John Roberts Profile picture
Actuary for far too many years. Welsh, but now live in the spiritual home of the Wurzels out west. Don’t think I’ve got the accent yet. Like zider though...

Sep 13, 2021, 7 tweets

The ONS has added to recent analyses of relative mortality by vaccination status with a new release today, using age-standardised mortality rates (ASMR).

TLDR: COVID death rates for fully vaccinated people are much much lower.

1/

Note the report does include number counts, but clearly states that the priority ordering of the roll-out makes these comparisons of limited use. Also many of the deaths were at a time when vacc'n coverage was very limited.

Hence the focus on weekly age-standardised rates.
2/

Looking at the underlying data, we see that in the last four weeks of the analysis, ASMRs for COVID deaths have been 10x higher for the unvaccinated.

Note also the increases approaching the early July peak.

3/

ASMRs have also been around 75% higher in the unvaccinated group for deaths that weren't registered as being COVID related. That's a very interesting finding. Might it suggest that COVID is actually a contributory factor for even more deaths than we thought? Or maybe...

4/

... it's partly or predominately due to the other demographic factors that influence the non-vaccinated population (ethnicity, deprivation etc) which means the unvaccinated have a generally higher mortality rate.

5/

Another point noted is that for "breakthrough" deaths (ie amongst the fully vaccinated), a much higher proportion are immunocompromised (13%) than for COVID deaths generally, reinforcing the additional vulnerability of this group.

They've also tended to be slightly older.

6/

Age-standardised analyses are the best way to look at mortality comparisons, particularly when we have populations of varying age profiles (as the vaccine roll out means we have seen here).

Report here: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…
7/7

Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.

A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.

Keep scrolling