How protected are vaccinated Americans?

• The Omicron variant was initially detected in the United States in the first week of December 2021. At that time, unvaccinated adults were nearly 25 times more likely to be hospitalized than vaccinated adults.

• Georgia's unvaccinated population, along with people who received one vaccine dose, were 10 times likelier to be hospitalized with coronavirus than boosted people.

• Data from hospitals in 12 states show that in the week before Christmas, unvaccinated people 50 to 64 were 32 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than boosted people of the same age.

• As of January 26, 210 million Americans — 64% of the US population — were considered fully vaccinated after completing their initial COVID-19 shot series. Twenty-six percent of Americans had received a booster.

See the rates in cities and states, including New York City, California, Utah, and more. 


African American data from W.E.B. Du Bois

To mark the first full week of Black History Month, we want to reshare this article on trailblazing data visualizations from W.E.B. Du Bois, a sociologist and co-founder of the NAACP. He also lead an exhibit on Black people in the United States for the 1900 Paris Exposition. Du Bois and his Atlanta University students (now Clark Atlanta University) created these charts for the exhibit from government sources like the Census Bureau and the then-Bureau of Labor.  

• One data visualization series focused on Georgia, the state with the nation's highest proportion of Black people at the time. Du Bois and company provided metrics on Black Georgians' education, wealth, and occupations.

• Another series compared the US Black population to European nations. "…A comparison of the size of the Negro population with European countries bringing out the striking fact that there are nearly half as many Negroes in the United States as Spaniards in Spain," Du Bois wrote in an essay on the exposition.