Conspiracy theories about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of vaccination are currently circulating on the Internet, and not only there. Instead of censoring the many fake news, it makes more sense to counter them with proven data and facts. Such facts could then also be evaluated by independent scientists. But here we have come to a core problem: The official figures from the Ministry of Health are largely inadequate here.
To this day, the case numbers from the hospitals are provided without disclosure of the respective vaccination status. The effectiveness of the vaccination with regard to more severe diseases cannot be assessed by statisticians. The renowned Austrian scientist Erich Neuwirth broke the collar in August: “Which data is publicly available – and in which form – is an imposition for citizens who want to understand and understand the decision-making process of politics.”
In the federal states, one does not seem to be aware of the problem to this day, because it is from there that the hospital reports come. But the Ministry of Health does not seem to be aware of the problem either: “In truth, I can only deal with an epidemic like a hazy one in retrospect,” said Clemens M. Auer, the special health officer there, at the beginning of the corona pandemic. “In retrospect, all data will be available or all data will also be available.” Auer caused a shake of the head: Accordingly, Auer is not interested in ongoing evaluations by researchers. Neither the current nor the previous Minister of Health have ever distanced themselves from these statements.
Even for Covid cases, there are three different sources in Austria that provide different data: The EMS epidemiological reporting system of the Ministry of Health, the figures announced by the Ministry of the Interior – based on the reports from the federal states from the morning conference of the crisis team – and the figures from the agency for health and food security, Ages for short (it records the data from the EMS differently). The reliability and meaningfulness of the figures should also – as one hears – diverge greatly depending on the federal state. Austria’s federalism and health system seem … to be in need of improvement.
Some statisticians are also skeptical about the vaccination numbers of the Ages. As far as the evaluations presented are concerned, Neuwirth said in August: “I don’t want to have to rely on any institution there at some point coming up with the idea of evaluating it accordingly. I want this data daily so that I can evaluate it myself. “
It would be helpful if the Ministry of Health made everything that has so far been considered secure, at least transparently, and made publicly available. In Germany, for example, a recent report from the Robert Koch Institute listed exactly how many of those who were fully vaccinated had been infected with the virus since the beginning of the year. Result: There were 145,185 vaccination breakthroughs in 55,566,259 fully vaccinated people. This corresponds to 0.26 percent of the total of those vaccinated. It was also broken down which vaccines the Covid patients had vaccinated with. And: The proportion of people vaccinated was not only announced for infections, but also for hospitalizations, intensive care patients and deaths, and that also in all age groups.
The fact that 45 percent of the 60+ generation (see graphic above) are fully vaccinated in hospitals briefly caused irritation. Those who believe the vaccination has little or no effectiveness saw themselves confirmed. However, the number is far less high when you consider the high vaccination rate of 91 percent in this age group.
