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Comment by TigeriusKirk | Hacker News Reader

Why is the death rate in the US plummeting among the unvaccinated? Is it just less spread all around?

Because Covid seems to be exceptionally efficient at killing those who are already sick. It's somewhat survivorship bias... Now that we have more effective means of protecting the at-risk (and plenty of them already died), the mortality rate is going down since the mix of people getting sick includes more healthy people as a %.

Recently infected people haven't had as much chance to succumb. There are also delays in reporting I believe. I also think your explanation carries much of the effect size, but the timing also matters.

You’re wrong here.

It’s not about recently infected. It’s about deaths per day of unvaccinated. If the amount of death among the unvaccinated is going down daily then it is. It has nothing to do with recently infected because at some point some of those people may die next week or the week after and it will be reported then.

If the data reports the date when someone dies, and it takes a couple of days for the death to trickle through the data processing/reporting pipelines, wouldn't that be a lag?

Probably a few things. Younger people getting it as schools open up, and it has already killed a lot of the people that it was able to kill.

> Younger people getting it as schools open up

Wouldn't that cause an increase in the death rate among the unvaccinated?

AFAIK this data isn't "covid deaths/people who got covid", it's "covid deaths/the entire population".

> > Younger people getting it as schools open up

> Wouldn't that cause an increase in the death rate among the unvaccinated?

If the unvaccinated are skewing younger over time, we'd expect the death rate to go down because of that. Younger people are much less likely to die from COVID, even if they're not vaccinated, and this seems to be especially true for school age children.

This confused me as well -- it's not totally obvious with the way that the information is presented.

Per the "Sources" tab:

> Incidence rate estimates: Weekly age-specific incidence rates by vaccination status were calculated as the number of deaths divided by the number of people either fully vaccinated (cumulative) or unvaccinated (obtained by subtracting the cumulative number of fully vaccinated and current number of partially vaccinated people from the 2019 U.S. intercensal population estimates) and multiplied by 100,000. Overall incidence rates were age-standardized using the 2000 U.S. Census standard population. Rates are not adjusted for time since vaccination, underlying conditions, or other demographic factors besides age.

So I believe you're correct in that the data comparing deaths against the entire population, not against people who got covid.

Less spread and delta was so contagious over the summer that it quickly burned through many unvaccinated populations.

The denominator of the death rate is not COVID cases, it is total population. If the number of COVID cases drops, even if mortality remains constant, then the death rate will also see a concomitant drop. When compared to a graph of the daily cases, the pattern in the parent post essentially matches.

We have thereputics and understand how to treat it. Also younger people are getting sicker.

Younger people are getting infected at higher rates, however there's no reliable evidence that they're suffering more severe symptoms.

Maybe because, even if you are not vaccinated, you have less chance of catching covid if everyone around you is.

OP is asking about survivorship rate of people who get it, not how likely you are to die of covid. Herd immunity shouldn't come into play here.

You are right, it's not what he was asking. Yet, herd immunity absolutely come into play. The peak of death rates were during hospital overrun.

The Delta variant is so contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect those who lack immunity.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

There has never been enough hospital overrun to significantly impact death rates. In other words, the number of people who died who would have survived if more hospital care was available is extremely small relative to the total death toll.

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