Against the Spread: Addendum
With vaccines, much like in gambling, the many must lose so that the few can win
In my previous article, we took a closer look at person years lived as a metric for evaluating VE. Doing so provides us with some perspective as to just how effective the vaccines are in dynamic conditions. Still, we found that it is not a perfect metric as the unvaccinated took the full brunt of the winter wave, and the vaccinated completely evaded it nearly completely. When removing that period of bias, we found that VE against death drops down to 51.8% for the 60+ age group.
One of the aspects of VE that we did examine is the first 14 days of the first dose. Under the biased conditions, we found that VE was -24.6% and absolute risk ~0.42%. What we did not do was readjust this number to account for the reduced bias conditions. Let me remind you that the new absolute risk for the unvaccinated group is ~0.21%. In other words, the adjusted VE for the first 14 days of the vaccine is -100% for those 60+. Yikes.
When adjusting for bias, the vaccinated are twice as likely to die in the first 14 days than the unvaccinated! Combining this with the healthy vaccine effect, this revealation is deeply troubling. At the very least 60+ deaths can be directly attributed to dying from the virus after vaccination in this time period that would have not otherwise occured (as opposed to ~26 unadjusted). This increased risk is not communicated to those getting the vaccine because it may cause vaccine hesitancy. If the risk was communicated, many of these people may have sheltered at home after getting vaccinated even if they were steadfast on taking the risk.