There it was, on the left hand side of the Lexington Herald-Leader’s website main page, a story about ‘breakthrough’ COVID-19 cases, which naturally got my attention.

Fayette County vaccination rates inch up but so do breakthrough COVID cases

By Beth Musgrave | August 24, 2021 | 5:52 PM

Lexington’s vaccination rate for those over 18 has hit 70 percent as COVID breakthrough infections — typically far less serious — have increased in those immunized, health and city officials said Tuesday.

Although 70 percent of those over 18 have been immunized, the overall vaccination rate, which includes those 12 to 17, is about 58.7 percent, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data as of Sunday.

OK, here’s the first statistical problem: the vaccines were not approved for use in patients 12 to 15 years of age until May 10, 2021, so of course the vaccination rate for minors is going to be lower . . . but the Herald-Leader doesn’t tell us that. The vaccines have still not been approved for use in patients under 12, though that is expected soon.

The city also hit another more grim milestone this week — the number of coronavirus cases in Fayette County has now topped 40,000. In the past four weeks, the city has had more than 4,000 reported cases, with 486 of those new cases from Saturday through Monday, say city and health leaders who held a press conference Tuesday on COVID issues.

Approximately 28 percent of all August cases have been in fully vaccinated people, according to health department data.

“But that’s also because more people are getting vaccinated,” said health department spokesman Kevin Hall.

Still, vaccinated people are much less likely to be hospitalized, Fayette County Health Department data shows.

Since February, 88 percent of people hospitalized locally have been unvaccinated or only received a single dose of the vaccine. Of the 94 Lexington residents who are currently hospitalized, 79 percent are unvaccinated, Hall said.

And here we go again: “Since February, 88 percent of people hospitalized locally have been unvaccinated or only received a single dose of the vaccine.” The vaccines were not even available to people under 70, who were not health care workers, until March, and even then, supply shortages meant that people under 70 could not get the vaccines in March. Nor does this account for children under 12, who have never been approved for vaccination; including children under 12 further skews the statistics.

More, even the people who were able to receive their first dose in early March — I was not able to get my first dose until April Fool’s Day, due to shortages of the vaccine — could not have gotten the second dose until early April, and would not have been considered fully vaccinated, meaning 14 days after the second dose, until mid-April. Thus, any statistic like the one given us above, using percentages from before almost anyone could have received both doses, is going to be seriously skewed. We’ve noted this previously, when Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) and state Health Commissioner Steven Stack released a wholly misleading graphic on Twitter. I do not disagree with the Governor that people should get vaccinated; I just see these tweets as wholly dishonest. Of course, I see the Governor as totally dishonest on just about everything.

If the case for vaccination is a good one, and I believe it is, why do public officials use skewed, obviously skewed, data to try to make their case? When you are trying to sell people on something — and trying to persuade people to do something they’ve previously been reluctant to do definitely qualifies as selling — getting caught using misleading information sure doesn’t help your case.

Would you buy a used car from Andy Beshear?

I have previously stated that the Herald-Leader employs journolism^[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term … Continue reading as much as journalism, and this is another example of it. According to her Herald-Leader biography blurb, Beth Musgrave, the article author,

has covered government and politics for the Herald-Leader for more than a decade. A graduate of Northwestern University, she has worked as a reporter in Kentucky, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois and Washington D.C.

If she has covered government and politics for over ten years, I have no doubt that she’s at least reasonably intelligent, and ought to be able to spot the bovine feces which comes from the mouths of government officials. She should not have missed how misleading the statistics presented were, and if she managed to miss it, Peter Baniak, the newspaper’s editor, should have caught it.

I understand: it is the Herald-Leader’s editorial policy to push vaccination and mask mandates, and I absolutely support people choosing to take the vaccine. More, the newspaper is, like medium sized newspapers everywhere, on shaky financial footing. But it takes little energy and few dollars to ask the questions which get statistics which are not biased, not misleading, and this the Herald-Leader does not do.