Covid-19 Death Rate for Under-50 Population Negligible According to Los Angeles County Health Department

June 24, 2022 - The death rates from Covid-19 for the past month have been so low for those under 50 years old that the Los Angeles County Health Department is unable to show them on a bar chart. Even the unvaccinated are not expiring from Covid at a rate that can be shown on the chart at the health department's Covid central.

"Rates for some age categories are not shown due to small numbers," is the explanation given on the chart that only shows death rates for those over 50 years of age.

The chart shows a significant difference in death rates between the vaccinated and unvaccinated for those over age 50, but all of the rates are very low. These are the rates as calculated for the 30 days prior to June 2, 2022.

For ages 50-64

Unvaccinated death rate: 2.5 per 100,000 (.0025%)

Vaccinated death rate: 0.3 per 100,000 (.0003%)

For ages 65+

Unvaccinated death rate: 44.3 per 100,000 (.0443%)

Vaccinated death rate: 4.9 per 100,000 (.0049%)

The DPH does not define if this is the rate per infection or the rate per population of unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals, but given the denominator of 100,000, a good assumption is this is the rate per population. In other words, during the month of May, 44 elderly people per 100,000 unvaccinated elderly people died within 30 days of a postive Covid-19 diagnosis.

The DPH counts as a Covid death anyone who died of a reason other than accident/trauma within 30 days of a postive Covid-19 test.

A disclaimer on the graph states that, "Prior infection, time since vaccination, testing behaviors, and risk factors may differ by age and vaccination status. This dashboard does not adjust for these characteristics, which might partially contribute to differences in rates between groups and makes interpretation of recent trends in case rates by booster status difficult."

There is no statement if the numbers are age-adjusted, that is, if allowance is made for the fact that people over 65 die more often, in general, than those under 65.

The vaccinated and unvaccinated death rates for the ages below 50, however, are deemed too low to include.

In addition, no separate category is recorded for fully boosted as opposed to those who received a primary vaccine series only. Other graphs on the website indicate the county does track case and deaths by boosted status, so the absence of a distinction regarding these death rates seems to indicate it is too small to record betwee the two groups, simply vaccinated and fully boosted.