Who Do You Vaccinate First?

One of the things I love about statistics is they are counter-intuitive.  People love stats when they confirm their gut feeling.  They hate them when they don’t.

John Cochrane was a professor at Chicago Booth. He’s at Stanford now.  I hope someday he goes back to Chicago.  Austan Goolsbee needs a counterweight but I digress.

He wrote a post about Covid.  It’s fantastic.  But one line that stood out is this one:

“But the hard fact is, give it to one millennial bar hopper and save the 25 people he would give it to.”

My gut feel was to innoculate old people first.  My reasoning was they were the most vulnerable to death.  I was wrong.

This idea smacks of putting armor on WW2 planes.

But the real reason against additional armor is that the holes precisely showed the strongest parts of the plane since the plane survived despite the damage it suffered.

To put it simply, the plane survived despite being hit on those specific parts, and that means that those badly-hit parts can withstand enemy fire. 

And boiled down to its essence: The holes revealed the parts that needed the least additional protection.

Hmmmm, survivor bias….the end result of Covid is death and the end result of not having a properly armored plane is death too….so the stakes are similar.

Going further with statistics, I saw this from Wirepoints.  Illinois has seen a spike in cases, but deaths are down.  Not just down. Statistically, you have a higher probability of dying from a gunshot in Illinois than you do of Covid.

The issue of course is that the highest percentage of people testing positive are age 20-49.  They have a 99.99% survival rate assuming no co-morbidities.  It’s not if you can run a marathon after Covid like you used to, it’s if you live or die right?

Cochrane says if the stats are right we are approaching herd immunity in the US as opposed to the herd mentality of politicians and bureaucrats that want to shut the country down again. Just a tip, it didn’t work last time and it won’t work this time.

Turns out the Pfizer vaccine should be given in mass quantities to people aged 18-50 first.  Old people are vulnerable for sure, but they are more likely to get it from a younger person spreading it around than from another older person.

Don’t you hate statistics?  But they can tell us so much.

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