John Hinderaker, of the Power Line blog, thinks, or says he thinks, that data show whatever protective properties the Covid vaccines may once have conferred are now falling away toward zero. One of his main exhibits relates to the above graph, about which he comments:
In this age range [65 and up], more than 90% are fully vaccinated. Unfortunately, 78% of covid cases, 71% of hospitalizations and around 70% of deaths are also among the vaccinated. So the protection isn't zero—at least not yet—but it is weak.
It's pretty misleading to talk only in terms of percent of "breakthroughs." Consider a population of 1000 people. If 92% are vaccinated, that makes 920. Suppose that 3 in the population die and that, of those, 2 (or 67%) were fully vaccinated. This scenario matches almost exactly what the graph shows, which is 92% vaccinated and 68% of deaths qualifying as "breakthrough." So, among the fully vaccinated, the death rate is 2-out-of-920 and for the rest it's 1-out-of-80.
Define "weak," John. I think the graph is intended to encourage the interpretation that Hinderaker gives it—the intent, in other words, is to mislead—but just a wee bit of analysis reveals that the fully vaccinated are almost 6 times less likely to die of Covid: 1-in-460 as opposed to 1-in-80.
Actually, for a variety of reasons, the above calculation probably understates vaccine effectiveness. For example, those in frail health and under a doctor's care are more likely to get vaccinated. The most vulnerable are therefore over-represented in the fully vaccinated group. Nevertheless, the unvaccinated are many times more likely to die of Covid.
It's instructive to consider why the graph is misleading. One is encouraged to think the shrinking gap between the vaccinated line and the lines showing percentage of breakthroughs means the vaccines are increasingly ineffective. Hinderaker as much as says that if 90% are vaccinated, and 90% of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are among the vaccinated, then the vaccines would be proven perfectly ineffective. They offer weak protection, he thinks, because the breakthrough percentages are slightly lower than the vaccination percentage. By this logic, however, the vaccines would be proven worthless if everyone were vaccinated, since in that case the lines would all converge and every case, hospitalization, and death would be a breakthrough. Maybe that's what he thinks! It follows from what he's written, though I understand that he made it through law school at Harvard.
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