The attack on unvaccinated Ontarians is unwarranted and serves no one
As of September 16, 2021, some 11 million Ontarians had received at least one dose of a vaccine for COVID-19 and a reported 10,180,746 Ontarians had been fully vaccinated or 69.1% of Ontario’s population of 14.8 million people. 1.8 million are under 12 and ineligible for vaccination at this point. The unvaccinated population comprises 2 million people as of September 16, 2021.
Ontario reports that 578,000 people have been infected since the pandemic began. Since these people have now acquired some level of immunity to COVID, it is likely that many of them have chosen not to be vaccinated.
On September 16, 2021, Ontario tests 37,763 people and found 795 infected. While it is likely the preponderance of those found infected had symptoms, I will assume the tests were random and not isolated to people with symptoms. As you will see, this assumption is conservative to the conclusions I am going to draw from the data.
Of the 795 people infected, some were so-called “breakthrough cases” where the patient had been vaccinated or partially vaccinated.
The September 16, 2021, report (for the previous day) had 864 cases of which 209 were among those fully vaccinated and 56 among partially vaccinated people. Treating all other cases as “unvaccinated” even when their vaccination status was unknown, only 599 of the 864 cases could have been “unvaccinated” persons.
The test positivity rate for September 16, 2021, was 2.4%. That is lower than the average of 3.2% since the pandemic began. Included in that 2.4% are over one quarter of the cases found which were fully vaccinated Ontarians and if these are removed from the totals, the positivity rate for the remainder which I have classified as “unvaccinated” (even if they have had one shot or acquired an immunity having been infected and recovered) is approximately 1.8%. Stated simply, if September 16, 2021, are representative, there cannot be more than 36,000 unvaccinated Ontarians with COVID on that date.
Fully vaccinated people can and do transmit the disease. There are 10 million fully vaccinated people who our leaders say they will give a passport to travel at will, attend sports events and concerts, go to gymnasia, fly on airplanes, etc. With the certain knowledge that on September 16, 2021, there were 209 cases among the fully vaccinated it is a reasonable inference that there may be 6,000 vaccinated people carrying the disease today.
If you attend an event with 20,000 in the audience and all are fully vaccinated there are likely to be 120 in that audience who are carrying COVID. If the same event were open to everyone and the proportion of those attending randomly distributed, there would be approximately 2,700 unvaccinated people and 18,300 fully vaccinated people in the crowd, again treating the partially vaccinated as unvaccinated.
Of that 2,700 with an unvaccinated positivity rate of 1.8% there would be 49 infected unvaccinated people in the audience and with a vaccinated positivity rate of .06% there would be 104 infected fully vaccinated people present. While the total number of infected people at the event might be higher (153 versus 104) you would be twice as likely to experience a transmission to you from a vaccinated person than one who was not vaccinated. Given the risks, denying attendance to people who are not vaccinated provides limited benefit compared to requiring testing for those who wish to attend regardless of vaccination status.
Vaccinated people have all the protection that exists. It is not only specious to claim the unvaccinated population presents a risk to the vaccinated population but also a disgraceful fear-driven assault on a sub-group of society who do not present such a risk to anyone but to themselves, since they are certainly at greater risk of becoming infected than the vaccinated population unless they have acquired (through prior infection) or natural immunity.
Ontario is administering about 39,000 vaccines daily at present. At this rate the unvaccinated population shrinks to zero in 51 days. Among that population there is a statistically meaningful number of people whose natural immune system will keep them from becoming infected and another large segment who have already been infected and recovered, acquiring a natural immunity in the process. The evidence is robust that natural immunity however acquired provides more protection than a vaccine and a person who has acquired natural immunity having been infected is acting sensibly in avoiding the vaccination with its risks, however low, since vaccination adds nothing to their safety nor to the safety of anyone else.