Thread by @tomaspueyo

I’m seeing vaccine hesitancy from things like “60% of patients in serious condition got a vaccine. Does it work?”

This is a statistical artifact. Yes, vaccines work, but because of how they work and on whom, we get results like this. Let me explain

m.jpost.com/breaking-news/…

Good vaccines reduce hospitalizations & death by ~10x.

But being young reduces them by even more. Depending on your age, 10, 100, 1000x…

So being old and vaccinated is still more dangerous than being young and unvaccinated.

The likelihood of death of a 90yo if infected might be ~1.5%

The likelihood of death of an unvaccinated 25yo might be 0.01%.

So even if all 90yo are vaccinated and no 25yo are, you will still see more 90yo hospitalized (and dead) than 25yo

The thing that vaccines will do is not dramatically change the makeup of who dies (they will change it a bit). What they will really do is, for any given age, reduce deaths at that age by ~10x

Back to the stat quoted then. Yes, “60% of ppl in serious conditions being vaccinated” is reasonable. They’re likely old/have pre-existing conditions. Thankfully, there’s likely~10x fewer of them dying.