COVID-19 Boosters and Cases

Empirical data analysis of Europe

Empirical data is the Marmite of the COVID divide. For those citizens who have never been colonised by the British, Marmite is a brown, salty paste that you spread on toast or crumpets that has the slogan you either love it or hate it.

So it is that those who oppose the policy responses to COVID typically love empirical data but those who dogmatically trust governments and their “scientific experts”, it’s typically held with contempt.

I love Marmite. I also love empirical data.

So, I combined my two loves this morning and did this little analysis while eating my breakfast of Marmite on toast.

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If you take the 26 major European countries that have reported giving boosters and plot their cases per million population against the 19 that haven’t, you get an interesting picture.

Not only do the boosting countries have 19% more cases at the start of the analysis, towards the end of summer, but the margin actually gets bigger as we get deep into autumn, currently standing at 21%.

I haven’t controlled for geography or anything else because it looks like a fairly mixed bag to me and my toast was getting cold. Notwithstanding any potential counfounders, it’s not exactly looking like a therapy that is 95% effective?

I would say the vaccines aren’t claimed to reduce transmission so this is not unexpected but there are still many people supporting the countries discriminating against the unvaccinated so clearly that message hasn’t sunk in. We’re looking at you Germany, Austria, Spain, Scotland, Wales, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechia, Switzerland, etc.

#CanYouSeeItYet?

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