No fancy statistics: a simple plot of vaccination rate against Covid death rate for all countries in the world
Using the "Our Word in Data" website we have extracted the latest snapshot for each country of total vaccinations per hundred people and total 'covid deaths' per million. The full data by country - in order of vaccinations - is listed at the bottom of this page (all numbers rounded to 0 decimal places).
We use inverted commas for 'covid deaths' because (as readers of this blog will know) this is a very vague metric and we have no confidence that it is accurate or consistently collected for any country in the world. If the data were accurate, and if the vaccines worked as claimed, then what we should see when we plot the vaccinations against deaths is something like this:
i.e. the more vaccinations in a country the fewer deaths.
Obviously there are multiple confounding factors (other than inconsistent reporting) that can impact on the relationship (timing when covid first hit, average population age, population density, geographial location, access to healthcare, etc) not to mention all the missing factors previously discussed**. Ideally the deaths should also be restricted to post-vaccination roll out (difficult to do that using the Our World in Data spreadsheet). But it is still surprising that the following is the actual plot:
All pretty random*** but note the high number of low vaccination, low covid death countries (mainly in Africa) as shown in this map:
But what it really shows more than anything is how poor all the 'official' covid data are (look at the laughable China data) and, because of the universally poor data, how little evidence there is of either the severity of Covid or the effectiveness of any covid interventions.
**As we have been saying since March 2020 all of the 'official' Covid data are essentially useless because they do not provide us with the necessary information to take account of all of the causal explanations for what is observed:
Country total vaccinations per hundred total deaths per million Gibraltar 322 2968 Cuba 268 735 Chile 230 2035 United Arab Emirates 224 216 Iceland 209 108 Denmark 209 560 Isle of Man 208 784 Malta 208 922 South Korea 202 111 Uruguay 200 1771 China 197 3 Cayman Islands 196 165 Faeroe Islands 196 285 United Kingdom 195 2181 Ireland 194 1186 Portugal 191 1864 Belgium 186 2434 Seychelles 185 1324 Bahrain 185 797 Spain 184 1909 Italy 184 2278 France 183 1830 Austria 182 1520 Bermuda 182 1707 Canada 181 798 Israel 180 887 Cambodia 180 178 Brunei 179 222 Germany 178 1336 Norway 178 239 Qatar 178 211 Malaysia 176 961 Singapore 175 149 Finland 175 282 Sweden 173 1507 Cyprus 172 698 Argentina 168 2569 Greece 167 2005 Australia 165 88 Luxembourg 165 1429 Liechtenstein 165 1804 Mongolia 161 619 Kuwait 160 570 Mauritius 160 188 New Zealand 160 10 San Marino 159 2793 Japan 158 146 Switzerland 158 1397 Sri Lanka 158 698 Hungary 156 3934 Netherlands 155 1193 Brazil 155 2894 Turkey 155 968 Lithuania 154 2752 United States 153 2476 Aruba 153 1689 Ecuador 153 1881 Vietnam 151 322 Costa Rica 151 1429 Andorra 150 1719 Bhutan 148 4 Peru 148 6071 Thailand 147 309 El Salvador 147 585 Taiwan 146 36 Maldives 145 482 Saudi Arabia 144 251 Czechia 144 3374 Turks and Caicos Islands 144 586 Fiji 140 772 Slovenia 140 2693 Greenland 138 18 Iran 137 1545 Latvia 137 2443 Morocco 135 397 Panama 135 1696 Anguilla 134 264 Curacao 132 1147 Hong Kong 132 28 Dominican Republic 129 388 Monaco 126 835 Colombia 126 2533 Poland 124 2581 New Caledonia 123 971 Antigua and Barbuda 123 1195 Serbia 120 1840 British Virgin Islands 118 1282 French Polynesia 116 2251 Nicaragua 116 32 Croatia 116 3072 Oman 116 787 Uzbekistan 115 44 Estonia 115 1458 Mexico 114 2299 Slovakia 112 3046 Azerbaijan 111 818 Wallis and Futuna 108 631 Belize 105 1462 Venezuela 105 183 India 104 346 Barbados 104 904 Saint Kitts and Nevis 102 523 Cape Verde 102 625 Tunisia 102 2141 Indonesia 101 521 Montenegro 101 3844 Russia 101 2080 Trinidad and Tobago 100 2054 Rwanda 99 102 Philippines 98 463 Guyana 97 1318 Honduras 95 1037 Paraguay 95 2301 Kosovo 94 1678 Kazakhstan 92 959 Botswana 92 1020 Timor 89 91 North Macedonia 84 3752 Romania 83 3072 Suriname 83 2009 Bolivia 82 1661 Belarus 82 570 Albania 81 1116 Jordan 80 1205 Bangladesh 80 169 Laos 79 19 Bahamas 76 1796 Nepal 74 390 Pakistan 70 128 Grenada 69 1770 Ukraine 65 2354 Lebanon 65 1350 Tajikistan 64 13 Palestine 63 932 Georgia 63 3457 Guatemala 62 883 Sao Tome and Principe 62 255 Montserrat 61 201 Comoros 59 170 Myanmar 58 350 Saint Lucia 57 1600 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 55 728 Armenia 55 2676 Bulgaria 54 4492 Egypt 51 207 Vanuatu 49 3 Zimbabwe 48 332 Bosnia and Herzegovina 48 3590 South Africa 46 1515 Mozambique 46 62 Moldova 44 2556 Jamaica 41 833 Libya 39 819 Iraq 34 586 Angola 34 52 Eswatini 34 1102 Kyrgyzstan 34 423 Lesotho 32 308 Equatorial Guinea 31 121 Namibia 29 1398 Algeria 28 139 Togo 28 29 Gabon 25 125 Ghana 24 40 Congo 23 63 Guinea 21 29 Uganda 21 69 Guinea-Bissau 21 74 Djibouti 20 189 Kenya 18 98 Cote d'Ivoire 18 26 Liberia 17 55 Central African Republic 16 21 Benin 14 13 Senegal 13 110 Afghanistan 13 183 Sudan 12 72 Sierra Leone 11 15 Gambia 11 138 Syria 10 156 Ethiopia 9 59 Somalia 9 81 Zambia 9 197 Malawi 9 120 Nigeria 7 14 Papua New Guinea 6 65 Mali 5 32 Burkina Faso 5 15 Tanzania 4 12 Niger 4 10 Cameroon 4 67 Madagascar 3 34 Yemen 3 64 South Sudan 2 12 Chad 2 11 Haiti 2 66 Burundi 0 3 Mozambique 0 22
***For those who place value in correlation coefficients for such relationships (we don't) there is a significant positive correlation of 0.31 between number of vaccines and number of deaths