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Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022

Does a comparison of January case rates in Scotland prove the unvaccinated have better odds against COVID-19?

Dean Miller, Lead Stories
no

A crude comparison of the vaccinated and the unvaccinated circulating on social media does not account for important differences between those two groups. For instance, the vaccinated are more likely to be elderly and to have other health problems that make them vulnerable to infection.

Public health officials say vaccinated people are more likely to get tested and report an infection, which skews their case rate upward. Given this, data on COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths are arguably more reliable measures of vaccine efficacy. An epidemiologist with the UK Health Security Agency writes, "The rates of hospitalisation and deaths are substantially lower in fully vaccinated people."

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