[Ambolia]

"Covid deaths" are also a very meaningless metric where every country or region does whatever it wants. Excess deaths would be a better metric, but also hard to remove from there all the damage done by lockdowns, stress generated on the population, and by hospitals stopping attending other diseases in some places.

[ziml77]

Why would you remove the excess deaths caused by hospitals not being able to handle non-COVID illnesses due to taking care of COVID patients?

[Ambolia]

Because those are dependent on the response to the disease, not the disease itself.

[sgtnoodle]

So what's the right available metric to look at that statistically quantifies the effectiveness of the vaccines? Or does one not exist?

[Ambolia]

Control groups. But most countries and trials seem decided to get rid of them as fast as possible.