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More than a year into the massive worldwide vaccination rollout, people still voice a wide range of opinions--from confidence that the benefits of the shots far outweigh their risks to an often intensely held belief that they offer few or no benefits and are extremely dangerous. Claims like those are widely disseminated via social media, and almost certainly have contributed to the relatively low vaccination and booster rates in the US.
Readers interested in what's known about the risks of the vaccines from several large-scale studies can find reports here, here and here.
In terms of benefits, official sources in the US and many other countries consistently assure the public that the vaccines significantly reduce the risk of contracting covid, more strongly reduce the risk of serious illness and hospitalization, and even more dramatically reduce the risk of death from covid. With the passage of time following people's vaccinations, and especially during the omicron surge, authorities have noted that the protection from full vaccination (usually defined as two mRNA doses or one J&J injection) has declined while protection following a booster remains high.
People who view the vaccines as ineffective and/or dangerous often flatly discount data about vaccine effectiveness, particularly those coming from the US CDC. At times such views are backed by specific arguments, such as that counting people as unvaccinated for the two weeks that follow vaccination conflates those who are and aren't vaccinated and so renders the data meaningless. At other times the CDC data are completely dismissed on the assumption or belief that they are essentially made up as part of some kind of overriding plot.
To clarify these issues, it might be useful to look at comparable data from other countries. Those who view the vaccines as ineffective often take a stab at this by citing a number of countries that have both high vaccination rates and high case, hospitalization or death rates. Unfortunately, such lists usually turn out to be the product of "cherry-picking"--that is one can easily find an equal number of countries with high vaccination rates and low case counts, low vaccination rates and low case counts or low vaccination rates and high case counts. Or covid-vaccine critics point to a few times and places where case numbers or case rates have been more or less equal between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups, while ignoring hospitalization and death rates, which consistently strongly favor vaccinated populations.
A more meaningful way that a number of countries use to assess vaccine effectiveness is simply to compare the rates of covid cases, hospitalizations or deaths per 100,000 people between unvaccinated and vaccinated cohorts, or between unvaccinated, vaccinated, and boosted subsets of their population.
In practice this turns out not to be a simple undertaking. Apart from the technical and organizational issues of gathering, collating and reporting on the underlying data, countries must decide on what categories to use and how to define them. For example, some countries count people as vaccinated as soon as they have received their first shot; others, including the US, count people as unvaccinated until two weeks after a first vaccination; while some count people as unvaccinated until three weeks after vaccination. Some countries provide more data (e.g. cases, hospitalizations and deaths by vaccination status over time) while some only provide data for one of those outcomes, or for specific age groups. In addition, the time periods for which data is available vary country by country.
While those differences may make it difficult to precisely equate the findings from various countries, we can certainly learn something from these additional, independent sources.
I've been able to find data on covid death rates by vaccination status for 11 countries plus the Spanish region of Catalonia. The numbers that follow represent the most recent data I could locate.
A good place to start is with Our World in Data. They provide graphs and numerical data of weekly death rates by vaccination status over time for three countries, Switzerland, the US and Chile, plus graphs and monthly data for England. The graphs are well worth viewing and studying.
1. Switzerland (includes Liechtenstein), population approximately 9 million:
Weekly covid deaths per 100,000 people, week ending January 22, 2022
Unvaccinated: 10.71
Fully vaccinated: 0.97
Fully vaccinated and boosted: 0.19
As of 1/22/2022, unvaccinated Swiss were 11 times more likely to die from covid than those who were fully vaccinated, and 56 times more likely to die from covid than their boosted peers.
Detailed category definitions can be found here.
2. United States, population approximately 331 million:
Weekly covid deaths per 100,000 people, week ending December 3, 2021
Unvaccinated: 9.74
Fully vaccinated: 0.71
Fully vaccinated and boosted: 0.10
Unvaccinated Americans were 14 times more likely to die from covid than those who were fully vaccinated, and 97 times more likely to die from covid than their boosted peers.
Detailed category definitions can be found here.
3. Chile, population approximately 19 million:
Weekly covid deaths per 100,000 people, week ending January 15, 2022
Not vaccinated or not fully vaccinated: 1.81
Fully vaccinated: 1.32
Fully vaccinated and boosted: 0.19
Chileans who were either not vaccinated or not fully vaccinated were 1.4 times more likely to die than those who were fully vaccinated, and 9.5 times more likely to die from covid than their boosted peers.
Detailed category definitions can be found here.
4. England, population approximately 57 million:
Monthly covid death rates per 100,000 people, month ending October 15, 2021
Unvaccinated: 23.8
Fully vaccinated: 5.20
English citizens who were not vaccinated were 4.6 times more likely to die than those who were fully vaccinated.
Detailed category definitions can be found here.
5. Malaysia, population approximately 33 million:
Weekly covid death rates per 100,000 people, week ending February 3, 2022
Unvaccinated: 5.4
Two doses: 0.5
Boosted: less than 0.1
Malaysians who were not vaccinated were 10.8 times more likely to die than those who were fully vaccinated, and more than 54 times more likely to die than those who were boosted.
Graph for the past six months and detailed category definitions can be found here.
6. Singapore, population approximately 6 million:
Daily covid deaths per 100,000 people, week ending January 27, 2022
Not vaccinated: 0.67
Fully vaccinated: 0.23
Boosted: 0.07
Residents of Singapore who were not vaccinated were 2.9 times more likely to die than those who were fully vaccinated, and 9.6 times more likely to die than those who were boosted.
Graphs and detailed category definitions can be found here.
7. France, population approximately 65 million:
Monthly covid deaths per 100,000 people, month ending December 1, 2021
Not vaccinated: 35.65
Partly vaccinated: 9.74
Fully vaccinated: 4.38
Residents of France who were not vaccinated were 3.7 times more likely to die than those who were partly vaccinated, and 8.1 times more likely to die than those who were fully vaccinated.
Graphs and detailed category definitions can be found here.
8. Italy, population approximately 60 million:
Monthly covid deaths per 100,000 people, month ending January 9, 2022
Not vaccinated: 78.6
Fully vaccinated: 9.5
Boosted: 3.2
Unvaccinated Italians were 8.3 times more likely to die than their fully vaccinated peers, and 24.6 times more likely to die than those who were fully vaccinated and boosted.
Detailed category definitions can be found here.
9. Canada, population approximately 38 million:
Cumulative covid deaths per 100,000 people, December 14, 2020 through January 22, 2022
Unvaccinated: 975
Not yet protected: 1530
Partly vaccinated: 1010
Fully vaccinated: 384
Unvaccinated Canadians were 2.54 times more likely to die than their fully vaccinated peers. Not-yet-protected Canadians were 3.98 times more likely to die than their fully vaccinated peers. Partly vaccinated Canadians were 2.63 times more likely to die than their fully vaccinated peers.
Detailed category definitions can be found here.
10. Catalonia, Spain, population approximately 8 million
Cumulative deaths per 100,000 people between December 23, 2021 and January 12, 2022
Ages 70 and above
Unvaccinated: 50
Fully vaccinated: 5
Unvaccinated Catalonians 70 years old or older were 10 times more likely to die than their fully vaccinated peers.
Ages 60 - 69
Unvaccinated: 15
Fully vaccinated: 5.5
Unvaccinated Catalonians in the 60 to 69 age group were 2.7 times more likely to die than their fully vaccinated peers.
More information can be found here and here.
11. Israel, population approximately 9 million:
Deaths per 100,000 people between August 10, 2021 and September 8, 2021
Under 60 years of age
Not vaccinated: 0.7
Fully vaccinated: 0.23
Boosted: 0.26
Unvaccinated Israelis under the age of 60 were 3 times more likely to die than their fully vaccinated peers, and 2.7 times more likely to die than those who were fully vaccinated and boosted.
60 years of age or older
Not vaccinated: 161.5
Vaccinated: 51.71
Boosted: 10.06
Unvaccinated Israelis 60 years old or older were 3.1 times more likely to die than their fully vaccinated peers, and 16 times more likely to die than those who were fully vaccinated and boosted.
More information can be found here and here.
A few take-aways:
Data detailing death rates by vaccination status were found for 11 countries or regions with a total population of 637 million people.
Despite different populations, methodologies, category definitions and time spans, the data consistently show that unvaccinated people are significantly more likely to die from covid than their vaccinated peers and are at at even higher risk when compared to fully vaccinated and boosted peers.
The risk ratios comparing covid death rates among unvaccinated vs. fully vaccinated people ranged from 1.4 (Chile) to 14 (US) with a median value of 4.6.
The risk ratios comparing covid death rates among unvaccinated vs. vaccinated and boosted people ranged from 9.5 (Chile) to 97 (US) with a median value of 16. In other words, in all countries providing statistics on covid deaths by vaccination status, unvaccinated people died at 9.5 times the rate or more than their vaccinated and boosted peers.
In short, the most recent available data from 11 countries representing 637 million people consistently demonstrate that fully vaccinated people are significantly less likely to die from covid than their unvaccinated peers, and fully vaccinated and boosted people are many times less likely to die from covid than their unvaccinated peers.
Those who reflexively discount covid data from the US CDC may need to cast a wider net in order to ignore the data from at least 10 other countries.
