An article from the blog, The Exposé, claims that fully vaccinated people accounted for nine in 10 Covid-19 deaths in Scotland over the past four months. Screenshots of the article’s headline, including this claim, have also circulated on social media.
That’s broadly accurate. Fully vaccinated people have accounted for around eight in 10 Covid-19 deaths over the period, while people who have received at least one dose account for around nine in 10 Covid-19 deaths over the period.
The Exposé also notes that vaccinated people account for a higher proportion of cases, hospitalisations, and deaths than unvaccinated people. As we’ve said before, with so many people in the population vaccinated now, it’s to be expected that a large proportion of cases, hospitalisations and deaths occur among that group.
However, the Exposé also points out that vaccinated people account for a higher proportion of deaths than of infections and even hospitalisations. It questions why the trend is not reversed if vaccines are meant to be more effective at preventing hospitalisation and death.
Vaccination is more effective at reducing serious illness and death than reducing infection. However, there are population factors at play here that could impact the figures in the way the Exposé describes; for example, age.
Vaccine uptake has been highest in older age groups and lowest in younger age groups.
Young people are also far less likely to have a severe illness or die from Covid-19 than older people.
So that might explain why a relatively high number of cases but low number of deaths are among unvaccinated individuals. Lots of young, unvaccinated people are being infected but not dying. This may mean the numbers look different when examining the overall populations rather than the individual risks and benefits.
So it’s not true that “the data suggests that the vaccines are actually making the recipients worse once exposed to the alleged Covid-19 virus” as the article goes on to hypothesise.
There are genuine reasons why the trend may be as observed. There’s no evidence vaccines make infections worse.