[wccrawford]

I do think it's very important to be clear what your statistics are saying, and everyone has done a pretty poor job of being clear about that.

But in this case, what people really want and need to know is how well the vaccine is going to prevent them from dying.

They don't care about the difference between "Prevent dying from covid" and "prevent dying from covid once you have covid". The latter simply doesn't matter to them until they have covid, and then it's too late for the vaccine. That statistic is meaningless to the general public.

People only want to know if the vaccine can help them not die. And it absolutely can because it helps prevent getting infected in the first place.

Edit: I just realized the statistic that people want: "How likely are you to die from Covid if exposed to it, vaxed vs unvaxed." Not if you get it. Just if you're exposed to it. And since we don't run tries where we deliberately expose people to viruses, it's going to be a hard number to get.