The Scary Number of UK Covid-19 Death Figure Cause by Delta Variant

The UK DailyMail has this news report which is self explanatory.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9681613/Study-shows-29-people-died-catching-new-strain-vaccinations.html

Daily Mail claimed that 1/3 or 29% of those death caused by Delta have been fully vaccinated. This news had caused a big stir among the Netizens. Many used the word "Shock" to express their feelings.

The UK Publish Health (PHE)'s Report

PHE made regular Technical Reports about Covid-19 works in UK.  In its 15th Technical Report,  it has this table 6. It shows the UK infection and death figures caused by Delta.  This table was arranged according to the vaccination status.

Among the various information,  the report said there were 42 death and 12 of them were fully vaccinated.

What Does this Death Figures Means?

It simple means what it means.  It doesn't tell whether these people died because the vaccine was not effective.  It also does not tell if the vaccine was the cause of death.  Do these people have pre-existing medical conditions that often cause death? Technically,  it is just another table with numbers if the numbers have not been analysed.

Does it not mean the Vaccine is not effective?

To understand better,  lets examine the other table,  table 4 as shown here.

This table 4 shows the infection number,  the death figure and the fatality of various virus variants since 1 October 2020.  Then we have  only Alpha. This Alpha caused over 4,000 deaths.  Delta came in after UK has the vaccine.  This Delta caused 42 deaths so far 

What the Tables Mean Exactly ?

Lets analyse the tables and put them into another table as shown below

This  table compares the "performance" of Alpha and Delta so far.  One can readily see that the performance of Delta has reduced drastically ranging from 70%  to 99%.    The rate of infection cases per day went  down by 70% per day and the rate of death  per day down by 98%.

Take Away

Most critics concentrated in comparing the raw death numbers.  This is not reflecting the real effectiveness of the vaccines.  One should always compare the numbers in terms of rates. For example,  US might have 20,000 deaths and Uruguay might have only 2,000.   When comparing in rates, Uruguay have 10 time more infections than the US.