Yes, the vaccination helps!

45% of people over 60 in hospital are vaccinated. That was the headline in BILD. And this information is often used as a reason for the ineffectiveness of the vaccination.

So 45% of Covid patients over 60 are vaccinated. The statement is not wrong. And it sounds temptingly like “fifty/fifty risk” when it comes to infection. Is a vaccination even worth it? Or as BILD asks, did the vaccination actually achieve anything?

Clear answer: yes! The vaccination is definitely worth it. And this supposedly high percentage actually proves that. This percentage must necessarily be set in relation to its initial quantity. And when that happens, we realize how effective the vaccination is.

Vaccination effective, simple structured explanation

The journalist and economist Katrin-Cécile Ziegler wrote a very easy-to-understand explanation on LinkedIn. This makes it very clear how low the risk is for vaccinated compared to unvaccinated people of ending up in the intensive care unit. And at the same time it becomes clear how manipulative a headline can be if it is used without explaining it. Ziegler writes :

Why we urgently need to train percentage calculation as a skill for the future and why we need greater public engagement in science...! Because otherwise powerful media like BILD can publish such an inadequate text assignment in the headline, which misleads society and the readers do not know how to question it.

If there are 45% vaccinated and 55% unvaccinated people in an intensive care unit (ICU), then that doesn't mean that the #vaccination does almost nothing, but actually reduces the risk of admission MULTIPLE! Why?

👉🏻 Because we have to use the base quantity of the respective group as a relation.

NOTE: The percentage is calculated by dividing the percentage value by the base value and multiplying by 100 percent.

Let's take a simplified look at the whole thing for an assumed total of 1000 people over 60 and assume that there are a total of 100 in the hospital. (In reality the ratio is of course much lower!)

Even then, it turns out that the proportion of seriously ill vaccinated people would only correspond to 5.2% and not the suggested 45%.

👉🏻 Here we go:

1.) In order to know the basic value of a group, we first have to look at how many people over 60 have been vaccinated.
The vaccination rate in this group is 86%. In other words: Out of an assumed 1,000 people, 860 are vaccinated and 140 are unvaccinated (basic values ​​of the respective group)

2.) Then this means proportionally for the BILD example:

a) If the basic value is 860 vaccinated people, then 45 patients from the basic quantity correspond to a proportion of 5.2% (45: 860 x 100 = 5.2)

b) 55 patients out of 140 unvaccinated people correspond to 39.3% (55: 140 x 100 = 39.3).

What does that tell us? In this calculation example, the risk of being in an ICU without vaccination is around 7.6 times higher than for vaccinated people! ( 39.3% versus 5.2% ).

Anyone who doesn't understand that vaccination reduces the risk of serious illness and comments otherwise is unfortunately revealing... well, let's put it this way: I would think about it again ;).

[…] Servicepost Opensource (Credit: Katrin-Cécile Ziegler)

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