Dear Editor:
Re: Informed decision, Sept. 9.
While I agree that people should make an informed decision about vaccination, Stella Mott’s egregious misuse of statistics merits a response.
She says that because 34 of the 143 people in hospital in Ontario have been fully vaccinated that more than 18% of people who were vaccinated still contracted a severe enough case of COVID to end up in the hospital. This is blatantly wrong.
Her statistics suggest that 18.8% of the people who are in hospital with COVID are fully vaccinated. If you consider that approximately 70% of Ontarions are fully vaccinated (according to the most recent data for Ontario), this means that an unvaccinated individual is actually 10 times more likely to end up in hospital than a vaccinated one and (using Mott’s data) 25 times more likely to end up in an ICU.
Mott also highlights that there is no information on co-morbitities in the data but one should consider that those at highest risk (the elderly and those with other conditions that might compromise the immune system) are more likely to be vaccinated. This means that these statistics are likely biased against the population that is vaccinated and, therefore, the odds of hospitalization or ICU admission are even lower for those that are vaccinated.
People should make informed decisions (and the decision is about more than hospitalization and ICU admission) but this sort of misinformed or malicious representation of the facts is dangerous. It reminds me of the old quote that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics (often incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain). Perhaps we should add a fourth item and make it lies, damn likes, statistics, and magical made-up numbers.
I understand that the Advertiser wants to represent a broad range of views and perspectives but these numbers were just egregiously wrong. I would hope for better.
Mike von Massow,
Elora