Who Are The Unvaccinated?

Who are the people refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19? A recent Marquette poll helps develop a picture.

Results of the most recent poll were a survey done from January 10-20 and released on January 27. Unlike most previous Marquette polls, which surveyed a sample of Wisconsin voters, this poll surveyed a national sample of about one thousand. Although the poll was described as aimed at assessing public attitudes towards the U.S. Supreme Court, it included several questions related to vaccines.

Among these questions, one asked “have you personally received the coronavirus vaccine, or not?” 20.8% said they had not received a vaccine, 9.6% said they had received the first of two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, 4.6% said they had received the single dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine, 19.9% said they had received both doses, and a surprisingly large 45% said they had received the full vaccine treatment plus the booster.

The Marquette poll, like most polls, publishes results by the demographic of the person responding, so it is possible to develop a profile of people who refuse the vaccines, for example.

The next graph compares the education level of the two extremes of vaccine response: those refusing to be vaccinated, shown in red, against those getting the full vaccine, including the booster shot, shown in green. 64% of the people refusing a vaccine stopped their education at or before high school graduation, compared to 26% of those getting the full vaccine treatment.

To get an overall education score for each of the five groups, I assigned numbers to each education level, starting with 0 for high school drop outs to 8 for post graduates. The unvaccinated group received a combined score of 3.1, midway between the high school graduate and the associate degree. The weighted average score of those getting the booster was 5.0, midway between associate and bachelor’s degrees.

That said, education is not the full story. 9% of the vaccine refuseniks indicate that they are postgraduates. Still, it does suggest that education makes a difference in being able to reject unsupported claims.

The red columns in the next graph show the relationship between those rejecting vaccinations and their reported partisan affiliation. The green columns show the political preference of those with the full vaccine treatment including the booster. Given the political opposition to vaccines among Republicans, it is unsurprising that 38% of those rejecting vaccination describe themselves as Republicans, whereas 46% of those with the booster self-describe as Democrats.

Still, 18% of the boosted population consider themselves to be Republicans. So, it is possible for Republicans to resist the peer pressure against vaccination.

There is increasing evidence that those rejecting vaccines can pay a heavy price. Increasingly hospitals are reporting that most of those in intensive care or dying are unvaccinated.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has established a Data Tracker that shows estimated probabilities of catching COVID-19 or dying from it. The graph below shows an overview of the death rates for vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans. The rust-colored line shows the rate for unvaccinated Americans starting in April of last year and running to December. The blue line shows the estimated rate for people with the Moderna vaccine (the rates for Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson are almost identical).

The gray line shows the ratio of the unvaccinated death rate to that for those who have the full vaccination (without the booster). The estimate for December 4th of last year is that the death rate for those who are unvaccinated is 9.20 per 100,000 of population compared to 0.47 for someone completely vaccinated (but without the booster).

This translates to an average death rate for unvaccinated people that is 23 times the rate for people who are fully vaccinated. For those who had the booster shot, the estimated death rate (shown with the yellow line) is lower still. Using December data, the estimated ratio is about 100 times greater for the unvaccinated person than for someone receiving the booster.

Given this data, getting vaccinated is a no-brainer. Not only do people reduce their own chance of dying, but doing so reduces the costs to society, including the burden on the health care system, the probability of spreading the virus to others, and the likelihood of new and more potent variants.

Instead, the virus has enjoyed the benefits of a highly effective lobbying campaign that particularly targets people who are skeptical of science. Recently this lobby has concentrated on the purported risks of the vaccines.

Recent claims about athletes dying after receiving vaccines illustrate the pro-virus lobby in action. In an interview with Charlie Kirk, the head of the conservative group Turning Point USA, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson boosted this story:

We’ve heard story after story, I mean all these athletes dropping dead on the field. But we’re supposed to ignore that. Nothing happening here. Nothing to see. This is a travesty. This is a scandal.

It is likely that Johnson got this claim from Gateway Pundit, known as a far-right fake news website. Under the headline “Report Shows Nearly 300 Athletes Worldwide Collapsed or Suffered Cardiac Arrests after Taking COVID This Year – Many Died,” the DP went on to claim that

A list of athletes around the world who went under cardiac arrest shortly after taking the COVID exam was created and published.  It shows that there may be something wrong with the vaccine if the world’s greatest athletes suffer or die after taking the vaccines.

In turn, this was based on a report from an anonymous site, called Real Science, that mainly posts articles that attack vaccines and masks.

PolitFact examined this list, especially on the 19 Americans. It “found no proof of a causal relationship in any of the cases between the vaccines and the injuries or deaths.” Among other problems, it found that in most of the cases, the Real Science website offered no evidence that the athlete was vaccinated.

It is striking that something as small as the virus is so skilled in spreading. Even more striking is that it is able to enlist so many people to help it spread.