I can't help but wonder whether analyzing the 'covid deaths' thing (or 'covid cases' this) might be an exercise in garbage-in-garbage out. We know the PCR tests are overly sensitive. Did anyone else recall this article from 2007? There are some creepy callouts to we, living in the future. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/health/22whoop.html

Yesterday I got curious about vaccine rates and total morbidity and the question "what was the point of all this" that gato asks.

I compared the YoY change in total deaths in each state in the US against % of population fully vaccinated. There's very little relationship. Like, R2 of basically 0 for some age cohorts.

https://imgur.com/a/IjBzD4r

I didn't try to control for seasonality, though. That might be an interesting follow up.