Q&A of the Day Part 1 – How many Floridians want a COVID-19 vaccine?
Each day I’ll feature a listener question that’s been submitted by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Parler: @brianmuddradio
Today’s entry: Brian, I have a question that I thought if anyone could answer it would be you. I noticed on the new COVID vaccine tracker on the Sun Sentinel’s website, it’s reporting the number of people vaccinated against the state’s population. That makes no sense. We know not every Floridian wants a COVID vaccine. This information is misleading. My question for you is if there’s information regarding how many Floridians want the vaccine? Then we’d know how far along we are with vaccines.
Bottom Line: Alright, there are a couple of considerations in play with your question. First, if you’re not familiar, the Florida Department of Health has begun the daily reporting process regarding vaccinations in our state. This tracking information is similar to the daily reporting of COVID-19 cases. In the case of the Sun Sentinel, they’re taking the information and populating it in a map daily. On one hand it may make it easier to view the updated information. On the other, to your point it has the potential to be misleading based on what you’re attempting to glean from the information. The first potentially problematic aspect of the Sentinel’s tracker is that it’s using data from the 2019 Census estimates from 2018 data. It’s generally not a good idea to use dated demographic information for real-time daily updates. For example, as of this this entry here’s what the Sentinel's tracker concludes:
- In Florida, 547,968 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, or about 2.55% of the population.
- So far, 39,988 people have completed the series of doses required to be vaccinated. That represents about 0.19% of the population.
We know the total number of people vaccinated is accurate as it’s what’s coming directly from the Florida Department of Health’s daily update. We know the percentage of the population vaccinated isn’t precise, despite reporting to the one-hundredth of a percent, which would naturally be interpreted as such. I don’t think they’re attempting to be misleading, it’s just a method of presentation that’s likely ill-advised. Now, that’s not to say there isn’t value in knowing the percentage of the population that’s immunized even if many won’t opt for the vaccine.
Here's the link for Part 2 of today's Q&A: https://ihr.fm/3bBzlGe
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