By: Mark Glennon*
Contrary to what is widely said by the media and many health authorities, the number of “breakthroughs” — COVID deaths in fully vaccinated people — is large, and that number as a percentage of total COVID deaths has been growing.
For the week of October 7 to 13, 62 fully vaccinated Illinoisans died from COVID. That’s 36% of the total COVID deaths reported for that week. For the week ending October 20, 48 breakthrough deaths were recorded, which was about 24% of COVID deaths. Breakthrough deaths have ranged from 21% to 37% of COVID deaths since September 1.
The chart here shows total breakthrough deaths and total COVID deaths for the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. This chart is now in our regular COVID data reports:
Our data are derived directly from the Illinois Department of Public Health weekly reports on breakthroughs, which are provided every Wednesday.
Their website with those numbers, however, is badly misleading because it conspicuously shows cumulative numbers since earlier in the year. That’s misleading because there simply weren't that many vaccinated people around earlier in the year. Plus, vaccine effectiveness is now widely known to diminish significantly over time. Cumulative numbers from the start therefore mean little.
In other words, there were almost no breakthrough deaths earlier because the vaccine had not been widely given out and vaccine efficacy was high. To get to the relevant, current numbers we used, you have to go to the data at the very bottom of the IDPH site and click through to the final tab.
The Centers for Disease Control’s website buries its breakthrough numbers the same way. In fact, it provides only cumulative numbers without a recent, weekly breakdown. Consequently, we cannot provide a more current run rate on national breakthrough deaths as we have done for Illinois.
Some other states are providing their own breakthrough numbers. One is Massachusetts, where breakthrough cases represented about 38% of total reported cases for a recent week.
The shortage of good data and the misleading cumulative numbers no doubt account for the media coverage on this subject, which has been abysmal and often dead wrong. A recent CBS Chicago article, for example, says flatly that “Breakthrough cases of COVID-19 are rare.”
You can easily find many news stories from other sources saying much the same, but they are simply wrong. Sixty-two breakthrough deaths in one week just in Illinois is very significant. That’s not much less than all weekly COVID deaths were running during the summer this year and last year. Weekly breakthrough deaths have ranged from 30 to 95 per week since mid-August.
A particularly irresponsible comment came from CNN National Correspondent John King. On Tuesday he thanked his guests and staff for all being vaccinated because he is immunocompromised and has multiple sclerosis. That was “incredibly brave” of him, tweeted another CNN correspondent.
But hold on. Is he brave or foolish? He seems unaware of the chances that his vaccinated contacts might be infected. Nor is he seemingly aware of the other growing evidence that the vaccinated still spread the virus. Being immunocompromised, should he he feel as secure as he does just because those around him are vaccinated?
A few other things are worth noting.
First, you may wonder about how common breakthrough deaths are for those with natural immunity – those who already have antibodies from a prior infection. We can find nothing on that. It’s yet another inexcusable hole in the data, as explained by a University of Illinois professor here.
Second, as you can see from the chart below, which we are now including in our regular data reports, breakthrough deaths have been representing a growing share of Illinois COVID deaths. In part that is just the result of more people being vaccinated. If everybody were vaccinated, that portion would be 100%. Still, the point remains that breakthrough deaths are now quite common and represent a growing share of the COVID challenge.
Third, and most importantly, COVID deaths of any kind have been going down, and that’s unquestionably due in part to the vaccines. Despite the growing number of breakthrough deaths, the consensus among experts still holds, which is that vaccines significantly reduce the chance of infection and, more importantly, greatly reduce the chances of hospitalization or death if you are infected.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
This column was updated to include IDPH data released on October 20.
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
To anyone whos interested,check out Alex Berensen on the Joe Rogan Show,a lot of facts and data that this so called ” vaccine” isnt all what the powers that be ,say it is
old lady friend: “some of my bridge playing friends won’t allow unvaccinated ladies to play cards with them.”
me: “really? Why is that?”
old lady friend: “because they haven’t got the vaccine.”
me: “yes I realize that. But if they already have got the vaccine, what are they worried about?”
old lady friend: “getting covid”
me: ???
When I had Covid 6 weeks ago, the doctor at the clinic said 65% of his Covid positive cases were vaccinated people. So we have a vaccine that doesn’t work. And we have a city about to fire cops who refuse to inject it into their veins. And these same brave cops hit the streets every day for over a year while we in the middle of a pandemic without a vaccine. Talk about no respect for police and no gratitude. Destroying careers because you get off on the physical submission of cops to your will.
Rick, I do think it’s oversimplification to say the vax doesn’t work. It certainly doesn’t work as well as initially promised, but it works moderately well enough that many who are at risk should get it, after balancing the pros and cons. But I agree with the rest of what you said.
“Rick, I do think it’s oversimplification to say the vax doesn’t work.”
Maybe it’s because data that is presented incorrectly misleads some of your commenters to these ignorant beliefs. You own that Mark.
Or maybe he didn’t read what we said is the most important point, which we put in italics. Or maybe you didn’t.
Lol
I’d like to learn how many millions or billions in taxpayer money is being shoveled out for public service announcements to promote the “jab” economy or threaten those who resist the “jab.” An unscrupulous use of public funds by the administrative state in which there’s no “truth in advertising.” For example, how many of these deaths attributed to the Wuhan flu, were of people [calling them “folks” is truly demeaning] who had insulin resistance? Where’s the testing and figures for this essential co-morbidity? Nowhere to be found. As for blacks, I understand that the skin color does make a difference… Read more »
I so agree with you. When I hear of one, I wonder “now if I were in Texas, Florida, any red state, would I have to be subjected to this”? Utterly ridiculous and shameful
***—First, you may wonder about how common breakthrough deaths are for those with natural immunity – those who already have antibodies from a prior infection. We can find nothing on that—***
Most assuredly because the numbers are so low…
There are a few studies going back several months with several thousand participants. IIRC refinfection was less than 1% and the total numbers of deaths among the reinfected was 2.
Mark,
Please STOP callining the shot a vaccine; it is NOT a vaccine. If the shot was a vaccine, people that have received it wouldn’t get Covid-19 OR spread it. The shot is similar to a flu shot – it might prevent the flu or it might not, but if you do get the flu it won’t be as bad. At the moment “The Shot” is the best solution available to reduce your chances of dying from Covid 19. It’s not perfect, but few things in life are. Get the shot and get on with living.
That’s the thing, Doc. They will not let you get on with living after the jab.
It should be clear that the lab made disease was about creating fear. The jabs are about control.
That’s why you will have perpetual boosters. That’s why they take away your work unless you comply. Soon it will be your ability to freely associate as they are doing in Australia and elsewhere.
The agenda is obvious. The evil is obvious.
Will people see the obvious? Or is it too ugly to see?
That is the “carrot” that they present to all —- get this jab and we can get on with life as it was. I don’t think so. Many will be sorely disappointed once they find out that their promise was not reall.
“At the moment “The Shot” is the best solution available to reduce your chances of dying from Covid 19.”
Is it really? Or is that what Pfizer, Moderna and J&J want you to believe?
Items like ivermectin and a few others are available so that we do not need to go to the jabs to “reduce our chances of dieing”. Where have You been? And if we lived in a world of truth and science, they would not have been able to get these jabs on the market based on EUA because there are other options that work. They deny that these other options work and pulled a fast one. And, since they have gone and changed the definition of the word, in this crazy clown world it now is a vaxx. Voila!
I just audited a clinic in Eswatini (Swaziland) today. On detection of Covid-19 they TREAT the patient immediately with: Broad spectrum antibiotic 1 x IV. Zinc, Azithromycin, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin B, and IVERMECTIN. They are getting very good and quick results by early intervention. Now exploring Hydroxychloroquine options. Doctors in Africa know Ivermectin well for many illnesses – the human formulation in tablets which has had 3.7 Billion doses issued – so they are confident it works….and it does. Why are you Yanks so easily bamboozled? Those pushing the ‘stab’ have oceans of money to grab so they… Read more »
People did get on with living. Until the vaccine stopped that in its tracks.
Sorry, I do not get why that that’s not called a vaccine.
Providing percentage of deaths from vaccinated versus non-vaccinated is misleading. If 100% of the population was vaccinated then 100% of all COVID deaths would be from breakthrough cases. Would that percentage actually let us know if breakthrough is rare or not? While we are not 100% vaccinated, over age 65 is more than 83% vaccinated, the same group that predominately fills up hospitals and death counts. The percentage of those hospitalized by vaccination status does not provide any relevant information as to the efficacy of the vaccine. It only serves to discredit the vaccine among people that don’t understand numbers… Read more »
PPF, your suggestion in the last paragraph seems right and we will think about that. I did expressly make the point about the % being sort of misleading, though I think it is not entirely misleading and appropriately included. It provides a rough sense of where the deaths are occurring and is a good start when thinking about the common claim that “this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Your suggestion about age groups is good and we are putting up in our daily summary what we have from IDPH, but it is limited. They provide too few age groups.
PPF, the narrative in the press for some time has been that virtually all COVID deaths are the unvaccinated. That message has been hammered nationally over and over. As the data we published today shows, that’s simply not true. There were 174 reported COVID deaths in Illinois in the past week and 62 of them were breakthroughs. At 36 percent of the total, that’s a big number and certainly consequential given the vaccination discussion. More importantly, while our presentation is not perfect given the lack of data we have to work with and the caveats Mark described, it’s far better… Read more »
This mantra that it is a pandemic of the unjabbed is to provoke further fear and, in their minds at least, persuade more to “get with the program”. For people who are thoughtful, it is causing more questioning as to why the push. It is also very divisive.
Chatty, I agree that the point is to provoke fear. But it is no longer fear of COVID that they are pushing. That ship sailed a long time ago, people have already made up their minds about their risks.
They are pushing the fear of reprisal for failure to follow their dictates.
Mark and Ted, I don’t disagree that there has been many mainstream articles that have misinformed the public. They do this because they have an agenda. You are also presenting information that is misleading. Both can be true. If you are not comparing apples to apples then you are misleading. If I set up a study with 8500 patients in the active group and 1500 in the placebo group then I can’t compare raw number of outcomes but would need to compare the actual rate of the outcomes. In this same scenario, let’s say 0.1% of the patients in the… Read more »
Pensions Paid First, you are full of shit. If the ratio of vaccinated to unvaccinated is around 50/50, the issue just does not make a material difference to the story. That’s why your comparison of a study group of 8500 to a test group of 1500 is wrong. You would need to make them equal.Through most of the course of the time period covered by our chart on this the number of vaccinated was under 50%, which IL didn’t get to until late July. Still today it is just 56%. We will start making appropriate adjustments as that number grows,… Read more »
Time for a downer pill?
I prefer Doctor Walker’s Amber Restorative.
Mark, 50/50 Mark??? You are the one that’s completely full of shit. So now you’re comparing the breakthrough deaths of 75 year olds to 5 year olds that don’t get infected? The data already shows that a vaccinated over 65 year old has similar or even less protection than that of a young child. The majority of the deaths are coming from the over age 65 group. That group is vaccinated at around 85%. Hence the over age 65 group is the most accurate group to compare vaccination rates when looking at breakthrough. Is using that age group completely accurate?… Read more »
Pensions Paid First, you are entirely changing your issue to one of risk-adjusted population. The data we presented fairly present a topic nobody else has bothered with. You’re welcome. The simple point is that vaccinated people are dying in significant numbers, nobody else is saying that and it’s the government numbers that are most misleading. We would be better off if people like you were more interested in the massive distortion in the government’s meaningless cumulative numbers, instead of the minor issue you raise, which we already flagged as an issue in our column. Maybe the best solution is for… Read more »
The UK does report their breakthrough cases using rates per unit of population and it helps to provide more clarity. The level (and quality) of reporting in different US states varies but there are overriding similarities and some differences. One can learn when comparing. Here are the latest from the san Diego county: Summary of SARS-CoV-2 Infections by Vaccination Status (sandiegocounty.gov) San Diego County COVID-19 Watch All the relevant info are in the first “summary” document and the first pages of the second link. The San Diego county has been reporting higher vaccination coverage (whole population and at-risk groups). If… Read more »
Hot Carl, perhaps read something that isn’t straight up government propaganda.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/
This paper is interesting and i’ve looked into it. There are some relevant comments in the main covid thread. Can you please expand on this? i asked Aaron to do so in the other thread..
So the study is an interesting and was released recently by Dr. Subramanian and it’s been mentioned here (the title) but not really discussed: Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States (springer.com) It’s basically a form of bivariate analysis or a way to try to isolate the correlation between two variables (in this case: recent covid case incidence and vaccination coverage) by including an underlying pool of data. It can be interesting (correlation) but it’s important to 1-include an underlying pool of data that is fairly homogeneous and… Read more »
So,im not getting vaxxed,18 months into this and im perfectly healthy which means im probably gonna be ok,for you to say that im more likely to ” die” from covid is just more horeshit fear mongering,just stop it!-for those who dont want the so called vax,so be it,its nobodys business ,for the high risk people,the obese,elderly and so on,get the vax if you choose,for the healthy like myself,shove the vax up your rear ends and dont worry about what we choose to do
I’m not saying that Jabroni but the data is telling us that. Most smokers won’t get cancer (probably gonna be ok) but you are at a higher risk of lung cancer if you smoke. Just because a smoker doesn’t get it doesn’t changed the facts. Since most people don’t die from this I would agree that you are “probably gonna be ok”. With that said your risk of death and hospitalization is greater compared to the vaccinated. I support your decision to not get vaccinated. That is your personal decision and I do not support mandates for this vaccine. Not… Read more »
The problem is the data collectors will call a double vaxxed person “unvaxxed” if they haven’t had their 3rd or 4th booster by now.
If 100% get vaxed and people still get it and die, can we at least then say the vax doesn’t work?
Wow Aaron. Is that your assessment of any vaccine? That if it’s not 100% effective and there is any breakthrough then the vaccine “doesn’t work”. Thank you for serving as exhibit A as to commenters that don’t understand the data. You do realize that it took over 180 years to eradicate small pox after the vaccine was invented? A vaccine doesn’t need to be 100% effective to be considered effective. This is why I’ve stated this type of data is misleading. People without the cognitive abilities to look at this data will assume it means the vaccines aren’t effective. Kudos… Read more »
As i stated above,listen to Alex Berenson on joe rogan,lots of data and factual information,one of the things he talks about is a report from the UK stating that in recent months 7 out of 10 deaths were people that were vaccinated,theres many more interesting things covid related that they discuss
That’s a long winded way of saying the vaccine doesn’t work very well compared to other vaccines.
The reality is that the vaccine isn’t a vaccine using the previously understood definition of vaccine. It’s a therapeutic you take before you get sick and it can reduce your chances of a serious case between 6 to 9 months after the shot. Its certainly better than nothing and high risk people should definitely take it. But if you’re not high risk, what’s the point of taking it.
That’s not at all what I wrote debtsor. When did I say it wasn’t effective or doesn’t work very well. I said it’s not 100% effective just like ALL vaccines. The definition changing from the CDC had more to do with addressing that vaccines offer protection but don’t offer complete immunity because none of them are 100% effective. This is true for all vaccines. They didn’t just change it for COVID vaccines. Unfortunately the conspiracy folks now think it’s not a vaccine. The same people that believe in election conspiracy theories are the same people touting vaccine conspiracy theories. Go… Read more »
“I said it’s not 100% effective just like ALL vaccines.” So exactly, it doesn’t work very well as a vaccine. Most other vaccines are pretty darn close to 100% effective and have long lasting protection. The currently available approved US vaccines are not anywhere near 100% and do not give lasting protection as commonly understood with other vaccines. The CDC broadened the definition of a vaccine to include the covid-19 vaccine because it’s not really a vaccine according to the original definition of vaccine. The covid-19 vaccines are more like a therapeutic taken at least 14 days prior to infection.… Read more »
The larger and more important question is how many deaths will occur among the jabbed unrelated to COVID but directly related to the jabs?
Do you believe the medical industrial complex, which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of DC Swamp, Inc., would ever accurately report deaths tied to the jabs from heart failure, clotting, other organ failure, and compromised immune systems?
Do you really expect them to report accurately on the danger of these jabs after they’ve been pushing them like crack dealers?
Hmmm…
Where have I seen this before…???
Ohh yeah….
Big tobacco companies…
LGB, I so agree with you. Sad, isn’t it? To your point, according to some physicians, health care workers and others who are studying the numbers at VAERS, the website where deaths and injuries related to the jab are posted, the numbers on there are said to be 1 to 10% under-reported. Many incidents are either being attributed to being from covid or something else entirely, kind of like we saw with the virus numbers when this all started, distortions to accomplish whatever. Yesterday I tuned in to a local radio station that I don’t usually listen to that had… Read more »
Another key point about Illinois’ “vax breakthrough” COVID deaths is that, per IDPH, HALF are among people that do NOT have underlying conditions & are NOT immunocompromised. That’s a much lower % than among COVID deaths in general (which is 90%++ ppl with comorbidities/contributing causes)
Yes, 592 of the 679 deaths are age 65+, but 87 are 18-64. But it’s very unlikely that at least some of the 333 deaths among vaxed “healthy” people were not in younger groups. Big reason IDPH needs to publish vax BT death data using narrower age bands.
There is always talk about those who spread so called misinformation and are censored but the media and health officials are guilty of giving limited or partial information. Lack of information is just as if not more so damaging or misleading. If you notice that when Ivermectin is shown by media it is usually a photo of the animal version not the human form. It is almost always portrayed as “horse paste or dewormer” https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/huge-global-media-campaign-promotes-lies-against-safe-and-effective-ivermectin/ Many people are under the false impression that if vaccinated they are protected or immune from getting Covid but they can get it and still… Read more »