Effect of COVID-19 Vaccines on Excess Deaths

Even on LinkedIn, you still see posts and comments asserting that the COVID-19 vaccines aren’t “real” and alleging that they do more harm than good. This is usually based on articles of questionable value and the author’s brother-in-law catching COVID-19 while vaccinated. Public health, however, warrants serious research and is not a matter of anecdotes.

The real question is whether the administration of these vaccines to large populations was effective in curbing the pandemic and saving lives. Today, we can answer yes to some of these questions with simple methods applied to data from the US government. Specifically, we can analyze US CDC and census data on state-by-state Excess Deaths and fractions of the population vaccinated for 2021 and 2022. The results are obvious but, sometimes, the obvious needs belaboring. 

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