of COVID deaths since Dec. 8.

What about underlying poor health and age in deaths, I asked. Any difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated?

Not in Nova Scotia, Dr. Strang said. Being older (average age 78) and having multiple underlying conditions was a common factor. He didn’t want to discuss exceptions for privacy reasons.

But beyond our borders, Dr. Strang said they’re seeing “a much greater chance of somebody who’s otherwise healthy, maybe in their 40s, or even 30s, 20s, getting severe disease and ending up in hospital.”

Nationally, across all age groups and health conditions, “people who are unvaccinated are eight times more likely to end up in hospital. And that rate is even higher to end up in the ICU or dying.” That’s the nuance missing in anti-vax logic screaming the vaccines don’t work. It’s not black and white.

You might ask why some who’ve been fully vaccinated are dying?

It’s established science that vaccines are less effective in people with weaker immune systems. Age plays a role. But even teenagers with serious underlying health problems are more vulnerable, Dr. Strang said.

But being vaccinated does help.

“In the Omicron wave, we have had a lot of outbreaks in long-term care facilities. Many, many across the province,” Dr. Strang said.

Yet “the number of deaths resulting is very low." So the impact of COVID has been greatly mitigated in long-term care facilities because of vaccination.

At the same time, immunocompromised folks do rely on the rest of us to get our shots to help minimize spread, he said.

Why is this data on COVID-19 deaths only appearing now?

Privacy, he said. Until recently, the number of deaths in Nova Scotia was still relatively small, so breakdowns could be used to identify people. Sadly, that’s no longer the case.

What about the theory, popular among anti-vaxxers, that naturally acquired immunity (from catching COVID) is better than immunity conferred by vaccines?

Science doesn’t back that up, Dr. Strang said. Yes, some can get good long-term immunity that way, but it varies considerably, between even healthy individuals.

Vaccines are more predictable. Besides, “even if infection did give you long-term immunity, think of the cost and lives if we just said ‘Let’s let everybody get infected and we’ll deal with it that way.’”

Despite all the negative rhetoric, Dr. Strang said, vaccines have done an important job and will be critical in getting us from pandemic to endemic.

“It’s a success story. Vaccines work,” he said. “People should not, at all, see the pressures that our hospitals and long-term care facilities are under as a sign that the vaccines haven’t worked.

“Quite frankly, if we hadn’t had the vaccines, I can’t imagine where we would be. Our health system would have imploded.”