Thread by @StimmederVernu9

#servicetweet #vaccine #VaccineSideEffects #COVID19 #unvaccinated

It is often argued that C19-vaccinated people cause less costs than unvaccinated people. Intuitively, this seems to be true.

However, the facts show a surprising result.

🧵

1/19

The calculation:

On the left side of the equation are the costs of the unvaccinated (hospitalization C19/ICU).

On the right side are the costs of the vaccinated (vaccination+hospitalization C19/ICU+hospitalization due to vaccines), with corresponding probabilities.

2/19

For the sake of simplicity, we calculate how many vaccinations are necessary to prevent one hospitalization / ICU admission.

Concrete data such as NNTV is missing, we use qcovid.org from the Univ. of Oxford.

We will ignore hospitalizations due to vaccines.

3/19

At qcovid.org one can calculate the risk of death / hospitalization.

The probability of infection is taken into account for 90 days, data is from earlier waves.

We extrapolate to 180 days, which roughly corresponds to the duration of a full vaccination.

4/19

Unfortunately, ICU data is missing.

We help ourselves by estimating the ICU probability at about 1/5 of the hosp. probability (65-) , for older people about 1/3.

In view of the RKI data, this is a plausible but generous estimate.

5/19

Let's get to the costs (according to 🇩🇪):

An ICU patient costs c. EUR 33,000, and a normally hospitalized patient c. EUR 8,000. These are only average values, there may be deviations in individual cases.

We know this from the insurances.

aerztezeitung.de/Wirtschaft/Was…

6/19

Now let's take the costs for a full vaccination:

The doctor's fee (2 x EUR 28), the vaccination doses (2 x EUR 19.50) and a certain overhead (vaccination campaign etc., EUR 5).

2 x 28 + 2 x 19.50 +5 = EUR 100 per person to be fully vaccinated.

rnd.de/gesundheit/cor…

7/19

This is Harold.

A 65 y o male with a bit overweight (181 cm, 88 kg) but no preconditions.

According to qcovid.org, Harold has a probability of c. 1: 340 being hospitalised by covid (180 days; 1 : 681 / 90 d), ICU c. 1 : 1,700 (180 days; 1: 3,400 / 90 d).

8/19

To prevent one hospitalisation, we need 340 Harolds to be fully vaccinated.

This would cost EUR 34,000 for vaccination and another EUR 800.00 for vaccinated C19-hospitalisation.

Of course, those “340 Harolds” would also prevent 340 / 1700 ICU-Hosp.

9/19

In sum, we spent c. EUR 35,000 in order to save EUR 14,600.

Vaccinated Harolds, surprisingly, are more expensive than unvaccinated ones (2.4-fold).

Interesting result, isn't it?

10/19

However, it depends on the prevalence. The higher the prevalence the higher the benefit of the vacc.

Qcovid.org calculates with a 7-d-incidence of 271 per 100k.

Thus, the break-even would be 650 per 100k for 26 weeks,

11/19

or at a natural immunisation of c. 17 per cent in six months.

How realistic is this?

After 21 month of pandemic, the German RKI registrated 7.1 M positive pcr-tests (max 8 per cent of the population).

One could say 2.3 per cent in six months.

rki.de/DE/Content/Inf…

12/19

Even if we expect a high number of unknown cases (3-fold) we don’t even come close to 17 per cent.

One could argue that the measures prevented infections.

So, "unvaccinated and without restrictions" would perhaps be much more expensive.

13/19

Well, let us take a country without many restrictions: 🇸🇪

After 12 months of pandemic, 0.8 M infections (8 per cent), or 4 per cent infections in 6 months.

Even with high unknown cases (3-fold), the number is far below 17 per cent natural immunisation.

14/19

Be aware that the thread includes several assumptions/limitations which overestimate the positive effect of vaccines:

-High level of protection
-No severe adverse events
-No Omicron

Also, no capacity limit is assumed here.

15/19

/Conclusion/

We could see that vaccinating 65 y o males (w/o prec) is more expensive than leaving them unvaccinated, even with a vaccine-friendly calculation.

And, we know: the younger the people the less is the risk for hospitalisations.

16/19

This suggests that mass vaccinating 65- has produced a higher burden on the medical care than leaving them unvaccinated.

So, it is simply not true to blame the unvaccinated that they produce a burden on the society.

It seems that the vaccinated were more expensive.

17/19

Recent empirical data for the Canadian province of Alberta supports this hypothesis.

Mass vaccinating was more expensive than the expected outcome if there was no vaccination at all.

18/19

https://twitter.com/StimmederVernu9/status/1559625926010355712

These are only preliminary results mostly for Germany.

It would be great to see more analyses on the topic that also include the costs for severe adverse events.

The findings, however, do not support the argument that mass vaccination had fiscal / financial advantages.

19/19

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