Oxford University released a new study on vaccine effectiveness this week based on the ONS Infection Survey. Its headline finding was that, for the period dominated by the Delta variant, the AstraZeneca jab declined from 97% vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection to 71% and Pfizer’s declined from 97% to 84%. The researchers note that vaccine effectiveness (VE) appears to wane with time, putting this at 7% per month in the case of AstraZeneca and 22% per month in the case of Pfizer.
One odd thing about these results is that the 97% initial VE for AstraZeneca is very high compared to other estimates, including the vaccine trial which found it to be just 70.4%.
Here are their vaccine effectiveness results in full.
A second oddity is that for the all-infection (positive test) findings, the researchers found Pfizer VE was just 78% in the Alpha period, well below the usual figure – such as that from a major Israeli study, which put it at 92%. But then the researchers found it rose to 80% in the Delta period. A third oddity is that AstraZeneca VE was 71% in the 13 days after the second dose, up from 46% after the first dose even though that’s before the second dose is supposed to kick in. Yet once it is supposed to kick in, after 14 days, VE drops to 67%. These are strange results indeed.
Another perplexing aspect is that the VE estimates against Delta in this study, while (mostly) lower than against Alpha, are much higher than those indicated by recent data from Israel and the U.K., which have included 39% and 17%.
These various oddities piqued my suspicions, so I had a look at the raw data (shown below).
I converted some of these figures into positivity rates to get a clearer idea of where the VE results were coming from. I also added an unadjusted calculation of VE, given as 100% minus (vaccinated positivity/unvaccinated positivity). This assumes those tested are representative of the population, but since the purpose of the ONS Infection Survey is to survey a representative population sample this assumption didn’t seem unreasonable as a first pass.
As can be seen (I have included comments in the table) these positivity rates and VE scores are all over the place. AstraZeneca VE hits 93% before the first dose is supposed to kick in, then drops to 76.7% as it kicks in, then rises to 84.3% before the second dose kicks in, and drops again to 70.1% as it kicks in. For Pfizer, we find the vaccine ‘working’ again before the first dose is supposed to kick in, with VE of 42.2%, but dropping to 17.7% as the first dose is supposed to start working, before rising to 72.3%, but again before the second dose is supposed to kick in, then rising to 83.6% as the second dose comes on line. Surprisingly, previous infection is found to be only 66.4% effective against new infection on these figures, lower than the vaccines.
The researchers adjust these raw figures for a large number of “potential confounders” (though not calendar week or background prevalence).
The following potential confounders were adjusted for in all models as potential risk factors for acquiring SARS-CoV-2 infection: geographic area and age in years (see below), sex, ethnicity (white versus non-white as small numbers), index of multiple deprivation (percentile, calculated separately for each country in the UK), working in a care-home, having a patient-facing role in health or social care, presence of long-term health conditions, household size, multigenerational household, rural-urban classification, direct or indirect contact with a hospital or care-home, smoking status, and visit frequency.
Even so, as we have seen, their results still don’t make much sense or correspond well with other studies. One problem is that the survey doesn’t appear to be finding very many infections at all – an overall positivity rate of around 1% in the unvaccinated both over the winter and in the Delta surge is very low given that most estimates find that around 10-15% of the population was infected in each period. However, this may be because they are testing each person several times before they test positive. Another point is that just 6% of the ONS survey tests during the Delta period were in the unvaccinated (43,889 out of 742,019), which is very low as a much greater proportion of the country between May and August was unvaccinated.
The main conclusion must be that the ONS sample is not suitable for this study. It is not representative enough of the population since it throws up implausible results even after adjustments, and requires too much adjusting, which is always a process riddled with guesswork and no substitute for starting with a better sample. This leads to further questions about how suitable the ONS sample population is for estimating infection prevalence as well.
The researchers also found that viral load, and thus likely infectiousness, is no lower in vaccinated than unvaccinated people, adding to the evidence that vaccination is not something that does much to protect others, undermining the case for vaccine passports, coercion and the vaccination of children.
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its nothing to do with scariants – its all about vaccine coercion…
and it would be rude to wheel out the ‘boosters’ before everyone has been given the initial experimental gene therapy – and you will need the boosters to have your digital medical IDs updated – and receive your social points…. stay safe
Thank you for your clear presentation of the data & eloquent diagnosis of the sorry state in which we now live.
Yes, brilliant! Why can’t more people see this?
I find the hospitalisation of younger people a puzzle. Has the virus really changed its target population? Maybe, I suppose.
But an alternative explanation might be that there is a nod and a wink policy in operation whereby the NHS and the medical profession are conspiring to feed in as many hospital cases as possible. So, anyone with any sort of risk factor is now being hospitalised whereas six months they would have been told to stay at home and use ventolin, or whatever.
Another explanation of course might be that we are seeing the effects of vaccination, and that these younger people are now becoming vulnerable to the virus because of vaccination (give we know vaccination weakens the immune system for a couple of weeks).
Hospitalisation has fallen dramatically in the younger (<54) age groups as well, just a bit less relative to the older age groups. Overall mortality is much more seasonal in the older age groups, and a lot of that seasonal overall mortality is driven by respiratory infections, so the observed shift in the proportions of the (now far smaller) number of deaths in each age group is not too much of a surprise.
for “deaths” in the above read “hospitalisations”
Younger people who needed treatment for other serious conditions were also sidelined for the covid obsession.
It is also explained by considering the Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEETs). These are people who hve been at their parents’ homes for a large part of the lockdown, not having anywhere to go out to. And then the pubs opened and larger groups could gather, and Bob’s your uncle, all these unvaccinated and formerly isolated people meet up, hang out and share their infections around.
If you look at more nuanced age related statistic the highest infection group is 19 to 25. NEETs are 16 to 24.
Agreed, they WANT admissions to be high since there are so few deaths (and not just “from covid”, overall deaths have tanked for weeks)
Are we going to get less propaganda and more real news from GB News which begins this evening.
I live in hope, but will probably be disappointed
I hope too, they are more experienced reporters unlike the programmed ones we have now.
With Tom Harwood on the staff, I have very low expectations – I hope they are low enough that I will not be too disappointed!
The immediate signs are not promising, with BBC, ITV, and Sky apparently trying to throttle their news output by refusing GBN access to pooled news resources. We can all see what’s likely to happen next – access to the pooled facilities will be dependent on GBN agreeing not to rock the boat.
Seriously doubt it. Fully onboard with Covid forever I reckon.
Can I refer you to the NHS website and cancer treatment waiting time breaches from April 20 -21
thats 159310 thousand cases who were not treated within the basic NHS parametres, and most common failures are in Breast Cancer and Gyny Cancers, Way to go Boris you dont see those figures pasted up every day do you
Good post, thanks.
Now what was that Boris was saying the other day, something about society becoming more feminine? You need live females for that, not dead ones.
Anecdotally a friend said she knows an oncologist who specialises in breast cancer. He’s been twiddling his thumbs for the past 14 months. Like you say factor this into you stats fat man.
There can be no doubt, no doubt at all – that is a deliberate part of the whole scam.
If it is a scam then who is behind it? It could be the government, or it could be SAGE, big pharma, Bill Gates etc. (take your pick), and Boris and co. are too spineless/scared/stupid to stand up yo them.
A very good piece.
Welcome to our club.
This piece is vaccine propaganda, pure and simple.
I thought it was reaffirmation of the constant barrage of lies that we have been subjected to over the past 18 months. If it is propaganda to get me to be injected with an untested drug then it has failed miserably.
If it is propaganda to get me to be injected with an untested drug then it has failed miserably.
Yes it’s propaganda and I am glad it’s not working on you. Most doctors are so brainwashed concerning vaccines that it could even be unintentional, but still unlikely.
Looking at my down vote score I must congratulate 77th Brigade for working on Sundays, without pay I hope.
I think you miswrote your first posting which is why people down-voted you. Your second posting about doctors being brainwashed concerning vaccines implies you agreed with the article.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/face-third-wave-covid-19-die-may-already-have-cast/
The DT’s resident zero Covid advocate and vaccine pusher stirs up the readership to ask for more restrictions for longer….
My take on this is the following:
The share of the unvaccinated being infrcted is higher because the criteria have been changed for the vaccinated only, we are as a result now comparing apples to pears here and miss the vast part of infections amongst the vaxxed.
The vaccines have created the variants, mass vaccination is a huge mistake, the focus should always have been and be on treatment and prophylaxe and on focused protection.
Testing is useless, certainly as long as tests aren’t standardized.
Face masks and SD are not just useless but harmful torture, and the only thing needed to catch the asymptomatically infected (if transmission by them really exists, which is still highly doubtful contrary to the author’s claim and much more likely at the vaxxed now) temperature measurement, which is of course not done anymore but worked just fine last summer.
No test, no mask, no gene therapy for me, thanks. I’d rather get infected deliberately with the delta or any other variant.
Obesity is the driving factor for serious outcomes, not not being vaccinated, see swprs.org latest.
https://swprs.org/obesity-and-the-pandemic-new-insights/
And the absolute risk of death is still tiny and hardly reduced by the vaccines anyway- see all data and trial results.
If you are under the age of 70 and reasonable healthy, your risk of dying from the virus is as high as dying of any other cause unexpectedly, see Prof. Luckhaus, Germany’s top mathematician.
https://politikstube.com/professor-dr-stephan-luckhaus-zu-seinem-austritt-aus-der-leopoldina/
Stop the fearmongering and get a life!
Paul Nuki: purveyor of shite masquerading as science
Re the comment on obesity, I can’t help remembering that when BoJo was a patient on account of his alleged infection (I’ll set aside the issue as to whether it was true or not), someone released his body mass index; not good – albeit a good advert for whatever tailor he uses!
We all know Boris is a buffoon and a Liar. Neither of those precludes him from doing a good job as Prime Minister. His overarching character flawthough is that he is a COWARD.
Recent months? They were tossed away last March along with everything else we knew about medicine.
“A lot more dangerous than any virus”
Indeed. I think many of us reached that conclusion well over a year ago.
On hospital admissions : as a frequent visitor, it is obvious to me that hospitals are now opening up and trying to cope with the back-log generated by their politically-driven desk-jockeys. Activity has increased immensely compared with a year ago.
This will push up general admissions significantly, and, of course, in parallel,a rising number will be labelled ‘Covid admissions’ on the basis of false PCR-detected debris
The government`s Net Zero madness is going to require either coercion or psychology to implement, and Covid has given them some useful clues…
I attempted to post the following on order-order this morning and free speech was naturally prevented.
If anyone finds this too offensive well do let me know:
Its very easy.
Look at ourworldindata and compare the Vindaflu ‘cases’ in India with the UK.
Then move the line for the UK forward to match the Indian graph and you can see we are where they were back in April, 4 weeks before Vindaflu proved to be a damp squib, I mean peaked.
That’s where the experts are hoping we’ll be in 4 weeks time at the peak of the Vindaflu wave and then it’d obviously be impossible to relax anything and we would in fact need harsher lockdowns – as they’ve been so effective so far.
Obviously this does require you to ignore:
a. The two massive spikes (which we had and India didn’t) as that will mean a lot of people have natural immunity to Vindaflu and the highly profitable experimental prophylactic treatment and any positive effects it may have.
b. The naughty Indians have half a hospital bed/1000 people (UK 2/1000 last 2017 data) generally poor healthcare and sanitation yet have done surprisingly well by using WHO banned treatments like Ivermectin.
c. That Ponzi schemes exist and supposedly smart people keep falling for them.
No idea why this would be censored in a country of free speech
These days it is difficult to find a country of free speech. Do you know of any?
To continue Project Fear the govt issued to following propaganda poster
If anything starts with the word “Government”, don’t waste your time reading it!
Brave words, correct data. Having been a statistician and modeler for business years ago I have tracked the data relentlessly. I agree Covid is deadly, to a narrow corridor of people. I agree long Covid exists, as it does with seasonal flu and other viral diseases (reminder, one symptom that puts you in this category is depression…enough said).
But words like “exponential growth” are pure fear mongering. Yes we went from 2k to 4K, but we did not go to 16k this time. Or 256k. If they wants to use 3k as the baseline we would have to have 9k new cases.
We have bee surge testing in hotspot communities. Beyond the fact this is driven by the overstated fear of asymptomatic infections, it makes sample comparison. If you reduce testing elsewhere and test a hotspot you cannot compare last week’s 3k to this week’s 7k. I appreciate the work of Tim Spector, and I agree cases have gone up. In hotspots. In Oxford we had 13 positives yesterday. Our local trust has 3 Covid patients. 3 of the 1089 patients. Or .6% of capacity.
It is past time for this government to provide firm data and firm targets for the ending of masks, social distancing and the rest. If it is cases, they must justify why these pose a threat when the numbers are small and have had a small increase (.55 to .60 of capacity). Tell us on Boris what data (not date) will you base your decision on. We deserve that after 15 months of your abuse of our natural rights!
Safe means never!
Why surge test the bees, and for what?
Of course, they’ve manipulated the meaning of safety and risk, and the accuracy and tolerance of any tools in use, largely to promote their own position.
Awkward from the BBC “And of 42 deaths in people with Delta variant infections, 23 were unvaccinated and seven had received only one dose. The other 12 had received two doses more than two weeks before.”
19 vaccinated deaths and 23 unvaccinated. Not that much in it.
Welcome aboard !
LONDON
Mon, 14 June, 12 noon till late
Downing St, London
MONDAY https://gab.com/emoji/1f511.svghttps://gab.com/emoji/1f510.svghttps://gab.com/emoji/1f513.svghttps://gab.com/emoji/1f929.svg
JUNE 14TH , BE THERE
1O DOWNING STREET
12 PM
EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT TO PEACEFULLY GATHER.
All the acceptance of authoritarianism … Seems to me that the CCP has more control over the west than our leaders would have us believe, will the white elephant aircraft carriers stop the soft engagement with useful idiots like Blair and help us get our freedom back?
Methinks not.
Perhaps what we are seeing is fulfilment of Lord Acton’s dictum: “Power corrupts and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.”
As a chum of mine said to me – “Even Hitler didn’t mange to close Britain’s pubs.” It’s some power to be able to do that.
Blooming well said sir!
Absolutely fabulous piece.
A perfect summation, thank you very much. I’ve forwarded it to my MP. I know he’ll be able to do nothing; he’s a newbie MP and thus will only do what he’s told. But it will embarrass the servile plonker when I keep on reminding him of his craven attitude on a regular basis – up until he loses his seat on the gravy train at the next election. Hopefully.
Good idea, and I will forward it my (completely useless) MP, who ALWAYS, in spite of being (because?) in the CRG votes FOR the government every single time. My contempt for:
Politicians, Civil Servants, quangocrats
Bishops, a large number of the clergy
the BBC, most national newspapers
is boundless.
Your comment about the smoking technique is half way there. The theory of wearing ‘face coverings’ is supposedly to reduce risk to third parties. They are absolutely useless to the wearer, most of the time in this context (not writing about proper industrial masks etc). A minor tweak might be: A café man is happy to exhale known toxic compounds to the general public.
The last two sentences are spot on, though.
It was never about Covid or public health,it was always about getting as many people as possible jabbed. We can only speculate as to what will happen as a result but it won’t be good.
Wow! What a great article. Many thanks for that.
This piece is a cracker, which I have forwarded to both my Twitter and Facebook pages.
The key bit that resonated with me was this:
Generally speaking, I’m an adherent to the ‘cock-up’ school of disaster rationalisation – but the last few months have changed my mind.
That’s just it. Even the most conspiracy averse of us – in which I include myself – are now being forced by events to conclude that there is indeed “something rotten” going on.
I guess that Power corrupts, and…
Julian Jessop (retired doctor)
Couldn’t agree more. What has really bothered me during this whole episode is the total refusal of government and the DoH in particular to engage with real scientists and clinicians. When clinical medicine is determined by statisticians, epidemiologists, public health doctors, physicists etc it is a betrayal of medicine. Like the writer I am a retired NHS consultant, one who actually has experience of managing the syndrome that causes Covid-19 – the cytokine storm. I have read the definitive textbook on the subject. I have offered my help and advice. I have had no acknowledgement and, indeed, as the Sceptics website reported a while back, it is apparent that any communications from outside the system were simply binned. So it’s not only not medicine, it’s not even science.
Do I detect some difficulty on the author’s part in keeping one’s temper? Yes I do. I am in the same boat!
Thank you for making an effort.
It is very obvious that they do not want ‘outsiders’ to their narrative being involved, or to participate in sharing better or good practice – or even consider that there is an alternative viewpoint.
Can I ask why you and others such as the author of this piece have not taken and are not taking this up with the GMC and the Royal Colleges? Complaints from persons such as you would be treated with far more seriousness than those from the general public. It seems to me that if individuals such as Michie or Vallance thought they might be at risk of striking off/expulsion for misconduct they might start withdrawing their objections to lifting lockdown.
A great article.
My only argument is with graph 3 which is what the doomsters use to show that it’s more dangerous for the young. This would be better using actual numbers rather than percentages to show the decline across the older age groups with little (if any) change for the younger groups.
Really excellent article that poses all the key questions. First time I have commented here in well over a year of being registered with the site. Thank the writer!
“or why vaccinated people are prevented from foreign travel,” Why can’t those unvaccinated travel surely if you had the jab and are “protected” you don’t need to worry about other people’s medical history? And if the “vaccine” doesn’t work then it doesn’t matter whether you’re “vaccinated” or not ! It all totally illogical.