Breakthrough Cases Surge: Vaccinated Individuals Accounted for 87% of Covid Hospitalizations Over the Past Week in Wales UK; 99% of All New Cases Were Under 60 Years Old

Important to note: 67% of people in the UK are vaccinated. 

So, if 87-99% of those hospitalized are among the vaccinated, that means that 1/3 of the people only account for 1-13% of the vaccinated. 

Or, if my math is correct, they are between 3.3 and 49 times less likely to be hospitalized by COVID.

THERE'S MORE.

CORRECTION? 

A math guy sent me the following (and it makes sense to me):

I would say I would think those numbers, as shown, don't indicate that (necessarily) and are probably consistent with the vax helping (a little, but maybe not hugely).

Think of it this way. What if there were no vax. Like imagine a parallel universe. Then some number of people would be in the hospital. Imagine all those people, and who they are. They will be very, very disproportionately old. A tiny number of children, true. Some number of 20-40 year olds. Maybe 5-10% will be 40-60. But mostly 60+. Agreed?

Ok. Now, how many of those people are actually vaccinated though, in our vaxxed universe. I'm pretty sure it's way, way more than the 67% that we see quoted as the national vax rate. Let's say it's 95%.

If so, then for 87% of hospitalized to be vaxxed actually would mean the vax has helped, not hurt. If the vax 'did nothing' then you'd expect 95% of hospitalized (in my example) to be vaxxed, but actually, it's only 87%. So, the vax helped a bit.

To say it more briefly - You have to account for who was (mostly) hospitalization-prone in the first place, and then figure out how many of them were vaxxed, to get a sense of whether 87% means a failure or a success for the vax.