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Thursday, November 18, 2021

The Unvaccinated Are Not Happy Today

They are not happy because they are thinking the Governments,  almost all over the World are trying to fix them.  They are:

1.  Beginning to "open up" allowing only the vaccinated to travel;
2.  Implementing unfair practices to restrict their movements such as visiting the public places,  PUBs  and eatery shops;
3.  Forcing them to be vaccinated;  last but not lest;
4.  Talking about them responsible for spreading the Covid.

They demanded to know why people always blame them.





Why?

To understand why we must be prepared to know why the governments all over the world are doing so much to stop the spread of Covid.   Why aren't they worked up about the spread of the Common flu?    They have only one thing in mind, which is to "save their Health Service from collapsing".

They are not worried at the beginning when only a few were sick and eventually died although they had tried their best to save them.   They analyzed the data and found that there were more unvaccinated getting sick and the vaccinated are having either no symptoms or mild symptoms.   They also found that there are more unvaccinated than vaccinated getting infected.  As people with symptoms are having a higher chance to spread Covid,  they started to blame the unvaccinated.

When the majority are vaccinated,  the situation changed,  more and more vaccinated are getting sick.  Of late,  even the rate of vaccinated is getting infected,  at times having higher rates in hospitalisation than the unvaccinated.   They began to understand the effectiveness of the vaccine had started to wane.  They introduced booster shots.  At the same time,  the fewer unvaccinated leftover is getting even more skillful and careful.  They prevented themselves always from getting infected.

However,  one thing has never changed.  There are more unvaccinated getting severely sick and dying eventually.  This has unfortunately loaded up the Government's Health Services.  They tried to fix this.  This MOH Singapore chart tried to show that the unvaccinated have 9.4 times and 22.5 times the chance of getting severely sick and dying respectively.







They changed their tone now to say they are protecting the unvaccinated.




Why VTL?

Rightly speaking,  there is no real good reason to ban those fewer unvaccinated who can take extra precautions to have the chance to travel.  The Governments must be thinking that although these unvaccinated can take such extra precaution back home,  they might not be able to do so when traveling abroad.   It is likely that unvaccinated will have a hard time trying to convince their Governments that they are equally capable of preventing themselves from contracting Covid while traveling overseas.  And until the unvaccinated can do so,  the "decree" is likely to remain.

New Measures Poping up

Because the unvaccinated are more prone and vulnerable to being severely sick,  there will be calls everywhere from the vaccinated,  demanding the unvaccinated to pay for the medical bills if they get infected.









The unvaccinated will definitely be very unhappy,  but in countries like Singapore where the unvaccinated are the minority,  their voices would not be loud.    The country will start charging Covid patients who are ‘unvaccinated by choice’ by 8 December

Conclusion

The unvaccinated have every reason to be unhappy about the present restrictions imposed on them especially they can show data and statistics that vaccinated are equally vulnerable to infection and hospitalisation.   However,  one thing they cannot change is the higher rate of unvaccinated getting severely sick and then dying.  This is the only reason and they now saying "they are protecting the unvaccinated"


Monday, November 15, 2021

Why should Elderly be Vaccinated?

Governments all over the World are trying to pass on the message that the elderly,  older than 60 years of age are vulnerable to infection.  Many of those deaths are in the 80+ age group.    They tried to post all sorts of charts and figures,  supporting their claims;  however,  many elderly are still not serious. Why?.

How Vulnerable are these Elderly?

Yahoo has an interesting graphical table showing the death rate of various age groups in a week from July 11 to September 4.  This table must have been constructed using data from US CDC.  

The table shows, for example,  54  among 100,000  unvaccinated people above 80 will die each week.  On the other hand,  10 of 100,000 vaccinated people in this will also die each week if they are not careful.

What is the Difference from Other "Stories" Being Told?

There is no difference.  This "Story" is still too complicated for most of the elderly.     Not many elderly will understand especially when many have only gone to elementary schools when they were young. These people are more sensitive to numbers than rates,   which is a mathematical term.    After all,  they are the ones deciding if they should get vaccinated.

Why Elderly in Singapore not Excited?

Many a time,  we read about forumers in the discussion groups always asking why Singapore Government does not publish death numbers by vaccination status.  This is despite Singapore Government has made an effort to publish and compare the % of people dying by vaccination status on a daily basis.


Unfortunately,  this MOH's chart is not showing the numbers for the elderly.  It is showing the rate for vaccination and unvaccinated across all age groups.  The figure of 5.4 per 100,000 for the unvaccinated is 10 times smaller than the 54 per 100,000 for those 80+ as reported by Yahoo.

Then What are the numbers?

According to MOH of Singapore,  the following is the position of vaccination among the various age groups.

The chart clearly shows that about 12% of those >80 are unvaccinated.  6% of those 70-79 and 5% of those 60-69 are unvaccinated


About 770 or 1.5% of those elderly above 60 in Singapore who are unvaccinated are expected to die each year. Those aged above 80 and unvaccinated has the highest death rate  @ about 300 or 3% per year.  The breakdown figures for Singapore is as shown in this table.

Estimated Death Numbers for Unvaccinated of Age Above 60 @ 7 Nov 2021 for Singapore
Age GroupTotalRemarks
Age Group60-6970-79>80
Population number (I)500,124244,72796,228Data source: https://data.gov.sg/dataset/resident-population-by-ethnicity-gender-and-age-group?view_id=2f273a73-de27-4242-a602-8165789f96d3&resource_id=d5d35678-cd15-4f43-b347-d671d1870655
% Unvaccinated in Group (II)5%6%12%Data Source: https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19/vaccination
Unvaccinated Nos(Estd) III=(I*II)25,00614,68411,54751,237
Death per 100K per week(IV) (Yahoo expressed in %)13.0835.9654.39https://news.yahoo.com/age-still-huge-coronavirus-risk-090059106.html
Death per week (Estd) (III*IV)35615
Death per year (Estd) (III*IV)170275327771
% of Unvaccinated0.68%1.87%2.83%1.51%

One could work out a similar table for other countries using the same method.  As the death rate might differ from country to country,  the working should only be taken as a reference.

Update:  17 November 2021

MOH has just published this new chart reporting on the death rate of vaccinated and unvaccinated for those between 60 – 69, and above 70 years old.   This chart shows that the death rate of unvaccinated is about 12 to 14 times higher than vaccinated for these 2 elderly age groups.




















If we compare Singapore's rate to the USA's rate,  we can get this table:
Average Weekly Death Rate (Numbers per 100,000
Age Group
USASingaporeUSASingapore
UnvaccinatedVaccinated
80+5413111.1
65-7936320.2
55-64131
USA: for period between July 11-Sept 4
Singapore: for period between Oct 9 to Nov 16
Note: some discrepancy expected as Singapore's figure is for 60-69 and >70 instead of 65-70 and >80

No wonder the Singapore Authority recently claimed Singapore was having one of the lowest death rates in the World.  

The comparison table might not be fair to the US considering that Singapore is a city-state and a small country and US is a big country with many different demographics,

Saturday, November 13, 2021

Infection Rate vs Case Fatality Rate

Everyone is afraid to die.   In Covid Epidemiology,  Death is often measured by death rate,  i.e number of confirmed death per million or 100,000 people.   It is also measured by Case Fatality Rate (CFR).  CFR is the percentage ratio of the confirmed deaths over the confirmed infections.  

CFR tells also the seriousness or the severity of the Pandemic.   A higher CFR means more people are dying after catching Covid.  
However,  it is not always true;  a country having a very high infection rate and a very high death rate can also have a very low CFR.  

To accurately assess and interpret the seriousness and severity of the Pandemic,  one should also examine the infection and death rate together.

This table gives some ideas on what to look for:

Death Rate
CFR
Infection Rate
HighLow
High
HIghVery High RiskHigher severity and risk; Could be many infected not being counted
LowHigh severity and risk; could be caused by high Infections & high deathsNA
Low
HighNAMight be many infected or dead not being counted
LowLow or lesser severity and risk if the majority of infected are asymptomatic or false positiveVery low severity and risk

A high infection rate with a low death rate and a lower CFR could mean there is a lot of asymptomatic patients,  a condition likely to succeed in progressing towards the endemic condition.    A situation with a low infection rate,  a low death rate, and a low CFR is ideal but the residents must always be alert,  well prepared and well trained,  ready to face any Covid attack from the external communities or countries.

Navigation:
1.  3 top buttons are for adding and selecting countries.  The right button is for adding countries to pre-selected countries.   It will be displayed when the region and type buttons are selected.  The middle button is for selecting & building up countries(not working); the left button is to select chat lining in parallel or top/bottom at full width; 
2.  Use dropdown boxes provided to select the menu for charts;
3.  Use <ctl><click> to select on country or <shift><click> to select several countries in <select countries>;
4.  Use [Call/Save Chart] to call and save the existing chart.  The data saved can be erased by browser memory clearances;
5.  Use the [Expand] button to expand/contract and examine each chart.
6.  To go to Our-World-in-Data page,  just click the "full screen" symbols.  It is located at the bottom right of every chart.

  


The Use of CFR

One can use CFR often to assess if a sudden surge in the Infection rate is caused by a new wave or by some changes in the measures that control the spread and the transmission of the Covid.  

For example,  there was a spike recently happening in Singapore.  The infection rate shot up 6 times in a short span of time,  from about 800 cases per day in mid-September to about 5,000 on 29 October. 

Many blamed the effectiveness of the vaccines.

This chart will easily show that the spike has not much to do with the effectiveness of vaccines or the Health Services.

The chart shows the Covid situation in Japan,  Germany, and Malaysia.  Malaysia has just tamed the Covid with infection and death rates lower than Singapore at the moment.  One can explain that Malaysian's higher CFR might be more due to the slightly better Health Services in Singapore.  But it would be difficult to explain why the Japanese and German CFR are also higher than Singapore,  except Singapore has just implemented mandatory Antigen Rapid Testing (ART) from September 2021.    This mandatory ART testing has helped to flush out a lot of asymptomatic in the Community. 

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