Killer Kate takes down 267

I've written about a lot of topics on this blog in the last seven months, but none have been hotter than Oregon's decision to inoculate teachers and school workers against Covid instead of doing what the vast majority of other states are doing, which is vaccinating seniors first. The responses from my fellow oldies have been flooding in.

One outraged reader pointed out to me in an email that more than 80 percent of Covid-"involved" deaths are of people 65 and over. He suggested that vaccinating younger people first means that more people will die. His logic seems uncontestable.

I ran some numbers just to see how many people my reader might be talking about. Just a crude calculation, nothing that would pass an exam in a statistics course. But something to talk about. You non-math majors may want to skip a few paragraphs here while I explain.

Over the last 10 days, Oregonians have died of Covid-related problems at the rate of 17 a day. 

The national statistics tell us that 81 percent of such deaths are people over 65. So that's 13.8 of the 17 people.

Breaking the numbers down a little further, 21.3 percent of total deaths are people 65 to 74. Another 27.6 percent are people 75 to 84. And 32.1 percent are people are over 85.

For Oregon that would mean 3.6 deaths a day between 65 and 74; 4.6 deaths a day between 75 and 84; and 5.5 deaths a day at age 85 and above.

Now, let's say that the state is making people 85 and over wait an extra two weeks; making people 75 to 84 wait an extra four weeks; and making people 65 to 74 wait an extra six weeks. That leads to 357 deaths total.

But on the other side of the ledger, vaccinating the younger people will save some of their lives. We're told that 18.8 percent of deaths are among those age 25 to 64. That's 3.2 lives saved per day by poking those folks sooner.

Let's say that of the 3.2 daily deaths averted, a third are getting vaccinated two weeks sooner than they would otherwise. Another third are going four weeks early. The other third are going six weeks early. The crude calculation of deaths per day averted times days saved brings us to 90 lives saved in that group.

So you lose 357 seniors, but you save 90 teachers and school workers. The difference is 267 bodies.

I know, these numbers are hopelessly crude. But there is some number of lives that are going to be lost, and it's not small. And this is how the angry elderly are thinking. If they live that long, they won't be voting for Governor Kate Brown for anything ever again. She'll be 62 when her term is up, and so she may be thinking about one more elective office. It isn't going to happen.

The one guy told me he's looking at "populist" candidates. We all know what that's code for.

UPDATE, that night: An alert reader points out that the vaccine may be only 90 percent effective. So that would make it 321 seniors lost, and 81 teachers and school workers saved, for a net loss of 240 people.