In a blow to the mainstream advocacy for vaccines against COVID 19, dozens of vaccinated people at a nursing home in the state of Washington came down with COVID 19. Five of those who contracted the illness at the facility are dead.
On September 23, the Northeast Tri-County Health District announced via a News Flash that the Pinewood Terrace Nursing Center in Colville (Northeast Washington) is battling an outbreak of COVID 19 that has infected 74 people at the facility over the past month. The announcement stated:
The first case was reported on August 25 and spread quickly infecting 22 staff and 52 residents.
The announcement added that five people who contracted the disease died of it.
Number of Fully Vaccinated People Who Got Infected
According to the news flash by the health district, of the 74 people who contracted the disease, 33 were fully vaccinated and of the five people who died of the disease, one was fully vaccinated.
Important Details Missing
The health district’s post left out a number of important details about the age, gender, vaccination status of the infected and deceased, and other factors surrounding the outbreak.
While the first case was reported on August 25, there is no information on whether it was staff or a resident? Was the individual quarantined? How quickly it spread and how can the facility claim it is the Delta variant without testing specifically for it? These and other questions remain unanswered.
The most important question left unaddressed is whether any of the infected and dead was unvaccinated. The post only specifies that 33 of the 74 infected were fully vaccinated against COVID but does not specify whether the remaining 41 were partially vaccinated – i.e. had one dose of a COVID vaccine – or were unvaccinated with no dose of any COVID vaccine received. Similarly, the vaccination status of the four dead is also not clarified.
Confusion in Media Reports of the Story
Reporting the outbreak, KXLY presented the information about the vaccination status in a more confusing manner. The text of their story reads:
Out of the 74 cases related to the outbreak, the health district said 33 of them were fully vaccinated and 41 were not. Of the five people who died, one was fully vaccinated.
Thus the story implies that the 41 patients in question were not fully vaccinated – without specifying whether they were partially vaccinated or were unvaccinated. However, their video report on the same story claims that the 41 patients were “not vaccinated” though the report did not specify whether they got the information from the announcement of the health district or spoke directly to verify the vaccination status of the patients.
The story raises no questions of the efficacy of the COVID vaccines over the dozens of fully vaccinated that came down with COVID. Instead, it recommends getting the shot as a protective measure.
