COVID vaccine boosters and deaths in the UK

A close look at the data on which this assertion is based reveals the fatal flaws in this claim.

The platform cites an analysis by the Office for National Statistics in determining the rate of COVID-related death among those that received at least 3 doses of COVID vaccine by Dec 31, 2021.

The first factor to note is the average age of the population analyzed. The study’s “population included adults aged between 18 and 100 years, with a mean of 60.8 years and a standard deviation of 16 years.” This tells us that the study didn’t analyze deaths in the general population (where the median age is 40.7 years). Instead, it was looking at a significantly older population (60.8 years), where many factors unrelated to vaccination could contribute to non-COVID vulnerability.

In addition, the same Office for National Statistics stated in 2022 that “People who had received at least a third dose, or booster, of a COVID-19 vaccine, have been less likely to die from COVID-19 since September 2021 compared with people who are unvaccinated.”

This claim attempts to imply vaccine-related risks by using a dataset that was heavily biased towards an older population more vulnerable to COVID, and that was compiled by an organization that publicly supported the life-saving value of COVID vaccination.