King’s College London Professor of Genetics Tim Spector dismayed many of his Twitter followers yesterday by calling for the vaccination of older children. The reason? Because the Delta (Indian) variant means we now need 85% of the population vaccinated to reach herd immunity, he claims.
Professor Spector, who leads the ZOE Covid symptom study, was replying on Twitter to Israeli scientist Eran Segal, who tweeted: “Before Delta, Israel reached herd immunity or close to it. To regain herd immunity, we need to vaccinate as many of the 1.2 million over the age of 12 who have not yet been vaccinated.”
Spector wrote: “In the U.K. with delta we need to get near 85% of the population – which also means vaccinating older children.”
In calling for this, Prof Spector appears not to be concerned about the worries of many scientists including members of the JCVI about the benefit-versus-risk balance for teenagers in having the vaccine, or the ethics of suggesting children should be given a vaccine with no long-term safety data not for their own benefit but for the benefit of others.
The notion that a threshold of herd immunity will only be reached if 85% of the population is vaccinated also bears no relationship to real-world data. It’s not entirely clear what Segal and Spector mean by herd immunity in these tweets, but if they mean that without an 85% vaccination rate the Delta variant will continue indefinitely to cause mass hospitalisations and deaths, then perhaps they would like to explain why India’s test positivity rate entered a sustained plummet nearly two months ago, despite the Delta variant being dominant and the country at that point having only 2.5% of its population fully vaccinated? (The figure now stands scarcely higher at 4.3%.)
While there was some reduction in mobility in the country around that time, that has largely recovered now without triggering a reversal of the trend.
Plainly, the decline of India’s Delta variant outbreak did not require 85% of the population to be vaccinated. Just as the decline of England’s Alpha variant outbreak in December did not require such a measure. The Alpha variant, having declined, also failed to resurge in England as restrictions were lifted.
There is in fact no evidence from anywhere that any variant of the virus requires 85% of a population or anything like it to be vaccinated in order to exhaust itself within a few weeks. Outbreaks involving new variants quickly enter decline without vaccinating anyone let alone almost the entire population.
A further point is that we’re already now experiencing the Delta variant surge in the U.K, such as it is, so it’s too late to vaccinate children to prevent it, assuming that were possible. If the idea then becomes to vaccinate children pre-emptively for the next variant surge, in order to prevent it (again, assuming that were possible), we have to ask why? Given that all the vulnerable are fully vaccinated, why worry about teenagers getting runny noses? In fact, exposure to pathogens while young and healthy is an important part of developing a robust immune system.
The Delta variant really is no kind of reason to vaccinate children.
Stop Press: According to the ZOE app’s latest daily report, symptomatic infections in people vaccinated with at least one dose are increasing about as fast as in unvaccinated people, albeit from a lower level. While the data on vaccine effectiveness against serious illness and death has been consistently encouraging, data on effectiveness against infection has been more mixed, and this latest data suggests some of the more optimistic estimates may be on the high side.
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This is a very important reminder to everyone like myself who’d forgotten about the Debanking Scandal. I thought it was all over, but from this article, it’s still going on quietly in the background.
Likewise, we pulled out of PAYPAL when the news broke at the time, but this is a timely reminder and hopefully more people will abandon them. Likewise Give send go I think it was who froze the truckers accounts in Canada. I don’t use them anymore.
My wife and I immediately dropped Paypal when Toby Young was ‘debanked’ and we persuaded as many family and friends as possible to also leave Paypal. Whether it had any effect, I cannot be sure but I do know that it caused us no inconvenience by doing so.
Yes, I’ve dropped PayPal too.
Forget pandering to IRA murderers, if Sir Two-Tier needs to feed his lawfare fix, then bring in a law criminalising political de-banking and whip all the Right Dishonourable Labour Members to vote for it.
Would keep Attorney General Lord Hermeutic out of mischief doing something honourable for a change.
Don’t hold your breath.
I can’t imagine this shower of shite ever doing anything honourable, they don’t have the capability.
Wonder what would happen if everyone who is sickened by this contacted PayPal and demanded for them to disclose any information PayPal had on them? Easy to do, costs nothing and perfectly legal under the Freedom of Information Act. And I mean if hundreds of thousands contacted them, nay millions – all at the same time. And I’m sure you can do it even if you are a past customer. Think I’ll try to send them a letter forthwith. Was it this lot that debanked Farage too. No matter, it’s the thought that counts. Reform have rather a lot of members now, don’t they?
Used to use PayPal, have not used them since they suspended TY’s account.
Same here tof.
Nor I.
My PayPal account was lapsed, but not closed. So I went to the effort of reinstating my login just so I could delete my account and leave a snotty comment.
Closed mine, told them why too.
The state in most countries is an opponent of tge people. We are back in the days of totalitarian monarchs.
We should be glad that Reform is a party that works within the democratic system and it is led by a a man who is libertarian inclined.
If the elites succeed in retaining office within Uniparty I fear the next challenger will not be at all pleasant. The outcome of that would be to take us back to unexplained disappearances from the Tower.
We have all the money and the voting power. Never forget that.
But not the will of the majority to do anything with it sadly. We are but few.
I read somewhere that it takes about 20% of a country to turn the tide against despots. I’m sure we have that but the 20% aren’t stirred enough by these despots maybe?
They are. They just need to realise that they have the power. There is a sense of hopelessness but once again, we have the power, and the taxes they appropriate to fund their horror-show, is ultimately our money.
Stop Debanking Opinions
My personal fair use policy resulted in me banning PayPal (after 20 years of use, thousands of transactions) when it banned Lord Toby.
They’ll never see another penny of my cash.
Same here.
And what punishment did Paypal receive? Nothing I presume. They should have been forced to pay the account holders a fine equal to what sum they had in their account at the time.
At the time I made a donation to the Canadian truck driver protest. That was returned. Not sure if they were debanked or their dictator led government had a hand in it.
Does Elon Musk still Run PayPal ?
ESG——Agenda Driven Government and their “Stakeholders” in big business deciding commie style who can participate in society. —This must be STOPPED
PayPal ….. is not your Pal.
Pals don’t punish you for disagreeing with them; they don’t go out of their way to make your life difficult; they don’t seek to control your speech or your actions.
There’s nothing “friendly” about PayPunish.
I closed my account when they debanked Toby/The Daily Sceptic and I won’t be re-opening it.
It’s a DEMOCRACY! Because of this, you are entitled to your own opinions! And we are entitled to punish you for that with whatever means happen to be at our disposal!
The liberal progressive democracy in nutshell. It’s going to be hard to find a historic political system were people weren’t entitled to their own opinions provided they didn’t mind getting punished for that. Methods of punishment in the 2020s differ from those of the 1940s. But that’s just because our rulers believe their methods to be more effective, not because they’re nowadays more friendly disposed towards those of their subjects who ‘need’ to get punished.
Molly, if you’re reading this, thank you for the work UFT undertook during the pandemic, especially the Scottish team. They kept me sane during a horrific period when most around me were captivated by the BBC.