Hi, and welcome to COVID Quickly, a scientific American podcast series.

This is your fast track update on the COVID pandemic.

We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus

and the disease.

We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means.

I'm Tony Lewis.

I'm Josh Fishman.

And we're a scientific American senior health editors.

Today, we'll explain how to interpret COVID deaths among vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

We'll discuss why so few people are getting booster shots.

Plus, the latest news on new vaccines.

In the last few months, a fair number of people who died of COVID were vaccinated.

Yet, studies showed vaccination protects people, especially from severe illness.

And this seems like a big contradiction.

Are these studies wrong?

Josh, it's a common misconception that because vaccinated people can get and occasionally

die from COVID, the vaccines must not work.

But you need to understand the context.

Our graphics editor Amanda Montignez and I published a story on this.

We used CDC data from a subset of US jurisdictions that have tracked vaccination and booster status

and COVID deaths for people 12 and older.

In March, among people vaccinated with just the primary series,

...