A new study from University College London published yesterday claims to find that a single vaccine dose provides 62% protection against COVID-19 for care home residents.
The Government-funded study looked at data from more than 10,000 care home residents in England with an average age of 86, between December and mid-March, comparing the number of infections occurring in vaccinated and unvaccinated groups (as determined by a PCR test). It found that a single vaccine dose was effective at preventing 56% of infections after four weeks, rising to 62% of infections after five weeks.
It is the first major study to show vaccine efficacy in the most vulnerable, with Minister for Care Helen Whately saying it is “brilliant to see this [vaccine] is having the positive effect the science suggested, not only by preventing death, but also reducing the chance of infection”.
But have we been given the full picture? Below is the table the 62% figure comes from. It’s the 0.38 after 35-48 days (5-7 weeks) among the figures circled in red. The 56% protection is the 0.44 above it.
Notice two things. First, what the story on the UCL website and in newspaper reports doesn’t mention is that the protection figure drops from 62% to 51% (0.49) after seven weeks (circled red), which is somewhat less impressive. Secondly, the infection rate in the three weeks following vaccination rises significantly (circled orange), with the rate at 2-3 weeks hitting 26.21 vs 21.39 in the unvaccinated, a 22.5% increase. As Lockdown Sceptics has reported before, this increased infection rate post-vaccination has also been found in other studies, with a PHE study finding a 48% increase in infection risk in the over-80s group 4-9 days after receiving the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, the American FDA Emergency Use Authorisation for the Pfizer vaccine finding 40% higher “suspected Covid” in the first week after vaccination, and a large Danish study finding a 40% increase in infection risk among nursing home residents in the 14 days following the first Pfizer dose.
In this study, the increased infection risk disappears when controls are applied for a number of potential confounding factors including age, sex, prior infection, and local viral prevalence. However, this adjusting process is somewhat opaque (see the description of it under the table) and the resulting confidence intervals for the adjusted hazard ratios are wide enough to drive a bus through. Given the initial sample size is over 10,000, this suggests the adjusting process is brutal and leaves little data in the control groups for comparison.
Drilling down into the data for the two vaccines, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, is even more revealing.
We find, first of all, that the elevated infection risk post-vaccine mainly relates to the Pfizer jab, with the infection rate spike hitting 80% in the second week after the jab in the unadjusted infection figures (circled red). On this occasion even the adjusting process is unable to eliminate it completely (the 1.11 to the right, an 11% decrease in protection). The AstraZeneca jab by comparison only sees a mild spike of 17% in the third week after the jab in the unadjusted infection rate.
However, it’s not all good news for the Oxford vaccine, as it turns out the lower efficacy after seven weeks noted above is largely from the AstraZeneca vaccine. The unadjusted figures actually show a higher rate of infection among those vaccinated with the Oxford shot after seven weeks than among the unvaccinated (circled orange). Furthermore, the adjusted hazard ratio shows only a 36% improvement for the AstraZeneca vaccine, compared to a 62% improvement for the Pfizer vaccine after seven weeks. The confidence intervals are, again, wide, but even so this is not a great result for AstraZeneca.
It’s hard not to come away with a sense that the results of this study are being spun to make the vaccines look better than the full data suggests. Was the combining of the figures for both vaccines designed to spare AstraZeneca’s blushes and maintain confidence in the beleaguered shot? Was the use of the better efficacy figures for five weeks instead of seven weeks done to make the vaccines look good? What are we to make of the 80% infection spike after receiving the Pfizer vaccine, and the heavy controls applied that dampen the impact of it in the final results?
Do you ever get the sense that you’re not being told the full, unvarnished truth?
Stop Press: Dr Clare Craig, a frequent contributor to Lockdown Sceptics, has a “rapid response” in the BMJ today, replying to an opinion article blaming vaccinated individuals themselves for causing the post-vaccination spikes. We need to look beyond behavioural change, she says, to a possible effect of the vaccine itself. Good to see these things being raised in the pages of the BMJ.
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Truly frightening. People have no idea what they’re taking, whether it’s effective, which company provided the jab…
My 18 year old brother, a nursing student, got his first vaccine yesterday and when I was explaining (again) my scepticism to the fam he informed the group he didn’t see “how getting a little bit of the virus put in him was a bad thing.” He’s far from daft as well, but it’s sadly the case that so few have any idea of what they’re signing up to!
What’s worse is that the pressure from his university lecturers was apparently immense – immense yet somehow they’re condemnation If evil anti vaxxers never led to even a fundamental understanding of what the “vaccine” does? Frightening, truly frightening.
I pray my brothers and their wives. I feel so sickened by the whole thing and the experimental nature of all this
They do get a nice little badge though!
:Do you ever get the impression that you are not being told the full, unvarnished truth?
All the bloody time. I know many others tht think this but of course the sheeple ———? Wot can say?
have you seen this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80Vz7tZLuBI
Really worth a view. I am sharing it as much as I can because it puts across the ways in which Covid has been used to manipulate the masses in a very succinct manner that is difficult to refute.
Look to the wisdom of the body. If an individual receives the shot and the body prioritizes cleaning up that particular crap over cleaning up or blocking Covid then the latter will win and gain entry and/or strength, as it were….. depending on any comorbidities. So it really is on a case by case basis.
Another fascinating piece of analysis by Will. Many thanks.
When you look at these figures in their entirety, they are really very unimpressive.
So where does that leave the currently jabbed when the next generation of vaccines comes along? Do they retake the new ones? Can you mix and match?
This is steadily building into an almighty mess.
For me, a balanced approach over the last three months was for the vulnerable to consider having one of the vaccines. I’m now of the opinion that no one should go anywhere near them.
With every passing day I’m becoming more of what they call an ‘anti-vaxxer’. But I don’t care about labels, only the science.
Could not agree more with you. 70 y.o., I have said no thanks. Then had the nhs track me down to find out why I declined. That was easy. Biologicals still in trial, no animal studies done before giving to humans, minimal safety and efficacy data. Studies conclude in 2023. If they really want proof these great biologicals work, let’s see real testing not swabs. Anyone who has been vaccinated please step forward to be exposed to the wild virus. We only need a couple hundred thousand of you to prove our “belief” you now have immunity to the wicked virus. Volunteers please. Oh, and why did so many vulnerable elderly die in nursing homes post vaccine. Four homes in Devon that we know about. Not a word in MSM about these incidents, other than it was “coincidental”.
And here’s your badge! These are for adults!? You actually see these people proudly showing their ‘badge of honour’ all over MSM.
Tragic isn’t it.
Yes it may be 62% effective – for the survivors
It is not surprising that protection against infection in care home residents is poor, The elderly and infirm are not good at making antibodies (I have no antibodies following the vaccine) and it is the antibody response which largely prevents infection. The value in the elderly is the T cell response which fights the infection and prevents it becoming severe. I think there is good evidence from steeply falling death rates that the severity of infection in the elderly is falling.
Thank you once more for digging into data. It is good to see a clear increasing influence of articles like the above.Previous articles on ATL ,I’ve now seen quoted in several influencing twitter accounts on three continents. The latest reshape of LD has been criticized by some but I think contrary,the influence of LD seems to have increased.And we still have the general BTL to add new things coming up.Also good to see VIPIT mentioned with the Science article in todays news. This is major development coming.
I actually quite like the reshape – I think it’s worked well, and played to each of the contributor’s strengths.
The problem for me has been the editorial failure to face up to the vaccine questions – a sort of Banquo’s Ghost for this site.
Agree about the reshape. I think it’s more focused in terms of hard content, and less of the repetitive generalized moaning.
The big downside is that when the clock strikes thirteen all the previous day’s excellent replies including especially the wonderful sciency stuff from Swedenborg is permanently deleted.
Do you think the Free Speech Union should be told?
Indeed.
But here is an unanswered question. What us the outcome if you do nothing? What percentage is that. You are starting from a premise that this is working. That’s not science that’s opinion. If you are only comparing jabbed muppets you cannot know if its working well until you have a group that is untouched to see how bad the virus is. Also you have no idea the prevalence of the virus. We know the pcr test is bollocks. So again you are just guessing.
… which is what absolute risk reduction addresses. Thus the suspicious nature of its absence as a metric.
Mother of god. Surely this “study” was not accepted for publication? It does not even make sense. Rubbish in, rubbish out. Never truer words spoken.
It’s a non peer reviewed pre-print. As far as I’m concerned it shouldn’t be getting top billing in the news (I’m looking at you BBC). When you consider how the incredible amounts of solid peer-reviewed work on Ivermectin have been ignored by the press and Government, you can be in no doubt of the agenda at play.
Another major gotcha here, is that this study took place December through March. While this is the period the vaccines were rolled out, it’s also the period that would expect to see seasonal decline. Added to that the gradual adjustments to PCR cycles, how can such a defined figure as 62%, possibly be reached?
Indeed. I was wondering about the PCR cycles – amid all the noise, have we found/been told how many cycles are now used in the UK?
Anyone want to comment on Portugal and Israel?
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=e92000001&areas=w92000004&areas=s92000003&areas=isr&areas=prt&areas=n92000002&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2020-09-01&values=deaths
UK, Portugal and Israel have taken very different approaches since Christmas, but Portugal appears to have had the fastest decline in rates of both infections and deaths.
Why?
I haven’t double checked but interesting Brazil connection where some Ivermectin is used. It also seems the high spike picture. The virus goes rampant in a LD or non LD country , high spike but the quickly,quickly down again. Perhaps the social Darwinistic “let it run” is the best in the long run.
https://twitter.com/Covid19Crusher/status/1376653082436775936
Ivermectin use in Portugal, now the Southern European country with the lowest daily Covid deaths per capita: “I started using it in November, with fantastic results. The treatment has gone viral “
This chap has written a good article comparing the various US states, coming to the tentative conclusion that the ” One and done” approach causes the least harm or minimises the overall no of deaths:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2021/03/24/comparing-open-vs-closed-covid-policy/
Yes indeed, Portugese use of ivermectin is beating the pants off the UK’s use of vaccines. Now how does that get reflected in the soon to be introduced EU green pass for travel?
Thanks Will for another great article. Very concerning.
Some of the data in Table 3 seemed odd and I haven’t found a full explanation through an admittedly-quick scan of the pre-print paper.
I noticed that the un-vaccinated case data has not been broken down in the same way as that for the vaccinated cases. There might be a good explanation for this, but on the other hand, there might be an even better explanation
.
A simple way to compare the two data sets is to recombine the vaccinated data.
So then we have:-
723 unvaccinated ‘events’
1335-723=612 vaccinated ‘events’
Person days at risk:-
338,003 unvaccinated
670,628 – 338,003
= 332,625 vaccinated
So, approximately equal ‘population’ sizes.
Just based on this the vaccination has reduced the likelihood of an ‘event’ (ie positive PCR test with a variable cycle threshold – hardly a ‘gold-standard’ test unless you put varying amounts of ‘base’ metal in your gold reference or ‘standard’) by:-
1 – (612/332,625 x 338,003/723) = 14%
Hardly a large effect, and much smaller than the required 50% – is this the even better reason perhaps?!
But there’s something else…
What is the ‘control’ population? I might have misunderstood the paper, so I hope someone will check this and correct me, but it appears that the researchers took data from previously performed PCR tests, chosen I think to match the long term care facilities (LTCFs) from which the vaccinated person data was taken. Fair enough, but the data were from March 2020 when the first wave was at its height. So we are comparing data from completely different environments, especially as the incidence of covid was falling rapidly during the vaccination period for whatever cause.
Apologies for the rushed and sketchy analysis, but I wanted to get this out as soon as possible to perhaps prompt others better qualified than I to look into it in more detail.
No apologies required. There is always a crying need for detailed scrutiny. I’m afraid I’ve got to the stage where I’m data-fatigued after a year of the obvious distortions of the facts when the reality is pretty obvious.
I’m a bit suprised on an absolute risk basis that its as high as 14%. Perhaps as you comment that is because they have missused March 2020 PCR data.
Note again the omission of the key statistic : absolute risk reduction.
Beyond that are the key bottom lines :
… and one should add the blatant exclusion of potential prophylactics such as Ivermectin from any proper consideration or comparative analysis.
Very true. Portugal’s performance v UK since winter peak. As well as showing usual decline in seasonal respiratory disease it demonstates that wide spread use of ivermectin is at least as good as vaccines measured on death rates. Measured on just about every other criteria it beats the pants off them.
Are we ever told the full unvarnished truth about anything by this lot? You simply can’t trust a thing put out by them or their cronies in MSM. I wouldn’t believe a weather bulletin coming from these lot even if I was stood out in it.
The adjusted hazards ratio makes absolutely no sense to me looking at the infected vaccinated / unvaccinated numbers per 10,000.
Even controlling for every major demographic factor that’s some serious numberwang to reduce the ahr to zero for the vaccinated.
In fact I’d go so far as to suggest it is not possible without fraud in some cases – just look at the row for 14-20 days:
28-26 infected vaxx/no-vaxx – this is somehow transmorgified into a risk factor of 0-77 respectively. How is this even possible when the input values are so damn close?
“Do you ever get the sense that you’re not being told the full, unvarnished truth?”
Er….. since about 23rd March 2020.