This morning’s editorial in the Australian: “vaccines remain Australia’s best weapon against infection. As chief medical officer Paul Kelly pointed out…two-thirds of people in ICU in NSW are unvaccinated.”
There are two things amiss with this sloppy statement. First, vaccines do not prevent infection. These days most people who become infected have been vaccinated. It’s just a matter of fact, which even journalists could discover if they looked. As a weapon against infection, vaccines are therefore next to useless, if not totally useless.
Second, Kelly’s statistic on the status of those in NSW in ICU’s is meaningless as it stands. Among other things, we need to know how many of those in ICU’s have contributory health conditions and, vitally, whether those health conditions dissuaded, many or all, of the “two-thirds” from being vaccinated.
ICU’s may be dealing with the same cohort of people: those with serious underlying health conditions. A subset risked vaccination. While a larger subset didn’t. It might still be the case that those with serious underlying health conditions are better off being vaccinated. But the statistic, as it stands, doesn’t reveal that. It certainly, as it stands, says nothing about the benefits of vaccination for those without such underlying health conditions,
I don’t know the facts. Kelly maybe does. In any event, we are not being told. What we have is yet more superficiality. I’d call it propaganda, but that’s maybe giving too much credit to the powers that be. Limited people quoting and requoting statistics that they don’t understand. A more intelligent and enquiring press would be handy.
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