In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, government officials utilized ‘language games’ in order to hide the truth from the public.
A popular slogan was War is Peace, and it meant that the nation must remain at war — where defense contractors perpetually extract unearned profits from citizen tax dollars — in order to remain at peace.
In the modern world, it is 1984 all over again — and government officals are utilizing language games in order to hide the truth from the public.
An example is the following statement, taken from a technical report coming out of the UK:
The risk of being admitted to hospital for Omicron cases was lower for those who had received 2 doses of a vaccine (65% lower) compared to those who had not received any vaccination
To discover a risk, you count up the people admitted to hospital and then divide it by the total number of persons in the respective risk group (admitted + not admitted). Here is how language games were played in order to arrive at reduced risk for 2 doses versus zero doses:
To make it look like 2 doses are better than zero doses, they don’t start counting doses until there had been ample time (4 to 5 weeks) for the vaccines to cause breakthrough hospitalizations.
After enough time to get a lot of breakthrough hospitalizations from vaccine dosing, they then begin to count doses. But what would an honest analysis look like, one that stayed true to reality?
The proportion of all people in England, eligible or not, who have had at least one dose of vaccine is 67.9%, meaning that 32.1% have had zero doses:
If 2 doses of vaccine were better than zero doses in keeping you out of the hospital — as the first quote said — then the relative proportion of those with 2 doses admitted to hospital would be lower than the relative proportion of those with zero doses.
Here are the counts by vaccine status of those admitted to hospital for Omicron at the end of 2021:
Notice how the share of those admitted who had had zero doses was lower than their respective share of the population? Also make note that those with 2 doses make up 43.2% of the sample.
But to deal with the 18 people who remained unlinked, two sensitivity analyses were made showing, in both cases, that remaining unvaccinated was better at keeping you out of the hospital than getting 2 doses (the exact opposite of what the first quote at top said):
Observed hospitalizations by vaccine status run across the top. In one sensitivity analysis, the 18 unlinked were simply removed and the sample size was adjusted down due to that.
In that analysis, remaining unvaccinated was protective, because actual hospital admissions remained lower than expected hospital admissions at 95% confidence.
In the second analysis, at far right, a “worst-case” situation was analyzed:
What if ALL of the unlinked people had been unvaccinated, making their hospitalization numbers as bad as they could possible be?
When all unlinked were assigned as “unvaccinated”, getting zero doses of vaccine was STILL found to be protective in keeping you out of the hospital. Importantly, in both analyses, getting 2 doses of vaccine increased the risk for hospitalization — even at 95% confidence.
Reference
[25.3% of hospitalizations were unvaccinated] — SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England Technical briefing: Update on hospitalisation and vaccine effectiveness for Omicron VOC-21NOV-01 (B.1.1.529). 31 December 2021. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1045619/Technical-Briefing-31-Dec-2021-Omicron_severity_update.pdf
[32.1% of people were unvaccinated] — COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report. Week 50. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1041593/Vaccine-surveillance-report-week-50.pdf