The Anatomy of a Lie

In the bellow article entitled "Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated", a few
malicious sentences caught my eye:

1. "The CDC itself has not estimated what percentage of hospitalizations and deaths are in fully
vaccinated people, citing limitations in the data." This is a way of saying they don't follow up the
vaccinated people and they don't know actually what happens to this people. This follow up would
be in my opinion, what the scientific method would require when you have such a novel vaccine
that it's not been satisfactory understood how interacts with the human body, yet.

2. "Earlier this month, Andy Slavitt, a former adviser to the Biden administration on COVID-19,
suggested that 98% to 99% of the Americans dying of the corona virus are unvaccinated." Let's
unpack this sentence. This is a SUGGESTION, based on what?! Now here comes the nice part:
98% to 99%. What this percentage means actually? Let's say we have 100 people unvaccinated and
100 vaccinated. In total they are 200 and they represent in percentages 100%. From both
populations people will die. The percentage says that from a mixture of 100 vaccinated and
unvaccinated population, 98 to 99 dying are unvaccinated people. Which means just 1 or 2 people
that are vaccinated die. In other words, out of 100 vaccinated people, 98 to 99 will survive to Covid
due to being vaccinated. But when we consider that CDC doesn’t follow up the vaccinated people,
we can see how this percentage might be biased in the way it presents the present matter of affairs.

3. “Deaths in the US have plummeted from a peak of more than 3.400 day on average in mid-
January, one month into the vaccination drive.” This sentence needs as well a bit of unpacking. I
don’t know what the predicted death rate for this time of the year might be, but the drop might have
been due to a different predictor than the vaccine. It might very well be because the lockdown has
stopped, because people started to socialise again and so on. All this are factors can predict the drop.
What we actually need is to see the effect size of the vaccination when controlling for all the other
variables at play.

4. “Ali Mokdad, a professor of heatlh metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle,
said modelling suggests the nation will hit 1,000 deaths per day again next year.” This is a
prediction that needs a bit more details regarding the factors taken in consideration and what was
the modelling technique they have used. To me, this figure of 1000, is way too round and feels like
taken out from the magic hat.

5. “In Arkansas, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation, with only about 33% of
the population fully protected, cases, hospitalizations and deaths are rising.” Ok man! Please tell me
the following: what is the raising rate or percentage compared to what? The raise might be just
0.001% but is still called raise; How many of the cases, hospitalizations and deaths are vaccinated
and how many are not vaccinated?; Why would you add up cases and hospitalizations with deaths?!
What has to do a woman giving birth with Covid related deaths?! How many of these deaths are
Covid related? This sentence is a total mess…

6. “In Seattle’s king County, the public health department found only three deaths during a recent
60-day period in people who were fully vaccinated. The rest, some 95% of 62 deaths, had had no
vaccine or just one shot.” What they omitted to say here is the vaccination rate per day compared to
other periods. It must have been a very low vaccination rate. Having 62 people monitored during a
period of 60 days it’s a bit weird. Is this a sample or the total population that was vaccinated during
this 60 days in Seattle’s King County?

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-941fcf43d9731c76c16e7354f5d5e187