66 Billion COVID Shots?

Post #1061

Norman Fenton and Martin Neil recently reported on a pre-print study published by Ioannides et al. which indicated that 2.533 million lives got saved by COVID shots. To double-check the feasibility of such a number, I grabbed real-world COVID shot experience from Israel, to get the number-needed-to-treat (NNT) for COVID deaths.

As it turns out, if the Ioannides estimate had been the truth, then it means that there would have been 66 billion COVID shots given out (NNT at bottom right = 25,940):

[click to enlarge]

To get 2.533 million lives saved — when real-world data predicts that each single life saved would require injecting another 25,940 people — you need:

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2,533,000 * 25,940 = ________ shots

65,705,799,739 shots

(66 billion shots)

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That’s an average of more than 8 COVID shots for every man, woman, and child on Earth. The real-world evidence suggests that John Ioannides is wrong on this.

Reference

Larkin A, Waitzkin H, Fassler E, Nayar KR. How missing evidence-based medicine indicators can inform COVID-19 vaccine distribution policies: a scoping review and calculation of indicators from data in randomised controlled trials. BMJ Open. 2022 Dec 12;12(12):e063525. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-063525. PMID: 36523237; PMCID: PMC9748517. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9748517/