Since early August, public comment at meetings of the County Board of Supervisors and the San Diego City Council has seen growing numbers of residents calling on elected officials to end the state of local emergency set up at the start of the pandemic.
Those ahead of policymakers say the threat of COVID-19 is no longer there, saying instead that the vaccine should be the focus of serious illness concerns — not the virus itself.
These, mostly vaccine advocates, used county fatality data to back up their claim, arguing that problems with the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine are illustrated by numbers suggesting that the Vaccinated and boosted people accounted for the majority of deaths in recent months.
A new source analysis shows that such rhetoric is false: unvaccinated people have had the highest death rates this year, so far.
Compared to those who received the COVID vaccine, unvaccinated San Diegans experienced a death rate four times higher than those considered fully vaccinated and nine times higher than those who received at least one booster.
Public health experts point out that context, such as population size, is an important factor to consider when interpreting available county data.
“Data can be manipulated in many different ways, and data without context can be especially difficult to interpret,” said Dr. Michael Gisondi, vice chair of education for Stanford University’s Department of Emergency Medicine.
Read the full article at inewsource.org.
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