I got an email from a loyal reader who asks “Is it possible that the vax pass drove down hospitalizations in Chicago?” It’s a very good question and one I should have addressed during the last update.
As a reminder, here’s what Chicago’s hospitalization curve looks like:
If we go onto Chicago’s official page we see that the rolling average of Chicago’s hospitalizations peaked on January 12th at just under 1600. This is nine days after the vax pass was established. It SEEMS like it’s too early for the pass to make a difference, but just to make sure let’s check on the overall numbers in Illinois, which DOESN’T have a state-wide vax pass.
Just like above, when you interact with the website you can see the day covid hospitalizations peaked in Illinois — it’s January 12th, the same day that the rolling average peaked in Chicago.
Once again, we see that ‘the rules’ don’t move the needle with regards to covid. Long, long ago when I still thought this was about data, I used a comparison of midwest states with vastly different rules but similar curves to prove this. Here’s what that chart looks like today:
Without the labels, could you even tell which states had lots of covid rules and which had hardly any? Could you ever?
Did the Vax Pass Save Chicago?
And then there are confounding factors. Seasonality: these viruses are Winter viruses, they come as Winter starts, peak in the bleak mid-Winter, then wane as Winter moves towards Spring. Gompertz curve: the virus follows a particular trajectory, low activity, sudden exponential rise, peak, then gradual decline. This is due to the virus rapidly infecting and causing serious disease in the most susceptible but as it moves through the population there are fewer and fewer new victims, so activity falls away.
You can see both seasonality, and Gompertz curve on the September to January part of the figure in the article.
When this natural decline is observed, ‘triumph’ is declared for lockdowns, masks, vaccination.
But the same trajectory was observed before we had vaccines in places like Sweden where there was no lockdown, no masks. And comparing various territories there is no difference irrespective of what measures were taken, how strict, for how long or when, or levels of vaccination or when the programmes started.
What characterises this whole panicdemic, is the determined way evidence from observation has been ignored.
I suggest adding Iowa to the graph if you can. Iowa has emulated Florida as far as no masks, no more lockdowns and no vax mandates. I would love to see how Iowa compares. It should not be overlooked but it often is. I think people forget it borders Illinois.