Report: Hundreds of Fully Vaccinated Oregon Residents Die of COVID-19
Hundreds of fully vaccinated Oregonians have died of the COVID-19 virus in spite of their vaccination status, concerning new data reveals.
While the majority of cases are still among the unvaccinated, breakthrough cases appear to make up for around 30 percent of new cases in Oregon, according to data collected by the Oregon Health Authority from Nov. 6 to Dec. 11.
Overall, there were 49,250 known breakthrough cases reported to public health authorities in Oregon, which were found in each of the state’s 36 counties. Of these, 2,177 were hospitalized, or 4.4 percent, and 622, or 1.3 percent, died.
The OSA makes clear that as not all breakthrough cases may be reported to health authorities, these figures may give the misleading impression that the actual figure of breakthrough hospitalizations seems in higher proportion to overall breakthrough cases than it might be were the total figure of breakthrough cases known.
“This report includes only those vaccine breakthrough cases which are reported to public health following a positive test result,” the agency states in its report. “Many vaccine breakthrough cases are believed to experience no symptoms or minimal symptoms.”
“These cases are unlikely to undergo testing for COVID-19 and be reported to public health. Therefore, the true number of vaccine breakthrough cases is unknown,” it continues. “The number of vaccine breakthrough cases must be interpreted within the context of the nearly 2.5 million people in Oregon who have completed a COVID-19 vaccine series.”
While it is heartening to know that hospitalization rates may be lower than 4.4 percent of the total fully vaccinated population, the fact that there are still over 2,000 people who have been hospitalized after completing the full vaccine series and over 600 who have died from the virus is pretty alarming on its own.
What’s more, if there could be even more breakthrough cases that aren’t reported to authorities because few or no symptoms are experienced, doesn’t this increase the possibility that these people, assuming they’re not spreading the virus because they’ve been vaccinated, are in fact passing it on to others with a false sense of security?
With omicron hitting the U.S., we already know that 79 percent of the cases are occurring among the fully vaccinated. What’s more, a cruise ship recently reported dozens of positive cases of the virus onboard despite the requirement that adult passengers and crew be fully vaccinated.
All this merits discussion and adds a bit of weight to those who are concerned about the effectiveness of the vaccine, but because the pandemic has become so hyper-politicized, it is difficult to imagine that we can, in fact, have an honest public discussion about these legitimate concerns.
Regardless of what one thinks about the COVID-19 vaccine, the virus, medical freedom or urgent public health crises, we must admit that a) human life is always valuable and it is always tragic when it is lost and b) that fully vaccinated individuals contracting and subsequently dying from the virus is a pretty big deal, even if it only accounts for a small percentage of fully vaccinated individuals.
Public health officials and the Biden administration have been pushing very, very hard to get vaccination rates as humanly close to 100 percent as would be possible without implementing full-on authoritarianism — and many would say it hardly seems this latter option is off the table for the medical bureaucrats vying for power.
This week, the White House issued an ominous, almost threatening-sounding message from the Biden administration to unvaccinated individuals to expect “a winter of severe illness and death” for “themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm.”
The “good news,” the White House stated, was that “if you are vaccinated and you had your booster shot, you’re protected from severe illness and death — period.”
Period? Really?
The numbers hardly indicate that this is assuredly the case, wouldn’t you say?
The reason for President Joe Biden’s impassioned drive to get people vaccinated, going as far as to scorn and even seemingly threaten those who still refuse to comply, is, we are told, all part of his plan to “shut down” the COVID-19 virus, which we are to assume is expected to happen any day now if the plebian malcontents would just roll up their sleeves and submit to his benevolent leadership.
Yet even if we take an entirely sympathetic view of our aggressively pro-vaccine elected officials and concede that they’re simply trying to preserve human life, we cannot escape the fact that, if hundreds of fully vaccinated people in a single state have died of the virus they are supposed to be vaccinated against, this rather complicates things a bit.
Oregon’s breakthrough case death count, on the other hand, adds chilling and sobering support to the cases made by those obstinate members of the public who still won’t let anyone near them or their loved ones with the vaccine, as well as those who might have gotten it themselves but still adamantly and hotly oppose the federal government’s efforts to mandate that millions of federal workers, contractors and private employees be vaccinated against the virus.
If you take their view that it is not only unnecessary, but downright tyrannical to take such a heavy-handed approach toward increasing vaccination rates, it is most certainly concerning, and infuriatingly validating, to learn that people who are fully vaccinated are still succumbing to this virus.
You may still make the case that the vaccine has some added benefit to natural immunity to the virus but it is simply impossible to argue, in light of the data, that the vaccine is anywhere near 100 percent effective in preventing complications from the virus or spreading it to others.
The scary thing is, there is an exerted effort on the part of both Big Tech speech censors and Biden’s own hyperbole about the virus to nonetheless portray the vaccine as completely safe and effective, and only those who hate science and deal in sinister “misinformation” campaigns would ever dare to disagree.
And this is where it becomes abundantly clear that this thing has become about politics, or worse, an insatiable quest for power over the national discourse on nuanced issues like the COVID-19 vaccine’s effectiveness and the constitutionality of mandating citizens submit to taking it, one way or another.
We need to be able to have honest, straightforward conversations about this public health crisis that allow for information that threatens the narratives of the political establishment.
It is terrifying that we cannot, and terrifying that it has become utterly verboten to simply say “hey, these vaccines don’t seem to be effective in every case” or “hey, perhaps the rates of adverse reactions are low but they are still happening and maybe we should take a look at this, too.”
This destroys intellectual freedom — the kind of intellectual freedom that was the bedrock of the modern age of scientific advancements that has drastically improved the quality of life for billions around the world.
Threatening this intellectual freedom is significantly more dangerous to all of mankind than the COVID-19 virus can ever be, because it is a threat to the survival of our hard-fought modern freedoms as a whole.
Humanity may survive the pandemic — but will the western world survive these assaults on our liberty?
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
