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Here in the UK just before the vaccine rollout started to take effect about 4,000,000 people had tested positive and about 120,000 people had died. If you knock the zeros off that's 12 in 400 or 3 in 100. To put it another way for about every 30 people who tested positive 1 died of coronavirus.

If the vaccine is 80% effective it would reduce the death rate to a fifth of the pre vacine rate, or to look it another way instead of 1 in 30 about 1 in 250 people die.

The younger you are the less likely you are to die and of course older not so good, the 1 in 30 applies to people around 55 years old, if you are 65 it’s about 1 in 20 and 45 about 1 in 100. Over 80 it’s about 1 in 5 and under 30 about 1 in a 1,000.

I am adding an update here because of the publication of Public Health England vaccine effectiveness report.

Link

A simple explanation.

1 There is very little difference in effectiveness between the Pfizer and the Oxford jab.

2 This data is about over 80s 2 weeks after their first jab.

3 An unvaccinated group of 100,000 3% 300 get symptomatic covid 45 go to hospital and 40 die.

4 A vaccinated group of 100,000 60% protection 120 get symptomatic covid 10 go to hospital 7 die.

I should stress here that with every day that passes after the vaccination the situation improves.

Because Michael had his first shot in March the risk to us has reduced. At the moment, April 2021, we have calculated that if the two of us who work in the shop most of the time test positive, there is a 1 in 50 chance of one of us dying. This risk isn’t good enough to open the shop yet, but the risk is reducing all the time, so we are planning how to open safely, for us and for our customers.