{"id":27177,"date":"2021-10-17T17:11:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-17T17:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=27177"},"modified":"2021-10-18T00:23:22","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T00:23:22","slug":"how-many-lives-have-coronavirus-vaccines-saved-we-used-state-data-on-deaths-and-vaccination-rates-to-find-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-many-lives-have-coronavirus-vaccines-saved-we-used-state-data-on-deaths-and-vaccination-rates-to-find-out\/","title":{"rendered":"How many lives have coronavirus vaccines saved? We used state data on deaths and vaccination rates to find out"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sumedha Gupta<\/a>, IUPUI<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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CC BY-ND<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

More than 200 million U.S. residents have gotten at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine with the expectation that the vaccines slow virus transmission and save lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers know the efficacy of the vaccines from large-scale clinical trials<\/a>, the gold standard for medical research. The studies found the vaccines to be very effective at preventing severe COVID\u201319<\/a> and especially good at preventing death<\/a>. But it\u2019s important to track any new treatment in the real world as the population-level benefits of vaccines could differ from the efficacy found in clinical trials<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, some people in the U.S. have only been getting the first shot<\/a> of a two-shot vaccine and are therefore less protected than a fully vaccinated person<\/a>. Alternatively, vaccinated people are much less likely to transmit COVID-19 to others<\/a>, including those who are not vaccinated. This could make vaccines more effective at a population level than in the clinical trials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am a health economist<\/a>, and my team and I have been studying the effects of public policy interventions like vaccination have had on the pandemic. We wanted to know how many lives vaccines may have saved due to the states\u2019 COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building an accurate model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In March 2021, when weekly data on state COVID-19 vaccinations started to become reliably available from state agencies, my team began to analyze the association between state vaccination rates and the subsequent COVID-19 cases and deaths in each state. Our goal was to build a model that was accurate enough to measure the effect of vaccination within the complicated web of factors that influence COVID\u201319 deaths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
State data for vaccination rates and COVID\u201319 deaths can shed light on the real-world effectiveness of the vaccines. DeskCube\/iStock via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To do this, our model compares COVID-19 incidence in states with high vaccination rates against states with low vaccination rates. As part of the analysis, we controlled for things that influence the spread of the coronavirus, like state\u2013by\u2013state differences in weather<\/a> and population density<\/a>, seasonally driven changes in social behavior<\/a> and non-pharmaceutical interventions<\/a> like stay-at-home orders, mask mandates and overnight business closures. We also accounted for the fact that there is a delay between when a person is first vaccinated and when their immune system has built up protection<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vaccines saved lives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To check the strength of our model before playing with variables, we first compared reported deaths with an estimate that our model produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we fed it all of the information available \u2013 including vaccination rates \u2013 the model calculated that by May 9, 2021, there should have been 569,193 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. The reported death count<\/a> by that date was 578,862, less than a 2% difference from our model\u2019s prediction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Equipped with our well-working statistical model, we were then able to \u201cturn off\u201d the vaccination effect and see how much of a difference vaccines made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using near real-time data of state vaccination rates<\/a>, coronavirus cases and deaths in our model, we found that in the absence of vaccines, 708,586 people would have died by May 9, 2021. We then compared that to our model estimate of deaths with vaccines: 569,193. The difference between those two numbers is just under 140,000. Our model suggests that vaccines saved 140,000 lives<\/a> by May 9, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our study only looked at the few months just after vaccination began. Even in that short time frame, COVID-19 vaccinations saved many thousands of lives despite vaccination rates still being fairly low in several states by the end of our study period. I can say with certainty that vaccines have since then saved many more lives \u2013 and will continue to do so as long as the coronavirus is still around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sumedha Gupta<\/a>, Associate Professor of Economics, IUPUI<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sumedha Gupta, IUPUI More than 200 million U.S. residents have gotten at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine with the expectation that the vaccines slow virus transmission and save lives. Researchers know the efficacy of the vaccines from large-scale clinical trials, the gold standard for medical research. The studies found the vaccines to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":27178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[42],"tags":[10670,7689,8510,8259,997,2197,7765,390,5272,9651,3903],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27177"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27177"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27185,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27177\/revisions\/27185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}