In Sept. 2021, President Joe Biden declared a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” and blamed this on the roughly 80 million Americans who failed to get the COVID-19 shot.
However, by 2022, vaccinated people made up the majority of the population, with about 79 percent of adults having completed at least their initial shots.
The most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data now find the majority of adults dying of COVID-19 are vaccinated or boosted.
60 Percent of COVID-Related Deaths Among the Vaccinated
An alarming trend has become apparent: Vaccinated and boosted individuals account for a sharply increasing proportion of deaths from COVID-19.
Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) showed in an analysis posted on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, that about 4 in 10 COVID-related deaths were among the vaccinated or boosted by January 2022.
The most recent analysis of CDC data by KFF finds 6 out of 10 COVID-related deaths from April to August 2022 were among people with some level of vaccination.
According to KFF, this is due to a variety of factors relating to how many people were vaccinated earlier in the pandemic when the shots were first made available.
When the vaccines were first rolled out, people who received their initial series of injections represented only a small share of total deaths, because they were such a small number compared to the unvaccinated majority.
But that share was expected to rise as vaccinated people represented a growing share of the U.S. population. Ultimately, if everyone in the United States was vaccinated, then vaccinated people would represent 100 percent of COVID-19 deaths. The same would be observed among those who received a booster dose.
This is because some people who are up to date with vaccines will still get COVID-19, incidents which are considered “breakthrough infections.” As the CDC states, COVID-19 vaccination is effective at preventing severe illness and death, but the shots are not perfect.
Vaccine Benefit Has Become Marginal
The rising share of the vaccinated population is only one factor and doesn’t seem to explain all the increased deaths among vaccinated people over the last year.
