How many people will the anti-vaxxers kill between now and the end of the COVID pandemic?

Somebody who is better at statistics than I am should take a run at crunching these numbers.

(1) As of right now, the moving seven-day daily average for COVID deaths in the USA is 442, which extrapolates out to more than 160,000 per year. With confirmed cases continuing to skyrocket (the moving seven-day daily average of confirmed cases has gone from less than 12,000 six weeks ago to 100,000 as of now), that number seems likely to rise quite a bit in the immediate future.

(2) 70 percent of all adults are at least partially vaccinated, and 60 percent are fully vaccinated.

(3) 90 percent of people 65 and over are at least partially vaccinated, and 80 percent are fully vaccinated.

(4) 80 percent of all COVID deaths to this point have been among people 65 and over.

(5) The COVID vaccines remain nearly 100% effective in regard to protecting against death (One out of every 200,000 vaccinated people have died from COVID).

So here’s the question: How many people would be dying of COVID right now in the USA if there were no vaccines?

Obviously this can’t be answered with any kind of exactitude. On the one hand, if there were no vaccines, we would probably still be taking at least some semi-serious measures to avoid further infection. Very much on the other hand, however, THE VACCINES THEMSELVES PROVIDE A SIGNIFICANT LEVEL OF PROTECTION AGAINST FURTHER SPREAD OF THE VIRUS. In fact they provide probably a far higher level of protection that could have been achieved via any halfway imaginable social distancing regime that could be plausibly maintained in this country, a year and a half into the pandemic.

So again, I’m not a statistician, but all the above would seem to add up to the conclusion that as of now we would be looking at many thousands of deaths per day if not for the vaccines, given that the overwhelming majority of the most vulnerable demographic cohort in the population is already vaccinated, and yet we’re trending rapidly toward 500 deaths per day, which might well be 1000 a month from now.

Here’s what we’re up against in this country:

The daughter of an unvaccinated county employee in Florida who died after COVID-19 swept through the government office building where she worked says she and her family are steadfast in refusing their shots, even though their mother’s inoculated coworkers did not get sick at all.

“No one in my family will be getting the vaccine,” Molly Hart told The Daily Beast.

Hart’s mom, 58-year-old Mary Knight, passed away last week from complications related to COVID-19, Manatee County authorities announced. An IT customer service supervisor, Knight had worked for the county on and off for 15 years. A second unvaccinated member of the IT department, 53-year-old systems analyst Alphonso Cox, also died last week after coming down with COVID-19. Three others in the office who were unvaccinated and contracted the virus were ill enough to be hospitalized, but survived.

None of their vaccinated coworkers were affected at all, County Administrator Dr. Scott Hopes said in a statement. .

Hart described Knight, who also taught a computer course at the University of South Florida, as “the most loving, giving, and hardworking person I have ever known.”

“She was beyond intelligent and a quick problem solver,” said Hart. “She did everything for her children and granddaughter. Her customers and students raved about how helpful and kind she was. She had a 5/5 on [online site] Rate My Professors from all her students and only lovely comments about how helpful her courses were.”

Hart also doesn’t believe that COVID-19 was really responsible for killing her mom.

“She was always a busy worker bee,” Hart said. “She didn’t know how to rest and gave her all to everything she did. Stress killed her, not COVID. A healthy body and immune system [do] not need the vaccine.” (This is false, according to public health experts.)