Data recently released from Israel showed Israelis that were first to get vaccinated were catching COVID-19 despite being vaccinated. Israelis that had recently been vaccinated more recently were becoming infected at the same rate.
The study pushed for society to need or want booster shots as fear of waning immunity spread.
Now, the Biden Administration is suggesting anyone who has the vaccine should get the booster eight months after their last COVID vaccine dose.
The issue is that the data from the Israeli study may have been misleading, and the United States jumped the gun regarding the facts about booster shots.
So, has the “business” of COVID vaccines and their boosters, which has become costly, become intertwined with the greater good for the health of the people?
What was misleading about this study in Israeli were the other variables involved.
Simpson’s Paradox is when a conclusion that is false disappears when subgroups are examined, and this may have happened here.
The two groups of people studied weren’t just different because one group was vaccinated in winter and the other in spring. The earlier group was more educated, and they were more likely to travel and be the first group exposed to the Delta variant in comparison to the second group.
Because of this, their higher rate of infection could be due to their choices and actions, and not the vaccine waning.
Other experts say the statistics for positive COVID cases has remained similar among adults and children throughout the pandemic and the study on boosters needs to be better understood.
At the end of it all, business and politics has been greatly intertwined with the concept of vaccines and the health of the public, influencing much of the data available.
This is being seen as the United States pushes out booster shot timelines to vaccinated individuals while Simpson’s Paradox exists in the cited study working as a driving force behind boosters.
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