A former senior figure at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has criticised his old employer for breaching the Code of Practice for Statistics over its biased presentation of data relating to the vaccines.
James Wells, a statistician who served as head of the ONS UK trade team until 2019, has written to the UK Statistics Authority objecting to a new report, published November 1st, which leads with the statistic that “the age-adjusted risk of deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19) was 32 times greater in unvaccinated people than in fully vaccinated individuals”.
However, as James points out, this statistic uses data from January 2nd to September 24th 2021, which includes the bulk of the winter deaths at a time when almost no one was vaccinated. This massively skews the implied vaccine effectiveness, as a fair comparison would only include periods when a significant proportion of the country was vaccinated.
An earlier version of the same report was released in September using data from January 2nd to July 2nd, which I criticised at the time. It made a similarly sensational claim about the high number of deaths in the unvaccinated compared to the vaccinated, garnering headlines that just 1% of deaths in the first six months of 2021 (640 out of over 50,000) were in fully vaccinated people. This was technically true, but completely misleading in terms of what it appeared to tell us about the effectiveness of the vaccines. Neither the ONS nor the journalists reporting on the data took care to make this clear.
In fact, according to PHE data, around 70% of deaths in August were in the double-vaccinated, not 1% – though that by itself is also misleading as an indication of vaccine effectiveness as it takes no account of how many were vaccinated. An estimate of unadjusted vaccine effectiveness (VE) against death from the raw data suggests VE was around 70% in the over-80s in August (dropping to 58% in the most recent report), and around 90% in 30-39 year-olds. This corresponds to more like a two to 10 times higher risk of death in the unvaccinated, not 32 times (though the estimates may need adjusting for biases in the raw data; on the other hand, studies from Israel and Sweden have found similar drops in vaccine effectiveness against death within six months).
The new ONS report stresses that “age-standardised mortality rates (ASMRs) can be affected by differing characteristics of the population in the vaccination status groups and the changing COVID-19 infection rate”. It therefore warns that “the ASMRs do not show causal links between vaccines and risk of mortality”. However, that note appears halfway through and is unlikely to prevent the misunderstanding of the top-line figure, which is presented as though (and most people will assume) it is telling us something about vaccine effectiveness. After all, why else present mortality risk split by vaccination status? The implication the ONS wants us to draw about the vaccines from its headline statistic is clear, whatever its notes halfway down the page might say.
James Wells is right to object to this misleading presentation of statistics, apparently to serve a Government narrative. Let us hope the criticisms brought by him and others will bring about positive change in how the ONS and other official bodies present Covid statistics.
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I find many comics funny, and appreciate a lot of different comedy, whoever the performer!
But she is just crude, offensive and just totally unfunny. I’m in no way offended by crudity or bad language, but in comedy there should be a reason for it, not just some gratuitous naughty words to get some cheap laughs.
She may be a fine actress, but I wouldn’t want to watch anything she’s in.
Almost all those offered as comedians on the media these days are of the standard we remember when Mrs Thatcher was in office, had just been deposed and sgain when she died. These unfunny people expected laughs just from mentioning her name.
Miriam Margolyes as a performer and actress has proven over decades to be is a multi-faceted talented person.
I also cannot bear her because she uses crudity to shock and amuse and frankly it is incredibly boring and not very interesting.
A great shame but there we are.
Joan Rivers was crude and offensive, but very funny, she was able to pull it off.
Billy Connolly
George Carlin
Chubby Brown (I met someone who knows him, he NEVER swears in his private life apparently)
Derek and Clive
She’s not that great an actress either. No more than competent.
Margolyes is an obnoxious woman who is nowhere near as funny or well-liked as she thinks she is.
I can’t stand any Comedian who tries to force their political opinions on you, just stick to the jokes and the stories.
Someone like Peter Kay, amazingly funny, but never mentions his politics. I saw Jack Dee live, he was the same.
Good point. No ‘comedian’ less funny than Ben F*****g Elton.
Ben Elton is a comedian?
Who’d have thought it.
Never would have guessed that in a million years.
One of the acts at the comedy store some years ago did a lead balloon impression. After – unable to understand his lack of success doing stand-up, he was privately complaining that his day job was a comedy scriptwriter at the BBC.
Explains a lot that does.
She played Professor Sprout, a sort of Dickensian teacher, in a film featuring an institute of higher learning that Labour would certainly tax until the quaffles squeaked.
She could have refreshed her repertoire at the Festival by recounting her knowledge of the inspiration for the plots of these stories that come from great literature. Cerberus is well-known. More impressive would have been such an example as the exploits of Uther Pendragon and his knights with Merlin’s appearance-altering potion.
Brilliant, honest article by Duke Maskell, with a powerful ending.
This sentence summed up the problem:
“Was this to be the signature note of the evening – fat old lady with posh voice says rude words and audience erupts into laughter?”
Many modern comedians, and their audiences, mistake “wit” for words describing crude bodily functions, orifices, secretions and sexual organs, all of which drag the human consciousness down to a lower level, a demonic level: a Soul Trap.
“To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot consent.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn “insisted that political institutions must serve the highest good of developing the human soul in all of its moral, artistic, and spiritual dimensions.”
“The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.”
Better still, bored and Jewish.
No. Elizabeth Dilling was an enthusiastic Zionist until she started translating the Jewish Talmud into English, for the benefit and instruction of Christians, particularly Protestants, who have been taught to admire the Jews as “elder brothers” in worshipping God. She was deeply shocked to discover what she called the “obsession with excrement” and other disgusting obsessions and depravities in that supposedly “holy book”.
I guess we’re all different but wild horses would not drag me to any live show where I was unsure about the performer, performance and audience. My default assumption is that all new artistic material will be woke or lame bollocks for a woke and/or lame audience, until proven otherwise. The same goes for films and TV shows though they are less risky – they cost less and you can just switch off. Ditto modern books.
We’ve got up and walked out part way through a performance at the Edinburgh Festival too. It was a play not a comedy act. It was just boring. Then we saw another one where I’m glad we were sat at the back as the huz fell asleep and started snoring, though he blamed the beer, so it is hit and miss if you’re going to see more obscure acts. I went once just for the experience, but I have a low boredom threshold and I’ve yoghurt sat in the fridge that’s more cultured than me, so once was enough just to say I’d been. But there was some fun stuff there too, plus Edinburgh’s always a gorgeous place to visit and we were meeting friends.
This was donkey’s years ago and I think ‘woke’ wasn’t even a word in my vocabulary so I dread to think what it’s like nowadays.
I like the yoghurt analogy
I don’t think I’d be welcome in Scotland – I’m not sure I am welcome in England any more (but it’s my country so I’m bloody staying)!
I’m currently watching re-runs of The New Avengers on telly – that’s about as recent as I dare go without a thorough vetting.
Well done.
The British are so timid about these things.
It is best to get up an leave as soon as you decide you are going to and not wait for the interval to vanish.
It is then a statement as well as a huge relief to get out of the auditorium.
Dirty and disheveled, looks as though she spent the run sleeping in a doorway.
Hasn’t she been memory holed yet for putting on a Chinese accent when overdubbing on the Water Margin in the 1970s?
“and Miriam Margolyes is known to be a clever woman and a good actress.”
Well on the few occasions I have seen Margoyles on the telly I have never thought “wow she’s clever.” Actually what I have thought is ‘hmm, she thinks she’s clever.’ She also for a reason that I cannot fathom thinks she is funny. She is rude and crude but that is not funny in the way that Chubby Brown treats rude. And it must be said, she is decidedly not a sight to marvel at. As the saying goes… “some people are born with the right to be ugly but she abuses the privilege.”
It seems to me that paying to see this nasty, unpleasant woman constitutes a degree of virtue signalling on the part of the customer. Margoyles reminds me of that other so and so who is far too full of himself, Eddie Izard who is also about as funny as a wet weekend in Wales.
I would be demanding a few grand before deigning to put up with either of the above. In fact I would probably prefer a night on a hospital ward before either of them.
”And it must be said, she is decidedly not a sight to marvel at. As the saying goes… “some people are born with the right to be ugly but she abuses the privilege.”
So does that mean we can rename her ‘Miriam Gargoyles’?? LOL
It’s interesting how we feel comfortable passing comment on people’s looks when they’ve shown themselves to be unpleasant people. I’ve done that with Dianne ‘Hippo’ Abbot and ‘Horse face’ Arden, of course. And while I’m in full-on ‘Biatch mode’ I do think the presenter on GB News ( is it Nana, with the long hair? ) has a very strange face.
Crikey, ”meow”, there’s a saucer of milk with my name on it….
And let’s not forget the fount of beauty that is Jo Brand – mouthy, crude, vindictive and certainly not anything I would like to wake up to. And another one who goes to great efforts to look tramp-like scruffy.
To be honest, go to see Margolyes you get what you expected to get. Why an entire page on the blindingly bleeding obvious?
LOL.
Thank f&*) no one is calling her a national treasure.
Some treasures are best buried and lost forever.
Actually she is probably on the verge of ‘national treasurehood,’ especially if she gets all her Winter jabs and boosters like a good woketard should.
They call her a national treasure because she has a sunken chest.
Although I agree that some of the criticisms on here of Margolyes are justified, she can be very funny when it being political and she doesn’t deserve this bullying playground pile on
Good article.
Never could abide the woman.
Didn’t really see the point of that rambling, sorry, don’t like the person stay away, seemed to me more interested to see her reactions because she’s Jewish, not how she performed.
Ms Margoyles demands a second opinion. “Okay, you’re ugly as well”
Miriam Gargoyles?
Her cousin.
Margolyes is an absolute grotesque and an extremely unpleasant woman. That the BBV glorify her tells you all you need to know
She’s nothing more than a talentless, foul mouthed bigot. And about as funny as a hernia. She’s been getting away with it for years only because she has the ‘correct views’ Awful woman.
No. She is gifted and talented in her craft and still gets work because of her range and skills.
But beyond that I cannot bear the woman.
“It wasn’t a good sign that she introduced Dickens as the greatest writer in the language. He is, without doubt, a very great writer – perhaps (except for the author of Anna Karenina?) the greatest novelist in the language.”
Good article, but, as a friend has just pointed out to me, the bit quoted above is a bit…odd.
Dickens was a fine writer and up with the best in English literature but there are many above.
D H Lawrence
George Elliot
Wilfred Owen
Some bloke called Shakespeare. Andrew Marvell and his contemporaries.
Morris West, Kipling, Auden, Betjeman, Elizabeth Acton, Delia Smith….and on and on…
All debatable, of course – but I was only querying the claim that Tolstoy was an Englishman!
ps, Delia Smith?
Lawrence, Eliot (one L), Owen, Delia Smith (?!) Elizabeth Acton (?!)…
What criterion are we using here to discuss literary merit – the best to prepare asparagus?
I meant, of course, “the best WAY to prepare etc etc”
I once tried a Delia Smith recipe and vowed to ignore all.
It did not work.
Specifically one of the ingredients [from memory pineapple] reacted badly with the other ingredients and completely destroyed it.
It seemed to me that dear old Delia included recipes in her book she had not tested herself.
Perhaps she did not even write the book herself?
Who knows?
Anyway – anything Delia is off the menu in my house forever.
And so much for her literary merit.
Might she be the greatest writer of fictional foods the world has ever seen?
As I will not touch her work with a barge pole I will never find out.
One buys cookery books for reliable recipes.
PS. I followed her instructions faithfully for all the good it did and it is a rare thing in my house that a recipe goes wrong.
Also: “English literature” – Morris West?
More fool him for paying 25 quid to find out what the rest of us have known for years.
Just an unpleasant personality.
A corpulent, flatulent, unfunny and unpleasant person. Why anyone would pay money and waste life-hours listening to her is beyond my understanding.
It is art Darling.
The Philistines and Great Unwashed notoriously don’t understand art.
After all look at the over-reaction to an artistic Olympic parody of the Last Supper.
Yes indeed, though we are expected to pay for it.
I remember when she was spontaneous.
Combustion?
That would be a novelty.
All the hot air?
Watched her on the Real Marigold Hotel series. Obnoxious, crude, arrogant, vulgar and deeply unpleasant. (By contrast, Paul Nicholas was tremendous fun!)
You watched the Real Marigold Hotel?
Are you on medication by any chance?
The first one was crap so I was most surprised when they made a sequel.
Maybe it was a bet to prove it possible to do worse?
I hope the medication helped.