Mask mandates coming back -- and it's easy to see why

The City reimposed an indoor mask mandate yesterday. The Cook County Department of Public Health is following suit effective Monday, August 23.

What a difference a month makes. Here's today's City of Chicago COVID-19 Dashboard:

Compare with values from July 10 to the present as reflected in this chart:

(If you want to see snapshots of the COVID-19 Dashboards from which these figures are taken, look at this post.)

Things are getting worse. Objectively.

In these weekend 'Rona posts, I've been comparing how we here in True Blue, enlighted Chicago and County Cook are faring compared to those Yahoos in the hinterlands that the media makes fun of.

Oddly enough, though, not all of the actual facts fit the established narrative. In this July 31 post I documented how Chicago was actually dragging down Illinois' vaccination numbers.

They still are: The August 21 chart above shows that 54.4% of Chicagoans are fully vaccinated; 59.8% of city residents have received at least one dose. According to this August 20 press release from the Illinois Department of Public Health, more than 60% of Illinoisans are fully vaccinated and over 77% have received at least one dose.

For what it's worth, Illinois' vaccination rate varies from source to source. The Mayo Clinic reports lower numbers for our fair State. According to the Mayo Clinic, only 50.2% of Illinoisans are fully vaccinated, while 64.8% have received at least one dose. I can't explain why there's such a large discrepancy. Here is what the Mayo Clinic says it takes into account in compiling the numbers it reports:

Vaccine data is updated daily. Data is compiled from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We also use historical data from The COVID Tracking Project. State population data is from the 2019 census estimates from the United States Census Bureau.

For the sake of comparison, the State of Florida reports 66% of its population is "vaccinated" (report published August 20). The report does not distinguish between persons receiving one vaccination and those fully vaccinated. So I will not speculate as to whether Florida claims a better overall vaccination rate than Illinois, although that is surely one interpretation of the numbers.

But just as in the case of Illinois, the Mayo Clinic figures are less generous for Florida, too: According to the Mayo Clinic only 51% of Florida residents are fully vaccinated. So just a little bit better than Illinois.

Wait... what? Florida?

It gets worse: The fully vaccinated figures are broken down by age groups on the Mayo Clinic website. In the 18-64 age group, 55.4% of Illinoisans are fully vaccinated -- but so are 54.8% of Floridians. We've done a better job vaccinating eligible school-age young people: 13.9% of those under 18 are vaccinated in Illinois, while only 10.8% of Floridians aged 18 and under. But, for Illinois residents 65 and over, 80.3% are fully vaccinated. Not bad, perhaps, but, in Florida, according to the Mayo Clinic, 86.9% of persons 65+ are fully vaccinated. Considering that seniors are the age group that has been vaccine eligible longest, it seems astounding that so many of our most vulnerable fellow citizens remain unvaccinated. And how could we be behind Florida on this?

The popular narrative is not entirely wrong: According to the Mayo Clinic figures, the least fully vaccinated states are Alabama (36.1%), Mississippi (36.6%), Wyoming (37.8%), Idaho (38.3%), Arkansas (39.4%), and Lousiana (tied with West Virginia at 39.4%). But Illinois (at 50.2% fully vaccinated) is only 21st among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, way ahead of states like Alabama, of course, but not as far ahead of Texas (45.9%) as one might imagine. (Austin isn't that big.) And behind Iowa... and, as noted, Florida.

So the numbers are pretty much guaranteed to get worse for the immediate future. And masks are going to be with us... again... for some time to come.