A new study (not yet peer-reviewed) of over 50,000 employees of the healthcare system in Cleveland, Ohio, has found that previous infection provides very robust protection against re-infection and, importantly, that there is no gain to being vaccinated as well.
U.S. Senator Rand Paul tweeted the study’s conclusion: that it means vaccines should be prioritised for the not-previously-infected at home and abroad, not wasted on the already immune.
The confirmation of the protection provided by natural infection is very welcome, as is the finding that vaccinating the previously infected is superfluous. Given the significantly higher risk of adverse events for those previously infected (up to three times higher according to the ZOE Lancet study) and the world shortage of vaccines, there would seem to be a moral imperative to cease vaccinating the previously infected.
The study’s finding is particularly robust because of the large sample size and because there were zero instances of re-infection among the previously infected (both vaccinated and unvaccinated). This was despite the study period beginning at the peak of Ohio’s winter wave, so the unvaccinated had plenty of exposure to the virus. Other studies have found the relative risk reduction offered by previous infection to be 80% against all re-infection and 90% against symptomatic re-infection, so the results in this study were even higher than usually observed.
However, the study’s findings for vaccine effectiveness in the not-previously-infected are much less reliable.
The first thing to say is the reporting of the results is frustratingly minimal. There are no tables to go with the figures so you are left trying to read numbers off graphs. There is also no breakdown for first dose and second dose – people are counted as unvaccinated right up until 14 days after their second dose. This means all the infections people get after their jabs, including in any post-vaccination infection spike, get counted as unvaccinated infections.
Looking at only the not-previously-infected now (in whom all 2,154 infections in the study occurred), the study found 2,139 infections among the unvaccinated versus just 15 among the vaccinated. Unfortunately, we can’t do a simple calculation for vaccine effectiveness from this because the populations these infections occurred in changed by the day as people moved from the unvaccinated to vaccinated cohorts, and the authors did not convert the figures into person-days or similar to take that into account. This means we can’t say it was 2,139 infections out of so many people, and likewise with the 15 infections, to allow a straightforward comparison of infection rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated.
What we can do though is observe in the plot below that most of the infections in the study occurred before day 50 of the study period, at at time when (almost) no one was vaccinated – the numbers beneath the plot show that most people became vaccinated between days 60 and 80 (when the number vaccinated jumps from 7,392 to 24,989; note that in this kind of plot the cumulative incidence can change due to people moving from one category to another and not just because of new infections). This means the comparison of the number of infections in the two cohorts is heavily skewed by the much longer time period for the unvaccinated group and the fact that most infections occurred prior to (almost) anyone being vaccinated.
The authors state that they adjust for the “phase of the epidemic”, which is done by making changes according to the steepness of “the slope of the epidemic curve”. However, the steepness of the slope does not by itself tell you the background prevalence (just how fast infections are rising or falling) so it’s not clear that this adjustment will properly take into account the difference in incidence at different times. In any case, it does not take into account that the exposure time for the unvaccinated cohort is much longer than for the vaccinated cohort. The authors do not indicate that they adjust for anything else.
This means that the reported 0.031 hazard ratio for the vaccinated group, which translates to a 96.9% vaccine effectiveness (relative risk reduction of Covid infection), needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. Perhaps this is why the authors do not make anything of this finding, omitting it from their conclusions and summary. It does seem a missed opportunity, though, with data as detailed as the authors had access to, not to have designed a study that could reach a more reliable answer on vaccine effectiveness.
So in summary: the headline results about immunity through previous infection being robust and vaccination not adding anything to it are sound. But don’t try to get anything else out of it in terms of vaccine effectiveness because the analysis is not careful enough to tell you anything reliable.
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Twenty two billion (£) eh?
Now where have I heard that number previously?
Uncanny.
Yep these words like “22 billion”, “reset”, “world leaders” etc come out of his mouth a lot. But in reality, the only thing we lead the world in these days is impoverishment of our own citizens who now have the highest electricity prices in the world, and we are all supposed to have nice warm glow inside about that.
The warm glow inside me is because I am incandescent with rage.
Human beings interfering with nature by being alive is bad, so we’re going to do more interfering to make things less bad.
We are all bad by nature because we emit CO2 and can’t help it.
It’s the “original sin” of the new climate religion.
Of course you can help it. Just hold your breath.
Hmm, maybe we could get some hi-vis jackets and tee shirts with ‘JHYB’ printed?
Don’t worry it won’t work – but it will provide lots of loot for grifters.
Carbon capture is in the same category as gold from base metals, and recovering gold dust in and around coal seams, from colliery waste – both theoretically possible, but impractical. But fools, convinced by The Science™️, handed over their money to the experts and got swindled.
At least they lost their ox, money, this shower-O’-Shite is losing ours.
Already we in the UK have the highest electricity prices in the world. 4 times higher than in the US. Now here are the absurd eco socialists making us fork out another 22 billion basically for NOTHING. We get not a single watt of energy from this latest nonsense.
—— I notice also that the press conference let this cretinous Prime Minister get away once again with saying “Renewables are now cheaper than Fossil Fuels”. NOPE———Renewables only work part time. Fossil Fuels are full time energy that work 24 hours a day every day. For every watt that renewables produce you need the same amount as backup ticking over in the background which Starmer also needs to factor into the cost. Him and all proponents of climate change policies and renewables deliberately ignore this reality when they tell their bare faced lie. ——–He then admits that prices will be high for the short term. —–For how long? 1 year? 2 years 5 years? 10 years? ——But isn’t it simply the case that price of energy will always be high in line with the eco socialist desire to cut consumption because it is deemed by Starmer’s bosses at the UN/WEF that our lifestyles are unsustainable?
Yes, the aim is to cut consumption, but ours not theirs. 2TK and his pals will continue to live in the lap of luxury, totally unchanged.
What a bloody nuisance we are….8 billion of us.—Some wind turbines and solar panels is all we are getting. Like it or lump it.
It wouldn’t happen if the people spending our money so recklessly on these projects were forced to guarantee their results with their own personal wealth.
It’s easy to spend a few billion of other people’s money knowing that if it’s completely useless and achieves nothing (which it won’t) literally nothing will happen to you. Worse, no one is ever going to know either way because it won’t be reported. The news will be busy telling all about sone completely comlletely manufactured, inconsequential, highly titillating political “scandal”.
Monbiot …. “the only possible explanation…”
Wrong, George. It’s very simple – the Energy Minister is a weapons grade cretin.
AT A CINEMA NEAR YOU——–A MAURICE STRONG PRODUCTION OF —-THE 3 STOOGES—-STARRING —-Starmer Miliband and Reeves.
As someone on Talk Radio (if I remember aright) has pointed out, this major and poorly costed investment in handling fossil fuels for vital industries comes at the same time the same people have destroyed our own gas production and oil refining capacity. Hence we will thereafter be paying through the nose for LPG to be processed and transported across the world in carbon-dioxide producing plants and tankers.
This does not seem to be rocket science, but our government can’t do rocket science. Come to think of it, between Spacex and the arms companies, rocket science is not doing too well at reducing greenhouse gases either. Did you know that getting one man into orbit has a similar “carbon footprint” to about 100 long haul airline flights?
They will probably argue that they are using liquified natural gas (LNG) fueled tankers to ship the LNG around the world. There has been a fair bit of investment in storage facilities for such liquid, e.g. at Milford Haven. At least they don’t use heavy fuel oil to transport LNG around!
The South Hook and Dragon Liquid Natural gas (LNG) terminals import about 25% of our natural gas needs from Qatar. And yes they do !., Heavy Fuel Oil is used to power the diesel and steam turbine engined LNG carriers (LNGCs). The LNG boil-off is under in some LNGCs to propel the ships but boil-off rates can provide about 50% power only.
Many people complain that waste from nuclear power stations will need to be buried and stored for thousands of years before it is safe. When do they expect it to be safe to release the stored CO2 from this boondoggle? Never?
It’s not lobbying by fossil fuel companies. It’s Net-Zero zealots wasting our energy – literally.
Just a second… if we have decarbonised by 2050, why do we need carbon capture?
As a punishment beating of course!
It’s the premise that CO2 is the toxic thermostatic control knob to our climate that fundamentally needs to be attacked and discredited. This is the square root of the bullshit.
Net Zero sceptical chats on things like Talk TV and GB News are all well and good but until they address the ‘CO2 controls climate’ scam they may as well be discussing the absorbency of tampons.
In currenr times, to say that CO2 is not a temperature thermostat is like claiming that the sun does not orbit the earth in Galileo’s time.
It’s a heresy that will get any prominent figure into serious trouble.
Neither the Telegraph nor the Spectator will allow this heresy to be published, although their comment columns of full of people denying we are in a climate crisis caused by CO2. There is plenty of practical Net Zero scepticism, but the fundamental argument is never mentioned.
Millibrain, Peeves and Two-Tier Free-Gear
The Monbidiot and some other bloke were arguing about this on Radio 2 at midday.
2 bald men fighting over a comb.
Moonbat is another good name for George.
They are all officially certifiable.
We should be proud that we will be leading the world in a technology which doesn’t work and which nobody else is foolish enough to want.
Literally the equivalent of breaking rocks in Victorian prisons – pointless energy wasting with zero value, except being seen to ‘do something’…
This is so dark and so contrary to the life force that I think it will be a short-lived enterprise. Even the masses are beginning to sense it, the sense that this is an anti-human and anti-life agenda propagated by shrivelled ghouls who have risen to prominence in our shrivelled society. I think there is cause for optimism in the sense that complacency will always disappear when things get really difficult.
Don’t diss the number six it is the essence of the materium. You just can’t do that as a material being and you aren’t going to be able to upload yourself onto the internet and live forever.
Either my maths is bad or we have a very, very large black hole. As huxleypiggles has noted, 22 billion was the inherited black hole. The government is proposing to spend 22 billion on carbon capture. I believe that 22 plus 22 equals 44.
I wish the gods would move rapidly on to stage two (Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad).
They are already mad, and BAD. Time for the Gods….
Monbiot: “…the only possible explanation is…”
Lol – the guy is and always has been, deranged.
This is really stupid. They will use a great deal of energy removing a tiny amount of CO2 from the air in Britain whilst China takes the same air and adds Millions of tons more CO2? Have I missed something here, are they going to enclose the UK in a vast glass wall to keep our own CO2 free air? Of course such a plan would kill all plant life in Britain too, so perhaps not a good idea. Will any warming stop, of course not. A simple scientifically illiterate vanity project at our expense. I suggest that Labour politicians use their own money, not mine!
Clearly the new buzz phrase to replace “build back better “ is “decarbonisation does not mean de-industrialisation”. I expect to hear this echoing around the world, courtesy of the Davos crowd for whom decarbonisation does not mean cutting their own carbon footprint!
Carbon Capture is the green boondoggle equivalent of repeatedly digging a hole only to refill it again. Completely parasitic “make work “
The stunning stupidity of these uneducated politicians is simply breath-taking, but I suppose that is what ‘carbon capture’ is all about. (We exhale 100 times the amount of carbon dioxide we inhale.)
Capturing carbon would mean digging up coal but that is another discussion.
I cannot think of a more pointless project than carbon capture. Its cost of £22 billion will be funded by consumers of electricity and gas in their bills. It will not make an iota of difference to the climate but green plants will have a little less CO2 with which to grow and increase food crops. The government in general, and Ed Miliband in particular, are completely bonkers.