As the world has seen multiple Covid waves in the last ~2 years and as vaccines have been rolled out to billions of people over the last 12 months, there is enough real-life data on vaccine effectiveness for laymen like us to understand.
Unlike earlier expectations, vaccines have not magically pushed out Covid and reverted the world to its pre-Mar’20 glory(little joys and luxuries of life that we didn’t value that much at that time.. like meeting near and dear ones, those hugs, office corner gossips, water parks, life without masks.. sigh!), but have they dramatically cut down on infections? or serious illness that needed hospitalizations? or mortality rates?
While the UK is in news on account of having the highest ever cases, but it also provides one of the strongest case (on a big data set of ~70 Million population) in favor of vaccine effectiveness
source/credits: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
The UK has gone very aggressive on the vaccination front with more than 2/3rd of the population being fully vaccinated (~45% of the target population has also taken a booster jab). Effects of this focus and early leads are clear in terms of lower hospitalizations and Covid related deaths.
Russia, on the other hand, seems to be in a mess. These charts are quite inexplicable:
source/credits: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
What’s happening in Russia?
The fully vaccinated population is at ~35%, and while it is about half the ratio vs UK, but is still significant.
And yet, New Covid cases are higher, absolute deaths/day are at the highest, and the most absurd data point is that even mortality rates(3.5%) are higher than pre-vaccination era(2.1%)??
Other than pointing to the fact that sub 50% vaccination levels hardly provide a deterrent for overall society, Only 2 explanations for this:
1. Russia’s early pandemic era data was of bad/questionable quality
2. Sputnik’s efficacy against newer mutations is questionable
What do you think?