evidence: Thankfully, most people who get COVID–19 don’t become seriously ill – especially those who are vaccinated. But a small fraction do get hospitalized, and a smaller fraction do die. If you are vaccinated and catch the coronavirus, what are your chances of getting hospitalized or dying? [...] To calculate the risk of hospitalization or death after getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 you need to know the total number of infections. The problem is that nobody knows exactly how many people have been infected by the coronavirus. So while it is very hard to estimate the true risk of dying if you are vaccinated and come down with COVID-19, there are some ways to better understand the risks. [...] If you have enough good data, it would be possible to calculate the risk of hospitalization or death. You would need to count the number of people who were hospitalized or died and divide that number by the total number of infections. It’s also important to take into account time delays between infection, hospitalization and death. Doing this calculation would give you the true infection hospitalization or fatality rate. The trouble is health officials don’t know with certainty how many people have been infected.