COVID Vaccines Have Saved 3 Million Lives In US, If You Believe 'Science'

Nice time!

Today is the two-year anniversary of the first COVID-19 vaccination (outside clinical trials, yes, don't nitpick), and to mark the occasion, the Commonwealth Fund yesterday released results of a new study finding that the vaccines have prevented 3.2 million deaths, and more than 18.5 million hospitalizations in the US. Eighty percent of the US population has received at least one dose of the vaccine, and more than 655 million doses, including boosters, have been administered in the two years since the vaccine was rolled out.

In addition, the study estimates that without the vaccine, there would have been nearly 120 million more infections, and that the total savings in medical costs from a mostly vaccinated population came to roughly $1.5 trillion. 

The study used computer models of how the disease would have progressed without any vaccinations to come up with its estimates, to compare with how the disease actually played out in the US.

Those are just the data on COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths that were prevented by the vaccines; if the virus had continued unchecked, the authors also note, the impact on the US healthcare system would also have been far greater, since hospitals and the medical workforce would have been in even worse shape than they already are as a result of the pandemic. The Delta and Omicron waves last winter stressed many hospital system to the point of failure, filling ICUsand requiring some states to put in place "crisis standards of care" that amounted to rationing — which meant that people withother medical emergencies couldn't always get treated.

Read Moar!

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The study didn't attempt to model the additional deaths that would have resulted from hospitals being overwhelmed by unrestrained spread of the virus, but does note that widespread vaccination "has preserved hospital resources for individuals who would otherwise have not received timely care." It also notes that preventing millions of infections in the first place has had widespread benefits:

Although the acute phase of these infections may not have required medical attention, each infection carries a risk of long COVID and debilitating symptoms. Many of the prevented infections would have been reinfections, which have higher risk of death compared to initial infections . In addition, as our previous analysis demonstrated , vaccines have kept children in school, highlighting the societal value of the ongoing vaccination program.

CNN notes that the new multivalent boosters, which protect against both the initial strain of the virus and the Omicron variant, have so far only been administered to 14 percent of the eligible population. (I finally got mine over the weekend — yes, I fire myself for putting it off — and didn't have any side effects apart from a slightly sore arm and the ability to see through time.)

COVID cases have started climbing again, which is expected because people are spending more time indoors, so you should keep masking when you're in indoor public places, particularly since the US is also seeing an increase in flu and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) infections.

Also worrying: Now that Elon Musk is running Twitter, the anti-vaxxers are running wild on the platform; we noticed that the CNN tweet about the new study was mobbed with thousands of horrible replies yesterday. It's fucking depressing is what it is.

The study didn't attempt to model how many Americans would have survived COVID if the substantial portion of the population infected with MAGAbrain had instead gotten vaccinated, although there's no shortage of evidence that the disease is disproportionately killing Republicans who avoid the vaccines. One in five Americans haven't even received a single dose, and they're all on Twitter insisting they're just fine.

[ Commonwealth Fund / CNN / Photo:  Heather Hazzan for Self Magazine , Creative Commons License 2.0 ]

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