95592
  • Log in
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

More Evidence for the ‘Healthy Vaccinee’ Effect

by Noah Carl
21 January 2022 4:38 PM

How much protection do the vaccines provide against severe Covid? Some people claim that getting vaccinated reduces your risk of death by as much as 90%. They point to charts showing massive disparities in hospitalisation and death rates between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

However, these crude comparisons may overstate vaccine effectiveness. A study published last year by the U.S. CDC found that vaccinated people were less likely to die of non-Covid causes, suggesting that they’re inherently healthier and/or more risk averse than unvaccinated people.

This ‘healthy vaccinee’ effect means that part of the disparity in death rates between the vaccinated and unvaccinated is due to factors other than vaccination. So even if currently-unvaccinated people got vaccinated, they’d still die from Covid at higher rates than currently-vaccinated people.

Now, I’m not claiming that all or even most of the disparity in death rates between the vaccinated and unvaccinated is due to the ‘healthy vaccinee’ effect. I’m simply claiming that crude comparisons overstate vaccine effectiveness – which is probably less than 90%.

Okay, but is there any evidence for this form of ‘selection bias’ – as it’s known in the jargon – other than the CDC study? Yes: the ONS documented the very same phenomenon in a report published last year. See the table below, which shows age-standardised mortality rates by vaccination status:

Looking at the second column, unvaccinated people have a higher non-Covid death rate than all four groups of vaccinated people.

Note, however, that the ratios in the first column are substantially greater than those in the second column. This implies that the ‘healthy vaccinee’ cannot explain all or even most of the disparity in Covid death rates between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

On the other hand, the ratios would presumably be smaller if the comparison were restricted to vaccinated people who’d received their second dose more than, say, six months ago. We know that vaccine effectiveness wanes over time – for both infection and serious illness.

The ‘healthy vaccinee’ effect turned up again in a study published in Science. Barbara Cohn and colleagues analysed a large dataset on U.S. veterans, and found that survival rates among over 65s were higher among vaccinated individuals who tested positive than among unvaccinated individuals who tested negative:

Note: the left-hand chart corresponds to those aged under 65; the right-hand chart to those aged over 65. The researchers did acknowledge that selection bias may have impacted their results, writing:

Patterns of survival for those with a negative PCR test by vaccination status suggests there are underlying differences in unvaccinated compared to vaccinated persons, and that we did not measure or account for in our analysis; these differences may contribute to the different risks of death we observed.

There’s now fairly robust evidence for the ‘healthy vaccinee’ effect, at least in Britain and the U.S. The next step would be estimating how much of the disparity in death rates between the vaccinated and unvaccinated it can account for. Hopefully someone with the requisite data will attempt this soon enough.

Tags: ONSVaccine efficacyVaccines

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

Do Covid Vaccines Reduce All-Cause Mortality? ONS Data Give Us No Reason to Think So

Next Post

U.K. Government Has “Abandoned the Science”, says Wales First Minister – as He Sets Course For ‘Alert Level Zero’ Which Keeps Masks and Vaccine Passports

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

63 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

Nick Dixon and Toby Young Talk About Toby’s Appearance on the 77th Brigade’s Watch List, the Scrubbing of the Internet After the Pfizer Sting and the Trans Insanity Unfolding in Scotland

by Will Jones
31 January 2023
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editors Picks

MIT Expert on Drug Safety Calls for Immediate Withdrawal of mRNA Vaccines: “Clearly the Most Failing Medical Product in History, Causing Unprecedented Harm”

30 January 2023
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

31 January 2023
by Will Jones

The Ministry of Truth

31 January 2023
by Dr Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson

Elderly Vaccination Saved Lives in East Asia

31 January 2023
by Noah Carl
Mandatory Credit: Photo by JUSTIN LANE/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (10421665ds)
Sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg addresses world leaders at the start of the 2019 Climate Action Summit which is being held in advance of the General Debate of the General Assembly of the United Nations at United Nations Headquarters in New York, New York, USA, 23 September 2019. World Leaders have been invited to speak at the event, which was organized by the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, for the purpose of proposing plans for addressing global climate change. The General Debate of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly begins on 24 September.
United Nations 2019 Climate Action Summit, New York, USA - 23 Sep 2019

Elite Billionaire Foundations Fund Wave of Green Climate Propaganda Flooding into British Schools

31 January 2023
by Chris Morrison

Elderly Vaccination Saved Lives in East Asia

45

News Round-Up

48

The JCVI is Right to Withdraw Boosters for Under-50s, But It’s Still Spinning the Stats

35
Mandatory Credit: Photo by JUSTIN LANE/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (10421665ds)
Sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg addresses world leaders at the start of the 2019 Climate Action Summit which is being held in advance of the General Debate of the General Assembly of the United Nations at United Nations Headquarters in New York, New York, USA, 23 September 2019. World Leaders have been invited to speak at the event, which was organized by the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, for the purpose of proposing plans for addressing global climate change. The General Debate of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly begins on 24 September.
United Nations 2019 Climate Action Summit, New York, USA - 23 Sep 2019

Elite Billionaire Foundations Fund Wave of Green Climate Propaganda Flooding into British Schools

18

The Ministry of Truth

14

Elderly Vaccination Saved Lives in East Asia

31 January 2023
by Noah Carl
Mandatory Credit: Photo by JUSTIN LANE/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (10421665ds)
Sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg addresses world leaders at the start of the 2019 Climate Action Summit which is being held in advance of the General Debate of the General Assembly of the United Nations at United Nations Headquarters in New York, New York, USA, 23 September 2019. World Leaders have been invited to speak at the event, which was organized by the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, for the purpose of proposing plans for addressing global climate change. The General Debate of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly begins on 24 September.
United Nations 2019 Climate Action Summit, New York, USA - 23 Sep 2019

Elite Billionaire Foundations Fund Wave of Green Climate Propaganda Flooding into British Schools

31 January 2023
by Chris Morrison

The JCVI is Right to Withdraw Boosters for Under-50s, But It’s Still Spinning the Stats

31 January 2023
by Amanuensis

MIT Expert on Drug Safety Calls for Immediate Withdrawal of mRNA Vaccines: “Clearly the Most Failing Medical Product in History, Causing Unprecedented Harm”

30 January 2023
by Will Jones

In Praise of Boris Johnson’s Stance on Ukraine

28 January 2023
by Noah Carl

POSTS BY DATE

January 2022
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  
« Dec   Feb »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Please note: To be able to comment on our articles you'll need to be a registered donor

Already have an account?
Please click here to login Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment