As I’ve decided to manually grab every single public Covid-19 data page again, just to complete the collection, I’m going through and noticing things I hadn’t noticed before.
This thing is the inclusion (and later complete removal, a-la those charts on RNZ) of the bar chart on the Case Demographics page that showed cases and hospitalisations by dose count. It began on October 10, 2021.
I imagine the reasoning behind this was something like “If we show them how there are heaps more Unvaccinated than Fully-Vaccinated, that will be a good nudge to the hesitant. This will make taking the vaccine look like a better idea than not taking it.”
Given that 2021 was within the period covered by the HSU daily dose count spreadsheet, it’s easy to calculate the cohort sizes for that date, then the per-100,000 for each group. Definitely, not looking great for the 0-dose, but bear in mind this includes all of the cases recorded while there was no vaccine available.
This continued, for every day there was a new count (the first week or two was only updated twice, then it was every time), until the 7th of July 2022, it was gone.
On the 4th of July 2022, the final day it was posted, it looked like this:
Looking at the per-100,000 people rate for positive cases at that date, I think I can imagine why they decided to stop showing it.
I was going to make this post a while from now, when I have all the dates in the spreadsheet, but Daniel on X doesn’t seem to understand why the addition of the chart to begin with, then its removal when it was removed, is significant. While he is correct about the number of people vaccinated/boosted compared to the 0-dose, he seems to be missing the point that, although the population was heavily vaccinated against Covid, it was those heavily vaccinated cohorts that were catching Covid at a rate higher than the unvaccinated.
It all comes down to the actual RATE of infection.
For every 100,000 unvaccinated people, in the beginning, it was quite high. But as time went on, the 2-dose group eclipsed them. Not because there were more 2-dose people, but because out of every 100,000 people who took 2 doses, more were getting the very disease they were being vaccinated against, than those who didn’t take any doses.
Then came the Boosted. July 2022, when this chart stops, they had already overtaken the all-time Unvaccinated rate, and their counter didn’t even start until March 1, 2022.
So, thanks Daniel. I do think this data is great.
*Update* Dan’s back!
Righty, let’s take a look at Daniel’s expert analysis and math ability.
- Is 294,000 equal to 0.7% of 4,200,000? Let’s see. 294,000/4,200,000 = 0.1225. 0.1225*100 = 12.25%. Not really the best start for Dan. Also, it doesn’t actually represent the true cohort sizes for any of the groups. That’s because I only have the ability to calculate cohort sizes based on the number of doses given. HNZ internally updates actual cohort sizes when the vaccinated ones die, but this is not published. I saw one mention of it in a DPMC document, 38,000 dead vaccinated in total.
- Was the 12+ population at the time equal to 4,200,000? No. I get 4,335,950. Why say “roughly” when the exact number is available? Gee, Daniel, it’s really not looking like you know what you are talking about.
- Now, as for the part about the percentage totals.. that’s fun, because that week is one of HNZ/TWO’s “lets totally mess with the figures” weeks. Maybe that has something to do with why the chart was removed?
So, I’m not going to calculate the new cases for the week of the 7th of July 2022. It would be pointless.
I will do the 4th to the 14th, as they appear to be correct.
So, for the 10 days from July 4, 2022 to July 14, 2022: A total of 114,223 new cases in the 12+ population.
Some very quick maths, and we see that, of all the cohorts, the ONLY one with a percentage of the new cases for the 10-day period higher than its population percentage is.. the Boosted. I’d lay a shiny Lifetime Membership on the table on the bet that this is the case for at least 95% of all future weeks (or 10-day periods) where the HNZ data quality has not fallen off a cliff.
Just for interest’s sake, let’s look at the new Deaths within 28 Days of a positive Covid Case for the same period. We don’t exclude the under-12s from the population count for this one, and the 0-dose group is joined by the 1-dose group (for “privacy reasons” according to HNZ). As with Cases, the only cohort to have a higher percentage of new deaths for the period than its population percentage is.. the Boosted. By a long, long way.
So, that’s Spidey 2 – Daniel 1/2.
You have to assume he’ll try again. Stay tuned.
