Vaccine effectiveness against Omicron drops to zero within six months but natural immunity remains robust for at least a year, a new study from Qatar has found.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, looked at all symptomatic PCR-positive Covid infections in Qatar during the Omicron wave from December 23rd 2021 to February 21st 2022. As can be seen in the chart below, it found that protection from natural immunity (the blue dots on the left) endured at a level of around 50% for at least a year, meaning the infection rate in the previously infected was half that in those not previously infected. However, two vaccine doses of either Pfizer or Moderna (light green dots in middle) dropped to zero effectiveness or below within six months. A third dose (dark green dots on right) appeared to restore some protection in the short term, but it was dropping fast even during the short follow-up period. The authors, aware of the short follow-up time, explain that “most persons received their third dose less than 45 days earlier, perhaps explaining the relatively high effectiveness”.
The study was a test-negative case-control study, a type of study known to exaggerate vaccine effectiveness (owing to, for example, the vaccinated being more susceptible to Covid-like illness that isn’t Covid, such as colds and flu). This means the true picture may be significantly worse than found in this study. Recall that an earlier Qatar study on the Delta variant had already found vaccine effectiveness wane to negligible levels within seven months, and Omicron is much better at evading vaccine protection than Delta.
The cases were matched to controls to take into account differences of age, sex and epidemic phase. The study only included symptomatic positives, which is a plus as it avoids most false positives. It also excluded any tests that occurred within 14 days after a second dose or seven days after a third dose rather than counting them in another category, which avoids miscategorisation issues. There will however be some survivor bias as anyone vaccinated who gets infected in the post-jab exclusion period doesn’t count towards the vaccinated case total, leaving fewer susceptible people in the vaccine arm.
One point of note is that the authors observe that the protection offered by being both vaccinated and previously infected turns out to be exactly equal to the protection you would expect if the two forms of protection had an independent effect:
Because previous infection reduced the risk of infection by 50% and booster vaccination reduced it by 60%, the reduction in the risk of infection for both combined, if they acted fully independently, would be 1−(1−0.5)×(1−0.6)=0.8, which is an 80% reduction, just as observed. Although this effect needs to be further investigated, this finding may suggest that the combined effect of these two forms of immunity against omicron infection reflects neither synergy nor redundancy of the individual biologic effects of each.
One interpretation of this is that the vaccines and previous infection give different, independent forms of immunity, with the vaccine form waning quickly and the previous infection form enduring.
Another interpretation, however, is that the vaccine protection is an illusion created by survivor bias (the exclusion of those infected during the post-jab period), which is why it quickly fades and is wholly additive to natural immunity.
Meanwhile, the U.K. Government has updated its official estimate of vaccine effectiveness against Omicron. The latest UKHSA Vaccine Surveillance report shows Pfizer third-dose vaccine effectiveness dropping to negligible levels within 20 weeks (five months; see below).
This, again, is a test-negative case-control study, so is generous to the vaccines – we know the raw data, back when UKHSA used to publish them, showed infection rates many times higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated in many age groups. So when even this study shows negligible vaccine effectiveness you know they’ve accepted they can’t hide it anymore.
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.
“First comes the Nudge, then comes the PUSH”. The bureaucrat decides what you need and at first they explain why you should agree with them. They give incentive, like a subsidy or a Free Boiler (for Hydrogen eg). They have advertising campaigns, leaflets, indoctrination in schools etc etc etc. But then when all of that means their agenda is not occurring at the pace they want, next comes the PUSH. You won’t be allowed to choose eg not to have a Smart Meter, and you will be FORCED in law to have one. We are already committed in law to achieve the absurd NET ZERO by any means possible, whether that is getting rid of petrol and diesel, stopping coal and gas, taxing flights and meat and on and on. ————In the past no one had to be coerced into giving up a horse and cart and getting an automobile. No one had to be coerced into getting rid of a filing cabinet and getting a computer. The advantages of doing these things were obvious. They saved time and money. As someone once said “The best government is the one that governs least”. ——Today we have governments that govern the most and therefore what we now have is the worst government”. ——-The governments that think they know best how to spend your money
First Governments nudge then push you
How many politicians could start a successful business from scratch? None. But they would know where to stick a rainbow flag.
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
I get a feeling that one reason people aren’t fighting back harder against all this technocratic tyranny is that they’ve developed an apocalyptic mindset: I think people genuinely – on some level – believe our civilisation will collapse shortly and vast numbers of people are simply going to die.
Whether it’s our councils no longer maintaining public grassland areas (using the environment as an excuse) or an increasingly panicked-looking state clamping down hard on fiscal freedom and freedom of speech, everything looks like it’s run down and falling apart. It’s like civilisation is holding it’s breath waiting for the axe to fall.
Just wait until July/August when untended grassland catches fire all over the country and they try to blame ‘manmade climate change’ and not ‘manmade consequences of laziness’.
Mad Max here we come!!
It would help explain the accelerated interest in going to the moon in the near future (e.g. by 2030). An endeavour for humanity to be proud of intended to benefit the few?
The interest will be all the greater with the potential fall of the enthusiasm of submarine excursions due to recent events.
Our idiot former Prime Minister, writing in the Mail, was talking about the people on that tragic submarine being pioneers, risking it all to expand human knowledge; just proving he’s lost all grip on reality. These were tourists, not so much visiting an undersea graveyard as invading the graves.
I can get with commercial manned space exploration and exploitation: it should have been our priority since the 1960s. Every ill in our society comes from the navel-gazing that happens when a society stops looking outwards: most of our societal problems were sorted decades ago, especially in the West, only for fascist left wing academics to create new problems (micro-aggressions, cultural appropriation and the like) to sow new divisions.
I hope we see lunar bases, lunar factories and lunar space ports to set us on journeys to the other planets. It’s an outward-looking adventure. And, if we’d get our minds of this Net Zero crap, we have an unlimited supply of gas we could scoop in vast ships from the atmospheres of the gas giants to power the Earth forever.
Can you give us a cost-benefit analysis on transporting natural gas from Jupiter? It doesn’t seem to work for replacing Russian pipelines with US liquified gas, which is somewhat closer than the gas giants.
While I understand the sarcasm, Jon, my point is that the human race is being sold a crock that we have finite resources and that the planet is dying. There’s enough out there to fuel us forever, when the time comes.
Dom75———–You are mostly correct. The greatest resource on earth is ——-Humans. But modern environmentalism which is actually old fashioned environmentalism hijacked for political purposes is —–Anti Human. ————–Humans will find solutions to all problems if left free to do so. But manufactured crisis are rather more difficult to solve and is like farting against the wind.
Absolutely. All the technologies being used in this net zero/ death of civilisation agenda is old hat. If had been cost effective or had any operational efficiency it would have been used in the past. Any new technology would have to fit their agenda and also their tax and regulatory systems, and more importantly be paid for by the tax payer (inc green levies) in subsidies.
Hate to break it to you, but we never went and never will. Something called radiation. Another thing call rocket power and fuel.
But it does distract the peasants from real issues.
I think it’s a realisation that there is little one can do against the awesome power the state has accumulated.
Our only weapon is our own personal non compliance with whatever indignities they try to inflict on us.
It will all collapse under the weight of its inconsistencies and absurdities or not. And there’s not a whole lot anything most of us can do except refuse to comply as much as possible.
An hour or so ago, Neil Oliver on GBN made the same point, with a bit of history as to what happened with private tenement rent price inflation during WW1 in Glasgow. In effect, the tenants (mainly women with their husbands being at war) got together and refused to pay extra, and the following political changes there.
Sensible Environmentalism—Patrick Moore | UKColumn
I’ve only watched the first half so far but he points out that “doomsters” are ever present. e.g.the Crusade in 1097 onwards.
“manmade climate change” or man/arsonists?
An excellent read, thank you. The administrative man views the world as if painted by numbers, not an association of individual brush strokes, but fails to understand the function of either.
*Warning* Contender for Most Warped Thing You’ll See All Day award incoming…
https://twitter.com/DrLoupis/status/1672564471443881986?cxt=HHwWhIDQhc6hkrYuAAAA
And there is a clip three down which is rather brutal.
” we can derive some of the features of the German Administrative Man from our five examples. He appears to live in cities or at least in towns, not in the countryside. He’s certainly an apartment dweller, and he’s more likely than not to rent. He’s actually somewhat well-off, but not wealthy; he’s older and probably not in the best of health. He leads a fairly withdrawn, local life, with limited interest in public events.”
That’s exactly what Schwab and the WEF are trying to create with their 15 minute ghettos; building back better (for them) and denying ownership of anything to the “peasants” they intend to control.
Sad but beautiful description. I was a Whitehall civil servant once and thought I was doing my bit to improve the world. When I left in the mid noughties I had come to realise how incompetent, self-serving and deluded most of those who got to the top were. As others have said, all we can do is resist, develop grass-roots institutions (particularly for wellness and learning) where we can and watch the overbloated state implode.
Interesting that these Germans haven’t realised that their ideas don’t work, with the U turn on Coal. How muich will it take to do the same here, because Germany is (was) in a similar position the the UK with power availability. Plan are afoot for power cuts regularly this winter. They will kill thousands, but that appears not to matter.