When officials urge the public to “follow the science,” one would think that the appropriate data would be supplied. One would think that asking questions would be allowed. Regrettably, this is far from the case in Jefferson County.
Jefferson County Public Health (JCPH), the Leader and the Peninsula Daily News are the main print sources disseminating COVID-19 information for our county. While the data they publish can provide limited insight into the local COVID situation, there are many aspects of their reporting that are questionable, either because they don’t publish certain data or because they publish misleading data.
For example, data from the Leader indicate that more than half of Jefferson County “COVID deaths” have been in fully vaccinated individuals. That number may be as high as 71%. JCPH’s data also suggests cases among not fully vaccinated individuals outnumber those among fully vaccinated individuals three-to-one. However, this claim relies on misleading data. On the contrary, since early August, more than 40% of Jefferson County cases have been in fully vaccinated individuals. When data is muddled, irrelevant or misrepresented, it is impossible to make sound public health decisions— which, unfortunately, is exactly what Jefferson County Health Officer Allison Berry claims to be doing.
JCPH publishes a daily report with COVID-19 statistics for the county. Recently, I took a look at their data and was struck by the realization that some meaningful data can be extrapolated from some of the misleading statistics they’ve posted. That data, along with some other observations, is presented in the remainder of the article. All data is accurate as of 10/22/2021.
“Fully vaccinated” designation is misleading
The main source of my frustration within JCPH’s data is a pair of statistics (found in the third and fourth rows of the right-most data table): “Percent of cases among (not) fully vaccinated individuals since 2/1/2021.” At first glance, this might seem like an important and informative statistic. After all, this is the clearest data we have locally that informs on whether or not the vaccine actually prevents infection, right? As it turns out, this data is very misleading.
One important aspect to consider is the dichotomy between “fully vaccinated” and “not fully vaccinated”. What exactly do these terms mean? According to the CDC, one isn’t considered “fully vaccinated” until 14 days after they’ve received their last COVID-19 shot — either the single J&J, or the second of the two-dose mRNA jabs. Everybody else is considered “not fully vaccinated,” even if they’ve been “partially vaccinated.”
If all of the shots in a series (and the boosters) are the same, then one would think that being even partially vaccinated would confer some immunity. If being partially vaccinated provides any increase in immunity, there is absolutely no reason why those cases should be included in the same category as individuals who have received no shots.
These two groups seem to be incorrectly interpreted as vaccinated vs unvaccinated by some people—in fact, JCPH was guilty of doing so on 08/04/2021 (see the screenshot). The Peninsula Daily News has run articles that reference these statistics and call the “not fully vaccinated” group “unvaccinated”. While there may be some unvaccinated individuals in the group, it is disingenuous to assume that all of them are. The data provided by JCPH leaves us guessing—it could be a 20-80 split among partially vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals for all we know!
Jefferson County Public Health 8/4/2021 Facebook post
Another problem is that these percentages are measured since 02/01/2021. At this early date, the vast majority of people were not vaccinated, nor were they eligible for vaccination. Most Washington state adults weren’t able to get vaccinated until April 15th, some two and a half months later. Furthermore, if somebody got vaccinated on April 15th and got all of their shots as soon as possible, they wouldn’t be considered “fully vaccinated” until late April (if they chose the J&J shot) or late May (if they received one of the two-dose vaccines).
Why does this matter? Measuring this data from a time when hardly anybody was or could be vaccinated against COVID-19 artificially inflates the number of cases among the “not fully vaccinated’ while decreasing the number among the fully vaccinated. Think about it this way — 0% of COVID-19 cases were found in vaccinated individuals in March 2020. Does this mean that the vaccines are effective? Of course not: the vaccines weren’t available then! Measuring since February 2021 is much better than March 2020, of course, but vaccines were still virtually inaccessible at the start of February.
Speaking of vaccine unavailability, children under the age of 12 are still ineligible for these experimental shots. If the statistics showing the percentage of cases among fully vaccinated and not fully vaccinated individuals is meant to show the vaccine’s efficacy at preventing infection, positive tests among those ineligible for vaccination shouldn’t be included. (I’ll come back to this point later.) Nevertheless, positive tests in this age group are still figured into the data. JCPH lists 151 positive tests among children aged 0-11 since they started collecting data in March 2020. That’s more than one tenth of local cases!
How could this data be improved?
For one, split the data into three categories: fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated, and unvaccinated.
Second, children aged 0-11 should be removed from this specific statistic, as positive tests within this population can’t possibly show the efficacy of the vaccines. This statistic should only include people who are eligible for vaccination at the time when they contract COVID-19. (Previous data should be adjusted to reflect this as well.)
Third, the start date of the data collection should be changed, measuring from May 1st at the very earliest. Better yet, JCPH could publish the percentage of cases among the three groups over a moving time frame. (For example, JCPH publishes a “two-week COVID-19 case rate per 100,000” containing data from the latest two-week period.)
JCPH first published the breakdown of the percentage of positive tests by vaccination status on 08/04/2021 and has updated the statistic at fairly regular intervals ever since. (This data can be found on JCPH’s Facebook page.) Because the percentages among fully vaccinated and not fully vaccinated populations are periodically updated (as is the total number of positive tests), the number of cases among these two populations since 08/04/2021 can be calculated by noting the change in percentages. This data provides a picture of the situation in Jefferson County during just the two-month period from August to October.
I have created two data tables from JCPH’s updates. The first displays the raw data reported by JCPH, and the total number of cases among the two populations during the period. The second table uses the same information, but removes any cases from before 08/04/2021. Additionally, it presents the percentage of cases added each week in the two groups.
TABLE 1 – Cases Among Not Fully Versus Fully Vaccinated
TABLE 2 – New Cases Among Not Fully Versus Fully Vaccinated
There is a clear trend in the percentage share of cases among the two groups since 02/01/2021. As Table 1 shows, the percentage of cases among the not fully vaccinated decreased from 92.1% to 73.82% over the time period, while the percentage among fully vaccinated individuals rose from 7.9% to 26.18%. One possible explanation for this trend is that the data is greatly skewed by the odd start date; this argument is further supported by the fact that even during weeks where there were more cases among not fully vaccinated individuals than among fully vaccinated individuals, the percentage of cases among fully vaccinated individuals increased (for example, during the week of 10/08/2021).
Table 2 makes the data much more clear. Over the period from 08/04/2021 until 10/22/2021, 42.4% of positive tests were among fully vaccinated individuals while 57.6% were from individuals who were either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. These two percentages are worlds away from the 92.1% and 7.9% rates reported in August. They’re even considerably different from the percentages reported on 10/22/2021 (73.82% vs 26.18%). A 47.64 percentage point difference between 73.82% and 26.18% is more than three times greater than the 15.2 percentage point difference between 57.6% and 42.4%. The differences between these statistics evidently varies greatly with the time frame.
Let’s also consider improper inclusion of ineligible age groups.
On 08/18/2021, JCPH started reporting positive tests with an age band of 0-11-year-olds (replacing an earlier 0-19 age band). As of 8/18/2021, there were 62 individuals in the 0-11 category. By 10/22/2021, there were 151 cases in 0-11-year-olds. Subtracting 62 children from 151, at least 89 individuals aged 0-11 were diagnosed with COVID-19 in the larger period between 08/04/2021 and 10/22/2021. These cases shouldn’t be used to give an idea of vaccine efficacy, as the individuals couldn’t be vaccinated.
Subtracting 89 cases from the “not fully vaccinated” category for the data from 08/04/2021 until 10/22/2021, there are then only 508 total cases, among them 255 cases among the not fully vaccinated population and 253 among the fully vaccinated population. The percentages are virtually identical, with only two more cases found in not fully vaccinated individuals. (Remember that this is a conservative estimate, as there were very likely cases in 0-11-year-olds during the two-week window from 08/04/2021 to 08/18/2021.)
Saying that the vaccine prevents you from catching the virus is misinformation.
The vaccine companies only claim that the vaccine can reduce symptoms, hospitalizations and deaths. Unfortunately, JCPH doesn’t publish the data that could be used to support those claims. The number of asymptomatic and symptomatic cases is not shared (and possibly unknown). The number of fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated and unvaccinated hospitalizations is not reported. Information (e.g., comorbidities, vaccination status, age, date of death, etc.) surrounding alleged COVID-19 deaths is similarly unavailable.
Death data can be extrapolated from articles in the Leader, however, which show that 10 out of 17 ‘COVID’ deaths have been among the fully vaccinated. (Two deaths among the unvaccinated occurred in 2020 and should be discounted when considering vaccine efficacy; a third death reported in mid-April didn’t specify vaccination status. A more accurate number would thus be 10/15 deaths among the fully vaccinated (66.67%), or even 10/14 (71.43%)). It is unclear if the Leader uses the same definition of “unvaccinated” as the Peninsula Daily News (i.e., “not fully vaccinated”) or if it actually means unvaccinated. It is also unclear whether these individuals died of COVID-19 or simply with COVID-19.
If anything, I feel like the points raised above and the data provided by JCPH raise many more questions than they answer. If we are truly in the middle of a dangerous pandemic, shouldn’t the local health department be providing as much relevant and up-to-date information as possible? Are statistics showing the share of males and females who have contracted the virus (which have been divided at around 50-50 since March 2020) really more important than the percentage of deaths and hospitalizations that were among the unvaccinated, partially vaccinated and fully vaccinated?
Keeping information from the public prevents us from “following the science,” and sharing misleading information/pro-vaccine propaganda prevents us from seeing what’s really going on.
Kincaid Gould was born in Port Townsend in 2002. After graduating from Port Townsend High School in 2020, he attended the University of Washington to study music with a focus on the clarinet. Unable to further pursue his studies at UW due to the institution’s (unscientific) COVID-19 vaccination policies, he has returned to Port Townsend, where he enjoys running, cooking, playing music and continuing his education at home.
Unfortunately we don’t live in the right state and certainly not the right county for these kind of truths.
Well done young man!
Thank you Kincaid for asking these questions and taking the time to explain why they are important.
Excellent reporting. I have asked JCPH several times the same question but have never received any answers. this is what reporting is all about. We, the public, pay the salaries of the public servants, and have a right to accurate and timely information and answers!
Did I hear that the Jeff co sheriff department isn’t firing the unvaccinated officers, is this correct information?
We share Dr Berry as well as our public health officer. The same manipulation of data is going on here. In my view the big story is the vaccines are not even preventing serious disease anymore because of obvious waning effectiveness against the delta variant. Yet Dr Berry and The CDC director and President Biden all insist that vaccination is the only way to get back to normal. There’s a big chorus saying one thing “get vaccinated.” Oh, and get your booster if eligible. I foresee a real dizzy of a covid/flu season starting in January, don’t you? I included the video of Dr Berry. It’s worth watching. https://youtu.be/SwW1qfUeiiI
Thank you for taking on the difficult task of locating trends in intentionally misleading data. If county officials were interested in making informed decisions, they could always do moving or rolling averages to understand trends over time.
There are multiple potential problems with including any vaccinated person in the unvaccinated group. For example, a person vaccinated less than 14 days may be dealing with an impaired immune response and be more susceptible to Covid.
As with everything else, follow the money. Some people are making a bundle off of this masking and now the Vac Cards. As for how many deaths are in the county over COVID, Jimmy the Greek would take any odds that the death rate is inflated. Of course he’d want someone to monitor the numbers. In this County he would have to be able to pick out an honest man or woman to do the tally. That would be a big problem if the powers that be were involved.
Excellent! This needs to be said now and often. We are being lied to. I appreciated your interpretation of the available statistics to tease out the truth that is hiding there. They know more–they should publish it. Thanks for your effort.
How surprising is it that politicians from the party that one year ago stole a presidential election (and many other elections) and daily lie to us about anything and everything would lie to us about the ChiCom Virus and the fake vaccines they force upon us? Meanwhile, conservative internet news sites are reporting that over 200 members of congress have used Ivermectin to cure their own cases of Wu Flu. Congresspeople, of course, are exempt from the vaccine mandates Biden and Inslee use to torment the rest of us.
With so much fake news out there, who can you believe? I hope the Biden voters are happy. Install President Trump. He loves America, our real president.
Great work (and I appreciate the time it took Kincaid!) to show how basic cohort definitions along with applicable time lines gives meaningful and real information.
Being in the midst of 2-3 year experimental study, we certainly need quality, consistent and congruent data to assess wether or not the approach chosen was the best option of many in the end.
Thank you for contributing to clarity. Hopefully our public health department will see the wisdom in this.
When all 3 companies vaccines were developed by using murdered babies this does not allow me to get the shot.
Great reporting! Well done. Something else that jumps out at me, our numbers are way too small for accurate statistics.. We say silly things like “there’s been a 28% increase” when our sample amounts to a total of 4 people. It might be math accurate and sound very sciency, but it doesn’t provide us any factual information. It is just hyping up numbers which creates fear mongering.
I spoke of odds in the virus killing so many people. The Leader must have been impressed as it was 17 deaths out of 32,000 people in the county. That doesn’t sound so bad when you look at the same paper with usually three or more deaths per week from various causes including things like old age, auto accidents, chance and other everyday things. I’ll still take those odds. If it were 3200 deaths I might even decide to get the shots. But, I would want to know about any pre-exisisting problems they had. We all know those numbers can be fudged too.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Mark Twain….
Unfortunately, cherry picked stats can add credibility to an inaccurately portrayed story.
Equally unfortunate is that manipulation of statistics seem a rampant epidemic in our government agencies, used to push forward biased agendas.
As of yesterday 10/28/21 the Leader changed formats regarding comments. Added is an as yet non functioning REPORT THIS feature. Also changed is names or tags of commenters. A drop down box with any past anonymous tags or your chosen name or tag is removed. Commenters have no choice but the new tags the Leader has moved to. Some “new” tags do contain the names of commenters. Some have no ID at all, this is system wide going back apparently years in archives. It betrays trust and changes the public record of the fourth estate. A steadfast status quo commenter in now absolutely anonymous. I pasted in Bill Mann’s column (the Spreadneck hate speech Bill Mann) all the letters to editor not published that appeared in this forum. A simple work around available to all. I used the tag “Spreadneck of Knowledge”. Now I get full credit as forestgems19, not even the Harvey W I usually use. The Leader has now changed anonymous to not anonymous. I tried yesterday to use comments on this story
https://www.ptleader.com/stories/hundreds-leave-wsf-state-patrol-and-other-agencies-as-vaccination-mandate-takes-effect,77834?
to question the change. Comments appear to be locked. I note today that the Leader has a piece regarding all Port Properties to require vaccination cards for entry to buildings. No consistent mask quality requirements.
I don’t agree with everything in the Free Press. I know the Leader is a huge part of corrupted thinking locally and has been for years from FWPDA to parking to City Manager selection to Covid. For the record, my ongoing issue with parking non enforcement, no planning, and no education stems from government not following its own laws and codes. The benefit is to specific people in local government tied to the real estate industry. Business access is impacted regularly. The city manager chants “recovery”.
I find that the folks contributing to the Free Press are generally well researched. I know my mask policy at my business is contrary to some folks thinking who frequent the free press. I meet tens of thousands of strangers in my business yearly and added air filtration early on. Business is up. A few tale issue and are free not to enter.
I don’t tie masking to vax caution. Nothing is perfect. My space my rules. Next week I may require large red clown noses for entry. This is much different than government mandates on this experiment, still in the early stages.
Thanks to Kincaid Gould and many others contributing to more information so individuals can have more than one source for information. Big corporations in lock step with National and local government has chosen a course. Careers are on the line if you push back. It is a culture. There will be no course corrections. Question authority. Question yourself. Question everyone’s motivations. Question me. I am always ready to be thoughtfully corrected. But not censored.
I llike your clown nose idea.. Send a bunch to the City and County Gods of the Mask. I also believe if you have something to say in the paper, have the guts to have your name on it. Please leave your picture off in unless you’re really proud of yourself or are good looking. Personally I find it interesting that you only have to wear a mask. My mask has been worn from the start of the Dambpanic. I’ve washed it twice and I don’t think much can get through it now. I am happy to remove it and be able to breathing.. I’ve also not had a shot and meet many people without “social distancing” what ever that is, as nobody seems to worry about that. I did enjoy reading about the the guy who put on a patch to his jacket. He got somebody upset. As we said in the Army, “Sorry about that”. Folks, elections are coming and it’s time to clean out the barn.
Harvey – Thanks for your informative report about the new PTLeader.com commenting system! It appears that all the names in old comments have been replaced by account usernames, which are often private nicknames unknown to the public. For example, my Leader account username is “solmaker”, so all my old comments now look like they were written by “solmaker” not “Stephen Schumacher”. As you point out, lots of comments now appear with no author whatsoever, maybe because they never had or no longer have an active PTLeader.com account.
And the usernames of other commentators that previously posted anonymously have now been revealed. So under this new commenting system, the anonymous have become public while public commentators have become anonymous! See for example:
https://www.ptleader.com/stories/thanks-spreadnecks-for-our-covid-miseries-mann-overboard,76924
Thanks for the addition of info from another perspective regarding changes at the Leader. It really isn’t as simple as user names being substituted because Justin Hale was changed to loudonna80, then a day later changed back to Justin Hale. Marge Samuelson is totally anonymous now. For years of her comments. I think she must have an account.
I have no problem with my name on my comments, I did post anonymously a few times. No going back now to see my Harvey W tag, even in the FWPDA creation comments from years ago I am obscured. Others are also changed forever in history. The comments from years ago from two articles were removed totally, I replaced them from my records. Don’t know if they have been removed again. Comments are a good history that should not be tampered with. The Leader has a long history of tampering with comments and censorship.
Some think this new REPORT THIS tool will be used to further censor anything the Leader does not want printed. An anonymous complaint could even come from in house to justify removal of most any comment. As of now I seem to be locked out of commenting and pointing all this out on the story I pasted a link to in my original comment. 1984. With smiley faces.
The solution is right in front of us….we need to support this platform with more stories, comments, and civil dialog….and perhaps drafting energetic, investigative reporters … like Kinkaid. The pay ain’t good, but a great place to cut your your teeth, develop your writing skills, make a name for yourself, and pad your resume.
I dropped my subscription to the Leader years ago….my accounts on Facebook and Nextdoor were next…they have all become way too political, vitriolic, and terrible places to find simple unadulterated news. I know lots of folks who have done this. They’re tired of everything being politicized and divisive. Politics has it’s place, but it must not infringe on our God given freedoms, nor envelop the lion’s share of our conversations.
Maybe in time, as this forum grows, the Leader gets renamed to The Follower.
My subscription to the Leader expires tomorrow, after nearly 20 years being a subscriber I have had enough, them posting my private email address was the nail in the coffin.
The PTFP now has my attention and I agree with you Brad. I want the Media to tell me the who, what, when and where not what the journalist thinks, leave that to the LTE’s, editorial comment and columns.
Thank you soooo much for doing these calculations. I had noticed and posted about this on fb, but had not gotten around to making a spreadsheet. You mention the misinformation Jeffco Health is spreading. They also are spreading misinformation about the boosters, saying they have been “approved”. This is after their big meeting in which they vowed to “fight misinformation”.
I so appreciate you and your diligent writing.
Brad, our ‘God Given Freedoms Weren’t given by God. They were bought and paid for with the lives of many men and women through the centuries. Hopefully they will be remembered on 11th hour, of the 11th day and the 11th month this November. They are dead, but should never be forgotten.
Les,
There is no doubt that through the centuries untold have sacrificed, and paid the ultimate price, to protect those freedoms ….. they are not forgotten.
Thank You Brad. I wish more people felt like we do.
This is a great article and something I’ve been trying to tell people about, I was so irritated when I saw that they were counting cases from February!! I asked 5 people if they saw a problem when they read a quote I sent them from Berry that said something like “89% of new cases since February have been in unvaccinated” and aside from most saying “that number seems really high” nobody immediately saw how they blatantly (but not at the same time haha) misconstrued the data! They don’t realize how underhanded that statistic is! So thank you for writing this so well, I will definitely be sharing!! Well done.