Health Secretary Matt Hancock has described as “terrific” the findings of a new Public Health England study that shows one dose of the vaccines can cut household transmission by up to 50%.
This is indeed good news – and not unexpected, since the vaccines have been shown to reduce symptoms, and symptomatic disease is what drives transmission.
However, it’s worth being aware that this is the relative risk reduction. The absolute risk reduction (as always) does not look quite so impressive.
In fact, one of the remarkable findings of the study is that of 960,765 unvaccinated household contacts of unvaccinated index cases testing positive, just 10.1% of them (96,898) caught the disease. This means around 90% of unvaccinated people living in the same house as someone with COVID-19 didn’t catch it themselves. This low secondary attack rate is an indication of the level of immunity the population already has to the virus, whether from innate, pre-existing or acquired immunity, even before vaccines come into the picture.
The study identified 3,424 unvaccinated household contacts of index cases who tested positive despite receiving their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine at least 21 days earlier. Of these, 196 tested positive themselves, giving a secondary attack rate of 5.7%.
For the Pfizer vaccine the same figures were 371 secondary cases testing positive out of 5,939 unvaccinated household contacts, giving a secondary attack rate of 6.3%.
This means in absolute terms the risk for household members of catching Covid from an infected household index case was reduced from around 10% when the index case was an unvaccinated person to around 6% when he or she was vaccinated, a drop of 4%. This is encouraging, if not as big as might be hoped – though it may improve after the second dose.
For unexplained reasons the study does not look at symptoms at all, so we have no idea how many of the vaccinated positive cases were asymptomatic or how severe their symptoms were. Other studies suggest that positive cases are more likely to be asymptomatic or mild in those with immunity (whether from infection or vaccination) and this is likely to explain much of the drop in secondary attack rate for the household contacts of index cases who are vaccinated but test positive.
This cheering news on the effectiveness of the vaccines for cutting transmission gives the Government even less reason to stick to its glacial reopening strategy.
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Slow to make the news here, but there it is transmission cut in half with one dose. Most humans would rejoice, only misanthropists and freaks would frown at such news. Well we got plenty of those bums in the anti-vaxxers.
I’m truly glad that this input pleases the computer. I appreciate anything difficult can overload a very simple CPU. However the real people still require actual scientific evidence. Nanu Nanu.
Thank you – the one who gets his news from the Beeb
The detail of that study, from an untrusted source is not a great testimonial.
Actually – the headline miracle figure of a ‘50%’ reduction immediately flags up a credibility issue, which then leads on to other concerns (See BeBop’s comments)
We’re not ‘anti-vaxxers’, you silly little person. We’re pro-science.
You missed out some important bits.
(i) secondary attack rate in households even without vaccination is roughly 10% so we’re starting at a low level.
(ii) as page 11 makes clear, the reduction is 38% for AstraZenica, 49% for Pfizer. Given the relative change on infection reduction after 2 doses its expected Pfizer will reduce further but AZ no a lot.
Its good news for the minority of people who had Pfizer.
How’s that? If Pfizer vaxxees are celebrating these transmission figures then it means their precious vaxx has failed to protect them from catching C19 in the first instance.
Pfizer also has a higher morbidity to date than AZ judging by its ‘deaths per jab’ ratio. Further, being an mRNA vaxx the long term individual and next generation impact is completely unknown.
Get out the flags, huh?
Im assuming you missed every science lesson in school.
You (i) have no idea what vaccines are or do. By your definition there are roughly 2 vaccines on the planet. In total. For all known illnesses.
Care to supply a list of any vaccines that completely protect you from catching it?
Pfizer doesnt have a higher morbidity rate and in fact is running at roughly 8x fewer yellow cards per head.
You then rabbit on about mRNA clearly without a clue of how it works, what it does and where it fits in. You then add to that by failing to understand how Adenovirus vector vaccines work.
So yes, in Pfizer you have a vaccine with few side effects, that works well against variants almost totally prevents serious illness, is 90% or so effective preventing any infection and after a single dose is already 49% effective at preventing transmission.
Its quite likely one of the best vaccines we’ve ever seen.
Far better than the 2nd division AZ in every single comparison.
You are conflating tried and trusted traditional vaccines with experimental gene therapy. And why should I supply a list of imperfect traditional vaccines – do you care to supply a list traditional vaccines that have not been fully tested, or a list of experimental medical treatments (of any kind) that the reopening of a nation’s economy has been made conditional on?
I cannot find the figure for actual number of jabs I have been advised of, so I can’t pursue that point at present. BUT I can say that as of last week the Pfizer vaxx has had 143,034 adverse reactions of which 334 deaths. AZ has had 548,495 adverse reactions of which 627 deaths. So the chance of death being an adverse reaction to Pfizer is 1 in 428 reactions. In AZ that ratio is 1 in 875. Without the number of jabs per vaxx type figure (is there a government page?) or indeed accurate adverse reaction figures from Yellow Card reporting then no conclusion can be drawn.
The main point remains that we are relying on experimental vaxx treatments that Big Pharma refuses to indemnify. Whether Adenovirus Vector (AZ) or mRNA (Pfizer, Moderna etc) doesn’t seem to matter to the government, and both appear to be used interchangeably and without respect to the recipient. In many cases no comprehensive P.I.L. has been provided at the vaxx centres, and certainly not one that is specific to the type of experimental vaxx being given.
Despite the claims you now seek to make in the light of coerced Guinea Pig evidence, at the outset it was guesswork mRNA vaccines had NEVER been approved for human usage. Even now neither you nor the government nor Big Pharma know the long term impact – and if it was so SAFE why are the companies still refusing to indemnify recipients?
As for the vaxx difference, yes I know (and in some detail) but do those governments who have been advocating mixing doses, much to the ire of many medical experts?
Now, onto your Pfizer sales pitch. You claim ‘in Pfizer you have a vaccine with few side effects’, but you can’t say that as the trial period is not finished, and long term and generational side effects have yet to be assessed. And if it is so safe why doesn’t Pfizer break ranks with Big Pharma and indemnify all recipients?
You also say Pfizer ‘works well against variants almost totally prevents serious illness’. What serious illness? Do you mean Cov19, with a lower morbidity than most seasonal influenza strains (according to WHO)? You claim ‘Pfizer is 90% or so effective preventing any infection and 49% after a single dose’. Check out this study on published last week which questions that:
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210422/How-effective-is-the-Pfizer-BioNTech-(BNT162b2)-COVID-19-vaccine-A-real-world-study-in-Sweden.aspx
Well, consider the possibility that those here not rejoicing are neither misanthropists nor freaks but that they judge claims like “transmission cut in half with one dose” differently to you, and probably judge the severity of the covid threat relative to the wisdom of a mass vaccination program before long term trials are finished differently to you.
Maybe fon is a fiction invented to elicit comment. In any case, his spewings well illustrate the irrationality and nastiness of many cult followers.
fon is a not very bright 77 Brigade stooge.
His username is shorthand for:
F#ck off now.
I think you might be missing the point.
Cutting transmission by 50% is meaningless without context. If the secondary attack rate is being cut from, say, 60% to 30% then it’s clearly beneficial. 10% to 5% within HOUSEHOLDS – not so impressive.
Funny, but the manufacturers don’t claim the injection cuts transmission. I wonder where these miracle effects come from?
Oh, wait. The BBC.
And how is a true infection determined? I scanned the report for the word ‘false’ and ‘second’ to find ‘second test’. It mentioned “confirmed cases using PCR-based SARS-CoV-2” but did not define what ‘confirmed’ was. Some clarity is required there otherwise noise could be drowning out the data.
Will’s article does make the very valid point that the transmission only relates to 10% of a household that gets infected when sharing with an invaccinated, infected person. So the number of people protected only increases a small amount. One could spin it both ways.
However, unlike Will, I would hesitate to say that the news is ‘cheering’. That, too, can be spun both ways. Either, “if the jab is working, lockdown can ease” or “if the jab is working, we should do more of them first.”
Somehow, I have an idea which way things are going to go, regardless.
In the Oxford study tehy said a positive was anyone <30CTs.
Which of course is still too high if used as a single Yes or No measure.
"Impact of vaccination on SARS-CoV-2 cases in the community: a population-based study using the UK’s COVID-19 Infection Survey"
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.22.21255913v1
A quote from one of the scientists at PANDA on this: "This is such a poorly designed study that I can't believe its been published. The key control group needed is totally missing (i.e unvaccinated tested after the date of vaccination). The comparison they make is with tests prior to the vaccination campaign starting, which only confirms that positivity declined during the period. P-hackers can have hours and hours of fun with table 6 in the appendix."
"The fact that they include table 6 at all denigrates the whole study. There is information to be gleaned from the data, but not by running a logistic regression on a time series without taking into account the dates of the results. When I am teaching students to analyse observational data I tell them that if the analysis throws up any implausible or impossible effect then it indicates that any more plausible or possible effect could also be a spurious result of opportunistic data collection that does not have a suitable design." @NickHudsonCT
The PANDA comments are a precise formulation of what even a brief scan raises as issues.
The use of PCR in defining infection immediately presents a red light.
I suspect its even worse in a household setting.
PCR measuring exposure and there’s likely a much greater chance of exposure in a household where someone is infected even if that exposure does not result in a secondary infection.
In other words, you are going to have bits of viral RNA or fragments stuck to you just from being in proximity.
Yet again, as all through this, we do not and are not even attempting to culture or measure actual infection. Its a lazy reliance on a test that hasn’t been calibrated against what you’re looking for as a “gold standard” diagnostic.
It’d be ripped apart by any reviewer in normal times.
They’d get more respect by acknowledging the weight of things such as t cell immunity, pre existing or acquired, and giving a full picture of what drives lower rate sof infection we see today. Also acknowledgement of the PCR drawbacks. That’s just a few conflicting forces at play.
Instead what we have is the myth of asymptomatic spread being used to pump the efficacy of vaccines, further boosted by PCR hokery.
Even then the vaccines aren’t as great as they were sold to the regulators. Not by a long way, which makes it criminal in light of the continued suppression of alternative prophylactic treatments such as Ivermectin
Edit. I say PCR drawbacks. It’s actually a total fraud and can be used whatever way they need.
SWEDEN STOPS PCR TESTS AS COVID19 DIAGNOSIS!
“Guidance on criteria for assessment of freedom from infection in covid-19
The Swedish Public Health Agency has developed national criteria for assessing freedom from infection in covid-19.
The PCR technology used in tests to detect viruses cannot distinguish between viruses capable of infecting cells and viruses that have been neutralized by the immune system and therefore these tests cannot be used to determine whether someone is contagious or not. RNA from viruses can often be detected for weeks (sometimes months) after the illness but does not mean that you are still contagious. There are also several scientific studies that suggest that the infectivity of covid-19 is greatest at the beginning of the disease period.
The recommended criteria for assessing freedom from infection are therefore based on stable clinical improvement with freedom from fever for at least two days and that at least seven days have passed since the onset of symptoms. For those who have had more pronounced symptoms, at least 14 days after the illness and for the very sickest, individual assessment by the treating doctor.
The criteria have been developed in collaboration with representatives of the specialty associations in infectious disease medicine, clinical microbiology, hygiene and infection control. These have most recently been discussed in the group at a meeting on 19 April 2021 due to the new virus variants. The assessment was then that no update was needed. The recommendations will be updated as new knowledge about covid-19 infectivity is added.
Vägledning om kriterier för bedömning av smittfrihet vid covid-19 — Folkhälsomyndigheten
https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publicerat-material/publikationsarkiv/v/vagledning-om-kriterier-for-bedomning-av-smittfrihet-vid-covid-19/
The medical-industrial complex will fight back soon against this.
Ah!the beginning of the end? We travel in hope.
So, I get the vaxx BUT I still catch the virus. However, the vaxx (despite having failed to protect me) apparently reduces my chance of transmitting this (endemic) virus by 4%!! In real terms, whereas I might infect 1 in 25 people as an unvaxxed Covid sufferer, I might now infect 1 in 24 people as a vaxxed Covid sufferer (sic). And even this is dependent on age groups and household conditions (go read the report).
But for how long does this 4% bonus last – no info? And does it even matter with an endemic virus that cannot be stopped – even by the vaxx? Even if that additional 1 out of 25 no longer risks catching it from me, they sure will cop it from somewhere else! After all, even a vaxxed Guinea Pig can still catch it!
4% claimed success is utterly negligible in real terms. It is skewed statistically by the false positive conundrum, and skewed existentially by the absolute health risks of taking a still experimental vaxx that Pharma refuses to indemnify. There are 1,000 vaxx deaths so far reported so far in the UK via the MHRA’s Yellow card scheme, which the government openly admits is under reporting adverse reactions to the tune of up to 90%. Many other serious life changing side effects have also been reported – they are all online – and that is before we even consider the long term and intergenerational impacts.
Now for the ‘killer’ virus. As WHO has stated, C19 morbidity is less than many seasonal flus – it ain’t Ebola!:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/vaccine-risks-versus-rewards-what-your-gp-wont-tell-you/
Meanwhile LDS has morphed into Vaxx-Zealots, presumably to please its Tory government associates? I therefore trust TY, the BBC, the MSM, Hitchens and co will be digging deep to contribute to the experimental vaxx damages fund that Big Pharma refuse point blank to give a single dollar to.
‘Docile Guinea Pigs, Big Profits, No Financial Risk!!’ Which Multinational Corporate could resist it? As I have said many times before, JABEAT EMPTOR
https://www.deconstructingconventional.com/post/18-reason-i-won-t-be-getting-a-covid-vaccine
Sorry folks I was working off the original PDF, twisted around the figures in a typo and couldn’t correct after posting.
Correction:
(para. 1) In real terms, whereas I might infect an extra 1 in 25 people as an unvaxxed Covid sufferer, I will still infect 1 in 16 people as a vaxxed Covid sufferer.
The rest remains intact, and in particular the correlation with household size, contacts and age groups, as outlined in the report.
In the ‘real world’ I know exactly two people who tested positive and indeed did appear ill, and had to isolate. Not one other member of the family caught it, not the kids, not the wife, who was sleeping in the same bed, Not Grandma, Grandad, nobody, nada!
Exactly! This ‘survey’ is about transmission between people living in same household (the most dangerous everyday mask-less environment for transmission according to the government). It is not about the workplace, the supermarket, or the park! The transmission rate rises for two people households and falls off the more people are in the house – and varies with age – yet is still remarkably low.
As you point out in the ‘real world’ this flu is not the super virulent force it is made out to be. Indeed these wrapped up the figures are confirmation of this. If read another way it simply states that on average an infected person with C19 only has a 10% chance of infecting someone from the same household they see and mix with everyday at less than 2 metres and mask free.
How does that tie in with the dreaded ‘R‘ figure? If an unvaxxed infected person only has a 1 in 10 chance on average of infecting someone living in the same dangerous internal space, it doesn’t sound like a statistical recipe for exponential apocalyptic spread, does it?
Yes, a long time ago in an alternative universe, well just last year off Japan, a ship told us exactly all this. I keep asking, why are we reinventing the wheel?
I recall survey data from Swedish care homes that put the figure for household transmission at only 17% (prior to any ‘vaccines’)
The point is another case of the difference between using relative and absolute risk reduction figures.
Absolute figures should always be quoted, even if there can be an argument about their significance.
If they are not quoted, and if relative figures are, I always assume that there is something to hide.
Agreed. Every time there is a survey result the methodology is usually different (thus avoiding meaningful direct apples-apples comparison), and in addition what should be gold standards like ARR are often absent. As far as I am aware the government is yet to come forward with accurate vaxx death figures (despite several questions being asked of ministers) and the best we have is via the MHRA Yellow Card Scheme.
Even allowing for massive under reporting (up to 90% according to the government itself) there have still been over 1000 UK vaxx deaths to date, with Pfizer ‘deaths per jabs ratio’ being slightly higher than AZ. Let us say the full roll out has been going for around 100 days, this equates to at least 10 vaxx deaths per day on average (and posibly much higher). The current C19 deaths per day is in single figures on most days. So where is the meaningful benefit v risk of the jab – remembering that this deaths figure does not include life threatening adverse reactions and unknown long term side effects?
Like the original and ongoing gene therapy trials, this study basically only proves that the ‘vaccines’ aren’t needed at all.
And all the cases in the “vaccinated” are “21 days after being vaccinated”. What are the figures like for just “after vaccination”. A load of bollocks.
Good point.
We know from earlier studies that there is a greater chance of testing positive in the immediate few weeks after vaccination than the unvaccinated.
But this chart from the study indicates for the Pfizer vaccine that if that vaccinated person does test positive immediately after Pfizer vaccination then there is also a greater chance that a household member will test positive also than for an unvaccinated person who tested positive. So it’s a double whammy effect. Greater chance of the vaccinated person getting the virus in those first few weeks or so after vaccination plus greater chance of passing it on perhaps.
“after vaccination” is meaningless given any vaccine ever created takes several weeks for protection to start being generated.
Has this been considered?
I was half listening to the briefing while driving yesterday, so was only concentrating enough to mumble a few obscenities and be told off by my wife.
Early on someone said that most transmission takes place in the home.
They then moved on to draw some hard to challenge or prove conclusions about transmission from some partially explained new figures.
Did the latter allow for the fact that many of the people who tested positive will have caught it from other people in their household AND THEREFORE the person they caught it from would now be immune and so would not be infected by the vaccinated person anyway?.
I’m still in awe of the fact that they are still talking about meeting, touching, mixing, who on earth has been listening and following ‘the rules’ all of this time?
Guardian readers perhaps?
How can a “vaccine” which, by the manufacturers´ own guidlines (all four of them) does not reduce the chance of being infected OR reduce the chance of spreading the disease, but is only designed to reduce symptoms, cut household transmission?
How can LDS publish such a crap study without at least some semblance of journalistic integrity?
This is a strange study.
It seems to be attempting to look at whether the experimental vaccine works at stopping transmission to other household members (more than 21 days after vaccination) solely in those where the experimental vaccination doesn’t work in stopping the vaccinated person themselves testing PCR positive after 21 days.
Shouldn’t they be looking at whether the experimental vaccine works at stopping transmission to other household members regardless of whether the vaccinated person subsequently tests positive after more than 21 days?
I realise data wise why they use the positive PCR group but that doesn’t make it look any more sensible.
AN URGENT WARNING
Dr Sucharit Bhakdi, microbiologist: “They are killing people with covid vaccines to reduce the world’s population.”
Dr Mike Yeadon, former Pfizer Vice President: “That pathway will be used for mass depopulation.”
Dr Geer Vanden Bossche phD, Gates top virologist: “The vaccines are threatening humanity. They should be cancelled immediately.”
Professor Dolores Cahill: “This mRNA vaccine is killing people.”
Dr Coleman: “They want to kill six billion of us.”
Dr Carrie Madej: “They want to change our DNA.”
Dr Reiner Fuellmich, German top lawyer: “Those responsible for the corona fraud scandal must be criminally prosecuted for crimes against humanity.”
PLEASE SHARE EVERYWHERE!
(Source: thewhiterose.uk)