When facing Z scores of 5 and 7 indicating that the unvaccinated care rate is significantly lower than the vaccinated case rate, the precautionary principle has a lot to say about whether to continue vaccination while we await understanding of the cause of this difference.
For a null hypothesis is that there is no difference in case rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated, the probability of observing a difference like this is 1 in 8110. This is monthly data so that's once in 675 years
The hypothesis everyone is hoping for is that the case rate for vaccinated is less than the case rate for unvaccinated. That requires us to use a single tailed test. The probability of seeing Z=7 on a single tailed test is 1 in 16,207 or once every 1350 years
What this tells us is that there is a SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER CASE RATE FOR UNVACCINATED.
What this does not tell us is WHY.
Two obvious theories present themselves: 1. Vaccination makes you more susceptible 2. Unvaccinated less likely to get tested
Also 3. Both can be true
What we need now, or even better yesterday, is to design some experiments that can differentiate these two theories, run those experiments and see what the data says.
Or we can ignore the scientific method and blindly follow a new religion of "The science"
Society, your choice
FYI for reference on Z scores. if you have a single tailed test, the basic standard for publication is a P<0.05 (i.e. 1 in 20 odds of happening by chance) which is a Z score greater than 1.65. Four of the age cohorts meet this criteria
Even a Z score of 3.77 is a ONE in TWELVE THOUSAND chance for the single tailed test. Three of the age cohorts are at least this... so what we have is three one in twelve thousand chance occurances all in the same data set... the reported rates are almost certainly lower... why?
WHY are unvaccinated cases reporting lower than vaccinated cases in Israel last month? Given vaccinated people had been lead to believe they're less likely to catch (which is why restrictions were reduced for them) one would think they'd be less likely to present for testing
One could argue that the unvaccinated at this stage are more refusniks and might be reluctant to get tested, but my experience of Israeli people would suggest that they are conscientious principled people. I do not believe the subset who are unvaccinated would skip testing
So the question is... what experiments can we design that would probe the very real differences in case reporting rates between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Occam says that absence additional data we should use vaccination status as simplest explanation that fits observations
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Latest Israeli case data... @RanIsraeli@MLevitt_NP2013 it's complicated, but I'm going to try and explain what it says and what we can conclude. First the background 1/n
So there have been these spreadsheets popping up on social media reporting the age breakdown of cases and the percentage of the population fully vaccinated and highlighting the similarity of those numbers, citing datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/gener… as the source 2/n
Using that data I was able to compute statistical Z-scores, but as I do not speak Hebrew, my ability to verify the numbers was limited. Those Z-scores implied a significant difference in the case rate between vaccinated and unvaccinated with unvaccinated lower! 3/n
Here's the aggregate for almost the full month. A Z-score of 3.77 is, single tailed P<0.00008, double tailed P<0.00004. The Z-score of 5.28 and 7.00 is where the NCEST tables give up and say it's effectively beyond doubt. These are +ve Z-scores ie saying unvaccinated LESS likely
Caveat: This says there is a difference between the two groups... and it says for the 20-29, 40-49 and 60-69 age groups there is a very significant difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated rates... but it doesn't tell us what the difference is
Did I summarise the argument that vaccination during a pandemic may promote “worse (for us) is better (for the virus)” mutations over the normal “more infectious but less deadly” mutations we expect? 1/5
What are the bets @rtenews copies BBC and says “a few people protested vaccine apartheid at the customs house quay today” and at that it’ll be well hurried below the fold #NoVaccinePassportsAnywhere
I often wonder how many people actually read 1984 and what the “war is peace” slogan means. Before I read the book a few times, I thought it was trying to change the meaning of words and mixed in with the newspeak concept… but read the book carefully you see it’s different (1/)
The book says that governments discovered that while you were at war with an external enemy, internal dissent was quashed, so the (external) war is (internal) peace… and vice versa (2/)
Back to real life and the governments have discovered that the war on Covid is internal peace on a lot of fronts… “why is our healthcare system a shambles?” “Look, Covid, unprecedented times, save the nhs” (3/)
I think everyone can agree that what we want to avoid is deaths. Deaths follow cases, but by how much? Well we can take a look at the UK data and see. This January the cases peaked on Jan 10th and deaths peaked on Jan 25th that's 15 days... is that repeatable? (2/7)
The previous peak was Nov 6th for cases and Nov 25th for deaths... that's 19 days. We cannot do a meaningful comparison for March 2020 as everyone was low on testing can the case numbers are low (3/7)