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.
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.
But this is the real problem:
February 2024
More than 700 Nigerian nurses under investigation for taking part in ‘industrial-scale’ qualifications fraud could be working in the NHS | Daily Mail Online
May 2024
500 NHS nurses from Nigeria could be struck off over ‘fraudulent or incorrect’ exam results | Daily Mail Online
Some DM comments from the public:
— “And yet you show a photo of a white woman lol”
— “They are the most dishonest people I have come across, they get these false documents as nurses and go and work in care homes exploiting them I have seen them all it’s time someone did some investigation on these care home nurses.”
— “I asked this question 8 years ago and my shifts were cancelled. The hospital know this happens but ignores it, not exactly patient centred care.”
— “It’s obvious when you have to work with them!”
For me the question would be purely an economic one. What is the extra cost to the nation of the training involved, and what cost savings does that drive for the NHS?
But there is the problem : When you have a Communist Health Service, the first thing they do is break all relationship to free market pricing. So answering my question is impossible. And that, of course, is deliberate.
What really happened in Amsterdam…
https://youtu.be/DvTyg1kJGzM?si=-PwR6ncKHSl9utD3
We must be extremely careful what we believe in media in this modern age of misinformation..
Question absolutely everything..
I wont bother saying it…….. Yes i will… I told you so..
Astounding. That confirms what I read about a few days ago, but couldn’t find the link again: that Israeli youths actually started shouting insults and attacking first.
Yep, we seem to now be living in a true post-truth world.
I have a theory, where I spin everything in the msm on its head…. It’s served me well over these years…
Once one accepts that all the msm is one big lie.. You start to think about what was the reason for the lie….
https://youtu.be/LJxBnSyH0T4?si=_rI1AGoLZMb2FYK0
The media is lying to us… Eric Weinstein, what a brain this guy has..
I “checked out” decades ago…
There is so much you could say about this you could write volumes on every avenue and people have done so for those who are interested. I read a study in the Nursing Times a while back, before the recent exacerbation of the crisis, and if I remember correctly a survey found that within two years of working something like eighty percent of nurses reported feeling that they had lost all of their compassion. There was some speculation about the reasons and an acknowledgement that this detoeriotation would inevitable affect patiernt well-being. It is a hard job even under the best of circumstances ie good funding, low patient numbers, high staffing levels. But if you have someone who needs to go to the toilet and you know that they are about number six in your list of priorities because of the workload then perhaps a defensive numbness develops. People from overseas, especially America, often remark when working or receiving treatment within the NHS that it has a military feel which is understandable given its roots. The armed forced send their nursing students to the same lectures and placements as civilian nurses and this works seamlessly. Regardless of the sociopaths and psychopaths the cream of British society work in these institutions. The rot is the deep rot that pervades everything. The Jeremiad stuff is just jive talk which is sometimes disingenuous and more often just naive.
I don’t understand why it is not possible to have both graduate and non-graduate nurses. That would open up more opportunities for people to nurse and deal both with shortages and importing nurses from countries which no doubt need their own.
The problem is that getting well from a substantial illness requires nursing: not just getting the necessary tasks done, but being reconnected with the living: a little TLC, even if it’s ‘tough love’.
When school leavers, aged 16?, went straight into nursing, and on the wards soon after, it was an apprenticeship that included strengthening this connection to other human beings. Now, with the greater emphasis on knowledge and technology, this connection is, in fact, weakened: life becomes driven by theory: yes, a medical theory, but it is still an ideology, impersonal, and not helpful to nursing the sick. It why there are separate doctors and nurses, and patients can tell there’s a difference, even if they are not conscious of it. And once the connections to the rest of humanity, or even the community, are lost, it’s so hard to reconnect. Just look at the current Cabinet, lost in their political bubble, being bewildered by aliens, like farmers, manufacturers, shop keepers, and anyone running a small to medium sized business.
Of course, you can have traditional nursing skills with technical skills, (both nurses and doctors with both are usually outstanding), but emphasising the technical, at the expense of traditional nursing for all entrants, discards so many with the skills lacking in the NHS, and turns it into a regimented outfit, whether Military or Marxist, who cares?
You missed out that the current Cabinet also struggle to define what a ‘working person’ is let alone whether or not they have a penis.
People don’t know and they don’t even make the effort to understand and yet they simultaneously feel entitled to comment on a situation. Nothing new there. It is just intellectual laziness. They wonder why they are so disenfranchised. Maybe if you dig your finger out of your arsehole you might gain some understanding.
Hi standards are what matters. But the mindset of many graduate nurses is of climbing the management ladder ro get out of day to day nursing. We need good front line people to stay in nursing , not ro bugger off to damagement the first chance they get. And the demand foe all nurses to be graduates and for all management candidates to be so, is utterly foolish and quite spiteful by the graduate class.
And, get most of the immigrant nurses out of our NHS
Obviously there are some distinct benefits in training nurses to degree level, but not at the cost of provision of excellent nursing care. The patient essentially depends upon the doctors to determine the treatment and the nurses to administer it safely in a caring and competent manner.
There has been a definite shift in this situation since nurse graduates became the norm.
My own personal experience is that many nurses now regard themselves as too well trained to care for the holistic care of the patient. My own experience of nursing care bordered on what I and the Care Quality Commission considered gross negligence because the nurses mostly ignored the doctors’ instructions choosing to determine their own preferences without any consideration of the considerable medical needs of me the patient. They acted as neither competent nor caring nurses, doctors or health care assistants.
I’ve just written a supporting past, but under another post. But I would like to add that there was a nurse who came into my ward and briskly tidied up anything not in it’s place. She did so, slightly blaming those who had gone before, not vinductively, but to clear the air. It only took a couple of minutes, but I did feel more at ease. She knew what was acceptable, and what wasn’t really tolerable, for long, anyway.
I gather she had been at least a senior sister, and had come back to work, possibly part time, though she could have been like those ‘secret shoppers’ that provide feedback to management.
Whatever, I knew she had been trained in traditional nursing, because she exuded it. In a similar manner, I was, in my youth, a silver service waiter, and those subtle skills learnt were so useful in my career, which was always very technical. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king, or at least he’s less confused than most.
Surely the answer is multiple routes to training.
those that want to be ward nurses only could train in the job and those that wish to specialise, such as theatre or paediatric nurses should do the degree first followed by specialist top up training like the doctors do.
So two heads of university nursing units say that educating nurses at universities is a great idea…..
The problem is a State-run, Socialist health care system. Until people come to terms with that instead of writing about what’s wrong – we know! – and offer solutions to solve the insoluble, nothing will change.
Remove the State monopoly, restore healthcare to the competitive, private sector whence it came before Government nationalised it… starting in 1911 by the way.
Am I right in believing that nurses used to be trained completely on the job but received a small salary and accommodation in a nurses home; then entered the profession as qualified but without any debt? If so, what was wrong with that? If more academic study is required then with day release it could be provided and, if necessary, the course lengthened.