What is the number needed to vaccinate and why does it matter?

The UK government have finally done the only calculation that matters to patients regarding vaccination and the answer is not pretty.🧵

To understand the benefit of a drug, the simplest way to present the data is to tell you how many people need to be treated for one to have the desired outcome.

For the covid vaccines, for healthy people aged 40-49, for example, 932,500 people would need an autumn booster in order to prevent a single intensive care admission.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1131409/appen...

The chances of preventing an ICU admission were almost 1 in a million.

For the primary course in over 70 year olds "only" 2,500 needed to be vaccinated to prevent a single ICU admission.

Oddly data for older age groups is sparse in this table.

When discussing harms from a drug these are the terms used to label how frequently they occur.

Using these terms, the chance of a benefit from taking the drug in terms of an over 70 yr old avoiding ICU was *rare*.

The chance, even for the primary course, for anyone under 60 was *very rare*.

Critically, the number needed to harm from injection is considerably higher than the number needed to benefit.

One estimate, based only on a short period of follow up in the trials, was 1 in 800 who required hospitalisations.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X22010283

The UK gov have now said that for 12-15 yr olds, 162,600 would need to be injected to benefit, in terms of avoiding a single ICU admission.

In the meantime, the risk for young boys is at least 1 in 10,000 for myocarditis - just one adverse event.

www.hartgroup.org/is-myocarditis-risk-worse-after-vaccination-or-infection-or-both/

The risk benefit equation never stood up to scrutiny.

It is notable that these figures were discussed on 8th November.

Both @DrAseemMalhotra and @hartgroup_org had published the number needed to vaccinated in September.

Had no one in power asked that question before then?

insulinresistance.org/index.php/jir/article/view/71

www.hartgroup.org/number-needed-to-vaccinate/