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Levels of vaccination

August 28, 2021

Jane channelling 75%

Our government’s reluctance to set a vaccine target doesn’t sit well with me. The current mantra is to set targets for everything, so that you can see if you have achieved them or not and to encourage people to reach them. Whether one should have a target for everything is questionable, but whether one should identify targets for really important things like vaccination seems obvious.

There are a range of factors to consider when setting targets, targets need to be:

  • Achievable – there is no point in having a target that everyone thinks is stupid from the outset.
  • Measurable – no point having a target if you can’t know if you have reached it.
  • Communicated – no point in having a target no one knows about, or where they don’t know progress towards the target.
  • Timebound – there is generally no point in having a target with infinite time in which to achieve it, this removes incentives to act.

It is also important that targets don’t have perverse incentives – like when you incentivise planting a billion trees with a large government subsidy, and then find that farmland is turning into permanent forest, although you need food more than trees, or that lots of flammable trees are being planted in a time when wildfires are more likely because of climate change.

I get the impression that our government is currently so unsure of what vaccination target they want to reach, that they don’t want to set one. Is it that they don’t want to aim too low, tell people ‘we made it’ and then find out that level of vaccination is not enough to slow the tide of COVID-19? Or is it that they are scared of aiming too high and failing? Other governments are starting to make statements about sufficient levels of vaccination. A number currently being commonly bandied around is 72% of the total population which roughly equates to 90% of adults (people aged 16 and over), although that differs by country as different countries have different proportions of children in their populations.

So, I thought I would take a look at vaccine leaderboards and see what the new COVIDF1-9 case rates are for countries as one goes down the vaccinations ranks (looking at ourworldindata daily new case graphs ). If there is a critical level of vaccination, one would think it might show up in terms of control of COVID-19.

Here is what I found – if one ranks countries according to their level of full vaccination , one has to get to number 9 to find a country where the numbers of new cases are increasing (Belgium), and number 11 (Canada) to find a place where they are increasing steeply. Number 8 (Denmark) has 71% of the country fully vaccinated. I wonder if this is a coincidence, or if the people advising governments on vaccination targets are going through a very similar (but probably more sophisticated) process.

Country Population Partially vaccinated Fully vaccinated Trend in new cases
Malta 793,866 82% 82% Down
Singapore 8,796,076 80% 76% Flat
U.A.E. 17,909,062 87% 76% Down
Iceland 525,123 77% 73% Down steeply
Portugal 14,410,957 82% 72% Flat
Qatar 4,333,672 81% 72% Flat
Uruguay 5,434,944 77% 72% Flat
Denmark 8,451,189 75% 71% Flat
Belgium 16,040,343 73% 70% Up slightly
Chile 28,312,036 76% 70% Down
Spain 64,714,501 77% 68% Down steeply
Canada 52,855,509 74% 67% Up steeply
Ireland 6,705,120 74% 67% Flat
Bahrain 2,470,771 69% 66% Flat
Aruba 147,080 74% 65% Down steeply
Mongolia 4,311,222 69% 64% Up steeply
U.K. 90,095,045 72% 63% Up
Bhutan 1,036,834 74% 62% Flat
Netherlands 21,881,815 69% 62% Flat
Germany 100,926,849 65% 60% Up steeply
Israel 13,279,916 66% 60% Up steeply
Italy 76,493,946 70% 60% Flat
Austria 10,396,523 62% 58% Up
France 85,493,287 71% 58% Down
Luxembourg 757,407 65% 57% Flat
Maldives 676,694 71% 57% Flat
Hungary 10,555,046 59% 56% Flat
Mainland China 2,003,914,000 56% Flat
Mauritius 1,496,498 63% 56% Up steeply
Curaçao 181,226 61% 54% Down slightly
Czech Republic 11,372,245 55% 53% Flat
Greece 11,278,583 56% 53% Up slightly
Lithuania 3,117,351 59% 53% Flat
Sweden 12,282,731 66% 53% Up slightly
Norway 6,618,131 71% 52% Up steeply
United States 365,767,674 61% 52% Up steeply
Switzerland 9,479,410 57% 51% Up slightly
Cambodia 17,953,133 61% 49% Down
Poland 36,053,472 50% 49% Flat
Finland 6,641,094 72% 48% Down steeply
Hong Kong 7,287,817 54% 44% Flat
Japan 124,534,483 55% 44% Up steeply
Malaysia 33,044,202 59% 44% Up
Cyprus 1,085,014 48% 43% Down
Dominican Rep. 10,978,304 54% 43% Flat
Ecuador 17,513,775 57% 43% Flat
Slovenia 1,877,990 47% 43% Up
Turkey 91,747,545 57% 43% Up
Macau 582,592 51% 42% Flat
Estonia 1,252,180 54% 40% Up
Saudi Arabia 35,523,978 64% 40% Flat
Serbia 5,779,396 42% 40% Up steeply

There are all sorts of reasons my basic analysis could be flawed. For example, I don’t know:

  • How uniform vaccination is in each country – uniformity will reduce spread.
  • What degree of restrictions each country has – restrictions will also reduce spread.
  • Numbers of people who have immunity conferred as a result of getting COVID-19.
  • When the vaccinations were administered – there is growing evidence that vaccine efficacy wanes substantially by around 6 months after administration.

However, if the New Zealand government would like my advice, I would be choosing a 75% of total population vaccination rate as a goal. We have approximately 20% of our population under 12, who can’t yet be vaccinated. So let’s set an optimistic, but not unachievable target of vaccinating 94% of those who can be vaccinated by the end 2021. Please Jacinda? Clarity and kindness are closely aligned.


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