President Joe Biden tweeted about the risks and perils of not being vaccinated against COVID-19 on Saturday. It was the latest attempt by the president to scare people into getting vaccinated. However, the statistics he used aren’t consistent with many previous reports and studies, including those by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Here’s the deal: Unvaccinated individuals are 97 times more likely to die compared to those who are boosted,” Biden tweeted. “Protect yourself and those around you by getting vaccinated and boosted today.”
Clearly, the objective here is to create a sense of fear that if people don’t get vaccinated, they are likely to die. For most of the country, that just is not truthful. Vaccines do help prevent death, but even at the peak of the disease, most people who have contracted COVID have recovered.
Yet, at a White House briefing during the last week of November, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, stated that unvaccinated people were 14 times more likely to die compared to vaccinated people. So, is the country supposed to believe that over the course of about eight weeks, that probability somehow increased nearly seven times?
But if that is true, what about White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s comments on Jan. 10, when she said that the unvaccinated “are 20 times more likely to die.”
There was this report, released on Feb. 2, by the Washington state Department of Health, that claimed the unvaccinated were nine times more likely to die from COVID. Granted, this study appears to be focused on Washingtonian rates — however, the difference between 97 times and nine times is quite substantial.
Additionally, a Texas Department of State Health Services report claims that unvaccinated people (those studied in Texas) are 17 times more likely to die than vaccinated people. Moreover, many other reports reveal similar inconsistencies with the different probabilities of dying if unvaccinated.
This is not to suggest that people should not get vaccinated. If they want the best odds at surviving COVID, vaccinations are the best option. Statistical differences aside, all studies show that unvaccinated people have a greater risk of dying.
However, these statistics cited by Biden and the numerous reports of different probabilities do much more harm than good. They reinforce the skepticism of those against vaccines and damage the credibility of this administration. Such credibility was already on thin ice given that Biden said in July 2021 that you will not get the virus if you get the vaccine. Playing around with numbers does nothing to help these concerns. Such discrepancies contribute to the polarity over getting the vaccine.
The pandemic has been around for two years. Vaccines have been around for over a year. At this point, if someone is not vaccinated, it is by choice. Trying to scare people into getting vaccinated by flaunting statistics, especially inconsistent statistics, will not do much to persuade them.
