What do you do when people have spotted that infection rates are higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated and are spreading this ‘misinformation‘ on the internet?
It appears that you commission the ONS to come up with a model that fixes the problem. Or rather, in this case, three models.
The ONS on Monday published a new ‘technical article‘ based on its Covid Infection Survey that provides “analysis of populations in the U.K. by risk of testing positive for COVID-19”. It covers the two-week period August 29th to September 11th, though regular updates are now promised.
It involves no fewer than three models, briefly summarised as:
Our first model, Model 1 (the core model), predicts the likelihood of an individual testing positive based on general demographic characteristics in order to help identify broad groups where infections are persisting or arising. …
We then built upon Model 1 resulting in Model 2, the screening model. This includes the core demographic characteristics from Model 1 and incorporates other characteristics individually to identify other factors associated with testing positive for COVID-19. …
Finally, Model 3 (the behaviours model) adds behaviour variables to the core demographic characteristics from Model 1 and the screened characteristics that were kept in Model 2.
I’m sure this talk of models built on models is filling you with confidence.
I’m not sure it filled the authors with very much confidence, though, as their main findings are stated without specific figures:
● People who had received one or two doses of a coronavirus vaccine were less likely to test positive for coronavirus (COVID-19) in the fortnight ending September 11th 2021.
● People living in a household of three or more occupants were more likely to test positive for COVID-19 in the fortnight ending September 11th 2021.
● Those in younger age groups were more likely to test positive for COVID-19 in the fortnight ending September 11th 2021.
● People who never wore a face covering in enclosed spaces were more likely to test positive for COVID-19 in the fortnight ending September 11th 2021.
● Those who reported socially distanced contact with 11 or more people aged 18 to 69 years outside their household were more likely to test positive for COVID-19, in the fortnight ending September 11th 2021.
The media made much of the mask finding, with the Mail declaring: “People who don’t wear face masks indoors are up to TWICE as likely to test positive for Covid.”
Here’s the chart with the full ‘Model 3’ results.
And here are the ‘Model 2’ results, which include the vaccinated categories.
There are a number of curious points to these. For example, having a regular lateral flow test (LFT) makes you more than twice as likely to test positive. But why, when the ONS survey is based on a random sample of PCR testing, does your chance of being found positive increase just because you also test regularly with LFTs? Perhaps it’s because those more likely to test regularly, such as school children and healthcare workers, have higher background infection rates? Possibly, but isn’t the model supposed to control for confounders like this? Besides, according to the results above, children and students are actually less likely to test positive, not more.
Which is curious in itself. How can the ONS seriously suggest that in the fortnight August 29th to September 11th, as schools went back, infection rates were lower in students and children? Here are the ONS’s own estimates – from the same infection survey – for different age groups. The far higher rates in those under 24 are clearly visible.
What has gone wrong with the modelling in the study that it produces a piece of nonsense like lower infection risk for children and students? If the higher rates in children and students have been erased by the model, how can the rest of the findings be trusted?
The ONS has provided the raw data in a linked spreadsheet, so we can dig a little deeper.
Here we see that across all categories the prevalence varies little, moving mainly between 1-2%. This suggests that whatever relative risk reductions there are for the various categories, the absolute risk reductions are small, less than 1%.
The highest values are found in the unvaccinated, with 2.8% prevalence in the two-week study period, and children/students, with 2.6%. These will be many of the same people, of course. The fact that the raw data for children/students is up at 2.6 times the reference value (namely 1% for those employed/working) is baffling given we’ve just seen that the model comes up with a reduced risk for that group. That’s one heck of an adjustment.
Yet no such massive adjustment occurs for the unvaccinated, with the modelled risks for the vaccinated categories being little different to the raw data. This indicates that little account has been taken of the fact that the unvaccinated in the sample are mostly young people with high background infection rates, which will skew the implied vaccine effectiveness upwards.
We know from Public Health England data that over this period reported infection rates in the vaccinated over-40s were higher than in the unvaccinated. However, in this study there is no age breakdown for the vaccine categories, so any negative vaccine efficacy like this will be concealed.
One big problem for the study is that the study group is highly unrepresentative in a number of ways. For instance, only 12.8% of it is unvaccinated, compared to 29% in the wider population.
The study group is also an uncommonly conscientious bunch, as befits a group willing to participate in this kind of survey. As well as nearly a quarter doing regular LFT testing, 84% say they always wear a mask in an enclosed space (significantly higher than surveys indicate), while just 8% say they wear one sometimes and 6.5% never. There’s little chance that the researchers will have taken into account all the differences in the way these groups behave, such as never-maskers being likely to be less cautious people. Small wonder then that their results on masks are so different to the RCTs.
Only 6% of the study group has had a previous reported infection, yet PHE reports that around 19% of the population have antibodies from a Covid infection. Perhaps this is why the study shows that previous infection only gives 55% protection from re-infection, lower than from the vaccines even after their efficacy has waned over time and against Delta. However, this finding is based on just 59 positives in the recovered out of 10,055 tested or 0.6%, which is too small to have confidence in generalising it to the population, particularly when you take into account the chance of false positives. It also contradicts recent data from Israel which suggests that natural immunity provides much stronger protection against Delta than the vaccines.
Readers may recall an Oxford University study last month on vaccine efficacy against Delta which also used ONS Infection Survey data and made a similar finding that natural immunity was inferior to vaccine immunity. I pointed out then that the data in the study was all over the place and made no sense at all, and wondered whether the ONS Infection Survey sample was really fit for purpose. Is it too unrepresentative of the wider population to provide the basis for sound and meaningful results, even after adjustments, which seem to be done cackhandedly anyway? After this latest study I am even more convinced that the answer to that question may be yes.
Stop Press: Oxford Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine Carl Heneghan has been scathing about the study on Twitter: “No protocol, no peer review, no accounting for confounders, selection bias and reporting bias you couldn’t make it up – actually, it seems you can.”
Discussion
Comments
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Something else to point out :
The report states people having regular lateral flow tests (LFTs) are more likely to test positive, but states this may be correlation rather than LFTs causing Covid, eg high risk people may simply have tests more regularly. The report states people not wearing masks are more likely to test positive, but fails to state this may not be causal, eg mask wearers may be more attentive to hygiene measures. It’s unclear why the report highlights the correlation vs causation distinction for LFTs but not for masks.
Studies, such as this one published by the ONS, need to be policed. Science needs a police force to protect the discipline and the public. It is not right to censor these publications but they need to be scrutinised and any discrepancies or misleading information exposed for public and patient safety. They should be policed objectively and the media should be obligated to publish the findings.
Thank you Will Jones, Carl Henegan, Claire Craig and all the mathematicians/statistical analysts who are trying to ensure that we, the public, all get a fair, honest picture of what the reality is.
So we need to add the ONS to the organisation such as SAGE and others setting up models to give false information to suit the government agenda. Is there any organisation left that we can trust to give accurate information based on unbiased data rather than useless models that have nearly always proved to be wrong and mostly because they are set up to give the answers that the originator wants rather than unbiased truth.
The only benefit from this rubbish is that people who take the trouble to research the truth will never believe these government appointed charlatans again. I only wish more people would search out the truth and declare this kind of rubbish as what it is.
There has been some reliable research (sorry, I can’t recall the reference) in an American medical establishment that showed that those who had caught covid-19 naturally had zero reinfections compared with the group that had been vaccinated. I think the total numbers in the study was something like 3000. Obviously how long the immunity lasts after natural infection will only be known after a period of time. But if you look at SARS 1 infections (covid-19 is SARS 2) people who had this illness continue to produce an effective immune response 16 years later.
Perhaps they should rename the department from ONS. Office for National Bxxxxxxx (ONB), maybe.
Of course non-medical masks don’t stop virus spread. Even if they did, it would simply weaken our natural immunity. The scientists and politicians actually told the truth at the beginning of the panicdemic by asserting that masks were useless. I have noticed a lot more people are no longer wearing these muzzles. Perhaps sanity is beginning to return.I still can’t believe how mindblowingly stupid the global response to Covid has been. However try Australia and New Zealand for stupidity on steriods.
Absolutely right. A year or so ago I read the BSI standard on this topic, and they were a bit scathing about the idea of ‘face cover’ gadgets. All should note that many of them sold to the public have tiny labels round the back that admit that they not ‘masks’, so as to avoid being done under trading standards legislation (in English english anyway; might be different in America). https://www.bsigroup.com/globalassets/localfiles/en-gb/product-certification/personal-safety/bsi-guide-for-personal-safety-equipment-0520.pdf
In the US those who pop their clogs within 14 days of being pricked are counted as unpricked. Is that happening here?
seems to be
Enough
The retoric always changes to fit the narrative. Why can’t people see this.
It loses me. Ffs.
For the record:
During the summer there are usually about 9,000 deaths in England and Wales each week.
Over the last two weeks reported by the ONS (week 36 and 37), there were about 11,000.
About 1000 or these 2000 “excess deaths” were probably directly due to COVID
Less than 50 of these 1000 deaths were in fully vaccinated people (5%)
About 5% of NHS beds are occupied by those suffering from COVID; another 5% are empty.
About 2/3rds of the “non-COVID” excess deaths occurred at home
Where does the 1000 come from, and what was the vaccination status of that 1000?
The number of COVID inpatients is the NHS’s fault. How many NHS beds would be occupied by COVID patients if, since the start of the “pandemic”, the NHS hadn’t been refusing to provide early treatment, and the medical establishment hadn’t been scoffing at the very idea of early treatment and sabotaging clinical trials?
To give you an idea of what might have been, here’s a paper from Spain https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7833340/#!po=34.9057 describing two nursing homes where almost all the 84 elderly residents caught COVID in the first wave in 2020; none of them died and none of them even needed to be sent to hospital. Because the doctors actually bothered to treat them before they became really ill. With extremely cheap medication, with known safety profiles. Without treatment, typically an outbreak like that would kill 20%.
A key flaw is the data set, which was based upon drawing ‘random addresses. If a household is willing to take part in this type of survey, we realistically know the demographic they probably fit into (mask wearing, lockdown loving etc etc).
How many times do you get stopped by somebody on the street wanting to do a survey and actually take the time to do it? Never pretty much, as it has 0 interest to you.
Also, surveys are just generally one of the most flawed quantitative forms of data there are, especially with how they have undertaken it:
Participants rarely complete them unless there’s a vetted interest (i.e the topic interests them for one reason or another) resulting in a biased demographic and not a ‘true representation’. Individual responses are subjective and inaccurate. You can bet your bottom dollar participants over exaggerated their mask wearing to seem like ‘good people’. They have included children, what child can accurately recall how much social distancing, mask wearing etc they have incorporated over a period the sample size is ever increasing, resulting in an inability to accurately compare and contract X month with X month Could go on and… Read more »
Good to see Mr Heneghan increasingly putting his head above the parapet again after many months of I presume enforced silence.
Me too!
I guess he didn’t want whatever happened to Tim Spector to happen to him.
Statisticans have no reputation to destroy. The simple reason for that is that x% of the members of our one-off (as always) test group had property Y does not mean the probability of some other person not in the test group having property Y would be x%.
Assuming that Y would be randomly distributed among the entire population (and it isn’t) the relative frequency of Y being found when randomly examining people for it (which isn’t being done) would approach the probability of Y occurring as more and more randomly selected people are examined for it. But it’s not guaranteed to come anywhere near the actual probability for any small subgroup of the entire population: One could – by mere chance – have selected only people with Y. Or only people without Y.
No amount of junk pumped out by interested parties will ever chance this fundamental shortcoming of their so-called method: It’s literally at odds with basic math.
Tweet from Carl Heneghan
https://twitter.com/carlheneghan/status/1443171793582366722
No protocol, no peer review, no accounting for confounders, selection bias and reporting bias you couldn’t make it up – actually, it seems you can.
Let’s remember that mask mandates remain law in Scotland. High school children are masked all day. It’s highly unlikely you’ll see more than 2 or 3 unmasked faces in a busy supermarket at the weekend. Obedience is almost total.
Yet Scotland has the highest infection rates in the UK and Europe.
Or didn’t the ONS decide to have a peak north of the border?
Same for Wales where we have a Labour government led by an over-cautious and somewhat ignorant old man in a wrinkly suit.
His wisdom fills me with confidence – not!
Those models sound like Asimov’s three laws of robotics.
There’s lies, damned lies and statistics. As usual, the civil servants make them so difficult to comprehend that they can (and have been) be interpreted to ‘prove’ anything the author wants.
I seriously doubt if the ONS reports would ever meet the requirements of the Plain English Campaign’s crystal mark. Nothing new, of course.
Both claims are rubbish. Far too many experts NOT in the pay of Bill Gates and his globalist acolytes say the opposite. My immune system is keeping me safe. I have been quite healthy and I tested my Vitamin D levels the other day and they are ‘sufficient’, nevertheless as autumn has arrived I have upped my vitamin levels anyway. Natural Immunity is our best defence and we should take care of it.
“ … whatever relative risk reductions there are for the various categories, the absolute risk reductions are small, less than 1%.”
Of course, this is a foundational error of the whole mythology – the vast exaggeration of real risk. I always judge the veracity of studies on two key factors : the circumstantial evidence of a dodgy source (unfortunately, the ONS has gradually been sucked into the web of politicization), and the prominence of ARR figures.
Not that the ARR is the only relevant data – but it is a key piece – a litmus test – that tends to reveal the degree to which findings are edited.
“…whether the ONS Infection Survey sample was really fit for purpose.”
That is an underlying concern. Firstly – it blithely takes test results as the dependent variable measuring ‘infection’ – a known error that was established a long tie ago, and whose persistence is a key marker of the scam. Then there have been massive issues around sampling and other assumptions.
At the very beginning, the derived figures of prevalence had some credibility (if expressing numbers at the high end of what might be expected in the real world) , but this credibility… Read more »
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-09-tracking-pandemic-favour-nowcasts.html
You can guess this is how they want to keep the scare going
The comment section under the Mail article is quite encouraging though. People are definetely seeing through and calling this BS, and that at a ratio of 100:1!
And those few who don’t, make such stupid comments that they must be from the 77th.
I’ve not looked but bet the Guardian and Times commenters will still be lapping it up!
Sample bias. The majority will either not notice, or believe it.
Even mask fanatics don’t claim that masks prevent infection inbound. So if any projected statistical model shows that, then it is wrong.
And if it is wrong on that, then what else is it wrong about.
Models are very susceptible to GIGO. And their prevalence is due to the widespread availability of computing power that is far in excess of the number of people competent enough to model using it.
Especially so models that were constructed expressive to present the opposite finding of reality, like these and all vaxx and lockdown related ones.
All the warming is modelled and overcomes the thermometers recording cooling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvuhxv1Ywd4
models that use the outputs as inputs for the next time series are susceptible to “exponential error” (IIRR there used to be a wikipedia on it but it got deleted).
This means that near perfect in = garbage out.
Correct.
A case in point, Professor Pantsdown. My Great Grandson has a better grasp on computing than Neil Ferguson and is usually pretty honest.
Although, where has that bar of chocolate gone….
Well I’m hoping its stays as it is, very few muzzled up now, those who still do, good luck to them, their choice. Since humans appeared on the planet we have never had to be muzzled to survive.. in fact to the eugenicists who are trying to convince us they are benevolent, it rather ruins their argument
I always counter these kind of things with the undeniable observation that the infection curve has NEVER changed when ANY country introduced masks – it continued to rise on it’s merry way. The data is in from most countries. If you make a change to a dynamic system, some change is expected. Otherwise it’s deemed as ineffective.
Mask wearing on trains positively annoys me because if somebody is sat next to me, their breath is directed sideways straight into my face 1′ away. Would be far better to expel it forwards into the seat back.
As Neil Oliver said: They are getting desperate and you can smell their fear.
That’s just another line to give people hope. The fact is that many people have been jabbed once, many twice, and some are about to get a third jab. Children aged 12 and above are now being jabbed, and the ‘vaccine passports’ have arrived, and proof of ‘vaccination’ is required for travel and keeping your job (unless you prefer jumping through many hoops at your own expense).
A miserable situation, but here we are. It’s quite clear that ‘Covid’ has been the Con of the Century, but it is the gift that keeps on giving.
If you’re not sure whether the members of the SAGE committee and your MP are ‘fearful’, why not pop round to their home and ask them for yourself?
Why no news or comment today on the parliamentary vote on extending the Coronavirus Act powers?
Has Toby been got at too?
Seems I was wrong…….they’re not even going to have a 90-min debate, or a vote.
There is no news about this anywhere.
Looking on the HoP web-site, it says ‘Parliament is in Recess until 18th October’.
Can anyone explain what is going on?
Time to count their fat profits?
Parliamentary democracy has sunk to a new low now. This is the Coronavirus Act for heaven’s sake!
Toby can’t find out what is happening either?
See my comment above. It’s a relief to me that democracy has not failed yet, but the lack of news about the extension vote is still disturbing
“democracy has not failed yet.”
I would love you to explain that one.
Perhaps I should have said it has not completely failed!
My comment did not appear for some reason (!) so I have recommented
See my comment above
I have looked very hard and can find no news either on this very important vote
Finally found out that there will be a debate and a parliamentary vote on the Coronavirus Act 2020 after October 18th 2021 when the House of Commons sits again. This is referred to in the ninth two monthly report on the CA 2020 on the website assets.publishing.service.gov.uk. It makes interesting reading, the government’s going to offer to allow a number of provisions to expire or be suspended in order to ensure the agreement of the House to another extension.
I posted a comment on here about half an hour ago but it has gone for some reason! There will be a debate and a parliamentary vote in October 2021 in the House of Commons on an extension of the Coronavirus Act. This is referred to in the 9th two monthly report on the assets publishing government website. It makes interesting reading
The real messages:
> Winter is coming we need to control you again – put a mask on
> Masks work – anyone who doesn’t wear one is a cunt (especially as they are more likely not to be jabbed)
> People who wear masks are likely to be jabbed – therefore it can’t be them who are spreading it around
> We need to control you because we have to hide the fact that the jabs don’t work – they don’t prevent transmission, and they might even make deaths worse
> We have paid the news media to do as they are told, and they are lapping it up
”And we need to keep the ”be afraid” message going to make everyone believe there is still a ”state of emergency” because we’re going to renew the Coronavirus Act.”
”We have paid the news media…..” Anyone remember this from way back in 2020?
Absolutely.
I remember Gordon Brown complaining, during the Blair government years, that nobody trusted the “official” statistics from government and so he was going to set up a new independent body to publish national statistics, a body which would be unimpeachable in its authority and truthfulness.
Its name? The Office for National Statistics.
… which it was for some time. But corruption is easier to seed than integrity to preserve.
Interesting to see another National Institution crap on their own reputation by turning out Susan Michie’s communist agit-prop to Princess Nut-Nut’s orders.
At least some of the population trusted some of the policy based modelled evidence making, some of the time.
Now, like the MET Office, the Royal Society etc etc with their great enthusiasm for the Glowbull Warming scam, they, like the old Russian joke, prove “There is no Truth (Pravda) in The News (Izvestia) and no News in The Truth.”
This forum is excellent at times in documenting the COVID fraud but I cannot pass links onto *slightly* sceptical friends who are *very slowly* waking up to the lies, damned lies and statistics. If they see references to a ‘global warming scam’, they may stop reading the entire blog, even if the COVID official data *is* as useful as a chocolate teapot.
Not even I believe there’s a climate change scam, although there’s considerable groupthink. It can’t be denied that 250 years of the first industrial revolution, burning large quantities of coal, and cutting down forests, have had an effect on greenhouse gas concentrations and CO2 has gone from under 300 to over 400 ppm.
It’d be better if academic researchers were encouraged to argue things out in the open. Same indeed is true with medicine, i.e. as opposed to being told by pharma what you will think and say if you want your career to go anywhere.
“This forum is excellent at times in documenting the COVID fraud but I cannot pass links onto *slightly* sceptical friends who are *very slowly* waking up to the lies, damned lies and statistics. If they see references to a ‘global warming scam’, they may stop reading the entire blog, even if the COVID official data *is* as useful as a chocolate teapot.”
This is a real issue, but there is real danger in pursuing the moving target of respectability. I’ve seen numerous lively platforms for genuine free discussion turned into sterile lockstep establishment organs by following that route.(You could argue it’s basically how the near entirety of social media became the propaganda force for elite dogmas that it has become).
Imo the “best” compromise is controlling terminology and discussion atl, while allowing complete freedom btl, and accepting that you will be smeared with the contents of the latter. Pushback should be against snowflakes who get all flouncy about what btl contributors write, and those who object should be written off..
Culturally, we need to push back against the idea that we should not tolerate real dissent
“Not even I believe there’s a climate change scam, although there’s considerable groupthink.”
This… Read more »
It is a massive mistake to conflate the issues around climate and ecology with Covid. Plays right into the hands of the Narrative.
You need to undertake a lot more research into the climate scam if the above is the extent of your knowledge.
Are you aware that CO2 makes up just 0.04% of the earth’s atmosphere and without it there would be no life on earth?
Are you aware that C02 is pumped into greenhouses to increase production?
The simple answer to the climate scam is that we have to expect climate changes by virtue of the fact that we live on a planet whizzing through space and we are regulated by the Sun – not the newspaper BTW.
Anthropogenic Global Warming is an absolute bloody myth. We cannot regulate the planet’s temperature like an oven:
“Turn it down to Gas Mark 5.”
Interestingly none of the nutjobs in on this caper ever discuss what we would do if we faced global cooling.
Probably build more duckin windmills.
I wonder what caused the Thames Ice Fairs in the 18th century 🤔?
Funny old world.
All those questions have alternative answers, or are irrelevant. Not at all like the plain deception of the Covid scam.
Not hard to see what the purpose of all this is though – preparatory work for vax passes (with prior infection not valid), and for another muzzle mandate. It’s so fucking transparent, but what can anyone do when the MSM is fully on-board with it, and most people will believe the MSM?
I was banned from FB again yesterday for saying the BBC should be nuked from orbit. But, that is precisely what is required.
It might not have been a good idea to give them a reason for excluding you.
People have the chance to fight back, but then the 77th come along and say that if any violence is used then that will just give the ‘authorities’ the chance they’ve been looking for to clamp down on dissenters.
It does seem that few are willing to actually do anything physical, so it’s back to looking for nanobots in the ‘vaccines’ and endlessly analysing graphs, statistics and pie charts, in the hope that that will… err… do something.
And if people are going to go into a discussion on ‘Climate Change’, well, that’s a never-ending topic full of lies, nonsense, half-truths, speculation, theories, conspiracy theories, and more graphs and numbers of figures all of which can’t be proved not disproved, and takes us away from the subject of Covid and the lockdowns.
What will happen if access to the Internet is only allowed if you’ve been ‘vaccinated’ for Covid?
Wouldn’t that be lovely, to be completely and utterly disconnected?Can’t get us then, with their fear and lies, which affect the cynical and awake as much as it does the normies. Can’t be part of the Beast system either. We’d survive.
Did the people who made this crap up, send pictures of their members to Dick Emery when they were younger?