Hello and welcome to more or less, the show that cuts through greasy data until the statistical

truth sparkles and squeaks. This week, the deadliest year in a century. That's how the office

for national statistics described 2020 in England and Wales. We're more than two-thirds of the way

through 2021, so how's this year shaping up? We'll answer your questions on the newly announced

Health and Social Care Levy with the help of a former tax personality of the year. And where do you stand

on the dishwasher versus kitchen sink debate? Right, I'm looking at the dishes for the more or less

household. I've got my bowl, I've got my soap, I've got my yellow rubber gloves on.

But first, on Saturday, ITV News tweeted a link to an article by their political editor, Robert

Pestin, with a following tweet. Infections higher amongst double-vaxed for those age 40 to 79

than for non-vaxed. Now that is surprising. And less surprisingly, given that this is Twitter

we're talking about, some people got very, very cross. If you see this stupid tweet, consider

reporting both the tweet and Robert Pestin for spreading disinformation. The vast majority of 40

to 79-year-olds are vaccinated. So this tweets intellectually bankrupt, and the equivalent of saying

car accident survivors are more likely to wear seatbelts. That's what I thought too at first,

but on close to inspection, Robert Pestin's article doesn't simply compare the total number of

cases in vaccinated and unvaccinated people without adjusting for the number of people in each

group, often known as committing the base rate fallacy. Other media outlets have often made

that mistake, but Pestin isn't that foolish. Instead, he based his analysis on some new data in

a report produced by public health England, and it does pretty clearly seem to show that people

who are double-vaccinated are getting COVID at higher rates than people who are unvaccinated.

Wow, so what's going on? Other vaccines, as some people always suspected,

and attempt by lizard overlords to enslave the world's population, are unvaccinated people behaving

...