COVID Doesn't Have a 99.97 Recovery Rate
The Claim
COVID-19 has a 99.9 percent recovery rate.
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Emerging story
A meme has been widely shared on social media that claims the Pfizer vaccine is 90 percent effective and the virus – referring to COVID-19 – has a 99.97 percent recovery rate. The idea is that our immune systems are more effective than the vaccine. The shared post questions whether the COVID-19 vaccine is needed at all.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar has discovered that the post shared thousands of times across social media has several errors. First, in terms of the vaccine, according to STATnews.com, the Pfizer (with partner BioNTech) vaccine has shown efficacy of 95 percent at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infection, measured starting from seven days after the second dose was administered. The vaccine appears to be more or less equally protective across age groups and racial and ethnic groups. The social media posts claim a 90 percent effect rate for the vaccine.
The posts also claim a COVID-19 recovery rate equal to 99.97 percent. According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, the recovery rate is the recovered cases divided by the sum of recovered cases and deceased cases. In other words, the recovery rate is the number of people who get better divided by all of the COVID-19 cases. For example, in Illinois, this number is 98 percent, not 99.97 percent. The recovery rate will vary from region to region, and will also vary by age, gender, and underlying health conditions. For children, the rate of recovery is 99.9 percent, but for adults over the age of 85, the rate of recovery is only about 67.2 percent.
Underlying health conditions also matter when it comes to rates of recovery. According to a study published in TheLancet.com, the risk of dying from COVID-19 was almost three times higher for people with type 1 diabetes and almost twice as high for type 2, versus those without diabetes.
The other point that the meme does not mention is that even though many with COVID-19 survive, many survivors report lingering health problems related to the heart, lungs, and brain according to MayoClinic.org. The Pfizer vaccine could prevent or at least reduce the risk of the long-term health consequences.
