How do you explain Waterford in Ireland which apparently has 99.5% of adults double jabbed but also has the highest incidence rate in Ireland?
Most of what I've read argues that this is due to the public willingness to take more 'risks' and negate previous social distancing.
It had the highest rate - while it's still high, they've been overtaken by a few places now. It's hard to get regional breakdown in Ireland but for the last two weeks nationwide 25% of infections were in under 18's, so not part of that 99.5% statistic. Another 25% were aged 19-34. Is Waterford younger than the national average for example?
The other thing I would say is that I really struggle to believe that 99.5% of adults in Waterford are double vaccinated. It points for me to a denominator issue, that the 99.5% is based upon numbers of residents in the last census. If it's inaccurate, then the resulting % vaccinated is inaccurate. Related to that, if it is wrong then the incidence rate is also inaccurate and underestimated as that is also working off the same inaccurate total resident figure.
I think Ireland is suffering from both an overestimate of it's vaccination rate and an underestimate of it's infection rate going by official figures. The last census was 2016, the census of 2021 has been delayed until 2022, so figures could be very much out of date, especially in specific age groups. It's easy to imagine that Waterford sits at the top of the vaccination rate while somewhere remote like Donegal sits at the bottom purely because those who live in rural areas are more likely not to get it. But it's not difficult to imagine either that the population of Waterford has increased at a much higher rate than Donegal since 2016 and with accurate population figures, the difference between them might not be so large - and the true rate is closer to Donegal's than Waterford's.
