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The Data Suggest We Achieved Herd Immunity Before the Vaccines Were Rolled Out

by Toby Young
16 May 2021 9:13 PM

We’re publishing an original piece of data analysis today by a leading British scientist – a full professor at a major university – who wishes to remain anonymous. He believes the data show that the population of Britain had surpassed the herd immunity threshold in December, before the vaccines were rolled out. He’s not an anti-vaxxer, and thinks it was right to immunise the elderly and the vulnerable, but doesn’t believe we should vaccinate the rest of the population. Here is a summary of his analysis:

  • Population immunity played a major role in ending each wave of SARS-CoV-2 infection
  • Herd immunity thresholds differ by about two-fold across England, and have been reached
  • Different herd immunity thresholds correlate with regional differences in ethnicity and air temperature – possibly both operating by changing the rate of indoor contacts
  • The Infection Fatality Rate has changed dramatically during the pandemic: it first rose during (and possibly because of) lockdowns, and then fell by over eight-fold as older and vulnerable individuals were vaccinated. It is now so low, and herd immunity so well established, that vaccinating younger adults and children with novel genetic technology vaccines cannot be medically or ethically justified.

This piece is very much worth reading in full.

Tags: Herd immunityVaccines

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37 Comments
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peyrole
peyrole
4 years ago

Well the title is better than the paper. What a load of bollocks.
No wonder he wants to stay anonymous.
The IFR hasn’t gone up and down its stayed exactly the same, we just have more info so we can measure it better now as Ioannidis describes somewhat more lucidly.
And vaccines have bugger all to do with it!

24
-3
John
John
4 years ago

The problem is that the issue in Leicester was due to the amount of testing undertaken, which is a positive feedback into the number of cases.
Over the summer of 2020 whilst working in an out of hours service I never saw anyone with symptoms that could have been CoViD19.

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arfurmo
arfurmo
4 years ago

Would someone please explain “Herd immunity thresholds differ by about two-fold across England” in laymans terms?

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fon
fon
4 years ago
Reply to  arfurmo

yes, it’s called a swag (scietific wild arsed guess), or in laymans term, hogwash, that is what a layman calls it.

Last edited 4 years ago by fon
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Mayo
Mayo
4 years ago
Reply to  fon

No it’s not a SWAG. Common sense tells you that a virus will be more transmissible in some areas than others, e.g. urban v rural. The Herd Immunity Threshold in the latter will be lower.

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robnicholson
robnicholson
4 years ago
Reply to  Mayo

Please can this common sense become more common?

0
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
4 years ago
Reply to  arfurmo

Yes, I was wondering, too… obviously I am not an expert.

0
0
Annie
Annie
4 years ago
Reply to  Marcus Aurelius knew

I think that by now, everyone on LDS is a hogwash expert.

5
-1
Mayo
Mayo
4 years ago
Reply to  arfurmo

It all comes down to how transmissible the virus is in a location. This is represented by the Basic Reproduction Number, i.e. R0. This is the transmission rate at the beginning of an outbreak.

For example, R0 in central London might be 4 while R0 in a rural area might be 2. That, basically, means that an infected person will on average infect 4 more people in London and 2 more in the rural area.

It is this that determines the Herd Immunity Threshold (HIT). HIT occurs when one infected can only infect, at most, one other person.

For London that will happen when 75% of the population is infected. Although R0 = 4, that assumes everyone in the population is susceptible. Clearly if 3 out of 4 are immune then, on average, only ONE person will be infected. For the rural area, the HIT will be achieved when 50% have immunity.

Basic Formula: HIT = 1 – 1/R0

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huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
4 years ago
Reply to  Mayo

R number?

More fantasy modelling. Otherwise known as BS.

3
0
Mayo
Mayo
4 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

The reproduction number within a local population is a fact.

1
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JayBee
JayBee
4 years ago
Reply to  Mayo

Similar to a beautiful calculation to demonstrate that the Earth is flat.

1
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Mayo
Mayo
4 years ago
Reply to  JayBee

Why do you think that a reasonable estimate of the rate of infection within a population is not possible.

There are a lot of assumptions at the start but if these are refined as more data is gathered (e.g. heterogenicity)

It’s not difficult to predict the peak of local maxima once. Even SAGE got the April hospitalisation peaks right.

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Mike Yeadon
Mike Yeadon
4 years ago
Reply to  Mayo

You’re quoting a formula which applies only under conditions so unusual that it’s useless.
The conditions are those under which any two individuals are as likely to encounter one another as any other pair of individuals, a so-called homogeneous mixing model.
This never happens in the real world.
Instead, under heterogeneous mixing conditions, the HIT is much lower.
Prof Maria Gomez’ papers on this topic are a treat.
We’ve been hugely over this lower HIT since last year,

3
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JayBee
JayBee
4 years ago
Reply to  arfurmo

Take Stockholm and Malmö: Stockholm had, say, 30% of people infected in the first wave, Malmö 0%. What does that tell you about reaching herd immunity in the whole of Sweden? And what does this Swedish example tell us about reaching it in Europe, and then the resulting European one about reaching it in the whole World?
That this HIT is solely a theoretical concept, a computer model, without much relevance or chance to get realized in practice, as all previous diseases have demonstrated.

3
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fon
fon
4 years ago

Of course we have herd immunity, we’re 1.5 years in and 2/3rd of us have had a 95 % effective vaccine. Most of the rest have had the actual virus. It’s pathetic. It must be a crackpot professor if he remains anonymous in the face of such obvious facts.

If you have 1 jab, you cut risk to ~ 28% of what it would have been. And if you have both jabs, you cut the risk by a factor of ~18, which is in almost exactly in line with trial results (94.5% reduction in risk.) It’s good to have a 94% relative risk reduction, esp. when the one out of 18 who get sick after two jabs already frail.

So in summary: Hospital findings in Bolton on May 11 yield a 1 in 18 relative risk reduction after two jabs, which equates  to 94.4% relative risk reduction, exactly in line with trial results. The indian variant does not get past the vaccine. Or a 67% relative risk reduction after one jab. Again almost exactly in line with Oxford AZ vaccine trial results.If this holds elsewhere, and we can get everybody vaccinated, we’re through this. Mike Yeadon is correct, variant make no odds.
How much do these crackpots think it takes to ger herd immunirty, they are extremists.

We need a harsh law against scientific terrorism.

4
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OKUK
OKUK
4 years ago
Reply to  fon

They only get those vaccine efficacy figures by cheating – by not starting the count until 14 days after vaccination – thus avoiding the fact that vaccination makes people (especially the oldest and weakers) more susceptible to infection including Covid in the two weeks after vaccination. Given we saw some of our highest Covid death peaks after the vaccination, I think the negative vaccine effect is significant. A friend of mine got Covid soon after the vaccine. I very much doubt the 94.4% relative risk reduction figure. And don’t they count mild symptoms as non-infection as well?

15
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BeBopRockSteady
BeBopRockSteady
4 years ago
Reply to  OKUK

My friend has Covid a week after the second jab too

1
0
R G
R G
4 years ago
Reply to  fon

“We need a harsh law against scientific terrorism.”

Agreed. Ferguson et al. have a lot to answer for.

9
0
JayBee
JayBee
4 years ago
Reply to  fon

You cannot calculate correct efficiency numbers without knowing how many people overall were jabbed and unjabbed there.
If at the extreme, only those 6 people in Bolton were jabbed and then became sick whilst 140.000 weren’t and then the 12 of them became sick, you would still come up with your efficiency numbers whilst in truth, the jabs are the actual problem.
Even you should be able to get that.
And that leaves the practically non-existant absolute risk reduction, the statistically irrelevant small sample size, the general issues and questions around that sampling and testing and the all important age group distributions (how many sick in an age group, how many jabbed/unjabbed in that age group) aside.

5
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BeBopRockSteady
BeBopRockSteady
4 years ago
Reply to  JayBee

Fon is lost on this site. They don’t exactly understand what scepticism is. They see a government sugar coated number as proof of something, as if it wins the argument. The rest on the other hand ask, “What angle is it this time?”

1
0
eastender53
eastender53
4 years ago
Reply to  fon

Your doing it again. Your numbers are meaningless without context. What is the absolute risk reduction in your view?

I hope you are getting well paid for this statistical prestidigitation.

2
0
Dodgy Geezer
Dodgy Geezer
4 years ago

I think I understand what SAGE is trying to do here

They are instituting random variable social directives in an effort to confuse the virus.. .

9
0
tcm2007
tcm2007
4 years ago

I can’t help thinking he has confused the test positivity rate with the population positivity rate, and therefore thinks the peaks in the first graph show herd immunity.

As for the graph which sums % rates, which you simply can’t legitimately do, I presume the lack of a y axis label reveals that he knows that’s statistical nonsense.

1
0
Bill Grates
Bill Grates
4 years ago

Gee, who would’a know n that ?

Knut Wittkowski for one , but of course he’s just another covid denier.
and no one would know what he says because he’s been airbrushed out of the picture,

But never mind Toby, good old Boris is holding firm against all those zealots who want to keep us locked down.

Gimme a F…..g break.

6
0
Banjones
Banjones
4 years ago

Only read the heading. Surely we knew this weeks and weeks ago, didn’t we?

1
0
Mayo
Mayo
4 years ago

A spanner in the works?

I agree that we might have been getting close to Herd Immunity in December. The virus was circulating but infection (and death) rates were more or less flat over several weeks.

We then had an uptick in both cases and deaths. I disagree with the professor why this happened. I think the vaccine rollout, for whatever reason, caused the increase. There was bound to be a sharp decline after the peak. This has happened right across the world.

But the real problem might be immune escape. I’m still slightly nervous about Geert Vanden Bossche’s concerns over mass vaccination during a pandemic. I was trying to get more details on the Bolton cases earlier to-day – and this is the reason why.

I’m sure we’re ok but a variant that evades the “vaccine” could end up being a problem for previously asymptomatic cases and ultimately for all of us.

2
-1
BeBopRockSteady
BeBopRockSteady
4 years ago
Reply to  Mayo

It hasn’t happened in some places. Hungary, Chile, Uruguay.

Vaccine lite countries such as Mexico and Russia have seen declines.

It’s a complex ppicture.

The main correlation seen is regard to vax rollout and spikes immediately after. Currently happening in Indonesia, Thailand and Bhutan.

1
0
Mayo
Mayo
4 years ago
Reply to  BeBopRockSteady

It hasn’t happened in some places. Hungary, Chile, Uruguay.

They have had increases. The rate of vaccine rollout will be a factor.

0
0
Ross Hendry
Ross Hendry
4 years ago

It’s clear we have herd immunity to thank for ending the pandemic. But don’t expect the government to go along with that. They are mere puppets of the Big Pharma mafia who have an ongoing, long term interest in promoting their dodgy “vaccine”, even though people are dropping like flies from it.

8
0
JayBee
JayBee
4 years ago

“A parsimonious explanation for the history of the U.K pandemic would be that after the first wave hit we soon achieved enough population immunity (via natural infections) to suppress the virus during the warm summer months, but not sufficient to keep it in check during the colder autumn/winter period.”

What the lockdown critics and focused protection advocates stated from the beginning: Lockdowns actually worsen the death toll, as they prevent the early infection of the ones at little risk, creating the second wave in the first place and spreading the disease to more of those at more risk.
But then, this was most likely well known to the lockdownistas as well, but it obviously didn’t suit their real agenda: establishing a dictatorship and massively reducing the average life expectancy and population size over time.

1
0
Glynthepin
Glynthepin
4 years ago

The push to vaccinate the entire population regardless of vulnerability to the virus can only be about one thing and that is the covert goal of introducing global bio-identity papers.

4
0
JiveBear
JiveBear
4 years ago

I wonder how many people (if any) are turning up at a testing stations that have previously been jabbed. And for those that have been jabbed would a PCR or Lateral Flow Test thereafter always show positive ? . . . anyone?

0
0
Lowe
Lowe
4 years ago

Apart from the first graph, the other graphs have no vertical scale.

In graph 3, it would be better to look at average temperature over the time period of interest rather than the average yearly temperature. Would figure 3 predict what happens in India?

0
0
Mike Yeadon
Mike Yeadon
4 years ago

I think I did tell you all this beforehand.
Almost everyone seems to have forgotten that a substantial minority were already immune before the virus arrived (approx 30%).
Another 25% minimum have been infected & are now immune.
The youngest 10% do not participate in transmission (resistant rather than immune).
So I agree that, prior to initiating vaccination, we were at HI.

4
0
IanC
IanC
4 years ago
Reply to  Mike Yeadon

See link below

I just pray that this is real, and if so it isn’t squashed before it gets properly off the ground. Certainly, the list of charges being brought by the Corona Investigative Committee in Germany ring true. Spot on even.
If only. Do we dare hope?

https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/05/17/lawyers-and-medical-experts-worldwide-say-they-have-all-the-evidence-they-need-to-convict-who-cdc-phe-bill-gates-and-world-leaders-of-crimes-against-humanity/

0
0
robnicholson
robnicholson
4 years ago
Reply to  Mike Yeadon

Indeed – I don’t know quite how many cruise and military ship examples we need to show that even when in very close proximity, a large percentage don’t get ill. 30% sounds like a reasonable number to me from the 3 or 4 reports I’ve read.

1
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