Jeffco Public Health Violating Colorado Law With Bogus Health Order (Part 2)

In part one, we examined the illegality of Jefferson County Public Health’s upcoming order as it relates to the agency’s unauthorized exceeding of state authority, as well as several fundamental lies underpinning the agency’s claim to possess said authority. See part one here.

In part two, we will examine the data and scientific claims made within the order (and prior orders since they simply copied the data from past JCPH health orders) with a view towards exposing the terrible scientific case being made by JCPH.

Talking points up front:

• JCPH cherry-picks data indicating normal, obvious trends and characterizes it as if it demonstrates increased danger from COVID.
• JCPH reports different statistics than the state of Colorado concerning vaccination and reaches exaggerated conclusions regarding the danger presented by the vaccination rate.
• The order twists the stats to imply that not being vaccinated is associated with an increase in hospitalizations.

The JCPH order states:

In Colorado, as of November 18, 2021, fully vaccinated individuals were 3.9 times less likely to become a COVID case, 10 times less likely to be hospitalized for COVID, and 13.4 times less likely to die from COVID than unvaccinated individuals. Additionally, the median age of unvaccinated hospitalizations was 58 compared to the median age of vaccinated hospitalizations which was 73.

Of course, a COVID “case” is simply a person who tests positive. With all of the restrictions requiring vaccination or a negative test, it’s not unreasonable to assume that the vast majority of COVID tests are being administered to the unvaccinated. So of course discovered cases will be more likely among those who are more likely to be tested.

The order also fails to mention that a COVID “death” is any person who dies for any reason while at the same time being a positive or presumed positive case. The cited Colorado death tracker (tracking vaccinated versus unvaccinated deaths) counts only 1,818 total deaths in September when there were likely twice as many deaths in the state. The death data is leaving out a large number of Colorado deaths not counted as cases, quite possibly skewing data away from counting vaccinated deaths in a population overwhelmingly vaccinated.

Similarly, an unvaccinated hospitalization is simply a person admitted to the hospital for any reason who happens to either have not taken the experimental vaccines or has not reached two weeks post-vaccination. It’s only logical that younger people hospitalized would be less likely to be vaccinated, even as they are hospitalized for reasons unrelated to COVID.

They cite the median age of hospitalizations (the midline of the data set) instead of the average age of hospitalizations between those vaccinated and unvaccinated, failing to mention that the midline of the unvaccinated is pulled downward by the vast number of children who remain unvaccinated, implying that being unvaccinated is causing higher hospitalizations among younger patients.

Additionally from the order:

While the COVID-19 vaccines are currently available to all Coloradoans aged 5 and older, as of November 15, 2021, in Jefferson County, 75.6% of the eligible population and 72.0% of the total population has received at least 1 vaccine dose as of November 14, 2021; this is far short of the percentage of the population needed to reach herd immunity.

The JCPH order claims that 75.6% of eligible residents in Jeffco have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, yet state data indicates that 84.9% of eligible Jeffco residents have received at least one dose. By the standards of the JCPH order which states that “more than 80% of the population must be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity,” the county is above the threshold for herd immunity, yet the order claims that Jeffco’s vaccination rate is, “far short of the percentage of the population needed to reach herd immunity.”

The order continues:

The hospitalization rate per 100,000 for COVID-19 in Jefferson County rose sharply over the summer and early fall in a 5th wave of COVID-19 and currently exceeds the hospitalization rate per 100,000 seen at this time last year as demonstrated in the graph below.

The order notes that the COVID hospitalization rate in Jeffco in the first half of November is higher than the rate in July – hardly a surprise considering respiratory viral sickness always trends upward in the late fall.

The hospitalization chart included in the JCPH order shows a supposed sharp increase in hospitalization rate, but the graph is zoomed in (only showing a vertical axis up to 3) to give the impression of a large increase over last year. In reality, the average has never exceeded 4 Jeffco COVID hospitalizations per 100,000, or approximately 24 Jeffco COVID hospitalizations. Hardly an emergency.

Again from the order:

Furthermore, other Colorado counties have recently implemented universal Face Covering orders, which have significantly increased the incidence of mask wearing. For example, Larimer County saw a substantial increase in the number of individuals wearing Face Coverings after passing an order on October 20th as shown in the chart below.

The order cites the obvious statistic that Larimer county’s mask order caused more people to wear masks as if it is evidence of mask effectiveness when all it shows is that people will wear masks when they are ordered to. Nowhere in the order is an argument attempted for the effectiveness of face masks as mitigation for COVID.

It seems that the JCPH order simply copied the same out of context and plainly false statistics from prior orders, cherry-picking and mischaracterizing information to create a false impression of an elevated COVID risk that can be controlled by reimplementing the same mitigation efforts that have failed for well over a year. Either they are too incompetent to properly analyse the data, or there are other motivations at play.