You’re just bad at statistics. Let’s say that 900 out of 1000 people are vaccinated. Let’s say that there are 10 deaths, of which 7 are vaccinated. Then, you can say that 70% of the deaths were people who were vaccinated. It’s true!
But, it’s 7 out of 900 rather than 3 out of 100. Here’s a math question for you: Which one shows a higher death rate? Has the vaccine prevented deaths?
To bring this back on topic, are you saying that Republicans don’t want to get vaccinated because they don’t understand math?
@agzem, it’s OK not to understand the statistics. It’s a tricky subject. Maybe open up a Factual Question thread and ask questions about base rate, conditional probability, etc. In the meantime, stop posting COVID misinformation because you’re going to get people killed.
I’ll just second what @RitterSport said. If you want a factual understanding of the vaccine breakthrough situation in Vermont a Factual Questions thread might be better. Hopefully the number of people taken in by this nonsense is small.
Link below at NYT is what I use. And note that with 72/81% vaxxed their cases are at record highs and hospitalizations and deaths are pretty high also:
Vermont is too small to draw any conclusions about anything, what Vermont does have is a current surge and a highly vaccinated population. By choosing to put disproportionate focus on Vermont (which does not even have one million residents), it’s basically doing the opposite of good data science. Looking at the much larger population of the United States will give you better data on which to make conclusions.
The fact that Vermont is highly vaccinated will allow you to draw conclusions about the vaccine that aren’t accurate on a population wide basis.
Vermont also historically has had much less covid than other States, so a “record surge” in Vermont means quite a bit less than it might nationwide. For example, during the previous covid-peak period for the nation, Vermont was averaging around 3 covid hospitalizations per 100k people. Ohio was averaging 9–300% higher. In fact during VT’s current surge, they are again averaging around 3 / 100k hospitalizations. Much lower than what was seen per 100k during the earlier pandemic spikes in other states.
The UK is doing a better job with covid data and this fact checking says it’s true that 82% of deaths there are vaxxed but says it’s not the “full story”. But I mean come on…is this really what we expected of the vaccines?? We’ve gone from “vaccines prevent infection” to “vaccines help to prevent death”.
No vaccine prevents all infections or all deaths, you can actually see the results of the large studies done on these vaccines which show the percentages of exposed people and how many subsequently went on to get covid. None of the vaccines are anywhere close to 100% protective. Additionally, all of the initial studies were done on variants that are no longer predominant, and we know from additional data that the delta variant succeeds in causing breakthrough infections more frequently than the variant that was predominant when the current generation vaccines were being developed. And finally, we also now know after months of additional data that the vaccines start to drop off after 6 months in terms of efficacy.
It’s actually somewhat important to understand this, because if you were under the impression the vaccine was magical and was promising you “absolute protection”, you were under a very false impression that should be corrected.
I’ve been vaccinated many times and been on this earth many years. When you say “is this really what we expected of the vaccines?” My answer would be yes. I cannot think of any disease for which I am vaccinated where it isn’t well understood that the vaccines do not have 100% efficacy in preventing disease.
What the data you are parroting without context misses is that on population scale, people with the same sets of comorbidities, the ones who are vaccinated are far less likely to get sick and far more likely to survive if they are vaccinated. As the population in many countries gets very high rates of vaccination–particularly the age 65+ population which is massively out of bounds higher likelihood of death than other age cohorts, it should not be surprising when there are more vaccinated people in hospitals than there are unvaccinated people–this is actually to be expected in a population where very high percentages of those likely to be hospitalized are vaccinated. For example in Vermont something like 98% of the population over age 70 is vaccinated. So if you asked me of the age 70+ covid patients in Vermont, what % would be vaccinated, I would absolute expect it to be the majority, i.e. greater than 50%, just because breakthrough infections are real and since the vaccinated population is basically almost 50 times as large in that age cohort the breakthrough infections will be bigger than the total infections of the unvaccinated.
What level of efficacy in preventing death would make it worthwhile?
Because even the worst-case good-faith analysis of the UK data show the death rates 3x (80+ population) to 5x (60-79) higher in the unvaccinated population. Surely a 3x improvement in survival would make it worth getting vaccinated, right? And that’s without considering the fact of the overlap between those most likely to die from COVID and those for whom vaccines are the least effective.
This isn’t just fun and games tricks with math. There are real people dying from this nonsense. My wife sees them every day. They say things like “I didn’t think COVID was serious” or “somebody told me the vaccines didn’t work”. Then they go to the hospital and a heartbreaking number of them die. And this happens over and over and over.
Please stop pushing this crap that you clearly don’t understand.
There is a very good reason for the majority of deaths being made up of vaccinated people - because the demographics of the highest risk populations are overwhelmingly vaccinated. The 70+ age group is close to 95% vaccinated in England. That means that vaccinated people in that age group outnumber unvaccinated people 20:1 - and most deaths still happen in these older age groups. From what I recall, a vaccinated old person still has about the same likelihood of dying of COVID as an unvaccinated middle-aged person - but an unvaccinated old person has like a 5-10x chance of dying relative to a vaccinated one.
I am not sure what message you are getting out of the articles that you are posting, but “vaccines don’t work” should not be the message at all.
FWIW there is a reason that statistics frequently use “per 100,000” population, because it can remove various things that may give wrong impressions. For example, imagine a country where 95% of the population for some reason is under age 35. That country is in the midst of a pandemic, now in any given hospital, who will most of the patients be? They will be people under the age of 35. Does that mean people under the age of 35 are at the greatest risk? We can’t know that from the information presented to this point. But if you divide the age bands into cohorts, and then look at rates of hospitalization and deaths per 100k, instead of absolute numbers or absolute percentages, you might find for example that the tiny sliver of the population over age 35 in this hypothetical country is actually 5x more likely to die of the pandemic.
The exact same thing is basically being seen in highly vaccinated areas that are having more surges. For example Singapore is having a similar situation–more vaccinated people are dying than unvaccinated, and more vaccinated people than unvaccinated are going to the hospital with covid. But Singapore is highly vaccinated, so that “absolute count” really has no risk-analysis meaning. Instead, you need to look at the rates of hospitalization and death per 100,000 for the unvaccinated and the vaccinated. Luckily Singapore’s Ministry of Health has already done that for us–see this image:
What this image correctly identifies is that even though more in terms of absolute numbers are coming in vaccinated now, population-adjusted, the unvaccinated simply remain at substantially higher risk of being hospitalized and of dying. The data is unequivocal.
For those who don’t like images in Singapore:
Per 100k Unvaccinated Singaporeans
4.5 / 100k are Critically ill / ICU
0.9 / 100k are dying
Per 100k Vaccinated Singaporeans
0.5 / 100k are Critically ill / ICU
0.1 / 100k are dying
For the innumerate–that shows a nine times greater chance of dying of covid if you are unvaccinated, and a 9x multiple for ending up in the ICU / critically ill.