skyjuiceiswater: Why UK's Vaccinated Has Higher rate of Infection than the Unvaccinated?

10 October 2021

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1) Update : 13 December 2021

Introduction

The UK Heath Security Agent (UKHS) has regularly published COVID-19 vaccine surveillance reports weekly. In its week 42 report, it attached this table:

It also attached this chart

The table clearly shows the rate of hospitalisation and death of those vaccinated is higher than that of the unvaccinated for age above 30. In some cases, twice as much. Many netizens especially those anti-vax took & cited this table and the chart to mock the pro-vax.

What Could be the cause?

UKHS explained that it could be due to a variety of reasons, including differences in the population of vaccinated and unvaccinated people as well as differences in testing patterns. But what exactly does this mean and why does this happen?

What does it mean and Why?

The infection rate discrepancy between the vaccinated and unvaccinated always happen and is commonly found when the majority of the population is vaccinated. This also happened recently in Singapore. The Singapore Authority had to stop publishing such information in late September when such data become meaningless and misleading. We are not comparing the effectiveness of vaccines.

To understand why it happens, lets us examine a simple and extreme example. Imagine we have a population of 10,000 people. 9,000 are fully vaccinated and stay active with constant human-to-human contacts and interactions. The other 1,000 are unvaccinated and always stay in isolation or in a rural area away from busy streets. In this case, it is always likely that the rate of infection of the vaccinated is always higher than the unvaccinated in this population.

If we must compare the vaccine effectiveness, we must make sure the comparison is always done on the fairground. We must know if the vaccinated and unvaccinated are exposed to Covid on an equal and fair basis. This is only possible only when the unvaccinated are not aware they were not vaccinated.

This was exactly what the vaccine manufacturers had done when they first carried out the vaccine efficacy test earlier. Then, all participants were jabbed; half with vaccines & others half with placebo. The unvaccinated always thought they were vaccinated They were expected to behave the same when they returned back to the community.

Using the raw real-world data, the remaining few unvaccinated, knowing they are more vulnerable, will always take extra precautionary steps to prevent themselves from exposing themselves to Covid infection. If we were to use such raw real-world data for comparison, we are actually not comparing vaccinated against unvaccinated but other things like vaccinated against the various Covid control measures. By using the same argument, if the vaccinated were to take the same and stringent control measures as the unvaccinated, quite sure the results would be much different.

Then How Do We Rate them?

When a situation like the above extreme example was to happen and we must rate them, a fairer rating system is to compare the rate of infection (or the attack rate) of the vaccinated against a known benchmark, An example is shown on this webpage.

In Conclusion

It is always important to know what we are comparing. Sometimes, it is better to omit and ignore such data instead of comparing them and getting meaningless results or answers.

One can always take all extra precautions to avoid being infected but one cannot cheat death. This superimposed chart from Our-World-in Data shows that the unvaccinated has 5 times the death rate compared to the vaccinated. The ratio was 8:1 at the peak just a week ago.