I go by county residents who have received the 2nd COVID-19 shot only (or 1st in the case of the J&J vaccine).
I base my percentages on the total population via the 2020 U.S. Census including all ages (i.e., it includes kids under 12).
For most states + DC I use the daily data from the Centers for Disease Control, but there are some where the CDC is either missing county-level data entirely or where the CDC data is less than 90% complete at the county level. Therefore:
I've been posting weekly looks at the rate of COVID-19 cases & deaths at the county level since the point at which every U.S. adult could theoretically have received 2 COVID vaccination doses nearly a year ago, broken out by partisan lean (i.e, what percent of the vote Donald Trump received in 2020), as well as by the vaccination rate of each county in the U.S. (nonpartisan).
For a long time I used July 1st, 2021 as my start point, but in recent months I decided to back this up to May 1st, 2021 instead. Pinning down an exact date for this is a bit tricky since a) different populations were made eligible at different points in 2021, and b) it takes 3-4 weeks after getting your first vaccination dose before you can get the second one, but May 1st is what I've finally settled on.
As I (and many others) have been noting for many months now, the official end of the federal Public Health Emergency (PHE), whenever it happens, will presumably bring with it reason to celebrate...but will also likely create a new disaster at the same time:
What goes up usually goes back down eventually, and that's likely to be the case with Medicaid enrollment as soon as the public health crisis formally ends...whenever that may be.
Well, yesterday Ryan Levi and Dan Gorenstein of of the Tradeoffs healthcare policy podcast posted a new episode which attempts to dig into just when that might be, how many people could be kicked off of the program once that time comes and how to mitigate the fallout (I should note that they actually reference my own estimate in the program notes):
I've been posting weekly looks at the rate of COVID-19 cases & deaths at the county level since the point at which every U.S. adult could theoretically have received 2 COVID vaccination doses nearly a year ago, broken out by partisan lean (i.e, what percent of the vote Donald Trump received in 2020), as well as by the vaccination rate of each county in the U.S. (nonpartisan).
For a long time I used July 1st, 2021 as my start point, but in recent months I decided to back this up to May 1st, 2021 instead. Pinning down an exact date for this is a bit tricky since a) different populations were made eligible at different points in 2021, and b) it takes 3-4 weeks after getting your first vaccination dose before you can get the second one, but May 1st is what I've finally settled on.
The Biden-Harris Administration is announcing today that more than 59 million Americans with Medicare Part B, including those enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, now have access to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved, authorized, or cleared over-the-counter COVID-19 tests at no cost. People with Medicare can get up to eight tests per calendar month from participating pharmacies and health care providers for the duration of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
I've been posting weekly looks at the rate of COVID-19 cases & deaths at the county level since the point at which every U.S. adult could theoretically have received 2 COVID vaccination doses nearly a year ago, broken out by partisan lean (i.e, what percent of the vote Donald Trump received in 2020), as well as by the vaccination rate of each county in the U.S. (nonpartisan).
For a long time I used July 1st, 2021 as my start point, but in recent months I decided to back this up to May 1st, 2021 instead. Pinning down an exact date for this is a bit tricky since a) different populations were made eligible at different points in 2021, and b) it takes 3-4 weeks after getting your first vaccination dose before you can get the second one, but May 1st is what I've finally settled on.
NOTE: Given how much the national pace of vaccination shots has slowed down recently (the 7-day average is down to around ~330,000/day), this is now a MONTHLY update unless the pace picks up again significantly.
Methodology reminders:
I go by county residents who have received the 2nd COVID-19 shot only (or 1st in the case of the J&J vaccine).
I base my percentages on the total population via the 2020 U.S. Census as opposed to adults only or those over 11 years old (or even over 4 years old).
For most states + DC I use the daily data from the Centers for Disease Control, but there are some where the CDC is either missing county-level data entirely or where the CDC data is less than 90% complete at the county level. Therefore:
As you might expect, there's a clear drop-off in new COVID cases per capita as the vaccination rate of the counties goes up. There seems to bea slight drop-off starting around 50% fully vaccinated, followed by a steep drop-off starting around 65% vaxxed.
There's a third drop-off at around 75%, but there's literally only a handful of counties which have achieved that high a vaccination rate so far anyway.
HOWEVER, there's one major outlier over the 65% threshold...Miami-Dade County.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, Miami-Dade has fully vaccinated 68% of their entire population (1.84 million out of 2.72 million residents). I use the slightly lower official 2020 U.S. Census popualtion count for Miami-Dade County (2,701,767), which makes the vaccination rate slightly higher still: 68.24%.
For months I've posted weekly looks at the rate of COVID-19 cases & deaths at the county level since the point at which every U.S. adult could theoretically have received 2 COVID vaccination doses, broken out by partisan lean (i.e, what percent of the vote Donald Trump received in 2020), as well as by the vaccination rate of each county in the U.S. (nonpartisan).
For a long time I used July 1st, 2021 as my start point, but more recently I decided to back this up to May 1st, 2021 instead. Pinning down an exact date for this is a bit tricky since a) different populations were made eligible at different points in 2021, and b) it takes 3-4 weeks after getting your first vaccination dose before you can get the second one, but May 1st is what I've finally settled on. As it happens, this didn't change things that much since June 2021 in particular was the nadir of the pandemic's death rate since it began.
It's been another six weeks since my last attempt to estimate a grim but vitally important number: Just how many Trump voters vs. Biden voters have become fatal victims of the GOP/FOX News coordinated anti-vaxx/anti-mask campaign to date, and what sort of impact might this end up having on the midterm elections this November?
As I said at the time, I'm not going to attempt to justify this cynical bean counting anymore...the evidence is now overwhelming that Republican leadership, in coordination with outlets like FOX News and other right-wing outlets, made a conscious decision in spring 2021 to push hard against Americans getting vaccinated against COVID-19 for purely cynical political math reasons.
