The big news in the last week was that the authorities in Scotland have decided that enough is enough; they’re going to stop publishing data on infections, hospitalisations and deaths by vaccine status. This isn’t surprising – the best way to stop people knowing that your public health interventions have failed is to stop giving them the information that will inform them that they have failed. Without these data the Scottish authorities can keep on saying that the vaccines are magnificent and have saved the nation, whereas the data suggest that even if they had some short term positive impact, they at best ‘paint a complex picture’.
At least in England there is still fairly good data being published on the performance of the vaccines, for now…
And onto this week’s update. I saw a good summary of the most recent UKHSA data on the Freedom Podcast Twitter feed:
We’re clearly in a situation where the Covid vaccinations haven’t solved the Covid epidemic, and might even have made things worse (deaths). It certainly isn’t the case that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, when 72% of hospitalisations and 87% of deaths are in the vaccinated. Of course, the devil is in the detail, and in this specific case the variation between different age groups (older people are more likely to be vaccinated but also more likely to die). This week’s data indicate that infections continue to tumble for all age groups and vaccination status – the December and January Omicron wave appears to be receding fast. The data continue to show that for nearly all age groups the more vaccine doses you have the higher your risk of infection with Covid.
Two age groups stand out as different from the others – those aged under 18 and over 80. For those aged under 18 it is likely that the higher infection rate in the unvaccinated at least partially reflects their more recent vaccination (for all doses). It isn’t clear what is going on for those aged over 80 (and, to a certain extent, those aged 70-80). It is always worth remembering that the immune system of those under the age of about 12 and over the age of about 65 isn’t the same as for the majority of adults and you might expect to see different disease patterns and characteristics in these groups.
From the infection rate data we can again estimate the vaccine effectiveness against infection – negative for all age groups other than those aged under 18, and significantly so for those having taken a booster dose.
For this week we’ve got enough data to present graphs of vaccine effectiveness against time (this year) for all age ranges – as this is now rather a lot of data to present in one go I’ve split it into a graph for those aged under 50 and another for those aged over 50. First the changes with time for those aged under 50:
One dose of vaccine appears now to offer a relatively low but stable increase in the risk of infection, two doses offer a stable but higher risk of infection, while the risk of infection appears still to be increasing for those that have had a booster dose – those in their 40s being up to three times more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated. The silver lining in these data is that the impact of the vaccines in terms of increasing infection on those aged under 18 appears to be low; I hope that this reflects their robust innate immune system and isn’t simply because their recent vaccination means that there hasn’t been time for the increased risks to emerge.
The infections data for those aged over 50 paints a different picture. The only clear indication is that all age groups for any number of vaccinations have an increased risk of Covid, compared with the unvaccinated.
It is still unclear why the vaccine is resulting in increased risks of infection. There are several mechanisms that might explain it and really there should be much more research being done on this because they’ll determine the likely longer term outcomes of the vaccination programme.
The complication with the infections data is that there are concerns about reduced testing levels (including the likely-immient removal of free tests) and with the impact of reinfections. While reinfections are now included in the total, they’re only classed as reinfections if 90 days have passed since the previous test; whether 90 days is appropriate remains open to question.
The situation with testing is illustrated by the difference between official case number for the past month with people reporting symptomatic Covid to the Zoe symptom tracter – I’ve included graphs for both below; official data top, Zoe data middle. I’ve also included the latest ONS Infection Survey graph for England (bottom).
Note how official case numbers have dropped since the Christmas Omicron peak, while the Zoe Symptom Tracker is showing a second peak in the data. The ONS Infection Survey shows a pattern part way between the two. The impact of this complication on our analysis is unclear. It is of note that genomic analysis of a sample of test swabs suggests that the second peak in the Zoe data isn’t simply the BA.2 variant – that doesn’t seem to have infected large numbers in the UK (yet).
On the topic of variants, we’re now beyond the point where the arrival of Omicron variant would still be causing vaccine effectiveness to drop in our analysis – if it were simply an effect of Omicron having achieved more vaccine escape then the vaccine effectiveness should have flatlined over the past two or three data points, however the data suggest that more is going on – but is it continued and rapid antibody waning or something else? Consider the the data on variants published by the UKHSA:
The period covered by the latest report is highlighted in the red rectangle to the right of the graph. The continued decline in vaccine protection suggests that it is possible that variant Omicron BA.1.1 (and/or perhaps BA.2) has achieved further vaccine escape, compared with variant Omicron BA.1, and these variants might even be causing rapid reinfections in the short term. Again, more information is required to explain the disparity between the official and Zoe data.
Regarding vaccine protection against hospitalisation, the data are fairly consistent – three doses of vaccine still offer some protection against hospitalisation for all age groups, two doses appear to offer approximately zero benefit, while those having had only a single dose appear to have an increased risk of hospitalisation.
Note that unlike the infections data, the data for hospitalisations is rather robust, albeit complicated by the question of ‘with vs of’ Covid.
The data for protection against death is similar to the hospitalisations data; a fair amount of vaccine protection remains for those who have received a booster dose, two doses appear to give negligible protection and a single dose appears to offer negative protection (i.e., increases the risk of death). Note that I only included data for 40-80 year olds in this graph; the death rate in those aged under 40 is very low and gives ‘noisy’ results, while the data for those aged 80 or over is complicated by the very large range in vulnerability within the group.
It is important to note that although this last graph shows those with only one or two doses of vaccine to have an increased risk of death, the advent of Omicron has reduced the mortality rate of Covid significantly. The widespread ‘fear of Covid’ that is affecting so many lives is based on the information we had about the risk of the virus in early 2020; this level of fear isn’t appropriate in early 2022.
Amanuensis is an ex-academic and senior Government scientist. He blogs at Bartram’s Folly.
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Good article. ‘Hide the expansion’. ‘Hide the Arctic is not doing much of anything when compared to historical data’.
So the recent cold spell is due to the melting Arctic which blah blah causes the changey thingy blah blah and makes it colder (please send money for further ‘research’).
Except the 1% global ice volume Arctic and Greenland Ice sheets (15%) are expanding or doing not much of anything if viewed historically. So how can a stable Arctic which is not melting cause cold snaps due to plant food as stated by the climate religion? And if the winter was mild like 2 winters ago then what is the answer?
The idiocy of the Klimat-tard cult boggles, along with their fascistic pursuit of money and power. No morality in the Gaia cults. $cience. Follow the Trillion$.
These tired old bones prefer warmth to cold. I do not consider it an improvement if the Arctic is getting colder. OK, sea level is still rising gently. If anyone complains that the sea will flood homes in 100 years, ask them how old their present dwelling is – invariably much less than that.
That’s also just nonsense. Large parts of the Netherlands and Belgium have been below sea-level ever since they came to be dry land at all due to human work (and pre-industrial technology) being put into making that happen. Where sea-levels are a problem, people build dikes. They’re common throughout all of the continental shore of the North Sea.
And yet………
Melting ice caps will enable China’s military forces to “reach into the Atlantic”, the Chief of the Defence Staff has warned.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/14/chinas-military-could-reach-atlantic-ice-caps-melt-warns-armed/
That’s good to know
. If we have time to worry about the Chinese navy once the polar ice caps have melted because of climate change, climate change in itself must be harmless.
Perhaps someone will tell some bloke called Radakin, chief of defence or the suchlike, with his alarmist statement the Chinese will be able to sail round the melting poles into the Atlantic. But then again just a bid for more defence spending to be blown on civil servants and undelivered projects
Probable a stupid question, but don’t the Chinese have nuclear powered submarines that can go under the ice?
Extrapolating 30 or 40 years of Arctic sea ice to try and explain 4 billion years of climate change on our planet is like looking at a bare patch of 1 square cm of my 5 acre farm, and calling it a desert, when it is actually an abundance of green.
The pushers of the climate con do not understand context, or else are truly corrupted by a financial motive (Al Gore et al).
Definitely the latter.
Motive is more about power and control, the financial element of course comes trotting after.
Another good trick is to adjust old temps down and new temps up, creating a scary slope. Then project to the moon.
https://realclimatescience.com/rewriting-the-climate-at-nasa/
I’m fairly certain this documentary from 2007 is the one I saw on channel 4 ( obv not BBC material! ) back in the day, and ever since then I’ve known that man-made global warming to be complete hogwash;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTq8-hnDeyk&ab_channel=ClaudeStrobbe
It wasn’t that long ago The Coming Ice Age: With Leonard Nimoy was worrying over an imminent ice age and how we could potentially halt it with black soot on the ice sheets, and whatever their data back then concluded that ice age was still possible after the industrial revolution was well established (and that thing that causes all the [supposed] warming) so they know there are many [other] factors at play.
Now they’re warning of the complete opposite whilst ignoring all these other factors? Just goes to show the data can be presented to fit any hypothesis, from one extreme to another. Granted they were wrong back then, but that doesn’t mean the opposite is true now (unless of course an ice age is still on the cards). Their fraudulent data might support a warming planet, given that mini-mini ice age was used as a convenient baseline but that doesn’t make the warming (even if there genuinely was any) man made or anything outside the norms either. Why is that period considered normal and today’s not normal?
Thank god they didn’t cover the ice with black soot! Imagine the total catastrophe that would have been. Honestly, when are these people going to understand that we live on something infinitely more complex, interrelated, and balanced than we could ever imagine and that tinkering with its mechanisms is the one thing that will cause the problems we are trying to avert! Better by by far to live in this magnificent place, be a part of it as we already are, and learn to dance with its changes and adapt in a creative, harmonious way than trying to play god at every shadow that looms.
Thanks for all the data and reporting. We Greenland polar bears are especially thankful that the truth about the ice pack and the melting — hah! — of our glaciers is being told by someone in the media who is not engaged in climate propaganda. — Grandpa Polar Bear https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BQ2B29GP
Spot on article. The fact that they hide the data is 100% correct and very sad. This website below used to be fantastic and had masses of historical surface area data about ice extent in both the Arctic and Antarctic, but now it only shows the daily satellite pictures (these seem to have stopped in Sept 2022) with no surface area data.
https://cryosphere.today
I know because I used to regularly monitor the site 20 years ago.
Confessions of a Computer Modeler
“Any model, including those predicting climate doom, can be tweaked to yield a desired result. I should know.”
After three iterations [of remodeling] I finally blurted out, “What number are you looking for?” He didn’t miss a beat: He told me that he needed to show $2 billion of benefits to get the program renewed.
I finally turned enough knobs to get the answer he wanted, and everyone was happy.
Was the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] official asking me to lie?
I have to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he believed in the value of continuing the program. (Congress ended the grants in 1990.)
Robert J. Caprara, “Confessions of a Computer Modeler,”
The Wall Street Journal, 9 July 2014
https://www.wsj.com/articles/confessions-of-a-computer-modeler-1404861351
.
“There is something fascinating about science. On gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact”——Mark Twain. ——-But in those days scientists were actually indulging in a genuine search for truth. It would be interesting to see a quote from Mr.Twain about today’s Government funded data adjusters and their genuine search for anything that seems to support public policy and ignores everything that doesn’t
Chris I think your headline is a bit unfair. If scientists were hiding the data we wouldn’t have it available to us. Its mainstream media where most of the problem lies because they refuse to accurately report on what is actually happening if it doesn’t support the crazy net zero agenda. There must be scientists who see what is really happening and who would love to report it on TV but are never given the opportunity. People like Attenborough have lost any credibility they had with anybody who does any research on climate and he has become no more than a purveyor of a lying pile of political propaganda. He is either too old or too stupid or working to a political agenda to report things accurately and he has unlimited use of our TV licence fees to do it on the BBC. While this is the case many people watch his extortionately funded programs full of inaccurate or distorted data and believe the rubbish he spouts. Surely there must be somewhere, a UK TV station to take this crap on and set the record straight.