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A Lawrence Mini-Concert Live at WGBH Boston

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Belafon9/27/2021 7:07:48 am PDT

… In other words, unvaccinated people in Utah have been between 4.4 times and 5.1 times more likely to get COVID-19, be hospitalized, or die because of it than vaccinated people in the past eight months.

OK, pretty straightforward. But that’s obviously been changing, right? After all, you’ve heard a lot recently (including from me, by the way) about vaccine efficacy declining as time passes. Given that the majority of those vaccinated got their shots in March, April and May, five to seven months ago, aren’t we likely to see that gap shrink?

Not so fast! It turns out that the gap has actually been growing. In other words, we’re seeing the multiplier — the ratio of coronavirus cases among the unvaccinated when compared to the vaccinated — increase over the past month.

Why is that? Well, coronavirus spread happens exponentially. Because the vaccine prevents most cases and makes other cases more mild, the contagion coefficient is higher in mostly unvaccinated communities compared to mostly vaccinated ones…