One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has been caught spreading COVID-19 related misinformation, but is anyone honestly surprised?
While speaking at a freedom rally in Queensland last weekend, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson told the crowd: “In England, now it’s stated that more people are dying with COVID who are double-vaxxed than unvaxxed… It is a fact.”
Senator Hanson shamelessly manipulated statistics regarding COVID-19 related deaths in the UK to help her misleading argument that vaccinations are not successfully protecting people against the disease.
The statistics in question were released by the UK Health Security Agency, revealing that in the first three weeks of November, 2,903 vaccinated people in the UK died from COVID-19, compared to 708 unvaccinated deaths.
But because such a high percentage of the population in the UK is fully vaccinated, the number of deaths are going to be higher for those who have been jabbed, simply because they make up the vast majority of the population.
What our very trustworthy Senator failed to mention, is that in every single age bracket, unvaccinated deaths made up a far higher percentage when looked at per capita.
The real statistics show that in those first three weeks of November, for every 100,000 unvaccinated people in the UK, more than 250 have died from COVID-19. Meanwhile, only 80 out of every 100,000 people who are vaccinated have died from the disease.
University of Melbourne epidemiologist, Tony Blakely told the ABC that people who are fully vaccinated are 90 percent less likely to die from the Delta strain of COVID-19 compared to those who are unvaccinated.
There is also added complexity to the data in the UK that swings favour to the unvaccinated population. This is to do with the fact that a high proportion of the UK’s total population has already been infected with COVID-19 and recovered.
Professor Blakely explained: “Because an increasing fraction of the unvaccinated have had an infection in the past, this will tip more of the infections, hospitalisations and deaths to be among the vaccinated.”
