4 June 2021
(Updated 8 June 2021)
"The Week" has this news article. It said that "the Chinese's Covid-19 vaccines appears not effective." Is this true? Why they are saying so? Do they have any reason? This article will describe a simple method where one can use to verify if what they are saying is really true.
About The Week
First, about "The Week". This is a weekly news magazine with editions in the United Kingdom and United States. Although it is a bit left biased, most media rating agencies rated them as unlikely to give fake news. The following is its news report on 4 June 2021.
Responses
Netizens have mixed views. Those in favour of conventional vaccines like the inactivated vaccines have not agreed. They insisted that this news was very biased. Some said "This Week" was reporting fake news. Lets examine this news with real World data from "Our World in Data"
How to Examine?
The other chart that will be useful for comparison is "Share of people receiving at least one dose of vaccine vs Daily Deaths Per Million People. This chart tells if the vaccines are effective to curb death rate in the country.
Putting 3 Chart Together
User Note on How to Navigate
1. Select the country by clicking the text button "+Add country". Then tick the appropriate check boxes. The chart will update automatically;
2 Note that the charts are not of the same horizontal scale. To compare, adjust the scale on the right hand chart. This is done by draging the scale at the bottom of the chart using the mouse;
3. The death rate would be more realistic than infection rate. The infection rate can be lowered if country has not done enough testings. Refer to Worldometer for testing frequency.
Chart Interpretation
Take UK US & Israel for example, we can roughly say their vaccines are working to tame the infection. Their infection rates came down as soon as the vaccination numbers went up.
For Bahrain & Uruguay, there is still no sign that the infection rate has been tamed at all. These countries will need to check if their vaccines are able to deal with the Covid-19 variants.
As for the case in Brazil and Chile, they managed to hold the infection rate. There is still no sign about when will they be able to tame the viruses. Chile might have a vaccine that is not able to tame the Covid-19 variant.
The situation in Seychelles is not much different from the rest of the other countries. This tiny Easteern African island in the Indian Ocean has a volatile infection rate.
Take Away
Vaccines are highly politicized by various countries. This article describes only a simple method on how to check the effectiveness of vaccine using available public information. For those interested to know what brands of vaccine these countries are using, please refer to this webpage. One can also find out how many of which type of vaccines have been used to-date by some countries in terms of numbers and % from the webpage.
This simple method is to give an idea on how one could judge if the vaccines are effective. Previously before we have vaccines, many countries like China, Singapore, Japan, Australia, New Zealand & Taiwan were able to tame Covid-19 using the traditional control methods. These methods are Covid-19 testings, mask wearings, quarantine, safe distancing & shutdowns.
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