Americans received their first Covid-19 vaccine doses in December 2020 ... And yet hundreds of Americans are still dying each day. Who are they? The data offers a straightforward answer: older adults...
As many Twitter discussions about the “base rate fallacy” have emphasized, this is not because the vaccines are ineffective — we know, also from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, that they work very well...
But it isn’t the whole story, or vaccinated older adults wouldn’t now make up a larger share of Covid deaths than the unvaccinated do...First is the simple fact that more Americans are vaccinated than not, and those older Americans most vulnerable to severe disease are far more likely to be vaccinated than others... It is also partly a reflection of how many fewer Americans, including older ones, have gotten boosters than got the initial vaccines...Finally, vaccines are not as effective among older adults because the immune system weakens with age.