A new population study from Israel, published in the Lancet on Wednesday, finds that the Pfizer vaccine is 95.3% effective against SARS-CoV-2 infection once a person is fully vaccinated (defined as being a week past their second dose). It also finds the vaccine is 94.8% effective in those aged 65 or older once fully vaccinated.
This is in line with other studies and is a very encouraging result. However, as with previous studies, it’s not clear how well the researchers have taken into account the fact that infections were declining anyway during the study period and whether this has led to an over-estimation of vaccine effectiveness.
To test this I accessed the data available from the Israeli Government. I looked at how many cases occurred in each age group each week alongside the proportion of that age group that had been fully vaccinated by that week. This allowed me to calculate how many infections we would expect to occur among vaccinated people in each age group each week if you assume the vaccines don’t have any effect. I then added these together to give a baseline number of cases in each age group to compare against the number of actual cases among the vaccinated as reported in the study. The results are shown below.
I calculated we would expect 43,826 infections among the vaccinated out of a total of 237,700 in the study period (January 24th to April 3rd) if the vaccines have no effect, which is 18.4%.
The study reports 6,266 infections among the vaccinated out of a total of 232,268 during the study period, or 2.7%. (I wasn’t able to discover why the study had about 2.3% fewer infections than the Israeli Government data broken down by age, but by using proportions we can avoid this discrepancy affecting the calculation.)
A proportion of 2.7% is 85.4% lower than a proportion of 18.4% that we estimated if the vaccines had no effect. This suggests a vaccine effectiveness of more like 85% than 95%.
Looking now at the crucial older age group, if the vaccines had no effect I have calculated we would expect 11,332 infections among the vaccinated aged 60 and over out of a total of 29,489 infections in that age group during the study period. The study found 2,201 infections among the fully vaccinated aged 65 or more. (It doesn’t state how many infections there were in total in this age group so we can’t calculate a straightforward proportion from the study.)
We need to adjust our expected figure of 11,332 to allow for the fact that it includes those aged 60-64 (the study uses different age brackets from the publicly available Government data). From the table above this will be about half of the infections in the 60-69 age group, or 2,834. We also need to reduce the expected figure by around 2.3% to allow for the different infection totals of the study and Government data. This gives us an expected figure of 8,329 infections among the vaccinated over 65s.
The 2,201 figure from the study is 73.6% smaller than 8,329, suggesting a vaccine effectiveness among the over 65s of more like 74% than 95%.
It’s not clear why the authors of the study did not do an analysis similar to this one. Taking into account the background prevalence of the virus should be basic, to avoid over-estimating the effectiveness of vaccines when they are rolled out during the decline of the epidemic.
The study (which was funded and approved for publication by Pfizer) briefly mentions lower vaccine effectiveness 2-3 weeks after the first dose, but does not give any information about effectiveness or infection incidence in the first 14 days. This means it gives no more information about the post-vaccination infection spike observed in other studies, though the silence here may be telling.
A further question is why the researchers gave no finer-grained detail about those older than 65 when they must have had the data to do so, and more than half of Covid deaths are in those aged over 80.
An effectiveness of 85% overall and 74% among the over 65s is still good, but it is not as good as the 95% figures in the study. As so often with vaccine studies, on closer inspection you’re left wondering whether you’re getting the full and accurate picture.
(This article has been corrected for some earlier mistakes in the numbers. The overall argument is unaffected.)
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Garbage in, garbage out.
Nothing is going to change the fact that “Covid deaths” have increased dramatically since the “vaccinations” started:
http://www.nakim.org/israel-forums/viewtopic.php?p=276391
(Note, this was backed up by research from Aix-Marseilles University, the world-famous Professor Didier Raoult teaches infectious diseases at the Faculty of Medicine there)
Other studies back this up. For example, The Israeli People Committee:
https://gilad.online/writings/2021/4/21/the-israeli-people-committees-april-report-on-the-lethal-impact-of-vaccinations
If one looks at reports from Israeli users on Twitter, this is not a conspiracy theory. It’s real and these people are being ignored.
When you are ignoring the elephant in the room, it’s akin to philosophers discussing how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin, when the Black Death is raging.
Do the Nakim calculations take into account seasonality?
Not directly but the season nature of respiratory illness is alluded to here:
As always: what does ‘effective’ mean with these snake oils?
It’s Covvideaths over again. There’s no agreed definition of what is a Covvideath and what isn’t.
All the figures are junk, all conclusions drawn from them are false.
Remember 1984 yet again. If you don’t have the freedom to say that two and two make four, you have nothing.
“As always: what does ‘effective’ mean with these snake oils?”
As always – misleading figures based on non-randomized, non-experimental samples and showing some nominal relative risk reduction of much smaller absolute percentages in a context of reducing illness rates – and often using PCR+ data – i.e not illness..
And for those who are not sure of the significance of the RR v. AR distinction, this illustration shows the difference :
You still don’t get it.
I am a freelance reporter who is convinced that mainstream news organizations are not interested in publishing the truth, or facts that don’t “fit the narrative.”
In the article below, I present specific events from my own experiences which explain how I came to believe this.
This account shows how public health officials and editors blocked or ignored a story that presents strong evidence of “early spread” of the virus. However, I’m sure I would have had the same experiences if I was working on a story that challenged parts of the authorized vaccine narrative.
Excerpts:
Hypothetically speaking, if editors were interested in blocking or “censoring” certain stories, they could achieve this goal any number of ways. For example, they could simply refuse to assign reporters stories that would not qualify, in their opinion, as news “fit to print.” They could also not mention or follow-up on stories published by other news outlets.
…. Do I think important news organizations – those that ultimately shape “conventional wisdom” – are willing to report stories that contradict the “authorized narrative?” Generally speaking, I do not.
Does a simple “search for the truth” even matter anymore? For some journalists and for some employees at government agencies, I’m sure it still does. However, the numbers in this group seem to be diminishing by the week.
With my article on the McCain’s, I thought I was simply doing a story on one couple who had a disease earlier than this disease was said to have existed. As it turned out, my efforts to get this story published were more illuminating and ended up frightening me more than COVID-19.
When a genuine search for the truth is increasingly viewed as taboo or off-limits, the prognosis for a nation we all want to see survive and prosper is probably bleak.
https://uncoverdc.com/2020/07/13/covid-19-is-a-real-search-for-the-truth-now-taboo/
If a cigarette manufacturer funded a study that showed cigarettes do not create harm then no one would believe it.
If a pharma manufacturer funds a study to show how great vaccines are then it is fully believed.
Funny old world.
Which is why when Big Tobacco ran such studies in the 1960’s which confirmed the enormous damage they were doing to people they hid the results for several decades and that is why they got hit with class action law suits.
And the fact the data that they are talking about is not fully visible. So the data is not fully published but trust us we know the data. Well no you don’t you lying MF. you have been faking this number since day one. This is the equivalent of Chelsea winning the league title as although we lost more games and have less points we have taken an average and some numbers and come up with an average that’s 96% which is more than anyone else. So we win. Because we have not used number of losses as a critical number.
I have been thinking about that. It has to be because the psy ops personally invested people in the happy vaccine end to the story.
If that ending is questioned, people feel fearful. They stick their fingers in their ears and sing: “nah, nah, nah”.
And that process is reinforced by the sad lack of good mathematicians and scientists amongst journalists. Almost no one mainstream is warning them. Such people get much better pay elsewhere. Third rate scientists are more likely to enter journalism (this is not a personal attack on any currently in that field, I know none personally these days) and they are likely to be easily flattered by access to “top boffins” and bought by a steady stream of “exclusives” leaked from Sage and Hancock’s department, thrilling their news editors.
No one in journalism has a secure job any more due to the shift in advertising, with age and higher pay comes redundancy, so all specialists would also be highly influenced by a lunchtime strong hint that their qualities were highly admired, and any time they needed a job in future, say, Pfizer’s PR department, or the PR consultants advising Hancock, have already said they would love to have them and pay them proper money.
I can see at least one paper where a science specialist is showing signs of independent thinking, but he does not have free rein.
Almost 100 percent “pack journalism” – no real skeptics – or real seekers of the truth – in the entire profession.
Spot on baboon. The study excluded all participants who had only one dose of the vaccine, because they were not “trial compliant”. There were several hundred deaths after one dose excluded from the vaccinated deaths figure (hard to have two doses when the participant was dead!). Similarly for serious illness/hospitalisation – I’m guessing that anyone hospitalised after the first dose probably declined the second dose and was therefore excluded from the figures for hospitalisation after vaccination!
Standard drug trial reporting?
I would just add to the comments already received that the RT-PCR test at low prevalence levels is going to create a large percentage of false positives. This makes these analysis meaningless, we have absolutely no idea of the veracity of the numbers being banded about.
Big Pharma stocks the regulatory bodies with its own people, it runs its own tests, it runs its own post-event analytics. Unless and until there are completely independent studies undertaken it really is meaningless.
Dr Fauci latest: “I would avoid having any fun whatsoever” (attributed)
https://twitter.com/TyTheFisch/status/1389030797500461058#m
Nice interview/presentation with the fantastic Dr Carrie Madej taking a closer look at some of the issues with these injections (there are so many you would need 100 hours to cover them all!) and the agenda driving this, with her expert insight and knowledge.
Alex Newman Interviews Dr. Carrie Madej – COVID Shots, DNA & Transhumanism
https://www.bitchute.com/video/wQ0tkcCs58tg/
Transhumanism! That’s it! Studies on humanised mice… Fauci is, after long, secret, world leading scientific endeavour, like our own Professor Wormtongue, a humanised rat.
The most notable elephant in the room that most commentators seem to miss when discussing the ‘vaccine success’ is the stark fact that the quoted ’95%’ efficacy is in fact the Relative Risk Reduction. The Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) of the Pfizer vaccine is stated to be 0.7% and the Moderna vaccine is 1.1%. The Number Needed to treat, namely the inverse of the ARR is around a 100. So the delighted souls advertising their contribution to humanity with the ‘I’ve had MY jab’ on Facebook seem blithely unaware that they are probably NOT protected and especially after only one immunisation. This may of course be one of the possible causes of the post-vaccination spikes that are being witnessed around the world, though I do share concerns that there are more troubling safety concerns with vaccines that are actually only in Phase 3 trials as they are being rolled out on a largely unsuspecting public. The apparent success of the programme may be genuine, but coupled with the roll-over from the winter spike and dwindling numbers of cases anyway but the real test will be the very likely endemic resurgence in autumn. Dr Ronald B. Brown lays out the hugely deceptive reporting of efficacy by the vaccine companies in his Medicina paper. It is very sad that elementary statistics are lost not only on the general population but also on vast swathes of the medical profession. Part of the latter problem is that science is very poorly taught at Medical School Medicine as a subject does not have STEM status and given the present level of ignorance I am not surprised.
NO – It isn’t.
These might be the Absolute Risk (AR) figures during the period of the study but they are not the overall AR figures. We don’t really know what the overall AR is because we don’t know how many more people will be come infected.
These studies were carried out when prevalence was low. This means AR was low but that increases as prevalence increases.
“These might be the Absolute Risk (AR) figures during the period of the study”
As are the relative figures! That’s how RCTs work!
Jeez!!!!!
No No No.
How many more times do you need to be told this. The RR is the correct measure to use. If the whole population and ends up with the disease then
AR = RR
Clearly after a short period not everyone will caught the disease.
More Relative RR distortion from uncontrolled data. Not RCT data. Absolute RR = 15% – from a non-randomised sample with holes bigger than dinosaurs, let alone a virus.
Of course, ‘95%’ efficacy is literally incredible anyway – let alone the lack of assessment of harms.
Bottom line – you don’t need a vaccine, anyway, which connects with :
Observational data of all-cause mortality (comprehensive – better than this selective stuff) indicates no observable vaccine correlation in reducing deaths.
The study which was approved and funded by Pfizer.
All you need to know.
Could someone make Toby Young editor of the Times and Will Jones head of home and foreign news? Will seems to be one of the last men standing in Britain who understands what a reporter does.
He’s also doing it for peanuts.
In the US, Alex Berenson is the last real reporter. Self funded.
I assume there are some who would like to be able to report honestly, but are not allowed to do so by their news outlets. They end up telling lies to pay the bills.
NNT vs NNH (plus ARR vs RRR in thread)
Data from NEJM Israeli study and Pfizer trial published by UK Gov MHRA.
(References and data summary pic in tweet link below, see thread for ARR vs RRR):
https://mobile.twitter.com/JavRoJav/status/1372749574629060608
I haven’t read the details but if it says what I think it says then it’s not a bad analysis.
The only quibble I would have is that the length of the study is time restricted. The NNT numbers are likely to fall over time while the NNH numbers will probably remain broadly constant.
That said, NNH may change due to long term effects which are yet to become evident.
For f.’s sake, Mayo, stop gibbering statistical nonsense.
If you look, you can see the base data from which the risk figures are derived. You can work it out, and see the misleading nature of relative risk figures in a proper RCT.
The issue is hardly a novel distinction – it’s a well-known confusion amongst those with little immediate knowledge of statistical methods. The knowledge seekers (as opposed to the bias confirmers) pick it up at once.
As to ‘long term effects’ – the lack of knowledge in this area is, in itself, a reason for avoiding the ‘vaccines’, because there is no such information available. By definition.
I have a degree in mathematics and taught Statistics to undergraduate
You are wrong on this issue.
The figures simply provide an indication of AR over a specific period for a virus with a specific prevalence.
That’s it.
Yesterday, I tried to bring awareness to the fact this so-called ‘vaccine’, regardless of the manufacturer, is very dangerous and being more frequently described as a “bioweapon” by doctors. My comment went down like a lead balloon with ad hominem responses.
So let’s try again. Here’s a link to a thorough description of the contents and purposes of this synthetic drug, being paraded as a life-saving vaccine:
https://thewhiterose.uk/this-is-what-they-inject-in-your-body-must-watch-with-dr-carrie-madej/
My opinion is that if even a smidgen of what is described in the video is true, the level of crime being perpetrated on us is off the record.
The problem with Carrie Madej is she’s poisoning the well.
I am currently sending scientific literature, articles and video interviews from/with world renowned scientists to friends and family who are on the fence about the “vaccines”.
I can tell you right now that if I start sending them her interviews where she’s talking about 5G, my credibility will instantly be zero and whatever peer reviewed studies or other high quality data I have sent will be ignored.
I’m not saying she is doing this intentionally, she may well be on to something – I have no idea.
But the bottom line is you have to pick your battles. Promoting her stuff makes us look nuts to normal people.
Thanks for your considered response and I empathise with your reasoning behind being cautious when ‘picking battles’.
That being said, when you talk about being cautious to not look ‘nuts’ around ‘normal people’ who spend their time fearing a near non-existent threat, who insist on wearing masks, socially distancing, testing, etc ad infinitum – I slightly struggle to see how Carrie Madej’s claims could be deemed far fetched – really, nothing should surprise us anymore.
If your friends want a great laugh about 5G and wireless radiation, and the tin foil hat wearing loons who “go on about it”, tell them to have a good read of this, and all the links. Proper belly laugh a minute stuff:
Scientific Research On 5G, 4G Small Cells, Wireless Radiation And Health
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/2230/html/
This comes from the link, for a flava, discussing the documented health effects of Millimeter Waves, which are coming as part of the 5G rollout, already signed off. This text is originally from a study from the USSR, whole document available:
The Bioeffects of Millimeter Waves Documented Years Ago
A Russian Review on Millimeter Waves declassified by the CIA in 2015 “Biological Effect of Millimeter Waves” reported multiple research findings and concluded that “Morphological, functional and biochemical studies conducted in humans and animals revealed that millimeter wave caused changes in the body manifested in structural alterations in the skin and internal organs, qualitative and quantitative changes of the blood and bone marrow composition and changes of the conditioned reflex activity, tissue respiration, activity of enzymes participating in the process of tissue respiration and nucleic metabolism.” (Zalyubovskaya)
And it turns out that our skin is a custom built antennae for Millimeter Waves (a new kid on the block for 5G, on top of all the existing microwave frequencies) – but who cares, it’s all crazy conspiracy nonsense. 5G means 24/7 exposure to these device generated Millimeter Waves.
Potential Risks to Human Health from Future Sub-MM Communication Systems: Paul Ben-Ishai, PhD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuVtGldYXK4
And “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”, Scientific American, Oct 2019 https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no-reason-to-believe-5g-is-safe/
All cause mortality is probably the only honest measure of “success” in this enterprise. Here is an article from Canada. Article on the association between high excess mortality and mass vaccination campaign in Prince Rupert, BC, Canada https://alexposoukh.blogspot.com/2021/05/vaccination-campaign-in-prince-rupert.html?m=1