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. 2021 May 8;9(5):474. doi: 10.3390/vaccines9050474

Figure 2.

Figure 2

Investigation of whether vaccine combinations produce an enhanced protective effect (as measured by an inverse correlation to COVID-19 case and death rates) of the total pneumococcal vaccination rate. The vast majority of combinations resulted in a decrease in the correlation values indicating that there is no benefit from combining vaccinations; instead, there is an averaging of the vaccine effects. One notable exception was that a combination of pneumococcal and influenza vaccinations correlated with a significant decrease in COVID-19 cases, suggesting additive protection by the two vaccines. All possible pairwise combinations of the vaccine data were correlated with the COVID-19 case and death rates; all of those pairwise combinations not shown in the Table failed to reach significance in both the R and R2 values and were therefore omitted for simplicity. The strength of the correlation (R) is indicated by the intensity of the color, while the color itself indicates whether the correlation is positive or negative. Dark red blocks with white numbers are the strongest negative correlations; red blocks with white lettering are less strong negative correlations; orange blocks with bold black lettering are moderately negative correlations; light orange blocks with black lettering are weakly negative correlations; white blocks with black numbers are correlations in which neither R nor R2 are statistically significant after Bonferroni correction. With 51 national samples and after Bonferroni correction for 7 correlations per set of samples, R values must be greater than 0.35 or greater to achieve a p-value of less than 0.05. After Bonferroni corrections, R values of 0.41 or above have a p-value less than 0.005, and R values of 0.51 and above have p-values less than 0.00005. After correcting for seven variables, R2 must have a value of 0.26 or greater to achieve a p-value less than 0.05. In sum, the correlations with R values above 0.4 are highly statistically significant, but the effect sizes as determined by R2 reach statistical significance when the values also exceed 0.26. Pneum Vacc = pneumococcal vaccination; Ch = childhood vaccination rate; AR = vaccination rate of at-risk adults 18–64; >65= vaccination rate of adults 65 years of age and older; Inf = influenza vaccination rate; BCG = Bacillus Calmette–Guerin (tuberculosis) vaccination rate; DPT = diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccination rate; Hib = Haemophilus influenzae type B vaccination rate; MMR = measles-mumps-rubella vaccination rate; vacc = vaccination; /Million = per million population; /1000 = per one thousand population.