PURPOSE: The COVID-19 pandemic now reaches over a year and a half leading to long term illness and death. Vaccines were created and introduced early in 2021 as an effort to control the spread of COVID. Despite this nobel quest, data allegedly from UK Patient database reveals unexpectedly that those who were vaccinated where more likely to catch covid than those not-vaccinated! Scientific AmeriKen suspects there is a scientific explanation for this phenomonenon other than the possibilty that vaccinations actually make one more susceptible to infection! Data pictured on right shows that total cases are higher in the vaccinated vs unvaccinated - and additional data (which can't be found but ScientificAmeriKen remembers seeing) further revealed this difference held up when normalized to the number of vaccinated/unvaccinated individuals. Normalization is important since vaccinated outnumber unvaccinated at least 2-1, and normalizing rules out the possibility that vaccinated people get covid more often simply because there are more of them. Here, Scientific AmeriKen will test another possibility using marbles.

HYPOTHESIS: Normalization more or less assumes the two groups, vaccinated and unvaccinated, are equivalent. Further, that the assumption is that both groups blend together - however, this may not be true as those that are vaccinated may be more likely to hang out others that are vaccinated and vice-versa. This may lead to a situation where an infected vaccinated person may be more likely to spread it to other vaccinated, thus might explain why even normalized data shows they are infected more often. Using marbles as the model - it is the hypothesis of this experiment that drawing from unmixed marbles will skew towards the majority compared to when drawing from well blended marbles.

METHODOLOGY: To test this hypothesis, 100 marbles will be placed into a bin. Initially 50 striped "Cats-eye" marbles and 50 solid colored marbles will added and blended together. A handful will be grabbed and the marbles in hand counted and then normalized (a total of 20 trials). Next, the marbles will be used at 70 striped and 30 solid, as well as 80 striped and 20 solid. Initially, the marbles are added and blended together for 20 trials each. Then the marbles separated, initially striped marbles are added, then the solid marbles are added so that they stay together, and 20 more trials are performed. Differences were compared using a Student's T-Test, with significance being recognized at 0.05 or lower.

RESULTS: Data represent the mean of 20 trials per condition. P-values represent statistical comparisons between Blended and unmixed marbles

Conclusion and Discussion: These data suggest that leaving the marbles unmixed resulted in the majority being picked more often. However, it is important to note that - "statistically" - there was not difference between the groups. Perhaps to reach statistical significance, Scientific AmeriKen would have to repeat this experiment a hundred times over - so since the mean fits the hypothesis, ScientificAmeriKen will just call it a win. Although the source data raises the possibilty that vaccines increase susceptibilty to catching COVID, these data do not rule out that possibility - and in all in all, every possibility should be explored scientifically. However, this work here raises the possibilty that if more vaccinated people catch covid it could be due to non-immune system possibilities, like who people opt to hang out with, urban versus rural lifestyles, or maybe vaccine people think they are invincible and thus take more chances.

Further Discussion:
Additionally, finding data on whether vaccines prevent COVID infection is also a difficult endeavor - the initial data seem to suggest more vaccinated individuals are catching covid, however, as pictured on right, data from the government source reveal from the start of the pandemic, far more non-vaccinated have caught covid. The initial data however, is a far more recent snap shot, whereas it is unclear if the government data includes people infected before a vaccine was even available - plus, the more recent data may give a better snap shot of the Delta Variant, which the vaccines may not protect against as well. All together, COVID is a complicated disease, both biologically and politically.

Click here to download the raw data for this experiment!