Ed Humpherson, Director of U.K. Statistics Authority the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), has written to Emma Rourke, Director of Health Analysis at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to criticise the agency for a report it put out in October claiming that: “Between January 2nd and September 24th 2021, the age-adjusted risk of deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19) was 32 times greater in unvaccinated people than in fully vaccinated individuals.”
As James Wells, a statistician who served as head of the ONS UK trade team until 2019, pointed out when he wrote to the OSR to complain about the report earlier this month, 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 skews the implied vaccine effectiveness, as a fair comparison would only include periods when a significant proportion of the country was vaccinated.
In Mr Humpherson’s letter to Ms Rourke he wrote:
The headline in the publication is the age adjusted risk of deaths involving COVID-19 for vaccinated and unvaccinated groups for the period January 2nd to September 24th. This was also the key message in the main tweet associated with the publication. Focusing on the headline figure has been unhelpful and has undermined the more helpful analysis provided later in the report. The headline figure is based on a time period driven by data availability. While the age-standardised mortality rates for deaths involving COVID-19 are consistently lower for people who have received two vaccinations, the size of the difference varies enormously depending on the time frame chosen. The data cover a period when very few people had two doses of vaccination, to a period when the majority of the adult population had two doses (data taken from gov.uk on 24 November 2021 show second dose uptake for age 12 and over in England was 0.8% on January 10th 2021 and 77.4% by September 24th 2021). It also covers a period when case rates varied significantly as well as the levels of natural immunity in the population…
Given the analysis carried out, more should have been done to highlight the uncertainty associated with the headline figure… I would urge you to take the focus off the headline figure in any future publications.
The truth is that statistics are being spun like this all the time by Government and others during the pandemic to bolster the preferred narrative. It’s just on this occasion the effort was so egregious and prominent that it couldn’t be ignored.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
I presume Dr Jay is being coy, because everyone else knows the reason why children are being targeted for vaccination: money.
This is far bigger than crooks trying to make themselves rich; Bill Gates for example does not need to make himself more rich and he himself is on record talking about a desire to reduce surface population.
https://youtu.be/obRG-2jurz0
History shows us that fanatics motivate support by appealing to basic emotions. In this case greed. Gates isn’t interested in money but he needs the cooperation of those that are.
Absolutely correct and the “vaccines” which aren’t vaccines are the main depopulation tool. It was clear from last spring, that the “vaccines”, which supposedly didn’t then exist, would be the only way out of the fake pandemic. No other solution has been allowed to get in the way of these intentionally and exceedingly dangerous gene altering products. The nightmare is happening all around us, as the idiots line up to be terminated.
Gates’ pseudo Malthusuan model is wrong, family size does not decline as health improves but as wealth increases.
It’s far worse than the lust for money, they want the children sterilised or better still dead.
That vaccine causes clots.
In some people they might not feel the effects but they’re there. In some the clots kill
them.
Why a government would want as many people with clotting issues is a mystery.
I agree – I have an elderly parent with a horrendous extended family history with clots, brain haemorrhage etc and after having had the jab twice I am seeing substantial memory loss which was not present before the jabbing which makes me wonder has there been some kind of clotting process happening in the brain as a consequence of the jab
The John Tamny article is a breath of fresh air, as per usual. He brings a perspective which is sadly lacking in even generally conservative media.
Hancock says ‘looking good for Freedom Day on June 21st’.
Positioning himself for pole position in the Personality Cult sweepstakes as the cabal of delirious pro lockdown lunatics claim Victory over the dangerous, unprecedented worldwide Pandemic as a result of his bold and decisive policies.
Actually handcock and the rest of of your gang lockdown 1. made sod all difference to me as an out and about ‘key worker’ who survived unmasked and unscathed despite coming into close up contact with approx 6,000 random people during that time.
Lockdown lite (last summer) was a miserable fucking experience with social distancing in pubs and restaurants/cafes, asinine rules in supermarkets that are now universally ignored; masks enforced at a time when any use that they might have had had long gone.
You can stuff your simulacrum of Freedom Day; who wants to go to a half empty sports stadium, religious function or music event to be pushed around by minimum wage Covid Safety Enforcers sticking carcinogenic swabs in my cavities.
As it happens I am now medically housebound (non covid) and doing what the NHS finally got around to telling me I should do, shield at home because of other pre-existing conditions, that they should have told me last March (which I would have ignored). At least I’m no longer exposed to BBC propaganda bollocks courtesy of the Today Programme and Jeremy Vine on the car radio.
When the sun comes out I’ll take a taxi a short distance up into the hills to sit on a particular bench with fabulous views while enjoying a couple of fags and a miniature Laphraoigh while pondering about anything but bloody Covid.
Hope the view makes itself particularly beautiful for you.
Excellent post.
great post
but “ a miniature Laphraoigh while pondering about anything but bloody Covid.”
I bet you end up thinking about covid!
It would be like going to the pub with Neil Armstrong and trying not to think about the moon
Laphraoigh – top choice. Good for what ails ye. Enjoy the view.
Excellent choice of Single Malt! Enjoy the view.
“despite coming into close up contact with approx 6,000 random people during that time.”
Actually – 1 in 6000 is probably less than your overall chances of coming into contact with someone with an infective virus load.
So, your chances of catching anything are even less.
Thus the non-epidemic. See CEBM :
“The levels of suspected COVID-19 have not reached epidemic consultation levels and are dropping dramatically.”
(Nov 2020)
This, of course, raises the question of how a ‘pandemic’ can lack the characterisics of a epidemic?
Answer : by fiddling the definition of ‘pandemic’.
I have a funny feeling that “Freedom Day” might be something which someone decides in future should be “marked” and celebrated – a bit like thanksgiving in USA. It would of course be sickening, but I just have a feeling that that is the way the cult is going.
Inspired by you I went out and bought a bottle of Laphraoigh and yes it is not at all bad.
I’m in Lisbon, and sadly the sheep are in the majority. But it seems it is getting better though.
For sheer covviechutzpah, this one takes the biscuit:
“…the CDC’s updated guidance which recommends that fully vaccinated people who have no symptoms do not [need] to be tested for the virus, even if exposed to someone who is infected.”
And why are they not to be tested? Answers on a postcard please.
Because the fully vaccinated will be the Special People looking on in scorn at the unvaxxed pulled out of the line and frogmarched to the testing wigwam.
Not watching the news you will have missed out on the covid-sniffing dogs and the coming internment camps “to help people to self-isolate” (for now)
Because they might test positive which might, just might, get people asking awkward questions.
Loving your choice of newsreader to illustrate this column….!
I don’t have a telly, who is he, George Alagiah ?
I know that he has survived cancer (so far).
Thank you, I’ve heard of him too
200 million per month for seven beds in private hospitals … Moorfields rate is 500 per night per bed (had to go private because NHS is closed …) which for seven beds works out about a hundred grand a month … Some slight government overspending methinks ….
The NHS commandeered our local Nuffield at the start of lockdown 1. but only started using it to help clear the, non-covid, backlog several months later.
bit like setting up nightingale hospitals – fully covered to death in bogus broadcasting corporation news bulletins – which the then dismantled after barely using them – but like the private hospital contracts they had to do both of those things to crank up the fear and make people believe that there was a massive public health emergency afoot irrespective of the cost to the public purse.
From the Fauci story, for anyone who missed it..
https://www.poynter.org/united-facts-of-america-a-festival-of-fact-checking/#1617292355199-b65d2bab-7d3b
It’s hard to believe that this isn’t a parody website
Looks like Factchecking has spawned a lucrative source of employment for people who who expect to be highly remunerated.
As for the roundup link, ‘Fauci laughed and said “if the virus escaped from the lab someone must have introduced it into the lab from nature, therefore it already existed in nature . . .”
Yes but that was when Fauci illegally facilitated funding for gain of function research on the virus while in the Wuhan lab, twat.
Sorry karenovirus, not picking on you.
Mr Censor please explain why we can call Mr Fauci a ‘tw at’ without censorship, but not Mr Fon?
Probably because fauci is not a guest on this site which, rightly in my view, discourages ‘flaming’ of contributors.
‘SARS-2 will at some point join a handful of human coronaviruses that cause colds, mainly in the winter, when conditions favor their transmission.’
https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/19/how-the-covid-pandemic-ends-scientists-look-to-the-past-to-see-the-future/
Remind me….how are we doing for overall all cause mortality for 2021?
Oh! Plumb normal!
So, in short, SARS CoV 2 already joined the ranks of endemic common cold coronaviruses around May 2020.
All the rest has been a global weird out by a bunch of Mr Pooters.
But, for our great entertainment, the biggest Pooter of the lot of them is putting on a show this week about how he was right all along about locking everyone down, despite Sweden, Florida, South Dakota, Texas…..
As a general rule of thumb, if that other hopeless Pooter, the prime minister, says something, and he has said the lockdown policy was responsible for ‘defeating’ the virus, then that must reliably be a load of old ‘covid balls’.
Enjoy this week’s panto……
Millions of jabs, claim success, get full licence, make trillions, the race is on
Unless there are too many dead horses on the course, to follow the metaphor. Need to redesign the course, to reduce the risk in future.
‘Promoting Covid jabs on dating apps . . .’
Dozy Joe excluded Grindr from his list of dating apps whose members could include their vaccine status on their profiles.
Is this discrimination against the Gay Male community or does he think they might prefer not knowing their prospective new partners vaccine status as this could add an extra frisson to their encounter ?
I’ve been waiting for an update from Reiner Fuellmich. Get a cup of tea/coffee or something stronger (you might need it!) and settle down for an hour. It is riveting.
Thanks James.
I didn’t understand the 97% false positive claim for PCR cT=45. It sounds plausible if you are only considering positives that score cT<=45, if anything it’s much too low, this paper https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1491/5912603 suggests that the 97% rate kicks in at cT=35. But in observed PCR results most positives are way below 45 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.25.20219048v2 so the 97% figure would only apply to the upper tail of the distribution? Dr Fuellmich makes it sound like it applies to the whole distribution, or maybe I misunderstood.
“England is at risk of “replacing the Covid crisis with a cancer crisis”, the Telegraph says, as official figures show that 304,555 fewer patients were given an urgent referral in the 12 Months to March”
It would be interesting to know what proportion of referrals translate to (a) cancer diagnosis and (b) ultimate fatality from the llness.
It is widely stated that the annual average number deaths from cancer is 450. How long will it take to see if this number increases as a result of late or non diagnosis?
450? That doesn’t sound credible. Is there a missing ‘0’?
Oops, should read ‘daily’.
That’ useful, Friedrich – but what about the ration of examinations to confirmed cases of cancer?
Surprised no one has commented yet on Richard Madeley’s views on “ring fencing” communities that are “vaccine hesitant”.
Ah well Richard, with your new found credibility completely sabotaged I suppose you can go back to discussing amongst other things; carrots that look like penises, why do some dogs eat their own jobbies, and will Taylor Swift change her pronouns on your highly successful “This Morning” show.
My mum says you and your missus make a lovely couple.
Disclaimer….haven’t paid much attention to daytime TV for the past few decades, so apologies if this “show” has been removed from the schedules.
The bulk of Richard’s article is complaining about the government changing the definition of an Amber* country from whatever it was to ‘don’t go there unless absolutely essential’ and claims that ‘all travel is dangerous’.
His demand that areas still with high rates of Covid cases should be ‘ringfenced’ (how this might be done he does not explain) after he makes it clear that he and Judy are going on holiday to an Amber country whatever the government says. Just self obsession really.
* Actually bozo is quite correct, an Amber traffic light means either Stop or Proceed ‘when it is safe to do so’ whereas in much of continental Europe overnight a flashing Amber light means ‘all vehicles may proceed with caution at your own risk’ which definition would be fine by me.
I see that dogs have been “trained” to smell out Covid on human beings.
I wonder when the “hunting season” will be?
I would say it will be 365 days a year.
Richard Madely opines in the express:
“the situation in Lever Edge, Bolton?
There, barely 37 percent of the population – which has the highest weekly coronavirus rate in the area; almost 900 per 100,000 people – has been vaccinated.
Many locals are exceptionally “vaccine hesitant”, and their stubborn refusal to have the jab is putting our national roadmap to normality at risk.
We can’t force people to be vaccinated but surely we can ring-fence the area with red lights so the rest of us can get our lives back. Can’t we?”
Words fail me. This is what people have been reduced to – something to be imprisoned, penned in, ghettoised, because they opt to exercise autonomy over their own bodies, and people cannot see that we have reverted to a kind of “holocaust” type situation regarding the unvaccinated. I just didn’t think it would happen this quickly. I am scared now, more so than I have been at any other stage in this ‘pandemic’.
What an absolute bloody idiot he is. But then his appeal is to idiots.