Original article (in Croatian) was published on 03/11/2021
A particular type of deception has recently become popular among vaccination opponents. They use official statistics to falsely portray the vaccine as dangerous.
“The official public health data of Scotland for September and the beginning of October 2021 suggest a severe winter for vaccinated people” – this is the title of the text published by the anti-vaccine websites Provjeri.hr and iVijesti.hr.
The following incorrect statement is made in this text:
“This not only proves that Covid-19 vaccines do not work, but also suggests that they actually worsen the condition”.
According to the author of the text, signed under the pseudonym Slobodni Promatrac (Free Observer), such a conclusion stems from the official data of the Scottish Public Health Institute, i.e., the report available at this link.
The report, titled “Statistical Report on Covid-19”, was published on October 13 this year. It is a weekly report published by the Scottish Institute of Public Health.
Faktograf’s regular readers are probably already guessing that we will evaluate another case of manipulating official statistics from a country with a high percentage of vaccinated population. Recently, such topics have been very popular among Internet disinformers (1, 2, 3, 4).
Manipulation of statistics
However, websites Provjeri.hr and iVijesti.hr selectively extract only those figures from the report that correspond to their construct.
They show, for example, only the number of hospitalizations in the age group older than 60. In this age group, there were significantly more hospitalizations among the vaccinated than among the unvaccinated population in the observed period. This does not apply to younger age groups.
However, it is important to look at these figures in the proper context. The reason why the number of hospitalizations and deaths among vaccinated people is increasing in Scotland, as in all other high-vaccination countries, is very simple – there are more vaccinated than unvaccinated.
According to data from October 1, which was also reported by the BBC, Scotland has vaccinated almost 85 percent of the population. The highest vaccination rate is among the elderly. Among the Scottish population over the age of 60, the vaccination rate is close to one hundred percent. Vaccination in the age group of 50 to 59 years is higher than 90 percent.
In a population with such a high percentage of vaccinated, it is expected that more patients will be among the vaccinated than among the unvaccinated (because, again, there are more vaccinated than unvaccinated). However, this does not mean that the vaccine is ineffective; no vaccine provides 100 percent protection, i.e., there is the so-called virus breakthrough in some vaccinated.
Despite the expected infections among the vaccinated, statistics clearly show that the vaccine provides strong protection against hospitalization and death. Therefore, in countries with high vaccination coverage, this year’s Covid-19 autumn wave is significantly weaker than last year, when there were no vaccines.
This also applies to Scotland, and it is evident from the very first glance at a chart available on the official website of the British government:
RTL journalist is manipulating the numbers
RTL journalist Boris Misevic used an almost identical manipulation of statistical data from Scotland on his Facebook profile. Here is what he posted on Facebook on October 20:
Misevic has also taken this information from the Scottish Public Health Institute report, specifically from a report published on October 20. He erroneously took some figures from the report (e.g., the ratio of unvaccinated and vaccinated hospitalized people older than 60 in the week from 2 to 8 October is not 27:291 but 29:297, and there are more such errors in Misevic’s short post).
Misevic, just like the anti-vaccine disinformers from Provjeri.hr and iVijesti.hr, does not consider the relevant context, i.e., the fact that the number of unvaccinated people in Scotland is small even in the entire population, let alone among those over 60.
A source not to be trusted
Finally, it is necessary to look at the source through which such interpretations of official Scottish statistics reached the Croatian public. At the bottom of its text, Provjeri.hr cites the British website The Expose (formerly called The Daily Expose) as a source of information.
According to the Media Bias / Fact Check database, it is a website that frequently publishes conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific claims. Foreign fact-checkers have repeatedly dealt with their publications. The Health Feedback website wrote in October about their statistical manipulations, based on which they claim that vaccines endanger the Scottish population.
Fact-checking website Logically has repeatedly dealt with misinformation published by The Expose, a website founded in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic to place incorrect claims in the public space. They also conducted an investigation in which they found that British citizen Jonathan Allen-Walker was behind the website.