We’re publishing an original piece today by Dr. David Livermore, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of East Anglia, a member of HART, and a contributor to Collateral Global, about Covid status certificates – or vaccine passports to you and me. He’s not opposed to immigration officers demanding to see evidence that you’ve been double jabbed or tested negative as a condition of entering their country. But he does draw the line at internal use of vaccine passports – as a condition of attending a pop concert, for instance. He’s done a back-of-the-envelope calculation and concluded that admitting the unvaccinated, who will soon make up no more than 10% of the population, won’t pose a major risk and in any event will be outnumbered by the vaccinated who can still transmit the disease.
Suppose a concert is attended by 1,000 people, 900 vaccinated and 100 unvaccinated, which is about the current split. Assume also that vaccines confer around 80% protection – 95% for Pfizer and Moderna and 63-76% for AZ, and that 20% of the unvaccinated are immune through prior infection.
On that basis, the audience will include 80 unvaccinated ‘vulnerables’ and 180 potential vaccine failures. In other words, unvaccinated ‘hazards’ are outnumbered 2:1 by the vaccinated ‘hazards’. ZOE app data, showing that infections in the (large) vaccinated population are beginning to outnumber those in the (small and diminishing) unvaccinated population illustrate how, nationally, we are on track to reach such ratios.
In these circumstances, excluding the unvaccinated won’t dramatically alter the risk to the audience. Rather, the good news is that 740 of the 1000 attendees ([80% x 900]+[20% x 100]) are protected by successful vaccination or prior infection and this proportion, replicated across the population outside, should give sufficient herd immunity to prevent the virus regaining traction. Moreover, it’s generally accepted that vaccination gives better than 80% protection against severe infection, meaning that the vaccinated vulnerables aren’t at much risk.
As for the 80 unvaccinated vulnerables, have we not reached the point where it is their business if they choose to hazard more severe infection? They may also smoke or drink excessively. Or, despite limited mountaineering experience, join a commercial climb of Mt Everest, as promoted by this Everest Expedition service, whose blurb includes the wonderful encouragement: “If you want to experience what it feels like to be on the highest point on the planet and have strong economic background to compensate for your old age and your fear of risks, you can sign up for the VVIP Mount Everest Expedition Service.”
Worth reading in full.
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not worth reading in full if he can’t even get the basics right:
I feel like I have a better understanding of the entire debacle than any individual expert in a particular field.
The contradictions are what gets me.
87% vaccinated + 95% protection from infection, does not equal hundreds of thousands of legitimate cases a day. These things cannot both be true.
Simple logic has failed these people repeatedly, or honesty has…
Oh god, ‘20% naturally immune’ – the diamond princess would like a word.
Not wishing to disagree with your basic point, but to be fair to David Livermore, he wrote:”20% of the unvaccinated are immune through prior infection” (my emphasis). Naturally if you take the Diamond Princess into account, an even better case is made.
Aren’t most of the hospital admissions for folk with vaccination???
Yes because being unvaccinated is the same risk as climbing Everest without experience. Except that the last time I looked at the actual risk – you know, the scientific data rather some hysterical attention seeking scientist with a statistical value 1n – my risk of dying of Covid is actually significantly less than half the risk of me being run over. Presumably on that basis he sees my decision to cross the road as the equivalent of swimming in a lava pool?
Where do you get these clowns from?
I’ve said it before, we need to bring back the 4mph speed limit and the man with the red flag walking in front – or we could celebrate freedom along with the London to Brighton lot…
“He’s not opposed to immigration officers demanding to see evidence that you’ve been double jabbed or tested negative as a condition of entering their country.”
He can get stuffed as far as I am concerned then. What is the scientific basis for this? If the virus is endemic everywhere, which it is, what difference does it make? And the vaccines don’t work anyway.
“But he does draw the line at internal use of vaccine passports – as a condition of attending a pop concert, for instance. He’s done a back-of-the-envelope calculation and concluded that admitting the unvaccinated, who will soon make up no more than 10% of the population, won’t pose a major risk and in any event will be outnumbered by the vaccinated who can still transmit the disease.”
The unvaccinated never posed a major risk. There was never a major risk, at a societal level, that justified the restriction of freedom and the destruction of normal life.
Sorry, this fails the basic test.
Moron husband says he has no problem with other countries deciding to bar the un-innoculated in a bid to ‘protect their own economy’. No matter how much I try to get through his thick skull all of the points raised above, he just says something like ‘but you do see they need to protect their economy don’t you…?’
AAAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!
I think controlling your borders is something that appeals instinctively to people (though not usually to global elite leaders) and I am generally in favour of it to prevent mass illegal immigration, but thinking you can control a virus is just wishful thinking.
I agree. However, we cannot demand illegal migrants are vaxxed but someone who comes here the correct way will need to show evidence. Bizarre.
By making their diaspora die from stress because they can’t go home to visit their loved ones? strewth!
Again this is some scare tactics from the author. If any vaccine works then it works on an individual level. So if the roles were reversed and the
propagandastudy results are to be believed then the vaccinated could be 1 in 10 and be at no greater risk of “serious illness”. They act like this is some miracle. If the viral load is high enough then you would get ill, end off, vaxxed or not.It is way past time we just got on with it and let us all get immune and wait for it to inevitably become the next common cold.
Also as for accepting that it is acceptable for your papers at international borders but not for the pub is stupid. All it is is another way to get us mere plebs to show allegiance to the state. End of.
Latest information from Israel is that the vaccines offer 10-20% protection from infection. We have to use information from Israel because our authorities refuse to publish the relevant information (but they’re very keen to tell us that vaccination has saved 8 million people from the doom of long covid. Sorry, 8 million was last week — this week it is 12 million saved from doom).
Protection from transmission isn’t clear but is unlikely to be better than 20-30%.
I’d run the numbers through with the good Drs assumptions, but there isn’t any point — with protection of 10-20% the vaccines aren’t going to be doing anything substantial to stop infection/transmission.
And that’s today’s numbers — as the escape progresses the value of vaccination will decrease until there’s no point in it at all.
The data is clear — the vaccines offer insufficient benefit for vaccine passports to make any sense at all.
Except, of course, if it is actually about getting international ID cards into worldwide use ‘through the back-door’.
Indeed – I think the quality of the scientific reasoning and the understanding of real world risk from the guy in this article tells you everything you need to know about the level of scientific illiteracy endemic in our institutions. And he’s being touted here as one of the more reasonable ones. One of the big victims of the last 18 months is scientific credibility, and it will suffer long-fallout far worse than any of us will suffer post-viral fati- I mean long-covid
is it by any chance a ponzi scheme?
And if you have received the paperwork promoting it’s use, you will know that they do NOT promise that they protect you against infection at all, nor reduce the risk of passing it on to a third party. Just that it might mitigate your symptoms if infected. That’s the gist of the NHS leaflets, albeit contrary to what the usual suspects are pretending via advertising of all sorts. If it really did provide 10% protection, that would be a bonus. The whole idea of allowing bureaucrats access to one’s health records on those grounds is fraud.
Dear Toby,
Why are you publishing this rubbish?
Such ill-informed and poorly reasoned rubbish belongs in the Express; NOT here!
Errr. Excuse me. These Passports still have NOTHING to do with the virus, never did. Why are you published this crap?
“He’s not opposed to immigration officers demanding to see evidence that you’ve been double jabbed or tested negative as a condition of entering their country.”
If the vaccines do not stop transmission or prevent infection then how does evidence of being double jab prove that your not infected when entering this or any other country? You can have both jabs and still be infected – carrying and spreading the virus everywhere you go – many people who were double jabbed are still testing positive and even now being hospitalised – mask-wearing double-jabbed Sajid Javid is proof that this would be a pointless exercise – not to mention the recent news that pro-vaccine double-jabbed rock band Foo Fighters who have just had to cancel their concert because a band member who was double vaccinated still tested positive for the virus. On a tour of Britain they would have been waved through immigration and allowed into Britain because they have all been double jabbed and yet in reality one of them would have being unkowingly carrying and spreading the virus.
The whole thing is just completely insane – the world has gone completely nuts – we are governed by clowns..
Not by clowns, but by evil.
Not forgetting Andrew Marr (poetic justice).
Dr Livermore,
Assuming none of the 1000 concert goers is very elderly with underlying health conditions, their risk of being seriously affected by Covid is almost zero irrespective of vaccine status.
That was the case in March 2020 and is still the case now.
Whatever aspects of the authoritarian measures you’ve supported over the last 17 months have been a complete waste of time and money.
This must be very hard for you to accept as a supposedly intelligent academic person, so I understand your embarrassment.
Hence the reason for this drivel which desperately tries – but fails – to justify mass vaccination.
20% of the unvaccinated immune through prior infection? I would be astonished if I do not have immunity through prior infection. I’ve never gone for this excessive sanitising, and have continued socialising etc. pretty much throughout.
‘If they choose to hazard more severe infection’…. yep that would be me choosing to suffer a more severe cold, that’s if I catch one at all! It’s hard to understand this drivel except in the context that it’s obvious that nearly eighteen months of constant propaganda has not only befuddled the sheep but the scientists as well. They must truly think this is the new Black Death!
Back here in normal land I still don’t know one person who has died of the ‘worst infection that there has ever been like ever!
No. There is no medical justification for demanding a test only from the unvaccinated, whether for domestic or travelling purposes.
If anything, it exists only for the vaccinated, as only they can be asymptomatically infectious, thanks to the the symptoms artificially suppressing ‘vaccine’.
But demanding that would also be discrimination, this time of them, so I would not be in favour of that.
And any invasive test mandate is an infringement of the inalienable individual right of bodily autonomy.
Besides, all the tests are unstandardized and as such medically completely useless.
The permissible things here would be to either fix testing, required from all, in sofar as it is standardized, meaningful and non-invasive, or stick to temperature measurement for all only and instead.
Anything else is just criminal.
And the passport serves a wholly different purpose anyway.
Yes! The vaxxed are the new asymptomatic spreaders! That’s the point I keep trying to make in my DM comments. They’re the ones potentially breeding vax-resistant variants as well. More dangerous than us unvaxxed folks who are just getting on with taking care of our health in more normal ways.
Resist the passports by delaying gratification. Resist the New Normal, showing ‘papers’ to go about your own country is NOT normal. Repeat after me…I DO NOT CONSENT
Remember it is not a vaccine by definition. Its a gene therapy medical treatment. It’s like having chemotherapy just in case you get cancer.
Prof Livermore has forgotten the most essential. You can never stop transmission of a respiratory virus by border control (exception temporaruy some Pacific islands remote ones). The whole idea is ludicrous and self defeating and his over estimating of vaccine effects is mind boggling. The whole idea that a former Prof in Microbiology should recommend vaccination requirement for a flu like virus would be have laughed at pre March 2020. He should reconsider his position in HART if he continues with ths nonsense.
They continue to peddle the ridiculous notion that a virus gets on and off an aircraft.
If they know its just silly, they are lying through the teeth. If they don’t know, they should be stripped of their professional qualifications.
Nice words by Mr Young about continuing the sceptic cause today. But not one direct reference to ‘vaccines’, which are the means to biotech IDs and the control of populations.
Its a bit difficult to take the rest seriously. But I have signed in again, on the basis that some good BTL comments/info is obtained and occasionally a gem of an ATL article, mainly be Will. Living in France I don’t care if my details are by now with some UK government agency, hope most of the UK commentators realise why the change of title etc.
Comparing COVID-19 to yellow fever is inappropriate.
I must say, given our understanding of how disease spreads, how covid spreads, and how vaccines, particularly covid vacines, work there isn’t much logical point to expecting vaccination passes at borders. Afterall, vacciens don’t stop the spread, and with this country mostly vaccinated already it scarcely matters if someone brings a case or two in. That’s the beauty of these vaccines, if you choose to take them they protect YOU, whether you, or your whole country, then encounters a covid positive person is irrelevant. But I don’t see vaccine passes at international borders as a cause worthy of a major fight, domestic passes though are worth civil war if necessary to halt them.
I now pity anyone trying to use any form of logical reasoning to make the case against Our Social Credit Score by trying to argue the success of Our Vaccines Project.
They seem unable to grasp that the “vaccines” are the tool to get us to “papers, please”. The more people submit to the former, the closer comes the latter.