“Pandemic of the unvaccinated”? At midlife, white people are less vaccinated but still at less risk of Covid-19 mortality in Minnesota

INTRODUCTION: Recent research underscores the exceptionally young age distribution of Covid-19 deaths in the United States compared with international peers. This brief characterizes how high levels of Covid mortality at midlife ages (45–64) are deeply intertwined with continuing racial inequity in Covid-19 mortality. METHODS: Mortality data from Minnesota in 2020–2022 were analyzed in June 2022. Death certificate data and published vaccination rates in Minnesota allow vaccination and mortality rates to be observed with greater age and temporal precision than national data. RESULTS: Black, Hispanic, and Asian adults under age 65 were all more highly vaccinated than white populations of the same ages during most of Minnesota’s substantial and sustained Delta surge and all of the subsequent Omicron surge. However, white mortality rates were lower than those of all other groups. These disparities were extreme; at midlife ages (ages 45–64), during the Omicron period, more highly-vaccinated populations had COVID-19 mortality that was 164% (Asian-American), 115% (Hispanic), or 208% (Black) of white Covid-19 mortality at these ages. In Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) populations as a whole, Covid-19 mortality at ages 55–64 was greater than white mortality at 10 years older. CONCLUSIONS: This discrepancy between vaccination and mortality patterning by race/ethnicity suggests that, if the current period is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” it also remains a “pandemic of the disadvantaged” in ways that can decouple from vaccination rates. This result implies an urgent need to center health equity in the development of Covid-19 policy measures.