Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Helldozer5000 t1_j8fhz7e wrote

Reply to comment by gravitywind1012 in A study in the US has found, compared to unvaccinated people, protection from the risk of dying from COVID during the six-month omicron wave for folks who had two doses of an mRNA vaccine was 42% for 40- to 59-year-olds; 27% for 60- to 79-year-olds; and 46% for people 80 and older. by Wagamaga

I agree the sentence is confusing in a vacuum but it makes perfect sense in context. They're just saying that the people who chose to be vaccinated were already healthier in general so even if those healthy people didn't get vaccinated they still would've fared better than the people who ended up not getting the vaccination because those people were already in worse health.

Nothing super groundbreaking here, we already knew COVID was way worse for people with multiple comorbidities.

82

BenjaminHamnett t1_j8hz5pp wrote

People who care about their health are healthier than people who don’t take health seriously

25

dbx999 t1_j8irva0 wrote

Ok so the vaccinated group is biased towards healthier baseline individuals while unvaccinated group is biased for unhealthy lifestyle choices and a lack of self care including getting vaccinated?

12

mootmutemoat t1_j8oh2ei wrote

Why the other person snipped that line out is beyond me. Here is the whole paragraph and it is very clear that when you adjust for healthy living, the benefits of being vaccinated are even more obvious:

"Thus, the vaccinated would likely face lower COVID-19 risk even if not vaccinated. After controlling for these selection effects, we found substantial vaccine protection against death, but also increasing two-dose RMR over time, and large differences in RMR after two doses between younger (age 18–59) and older (age 60+) people. These findings imply that boosters are highly important in reducing mortality, especially for ages 60+."

4

BenjaminHamnett t1_j8l36z7 wrote

Over simplifying it, but yes that’s what I’m saying I think they are saying

2

sw33tr3l33s t1_j8hi7bd wrote

Maybe before becoming a scientists, they should focus on learning how to write proper sentences so people won't have to decipher them and wonder which of 5 possible meanings is the correct one. If one sentence requires 5 additional explanatory sentences to be understood, maybe we should focus on learning how to write that first sentence so that people don't require additional text to understand it. I swear these people are trying to figure out how to save the world but probably can't do their own laundry.

24

I-Way_Vagabond t1_j8hlvpr wrote

I think you’ve hit the nail right on the head with you comment.

The inability of public health leaders to explain these things in simple English has resulted in an information vacuum. As a result, people with their own agendas, often self-serving or even nefarious, have moved in to fill it.

The end result is confusion among the public and in many cases distrust and outright hostility towards public health authorities.

14

hallgod33 t1_j8i5t0t wrote

I've got a BSPH, and I'd say that is a huge barrier no one wants to tackle. Medical anthropology is designed to help reduce the communication barrier, but no one in practical medicine wants to listen. Even though we use the same English words, the grammar and sentence structure and etc make medical science a functionally different language.

2

DrThirdOpinion t1_j8huz99 wrote

The sentence wasn’t difficult to interpret at all.

Maybe before becoming scientists, people should learn how to read?

5

darquintan1 t1_j8jv4lz wrote

In this particular case, the sentence mentioned above is clearer when not taken by itself. In the paper, it is immediately preceded by "We found substantially lower non-COVID natural mortality risk for vaccinated than for unvaccinated persons." That statement clarifies why they suggest that because vaccinated individuals die less from all causes, they likely would die less from COVID too, regardless of the effectiveness of the vaccine itself.

5

jokester1801 t1_j8ljr22 wrote

You've hit the nail on the head but i think in a different way than you originally thought. The thing is, this paper isn't necessarily meant for the general public. One of the worst parts of the scientific literature in its present state is that it's written for other scientists, who already know the jargon and who are familiar with the field. Scientific writing just isn't meant to be easily digestible anymore, especially by people without training in it. This is a major flaw in scientific publishing though because it makes science much more inaccessible and creates the information vacuums that others have mentioned.

1

sw33tr3l33s t1_j8wz7g7 wrote

Everybody can overcomplicate things, a few can simplify.

1

Breezy207 t1_j8kqp4x wrote

It also makes sense that those who got the jabs were more concerned w distancing, masking and stayed away from public spaces…

2

advanced_approach t1_j8lkrxf wrote

Parents who read parenting books tend to be better parents because they're the type to read parenting books.

2