I recently came across a post claiming people are 10x more likely to die from COVID vaccines than COVID itself, and I found it fascinating how either plain dumb, or ill-intended, the content was.
It is easy to see it is shitpost, but hard to counter argue because the author hardly make sense of the numbers. It is literally math freestyle. He mixes data classified by age with data classified by underlying condition, which is how he manages to make people lazy to check the numbers and the sources and just believe him because he claims to have done the "math".
Starting form the first data presented by the post:
This data says literally nothing else except "if you have a preexisting condition, COVID is 10x more more likely to kill you", which is why countries are adopting a policy to vaccinate people with pre-existing conditions first.
This data is not wrong by itself, but the author tries to confuse the reader by implying that people with pre-existing conditions and COVID are more likely to die than regular people that, for example, overdose on opiates. No shit sherlock? What next? People that get shot and have heart issues are more likely to die than people that only get shot or only have heart issues?...
He then grabs some data about what are some of the adverse effects people get from the vaccines, and put on a spreadsheet:
The problem with this data is that he mixes the classification types (age and underlying condition)
From that alone, because the data is not classified by age we can make ridiculous assumptions, like:
- If you are under 19 you are about 150x more likely to die if you take the vaccine
- If you are over 80 your chances of suffering a heart attack after the vaccine is 50x smaller after the vaccine
Both affirmations above are bullshit, and only possible because he mixes the classification of the data he uses.
That would mean that for each 1 person under 18 you know that, sadly, died from COVID before getting a shot, you should "mathematically" (if that is even math) know 140 other under 18 that should also die, but only after getting the COVID vaccine. Do you?
It would be a massacre.
The math this guy does is so ridiculous you see numbers all over the place on his spreadsheet. Because the data do not have a common ground (one is separated by age, and other by underlying conditions), we have numbers ranging from 0.02x as likely to die from a heart attack after the vaccines (vaccines cure heart diseases?!?!), or up to 4000x more likely to need urgent care after you are vaccinated. I know 2 people that needed urgent care before the vaccine, and 1 person that needed after, if the numbers are so discrepant, how is that such a deviance from his "math" possible?...
That is why in statistics it is IMPORTANT TO CLASSIFY YOUR DATA.
Moreover, this is ridiculous, just look at ABSOLUTE FIGURES. If the vaccine makes you 10x more likely to die, and up to 4000x more likely to need urgent care, then how does society even work nowadays?!?!
Why is the world population not shrinking? Why don't we have huuuuge lines on the hospitals, like we had in the beginning, before the vaccines?
The absolute numbers can't lie. More people are getting vaccinated, than people got COVID before the vaccines, and as a result the number of deaths and hospitalization is CLEARLY DECREASING.
4000x more likely to need urgent care.... 10x more likely to die..... Ridiculous...