The Daily Signal - Data Shows COVID-19 Vaccines Are Safe, Effective, Says Researcher

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

Mixed messages about COVID-19 from the media, politicians, and public heath officials have left many Americans questioning what information they can trust.  Across the nation, some political leaders and health experts continue to push for individuals to be vaccinated. We now know, however, that those who are vaccinated still may be infected by the coronavirus and contract COVID-19, although they remain far less likely to be hospitalized or die than those who are unvaccinated and contract COVID-19. Vaccination data tells a positive story and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should relay all the facts to Americans, says Kevin Dayaratna, who is principal statistician, data scientist, and research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, parent organization of The Daily Signal. “The safety and the efficacy of the vaccines was tested last year. And we are continuing to see data and there are overall overwhelmingly no serious effects,” he says. Dayaratna and Norbert Michel, director of Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis, just released a new report examining the effectiveness of the vaccines against the delta variant. The report, “A Statistical Analysis of COVID-19 Breakthrough Infections and Deaths,” dives deep into the data and facts about the spread of the virus and the efficacy of the vaccines.  Dayaratna joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain what you need to know.  We also cover these stories: President Joe Biden defended his handling of Afghanistan in a new interview. Dozens of senators are calling on the Biden administration to move faster to evacuate Special Immigrant Visa holders from Afghanistan. The Department of Education announced it was cancelling student loans for over 300,000 disabled Americans. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, August 20th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Doug Blair. As the Delta variant of the coronavirus continues to spread across the country, mixed messages from the media, political leaders, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have left many Americans questioning what information they can trust. Kevin Dyeratna, a Heritage Foundation data scientist,

says vaccine data is telling a positive story about our health trajectory. He joins the Daily Signal podcast to explain what you need to know about breakthrough infections and the safety of the vaccine. And don't forget, if you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and please encourage others to subscribe. Now on to today's top news. President Biden defended his handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal

in an interview with ABC News's George Stephanopoulos that aired Thursday. Here's what Biden had to say about the intelligence he had prior to the withdrawal via ABC. Back in July, you said a Taliban takeover was highly unlikely. Was the intelligence wrong or did you downplay it? There was no consensus. You go back and look at the intelligence reports. They said that it was more likely to be sometime by the end of the year. You didn't put a timeline out when you said it was highly unlikely.

You just said flat out, it's highly unlikely the Taliban would take over. Yeah. Well, the question was whether or not it... The idea that the Taliban would take over was premised on the notion that somehow the 300,000 troops we had trained and equipped was going to just collapse. They were going to give up. I don't think anybody anticipated that.

Senator McConnell said it was predictable the Taliban was going to take over. Well, by the end of the year, said that that was a real possibility. But no one said it was going to take over then when it was being asked. When you look at what's happened over the last week, was it a failure of intelligence, planning,

execution, or judgment? Look, I don't think it was a failure. Look, it was a simple choice. asked about whether military leadership had urged him to leave 2,500 troops in place, which was reported by the Wall Street Journal, Biden pushed back. But your top military advisors weren't against withdrawing on this timeline. They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops. No, they didn't. It was split. That wasn't true. That wasn't true.

They didn't tell you that they wanted troops to stay? No, not in terms of whether we were going to get out in a time frame, all troops. They didn't argue against that. So no one told your military advisors to not tell you, no, we should just keep 2,500 troops. It's been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that. No, no one said that to me.

Then I can recall. Biden also defended his administration's actions regarding helping Americans and Afghanis who had helped the U.S. get out of Afghanistan. Now, granted, it took two days to take control of the airport. We have control of the airport now. Still a lot of pandemonium outside the airport. Well, there is, but look, but no one's being killed right now. God, forgive me if I'm wrong about that, but no one's being killed right now. People are, we got 1,000 somewhere, 1,200 out yesterday, a couple thousand a day, and it's increasing.

We're going to get those people out. A bipartisan group of more than 50 senators called on President Biden to move faster on the evacuation process for special immigrant visa holders in Afghanistan, as the Taliban solidify their rule over the country. In a Wednesday letter, the group led by New Hampshire Democrat Gene Shaheen and Iowa Republican Joni Ernst wrote, The Taliban's rapid ascendancy across Afghanistan and takeover of Kabul should not cause us to break our promise to the Afghans who helped us operate over the past 20 years and are counting on us for assistance. On July 17th, American forces began Operation Allies Refuge, a program designed to expedite evacuation efforts for Afghan citizens. who supported America's efforts in the country as translators or local guides.

Taliban forces have specifically targeted these Afghans as they consolidate power. The Department of Education is eliminating student debt, totaling $5.8 billion for Americans with serious disabilities. According to a press release from the department, this will affect 323,000 Americans and will be implemented by comparing student loan records with Social Security Administration data. Today's action removes a major barrier that prevented far too many borrowers with disabilities from receiving the total and permanent disability discharges they are entitled to under the law, says U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in a statement. Next up, we have Virginia Allen's conversation with Heritage Foundation's Kevin Dayaratna

about what his research found regarding the COVID-19 vaccine's effectiveness. Do you have an interest in public policy? Do you want to hear lectures from some of the biggest names in American politics? The Heritage Foundation hosts webinars called Heritage Events Live. These events are free and open to the public. To find the latest heritage events and to register, visit heritage.org slash events. I am so pleased to be joined by Kevin Day Aratna, a principal statistician, data scientist, and research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Kevin, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, hiring Virginia.

Kevin, you've just released a new report titled a statistical analysis of COVID-19, breakthrough infections and deaths. And this report, it really centers around the question, does the vaccine work? And even more specifically, does it work against the Delta variant? So, Kevin, share with us a little bit about the report and what you found. Absolutely, Virginia. Yeah, Thanks for asking this very important question. So last month in Barnes Table County, Massachusetts, there were a variety of festivities going on, and the CDC published a morbidity and mortality weekly report discussing COVID proliferation at these festivities.

And what they found was, and the paper was published toward the end of last month, they found that over three quarters of the cases reported were amongst fully vaccinated people. And not surprisingly, this permeated the news media. This was sensationalized. You had news headlines saying 74% of COVID cases in Barnes-Sable County, Massachusetts, were amongst the fully vaccinated. Things like that, which we cite in our report. And I just felt it incumbent upon ourselves to look at this data more carefully and see exactly what was going on.

And we found that the CDC study was critically flawed and that this is really a gross misrepresentation. of what had happened over there. So talk a little bit more about that. I mean, why is that a gross representation? Because I've also heard those statistics of people saying, you know, why should I get the vaccine? Because so many people that are vaccinated are still getting sick. Well, we talk about this in the study,

but those 74% of cases that were amongst a fully vaccinated in Barnes-Sable County, Massachusetts, that were retract. Firstly, this is not a representative sample. the American population. Secondly, the CDC study failed to look at the question with respect to everybody who attended the festivities. And we decided to examine this question ourselves, and we found that assuming 60,000 people had attended the festivities, which is in line with what other people have suggested, there's a number of people who attended, using a variety

of vaccination rates amongst all the attendees ranging from 60% all the way up to above 95%. We find that less than 2% of the fully vaccinated ended up with COVID. So that really is the truth there in terms of the assumptions that we made. And obviously you don't know about all the cases because not everybody is getting tested, but based on the available data, we found that only 2% of the attendees who contracted COVID were fully vaccinated. So that is really the story here. And if anything, that's actually good news that it shows that the vaccine works. And depending on the assumptions made, the unvaccinated population incurs significantly higher percentages of contraction because they're obviously not nearly as well protected as the vaccinated.

So, Kevin, how likely are those who have had the vaccine to get seriously sick or die from COVID-19 versus those who are, are not vaccinated? What is, what did you discover in the data? Great question, Virginia. So based on data reported by the CDC, obviously there is no vaccine that provides 100% protection against, you know, pretty much anything. But with this vaccine, you, again, although you don't have 100% protection against infection, you do have pretty darn good protection against severe infection and death. The chances of dying of COVID or being hospitalized of COVID are very slim. Specifically, there were 7,101 hospitalizations and 1,507 deaths reported by the CDC. And this really represents about 0.005% of the fully vaccinated. So again, the chances of something catastrophic happening,

they're non-zero, but they are slim to none. Okay. And so is that pretty normal? normal statistics for a vaccine that you would see, you know, even those that receive a vaccine are still at some risk of contracting a sickdose or a virus. Like I said, you know, it's rare to have vaccines that really have 100% efficacy. For example, the chickenpox vaccine, the meningitis vaccine and others, they have pretty good efficacy, but it's, you know, above 85 to 90%. But nothing is perfect. point of these vaccines is really to prevent against, you know, severe infection, hospitalization,

and death. And the COVID vaccine definitely does protect against that. So you obviously mentioned the CDC research and guidelines and report. CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, announced new COVID guidelines at the end of July and included in those guidelines was that everyone, including vaccinated people, should be wearing masks. She essentially alleged that the vaccine offers little protection against the Delta variant. You disagree with Director Wollenski. Why? Yes, my colleague, Norbert Michelle and I fundamentally disagree.

So we not only co-authored this report, but we also co-authored a report on mask mandates in Kansas earlier in the year, where the state of Kansas had a specific policy that enabled us to really look at basically what was a controlled experiment, where the governor signed an executive order that enabled some counties to sign on to a mask mandate and others did not. So you could really examine case proliferation amongst the counties that had mask mandates and those that did not. And what we noticed there was that there was a slight difference amongst the counties that had mask mandates versus those that did not. But those differences firstly were not statistically significant.

And secondly, in both the mask-mandated counties and the non-mandated counties, cases increased. and there was really no meaningful impact on deaths at all. So when you look at this, it really suggests that mask mandates don't really affect COVID proliferation, but the bottom line is, as we looked at in this recent report, the vaccine does. Hmm, hmm. Well, and so much of that, you know, comes down to the messaging and what people are hearing, and you point out in the report that public health officials, news outlets, that they've just done a poor job of communicating the difference between,

the risk of infection and the risk of serious illness and death. Why do you think this is and why is it so important to really be differentiating between those who test positive for COVID-19 and then those who actually get very, very ill? Yes, quite frankly, Virginia, this is due to sensationalist reporting by the news media because they want to have articles that are widely read and gain traction by publishing controversial headlines saying things along the lines of 74% of those who attended the barnsable festivities were fully vaccinated. It is quite frankly irresponsible reporting because if anything, this type of thing is only going to increase vaccine hesitancy. So it is fundamentally important that people, particularly the news media, differentiate between cases severe infection and

death regarding COVID. And that you clearly do see the distinction amongst the fully vaccinated. Now, obviously, like I said, there is nothing that is going to prevent, you know, hospitalization or death 100%, but the chances of that happening in this case are basically slim to none. Yeah. Well, and you mentioned vaccine hesitancy. You know, obviously the vaccine has become a really large national debate, and a lot of people are hesitant to get the vaccine. And yet we continue to see a major push by some to get every. everyone vaccinated. But Kevin, if the data is accurate, then those who are vaccinated will be largely safe. And those who are unvaccinated, they're making that personal choice to take that risk. So especially, you know, as conservatives, if we believe in personal freedom and autonomy, then why should anyone be vaccinated who's hesitant to get the shot? Great question, Virginia. So yes, in this country, people obviously do have, you know,

a significant amount of liberty to do whatever they want. I was speaking with Jeff Singer of the Cato Institute. He's a senior fellow there, and he's also a practicing surgeon. And he tells patients that are vaccine hesitant, obviously you don't have to get the vaccine, but it is perfectly safe. And if you end up on the ventilator, it's on you. So it is important to really consider the benefits of getting vaccinated, and that is to prevent severe infection and death. And it's sad that that there are many people who are vaccine hesitant that are now ending up in the hospital when it could have easily been prevented. Well, and obviously one of the biggest reasons why people are hesitant is for health and safety concerns. And, you know, it seems impossible to know the long-term

effects of a vaccine until it's been, well, a long time. So how confident do you think we can really be that the vaccine is actually safe? And we won't find out, you know, 10 years down the road that it's causing people health complications. So, Virginia, that's a very good question. But the thing is, you know, medications are different from vaccines. Medications, people, some may take, especially with chronic conditions for an extended period of time. But with vaccines, what has been noted in the past is that, yes, some vaccines do indeed

have side effects and, you know, their safety concerns with some of them, but pretty much always, in fact, always as far as I know, that the issues have manifested themselves within a few weeks of the vaccine. These vaccines have not developed issues, say years down the line. You noticed the issues early on. For example, polio in 1955 was given and in, well, it's still given, obviously, but that vaccine had some cases in 1 in 2.4 million recipients that caused paralysis. But this occurred between one and four weeks after the vaccination. Now, none of the COVID vaccines, unlike the polio vaccine actually use a live form of the virus. So there really is nothing to worry about long-term-wise here.

The safety and the efficacy of the vaccines was tested last year, and we are continuing to see data, and there are, overall, overwhelmingly no serious effects. There are some. I mean, there was some drama with the Johnson and Johnson vaccine a couple of weeks ago, but those concerns were looked at, And now I think all these vaccines are overwhelmingly deemed to be safe. All right, Kevin, let's dive back into the report for just a moment. You know, as you did research on the vaccine and these breakthrough cases and people who are vaccinated,

was there anything that you discovered that you found really particularly fascinating or that surprised you? Yeah. So toward the end of the study, after looking at the Barnstable report and discussing why it was flawed, and what the issues were with it, we compare the causes of death of COVID to other causes of death. And what we found was that amongst the fully vaccinated, you have a 1 in 31,000 chance of being hospitalized and 1 in 137,000 chance of dying. Now, obviously, these odds are not nothing, because they're non-zero. But compared to other things, there are many other things that are more likely to kill you,

including dying choking on food, dying the electrocution, or dying from bee stings. And the chances of death of COVID-19 being fully vaccinated based on the currently available data are pretty comparable to dying getting struck by lightning. Now, so that was really, you know, what was most interesting to me looking at those statistics. And what we found was that still for the unvaccinated, though, COVID-19 can still be very dangerous, especially for the elderly. And my calculations show that amongst the elderly, for example, above the age of 65, The odds of dying of COVID upon contracting the virus are around 1 in 8.

And across all ages, it's around 1 in 54. So this is still a dangerous virus for the unvaccinated. And it's important that people who are vaccine hesitant really think about this quite a bit. So, Kevin, what should the CDC be communicating to the American people right now? I mean, what is the best path forward to both respect the freedom of the American people, but also limit the spread of COVID-19? Great question, Virginia. The CDC is really, you know, basically sending mixed signals about the safety of vaccines, especially to the vaccine hesitant, and the efficacy of the vaccines to the vaccine hesitant, because they are easily telling people that regardless of your vaccination status, you need to continue to wear a mask in public. That is the implication of the recent MMWR report. And this is really, this really runs the risk of increasing vaccine hesitance. So what the CDC really should be doing should be discussing how the vaccine is safe and efficacious

and encouraging people to get vaccinated rather than telling everybody regardless of vaccination status to continue to wear masks. Thank you so much, Kevin. Kevin Dyeratna, a principal statistician, data scientist and research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. If you want to read Kevin's full report, you can visit the Heritage Foundation website. The report again is titled A Statistical Analysis of COVID-19, Breakthroughing, infections and deaths. Kevin, thank you so much for your time today. Thanks to having me, Virginia. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeart Radio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, and please encourage

others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you all Monday. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Virginia Allen and Kate Trinko, sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, please visitdailySignal.com.