The European Union's highly misleading chart and message about vaccine effectiveness

The European Commission has just posted this highly misleading chart and accompanying message which suggests that vaccinations drastically reduce the covid death rate.

The chart is highly misleading for several reasons, such as the fact that it is highly sensitive to the timing of infection 'waves'; countries that had already passed the infection peak will have low covid mortality, while those hitting a peak will have high covid mortality all irrespective of the vaccination programme status.

However, we must also consider the following which all relate to the thorny issue of 'death classification' with respect to vaccine effectiveness:

1. It focuses only on 'covid' deaths whereas (as explained here) we must consider all-cause mortality to determine if the benefit of the vaccine outweighs the risk, i.e. if it answers the question: are more people being ‘saved’ by the vaccine than being killed from its adverse reactions? Neither the Pfizer RCT data, nor the latest data from the UK suggests it is.

2. It assumes that any person classified as suffering a ‘covid’ death actually died of covid, whereas we know that in most countries any person dying within 28 days of a positive PCR test is classified as a 'covid' death irrespective of the actual cause of death. A terminal cancer patient who happens to test positive for covid shortly before death would have irrespective of whether they had been vaccinated.

3. An unvaccinated person (who does not have covid symptoms) is far more likely to get PCR tested than a vaccinated person and hence is far more likely to be classified as a 'covid' death if they die. (This causes the most distortion of the figures)

To give a concrete example why this means the EU chart is misleading consider the following hypothetical scenario (which will show that if two countries with very different vaccination rates have identical genuine covid mortality rates, the country with the higher vaccination rate will be reported as having a lower covid mortality rate):

Two countries Vaxxistan and Resististan each have a population of 100 million; 80% of Vaxxistan is fully vaccinated, while only 20% of Resististan is vaccinated.

Suppose that in a 14-day period the number of deaths caused directly by Covid are as shown in Table 1 (the non-covid deaths are all other deaths including those not caused by covid but in which the person may have been PCR positive).

Table 1: Total
deaths

		Vaccinated	Unvaccinated
Vaxxistan	Population	80,000,000	20,000,000
	Covid deaths	80	20
	Non covid deaths	8,000	2,000
Resististan	Population	20,000,000	80,000,000
	Covid deaths	20	80
	Non covid deaths	2,000	8,000

Note that, in both countries 100 people die directly from Covid and the genuine mortality rate is identical for vaccinated and unvaccinated (1 per million).

Also note that, in both countries 10,000 people die from a cause other than Covid and the genuine mortality rate is identical for vaccinated and unvaccinated (100 per million), meaning that we are assuming the vaccine causes no deaths through adverse reactions.

As these deaths are unrelated to Covid only the unvaccinated among them are likely to be tested. Suppose 50% of the unvaccinated are tested whereas only 10% of the vaccinated are tested. Then assuming 20% of tests are positive we get the results in Table 2.

Table 2: Non covid deaths with positive PCR result

		Vaccinated	Unvaccinated	Totals
Vaxxistan	Non covid deaths	8,000	2,000	10,000
	% tested	10%	50%
	Number tested	800	1,000	1,800
	Number positive (20% of those tested)	160	200	360
Resististan	Non covid deaths	2,000	8,000	10,000
	% tested	10%	50%
	Number tested	200	4,000	4,200
	Number positive (20% of those tested)	40	800	840

 

Each of those testing positive will be classified as a Covid death.

So, in Vaxxistan 360 people will be added to the number of covid deaths making a total of 460.
In Resististan 840 people will be added to the number of covid deaths making a total of 940.

Therefore, despite the true covid mortality rate being identical in both countries (1 per million) the reported covid mortality rate in Resististan will be over twice as great (9.4 per million) as Vaxxistan (4.6 per million).

#stemgeeks