Hello, everyone.
Now, I love a great infographic or graph as much as the next person.
They can easily explain complex ideas quickly.
But we need to be careful about the information we consume
and the context of the data.
Statistical analysis is difficult, even for experts.
Presenting the data as something that we can all understand is even harder.
Human brains are easily tricked.
Take this image, for example:
Would you believe me if I told you the inner circles are the same size?
Visually, we can be tricked.
The outer circles are giving us a context that make us think
the inner circle on the right is actually bigger than it is.
Graphs do this as well:
These two bar graphs have the same information,
but the y axis starts at a different level.
This makes the difference between the two values look bigger than it actually is.
Some people presenting data might do this intentionally to sway you
to their point of view.
Other representations of data might be legitimate but lack context.
Have you seen these two graphs on the Internet?
It makes it look like vaccinated people are more likely
to end up in the hospital than unvaccinated people.
This is far from the truth.
If you look at the proportion of vaccinated people versus the proportion
of unvaccinated people in the population, you are much
more likely to end up in hospital if you're unvaccinated.
This is because there are over 12 million vaccinated individuals in Ontario
compared to 2.5 million unvaccinated or partially unvaccinated individuals.
We call this the base rate fallacy.
It is the tendency to ignore base rate information such as population
and focus on specific information, such
as the COVID 19 hospital and ICU numbers.
And here's the same data we saw earlier, but corrected for population,
you were over three and a half times more likely to end up in the hospital.
If you are unvaccinated and almost seven times more likely
to end up in the ICU. It is also important to check the date of the data
you are seeing. Back in late December 2021 with the surge of the Omicron variant,
protection against infection declined rapidly in vaccinated individuals.
Boosters had not been widely
administered yet, and Omicron extremely contagious.
But protection against hospitalization and ICU admission remained high
After boosters were administered,
you see that the protection from infection went back up again.
With the relaxing of measures such as mask mandates and indoor capacity limits,
this has led to another increase in infection rates.
We know the vaccine protects us against severe outcomes from the disease,
but when measures
to reduce transmission are relaxed, it becomes easier to become infected.
Scientists are always looking at data.
They figure out risk, benefits and trends by looking at population data.
They will change their recommendations based off of what they have observed.
Their understanding of the science is evolving.
11.4 billion doses
of the vaccine against COVID-19 have been delivered worldwide.
Medical professionals have modified their recommendations
in how they administer the vaccines
based off of the delivery of these billions of doses.
The risk of blood clots associated with certain vaccines are known
and are monitored for. In populations that have a slightly higher
risk of rare side effects, such as myocarditis,
specific vaccines are preferred over others.
We also have decades of research on vaccines.
Yes, severe effects are possible, but
most of them occur within two months of vaccination.
This is not to say that long term effects can never happen, but there's very strong
evidence that there won't be long term effects from the vaccine.
Another important point is that adverse effects are more likely to occur
from viral infection.
Being vaccinated will help lower your risk of severe outcomes caused by infection.
We know you want to be informed with the best information.
It is important to know the source and the context of your data.
Look for credible experts
who can help you understand what it is that you are seeing.
People in public health are really doing their best to help everyone.
We are doing this because we care about your health and your safety.