A shift to younger ages of the age center of gravity of deaths due to COVID-19 observed in many countries after mass vaccinations. This is especially true in countries that have given priority to vaccinating the elderly, according to a new scientific study led by Stanford University School of Medicine Professor John Ioannidis.
Researchers from the United States and Italy, who published the study in the journal Environmental Research, assessed the change in the age profile of the deaths. COVID-19 in 40 countries after the use of vaccines. It has been found that proportionately more young people are dying from coronavirus than in the pre-vaccination period, which is not the case, however, for countries with low vaccination coverage or those that did not prioritize vaccination for the elderly.
The researchers pointed out that the age shift of deaths COVID-19 to younger ages (which have so far been less covered by vaccination programs in most countries) "is a strong indication of the effectiveness of vaccines and the favorable progression of the pandemic to endemicity with fewer deaths in the elderly".
According to Mr. Ioannidis, this is a “positive development, fully compatible with the development towards endemicity, which fortunately seems to have succeeded in countries with high vaccination coverage of the elderly and with proper pandemic management, unfortunately not yet Greece ”.
A second publication, led by him, in the British medical journal "BMJ Open", analyzed the scientific production and impact of the most prominent scientists in the media on COVID-19 in four countries (76 specialists from the USA, 12 from Greece, 50 from Denmark and two from Switzerland).
The study examined whether those who appear regularly in the media - especially on television - have a lot of research with international repercussions in scientific journals. The conclusion, according to Mr. Ioannidis, is that, despite some important exceptions, “most of the prominent experts have not published anything in the scientific literature on COVID-19 and the vast majority do not have much scientific impact on their overall work throughout their careers. There is a great separation of scientific reality from television reality. "
In the case of Greece, out of the 12 frequently featured scientists in the media, two were assessed with their publications to be in the top 2% of the international scientific impact.
Respectively, this applies to 23 out of 76 in the USA, 10 out of 50 in Denmark and neither of them in Switzerland. There was also an under-representation of women among media experts on the pandemic.
In Greece e.g. only two of the 12 examined were women. The researchers also estimated that in Greece there are 64 scientists (22 women) who have the highest scientific impact internationally on COVID-19 (references of foreign scientists in the work of the Greeks), in relation to most of the most prominent experts in the media.