Know someone who just cannot be convinced to get the vaccine? Maybe it’s written in the stars.
New data released by the Salt Lake County Department of Health shows some surprising, seemingly significant differences in the vaccination rates of residents across Zodiac signs. According to the data, Leos lead the pack with a 70% vaccination rate, followed by Aquariuses at 67%. Scorpios however, ranked at the bottom at just 46%, with Virgos notching slightly higher at 50%.
Now, before you Leos start gloating, there’s one big caveat, says Nicholas Rupp, health-department spokesman. This statistical breakdown may not be “super valid,” from a science perspective.
The data scientists at the Salt Lake County Department of Health approximated how many of Salt Lake County’s 1.2 million residents belonged to each of the 12 zodiac signs by using national averages provided by Texas A&M University. They then looked at the anonymous birthdays of the roughly 680,000 people who have been vaccinated in the county to come up with the percentages, says Rupp.
“Applying a national ratio to local data isn’t something that we would normally do, except for something fun like this,” he says.
Like health agencies across the world, the informatics team in Salt Lake County has been in heads-down mode, focused on the deadly serious business of analyzing infection rates, hospitalizations, and vaccine numbers. But after 18 months, they decided to get “a little silly,” Rupp said.
“Someone said, ‘Hey, we should see which astrological signs are most likely to get vaccinated’. They laughed about it, and went back to their serious business. And in passing the next day, one of them said to me, ‘We thought about just doing it based on the Zodiac,’” Rupp said. “I told them, well that’s not going to have any value scientifically, but it’s going to have enormous value promotionally — so let’s do it.”
Rupp was right: The chart has certainly gotten people talking, and just might fulfill its intended purpose of pushing more of the county’s younger residents to get vaccinated.
“We’re struggling most with teenagers,” Rupp said. “I think this message might appeal to a younger audience a little bit more. So I’m hopeful this will keep them talking about it amongst themselves, and maybe consider getting vaccinated.”
What do the astrologers say?
Even though the data might not be scientifically airtight, the gap between Leos and Scorpios still seems quite large. So we turned to Lisa Stardust, a New York City-based astrologer and author, for her take on the numbers.
She told us a lot of it “makes sense” based on the characteristics of each Zodiac sign. “Leos are a dynamic fire sign, — they like to be first,” she said. “Scorpios are the most suspicious sign of the Zodiac, so they tend to want people to go ahead of them.”
Lisa also thought that Aquariuses would be the most vaccinated sign, and that the other air signs, Gemini (55%) and Libra (54%), would also be higher up.
“Aquariuses tend to have more of a scientific mind,” Lisa said. “The air signs, in general, also look at facts and figures more than other signs. They’re really not using their intuition like water signs — Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces.”
She also wasn’t surprised to see earth signs, Capricorn (51%) and Virgo (50%) toward the bottom of the list: “They really weigh all of their choices. They’re probably taking the pulse of the people that were vaccinated.”
“Nothing really surprised me here,” she said.
