What Alabama’s Football Stadium Tells Us About the Risk of Dying from a Covid Breakthrough Infection

Unvaccinated Americans pose virtually zero mortal risk to the fully vaccinated. How do I know? Because the Centers for Disease Control says so.

According to the CDC, 99.999% of fully vaccinated people had not died as of July 26 from contracting a breakthrough case of Covid. Stated differently, only 0.001%—one one-thousandth of a percent—of fully vaccinated people died of complications from a breakthrough infection. That’s less than one death out of every 100,000 fully vaccinated breakthrough patients.

To put that in perspective, check out the picture of the University of Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium, seating capacity 100,000. If every seat in the stadium was occupied by a fully vaccinated Covid breakthrough patient, only one of those seats would be occupied by someone who would die of complications. The other 99,999 seats would be occupied by vaccinated breakthrough patients who recovered.

So, how trustworthy is the CDC’s suggestion that Covid vaccines provide 99.999% protection against death for vaccinated patients with a breakthrough infection? Since I lack any understanding of how health statistics are calculated, I have no idea whether the CDC’s finding is trustworthy, but am skeptical that it is.

Last week, Emory University Healthcare weighed in with this: “The vaccines are highly effective—most importantly at preventing greater than 90% of severe illness and death—but they are not 100% effective.” The CDC’s finding suggests vaccine effectiveness against death is 99.999%, about as close as you can get to 100%.

There’s a canyon-wide gap between ‘greater than 90%’ and 99.999%, the latter of which is a specific percentage so high that it seems impossible to take seriously. I don’t take it seriously, partly because the politicized CDC could have manipulated the data to mislead Americans to think, incorrectly, that getting vaccinated is a virtual slam dunk guarantee against dying of a Covid breakthrough infection. Slam dunk guarantee? Hardly. According to this CDC webpage, 4,493 vaccinated Americans have died of Covid as of September 20.

If malicious data manipulation did occur, it wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. government has deceived the American people. For the last four decades, government-funded climate science has been riddled with politically motivated misconduct ranging from suppression of contrary research to outright scientific fraud. If not for a totally in-the-tank western media, the manmade global warming theory would have been blown out of the water decades ago.

Emory University arrived at an effectiveness range of greater than 90%. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the bottom of that range (i.e. 90%) of vaccinated breakthrough patients are protected against death, and that the other 10% would not be so lucky.

Referring back to the picture of Alabama’s football stadium, the 90% assumption means 90,000 of those seats would be occupied by vaccinated breakthrough patients who recovered, and 10,000 seats by breakthrough patients who died. 10,000 deaths is a whole lot more than one death, but 90% effectiveness is still very high odds of a favorable outcome, which is why I believe most people should get the vaccine, if they so choose. I did, Pfizer 1 & 2.

According to the CDC’s own 99.999% finding, unvaccinated Americans pose miniscule mortal risk to the vaccinated. If Democrats trust the CDC (they do), why are they insisting that unvaccinated people with religious or medical objections must be subjected to vaccine mandates?

Democrats say the mandates are necessary for the good of us all. Forcing vaccines on the unwilling is much like forcing Christians to embrace abortion because Democrats believe  allowing pregnant women to get rid of their unborn baby is a good thing.

To the extent it is seen as credible, the CDC’s 99.999% finding tells us there’s virtually no rational reason for Americans who are vaccinated to fear being around those who aren’t. The greatest threat the unvaccinated pose is to themselves and their fellow travelers. If they roll the dice and Covid takes them out, they’ll have only themselves to blame. In the meantime, my vote is to let them make their own decision.

©John Edison. All rights reserved.

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