Thread by @DrBarbaraTaylor

Today’s front page @ExpressNews is “Rate of vaccinated in hospitals rises” It is important to put this in context. % vaxed in hospital = # vaccinated in hospital testing COVID+ / # in hospital testing COVID+. This % (~15% in SA) is not that helpful. Why?🧵 expressnews.com/news/local/art…

2/If you are vaccinated, or thinking about it, what you care about is your risk of infection, hospitalization, or death from COVID. Recent data show risk of hospitalization is 0.7/100,000 people and death w/COVID ~10x less if vaccinated. cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/7…

3/% vaxxed in hospital, on the other hand, has a numerator & denominator problem. First numerator: # vaccinated in hospital testing COVID+ includes those + on screening. If you came in to get your gallbladder out or hip fixed, and test + but have no symptoms, you get counted.

4/ In New Haven, 50% of those vaxed in hospital testing COVID+ were asymptomatic. thelancet.com/journals/lanin…
So, if you care about being sick with COVID and getting hospitalized, this number is the wrong number to look at.

5/Now denominator: I’m not that worried about my risk of being vaccinated if I’m hospitalized and my COVID test is positive. And that's what % vaxed in hospital actually tells me. I’m worried about my risk of being so sick with COVID I have to be hospitalized after I get vaxed.

6/ Good news, as I said earlier, so far risk of both hospitalization and death are much lower in those who are vaccinated, even with delta. Yes, there are breakthroughs and we need to track those, particularly as new variants come through.

7/But % vaxed in hospital is not a good way to track hospitalization breakthroughs because so many are hospitalized for nonCOVID reasons (like they had a car accident and their test is + because they had COVID 4 weeks ago.) This % will actually get worse as COVID declines in SA.

8/Why don’t we just track the % hospitalized of total vaxed? This is hard. Every hospital would have to report data on each COVID+ patient to determine whether they are hospitalized for COVID-related reasons. San Antonio hospitals are a little bit busy right now.

9/So, please don’t see this headline and think you shouldn’t get vaccinated or that your vaccine isn’t still protecting you from being hospitalized. If you make it past the paywall and read the article, Peggy O’Hare explains all this. (and EN writers don’t write their headlines)

10/ To end on a happy note if you got this far- a friend of mine has been really nervous about getting vaccinated. She just texted me to say she got her first shot earlier this month and it went well. Bird by bird, y’all. Stay safe out there.