An article in The conversation.com, a high quality Left blog that discusses the big issues, admits that in the UK more vaccinated people are dying from Covid than unvaccinated. According to a report from Public Health England (PHE), 163 of the 257 people (63.4%) who died of the Delta variant within 28 days of a positive Covid test between February 1 and June 21, had received at least one dose of the vaccine. It is claimed that this is to be expected, and is explained by the age differential: “The risk of dying from COVID doubles roughly every seven years older a patient is. The 35-year difference between a 35-year-old and a 70-year-old means the risk of death between the two patients has doubled five times – equivalently it has increased by a factor of 32. An unvaccinated 70-year-old might be 32 times more likely to die of COVID than an unvaccinated 35-year-old. This dramatic variation of the risk profile with age means that even excellent vaccines don’t reduce the risk of death for older people to below the risk for some younger demographics. … the 20-fold decrease in risk afforded by the vaccine isn’t enough to offset the 32-fold increase in underlying risk of death of a 70-year-old over a 35-year-old. Given the same risk of infection, we would still expect to see more double-vaccinated 70-year-olds die from COVID than unvaccinated 35-year-olds.”
That may be so, but it does not explain one obvious thing: that there are still substantial numbers of young vaccinated, even double vaccinated, still getting Covid, as the example of Israel dramatically shows. Whether the vaccines reduce deaths or not, the question is one of their efficiency, for one gets vaccinated to get immunity, not get the very disease one has got the vax for. If this was a tetanus vaccine, and people were getting the same results, one would be really careful not to step on a rusty nail from the soil. The case of Israel, covered at this blog indicates that vaccine efficiency, if it existed, is falling off. Hence the boosters. And more boosters.