George’s comment on Coronavirus kills the vaccinated in the UK, but not in the U.S., which quotes Mx. Fauci saying “If you look at the number of deaths, about 99.2 percent of them are unvaccinated.”:
Got to love the 99.2% number, specially the .2 added to 99.
By highlighting the absurd precision, I wonder if George has explained the root cause of the discrepancy between U.S. data and U.K. data, in which roughly half of the people dying from COVID-19 were previously blessed with the sacrament of two vaccine shots.
The U.K. is competent at keeping medical records. The U.S. is not. The U.K. has a central database to go with its National Health Service. With the exception of the VA hospitals, the U.S. has hundreds of $billions wasted on mutually incompatible databases, each one a silo for an individual hospital or hospital group.
Why couldn’t Saint Fauci find more than 0.8% vaccinated among the deceased? The better question is how he/she/ze/they was able to find even one vaccinated person given that there is no central database of the vaccinated, that to ask the “Are you vaccinated?” question violates HIPAA, and that hospitals have no incentive (and maybe no mechanism) to report the death of a vaccinated person.
Readers: What do you think? Unless an American dies with his/her/zir/their vaccine card stapled to his/her/zir/their forehead, how is anyone supposed to know whether he/she/ze/they was vaccinated?
Related:
- “EHR Use, High Administrative Burden Driving Healthcare Spending” (August 2018): “Since 2011, the federal government has spent $38 billion requiring doctors and hospitals to install electronic health records systems through the Meaningful Use program in Medicare and Medicaid,” noted Alexander. … Persistent problems with health data exchange and interoperability further diminish the value of EHR technology. Health data exchange and interoperability solutions are available to streamline health data exchange and eliminate the need for paper health records, but this additional technology costs money.
- Sweden may be recording COVID-19 deaths differently than other countries (the Swedes have one big database and use it to tag COVID-19 deaths within 30 days of a positive test; Norway relies on subjective evaluation by a physician and the physician taking the initiative to report)
Well, in the last year COVID stats explored every trick from Darrel Huff’s classic “How to Lie with Statistics”.
In MA the state must know, because when you sign up for the VaxMillions lottery drawings all you supply are name, address, DOB, email address and phone number. They don’t ask for proof of identity (either in the form of your DL or other ID) and they don’t ask for a photo of your vaccination card.
https://www.mass.gov/massachusetts-vaxmillions-giveaway
“If you completed your vaccination in January, last week, or today, sign up now!”
> that to ask the “Are you vaccinated?” question violates HIPAA
I wonder if there is a HIPAA exemption for “emergency use” vaccines and other treatments?
This was from 2014….
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/special/emergency/hipaa-privacy-emergency-situations.pdf
@Alex, the state knows [1]. To get your jab, you had to provide some form of an ID and your info goes into the state database. This is why Dr. Fauci is able to claim a 99.2% [2], yes, with a decimal, success rate for the jab.
The part that I love about all this is this: why are we required to present with an ID for the jab but not when we vote? What rights or privacy are voters giving away when they are asked for an ID to vote? Why liberals object for an ID during voting but are willingly present an ID for the jab?
[1] https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/12/10/massachusetts-immunization-information-system-miis-vaccine-tracking
[2] https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2021/07/08/coronavirus-kills-the-vaccinated-in-the-uk-but-not-in-the-u-s/
@George A.: When you vote, you don’t surrender most of your HIPAA rights because of an emergency use authorization form you signed?
Lots of other reasons. As you know, they’re irrelevant.
Alex: no ID is required at government-run vaccine clinics. Example: https://www.cambridgema.gov/covid19/News/2021/04/upcomingvaccineclinics
“No appointment is required, and you do not need insurance, an ID, or a social security number to get the vaccine. Getting a vaccine will NOT affect a public charge determination or immigration status.”
Even if the government had some vaccine status information, that doesn’t mean it is in the same database as the death information.
@Philg: These dichotomies are “Fascinating” as Chief #Science Officer Spock might have said.
When I did the legwork to get my vaccine slot I had to:
1) Find a vaccine clinic that would take me (because my healthcare provider was zero help and did not even want to hear from me)
2) Make an appointment
3) Show ID and proof of insurance
4) Fill out paperwork
5) Sit at an intake station and be entered into a hospital computer system
6) Sign an “emergency use” authorization form.
All of it was being run by a town senior center in conjunction with a local hospital. The facility was staffed by a mix of senior center volunteers, hospital RNs and assistants, and managed by the local police.
That intake procedure was the same for both shots. I do not live in a “wealthy” area. Thousands and thousands of people received their shots at the same facility, both Moderna and Pfizer – the lines were out the door and wrapping around the building for weeks on end. And everyone had paperwork to fill out and IDs to show. I believe the Patient ID# written on my vacc. card is the *hospital’s* number.
Meanwhile, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 9,048 deaths possibly related to C19 vaccine. VAERS tracks any unusual or unexpected adverse events that occur after vaccine administration, but cannot determine if a vaccine was the specific cause of an adverse event.
source: https://www.openvaers.com/covid-data
You think one decimal place of precision is absurd? good lord
Asking about vaccination status does not violate HIPPA.
BioNTech investors are being reassured that a third booster shot of BNT162b2 will be necessary even against the alpha variant:
https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/pfizer-and-biontech-provide-update-booster-program-light-delta
Also, because #AbundanceOfCaution, a new vaccine against the delta variant has been submitted for emergency use authorization.
I’m not aware of any HIPAA violation occurring by simply asking about whether you are vaccinated.
There is no violation because it is an “emergency use” public-health necessity. So when you sign the form and get the shot, you acknowledge the emergency use waiver under HIPAA to the best of my understanding. My question is: how far does that waiver go? The rest of your medical records as well? After all, if you’re not holistically well, you might die from a comorbidity but not COVID itself. The government needs to know that information to produce accurate statistics.
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/special/emergency/hipaa-privacy-emergency-situations.pdf
As someone who had to implement HIPAA policies in software systems, HIPAA does not allow sharing any health related information including health procedures such as vaccination except when patient volunteered to share it.
In the UK we cleverly prioritised seniors. Despite the vaccine, they are still more at risk. So, people that have had the vaccine will be those dying.
The Guardian: Why most people who now die with Covid in England have had a vaccination
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2021/jun/27/why-most-people-who-now-die-with-covid-have-been-vaccinated
“But the risk of dying from Covid-19 is extraordinarily dependent on age: it halves for each six to seven year age gap. This means that someone aged 80 who is fully vaccinated essentially takes on the risk of an unvaccinated person of around 50 – much lower, but still not nothing, and so we can expect some deaths.”