Vaccine doubters' strange fixation with Israel

[reACTIONary]

A prominent vaccine skeptic who appears often on Fox News went so far as to claim Israel’s data showed something amounting to a “complete vaccine failure on every level.”

The reality, as it often is with such claims, is quite different from how it’s being pitched.

While cases are indeed rising significantly in Israel because of the more vaccine-resistant delta variant, that’s from a very low baseline. The country remains at a fraction of its former case numbers.

Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina last week explained this misleading use of data, which is known as a base rate fallacy — or base rate bias in epidemiology:

The more vaccinated a population, the more we’ll hear of the vaccinated getting infected. For example, say there’s a community that’s 100% vaccinated. If there’s transmission, we know breakthrough cases will happen. So, by definition, 100% of outbreak cases will be among the vaccinated. It will just be 100% out of a smaller number.
Cue Israel. They are one of the global leaders in vaccinations; 85% of Israeli adults are vaccinated. So, say we have the following scenario:
...
With an infection rate among the vaccinated of 2% and infection rate of 13% among the unvaccinated, this would give us an efficacy rate of 85%

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/19/vaccine-skeptics-zero-israel-again-some-reason/

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/israel-50-of-infected-are-vaccinated

https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/base-rate-fallacy/

[empedocles]

1. Some people need to vent - no matter what..

[hlthe2b]

2. Base Rate Fallacy--among the concepts we have a horrible time conveying.

[Jim__]

3. It's easy to mislead people with statistics.

Most people just repeat what they've been told and so aren't deliberately misleading people. But the person who starts the misleading rumor almost has to know that they're misrepresenting the facts.

[LymphocyteLover]

4. RWers have a hard time with Israel, for various reasons.

They love to ignore Israel's universal healthcare and legal abortion policies. But somehow hold up Israel as a model nation otherwise. Truly bizarre.

[MurrayDelph]

5. It's complicated

1. The Christo-fascists hate Jews, but need Israel to be there so their imaginary friend can come back.

2. They need tensions in the area to be high so that there will be a War (one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) when said friend comes back.

3. Pestilence is also one of the Four Horsemen (as is Famine, which is increasing due to Climate Change), so they are rooting for the pandemic.

They hope that bringing on all of these disasters in direct disobedience to how their messiah told them to behave, it will somehow bring him back to reward them?

[Behind the Aegis]

6. The opposite is true as well.

That is the problem with extremist views and "all or nothing" thinking.