It's taken some time, but I listened through twice to check the details and then gone to the figures online at the UKHSA and the ONS.Originally Posted by Mark G
The debate is about a claim on Linkedin that 1 in 73 vaccinated folk have died by the end of May 2022. It's the sort of meaningless but eye-catching stat we often see used these days. I would normally skim over such a claim if I came across it.
But BBC R4’s More or Less had a listener Michael who wrote in about the claim, the team felt it was worthy of discussion so they brought on “friend of the programme” Stuart Mcdonald but didn’t bring on anyone behind the claim or who felt the claim worthy of note to balance the discussion.
Balance seems not to be required these days when having such discussions on the BBC.
They initially accept the figure as correct and suggest that it is about what might be expected, so nothing to see here, but then go further which backs up my previous thought that this was a strawman. They didn’t really want to discuss the claim, it was just a nice route in to produce a covid vaccine promotion slot.
By the end Tim Harford summarises "The risk of death for unvaccinated people rose substantially during the same period.”
I have my doubts as readers may know and I don't think they presented anything that allowed Tim to make such a claim.
MacDonald works on the basis that over 90% of UK adults have been vaccinated. His terminology was “more than 9 in 10”.
Mcdonald concludes that we should have expected 598k deaths of the vaccinated pro rata over the period but there had only been 531k. For unvaccinated expected is 57k and actual 110k.
According to the ONS age 15+ deaths for the period were 640785 which broke down to 531708 vaccinated and 109707 unvaccinated so he’s probably used these figures. It’s not quite the same age banding but so close it doesn’t matter.
SM’s assertion is that we should expect 91.3% of the deaths based on above to come from the vaccinated and only 8.7% from the vaccinated.
The figures for England from UKHSA end July 2022 show that 81.6% of adults had received at least one dose (Weekly national Influenza and COVID-19 surveillance Week 27 report – Pg 65)
https://assets.publishing.service.go...report_w27.pdf
The period in question is to end May 2022 so the total cannot be more than 81.6% for the period under scrutiny.
81.6% (if accurate and it is the UKHSA data) would suggest the following expected numbers.
Vaccinated – 81.6% of 640785 = 522880 (actual 531708 so higher than expected)
Unvaccinated 18.4% of 640785 = 117904 (actual 109707) so lower than expected)
Conclusion
Stuart McDonald’s maths work and the conclusion stands if you accept his 91.3% ever vaccinated rate.
They fall if you accept the UK Health Surveillance Agency rate of 81.6%.
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