COVID-19 Incidence and hospitalization during the delta surge were inversely related to vaccination coverage among the most populous U.S. Counties

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Abstract

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.17.21262195: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    The most critical limitation of the current study is that the COVID-19 Community Profile Report, maintained at healthdata.gov,5 does not provide a detailed breakdown of our county-specific data by age group. While numerous demographic and environmental factors could have contributed to the substantial scatter seen in Figs. 1 through 3, including county-specific differences in racial and ethnic distribution as well as population density, nonetheless age-specific differences are likely to have figured most prominently. It is also possible that differences in public policies, including prohibition of mandates on vaccination and mask-wearing in schools and workplaces in certain states, may have been contributing factors.7 Still, the persistence of clearly detectable differences between low- and high-vaccination counties – even with the low R2 statistics seen in the regression results in Table 2 – points to an important, identifiable deterrent effect of vaccinations on disease spread. A recent case report suggests that the Delta variant is more likely to cause breakthrough infections in fully vaccinated individuals, who may harbor sufficient concentrations of virus in the nasopharynx to transmit their infections to others.8 Another report finds a recent diminution in the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines in preventing infection among nursing home residents.9 Our results here do not bear directly on the existence or extent of such a phenomenon. But they do suggest that the phenomenon ...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a protocol registration statement.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.


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