The Vaccine Surveillance Report from the UKHSA has for much of its existence been a bit of an oddity – it is very strong on telling everyone that the Covid vaccines are most definitely wonderful, but rather weak on actually providing any surveillance.
So imagine my surprise when in the most recent publication there was a little section tucked away near the end of the document reporting the number of hospitalisations for Covid by vaccination status. These data were gathered from the SARI-watch system, a nationwide surveillance system for England that gathers data on Severe Acute Respiratory Infections – thus these particular data are for those testing positive and who are being treated for a respiratory infection severe enough to warrant hospitalisation (i.e., for not with Covid as a primary diagnosis).
Of course, the big problem with raw numbers such as in the table above is that it doesn’t factor in the numbers in the population for each age group and vaccination status; in order to gain a more useful understanding of the situation it is necessary to factor in the impact of population. Actually doing this is made more complex, however, because there are no official data on the number of unvaccinated in the U.K. – all we know is the number vaccinated and by how many doses and thus we need to use an estimate of the population for England to obtain the number unvaccinated. Many official data sources use the ONS estimate of the population – this is unsatisfactory as for a few age ranges there are more people vaccinated in the country than the ONS estimates are in the country. An alternative estimate of the population is to be found in the National Immunisation Management Service dataset, based on the number of people registered for healthcare in England. This dataset shows that around 19% of the adult population in the U.K. is unvaccinated – this is broadly compatible with (albeit still somewhat below) the survey undertaken by the BBC that showed that approximately one quarter (25%) of the adult population in the U.K. were unvaccinated.
Given the NIMS data on vaccination status for England we can thus calculate the hospitalisation rate per 100,000 population for the 90 day period covered in Table 13a in the UKHSA Vaccine Surveillance Report.
A few points immediately stand out:
- The hospitalisation rate by vaccination status for those aged under 40 is remarkably constant – for this age group the vaccines don’t appear to offer any benefit.
- For all ages the hospitalisation rate in the triple vaccinated is broadly similar to the unvaccinated.
- The higher hospitalisation rates seen in all age groups above 40 for those having received only one or two doses of vaccine is troubling.
The data for Table 13b in the UKHSA Vaccine Surveillance Report shows a similar trend, albeit with a bit more statistical variability due to the low numbers.
These data are consistent with recent reports from the Netherlands and Canada and with U.K. data on real-world effectiveness against death. They are also broadly consistent with data from ICNARC on intensive care admissions with COVID-19, once adjusted for the estimate of the unvaccinated in England (ICNARC uses the ONS population estimates in its own tables and graphs, resulting in an overestimation of the ICU admission rate for the unvaccinated). For the most recent data, February 2022, it shows the following admission statistics:
It would be nice to get an update from ICNARC on these statistics, as there was a general trend of increasing hospitalisations in the vaccinated as we entered the Omicron variant period. Unfortunately, it stopped updating the data just as it started getting interesting.
The UKHSA Vaccine Surveillance Report includes four pages on these vaccine surveillance data. It also includes 12 pages on reporting on the various estimates of vaccine effectiveness that have come from scientific studies. Of particular note is the estimate of vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation with severe Covid.
It can be readily seen in the above table that the vaccines appear to be magnificent at protecting against hospitalisation, with the risk being reduced by between twofold (younger individuals, less severe) and tenfold (older individuals, more severe). It is difficult to square these estimates of vaccine effectiveness with the data that we see coming from SARI-watch and ICNARC. That said, there are at least two potential explanations: the impact of co-morbidities and prior infection. For the former, the impact of morbidities is diluted when looking at population-wide data; while it can have an effect it is unlikely to explain the large discrepancy seen between the hospitalisations data and the estimates of vaccine effectiveness. The impact of prior infections is perhaps more important – it is likely that the vast majority of individuals in the U.K. have now had at least one Covid infection and have developed a level of natural immunity to the complete virus (not just the highly mutable spike protein as offered by the vaccines) and this might explain the lack of any difference between the unvaccinated and triple vaccinated in the hospitalisation data. The increased hospitalisation rate seen in the data for one and two doses of vaccine remains difficult to explain, however.
‘Science’ is in many respects the use of experimental data to build theories to try to understand the real world. When experimental data and theoretical hypotheses disagree with what is seen in the real world the answer is to try harder to fully understand what is going on, not to declare that it is the experiments and theories that are right and that it is the real world that is wrong.
Amanuensis is an ex-academic and senior Government scientist. He blogs at Bartram’s Folly.
This post has been corrected. An earlier version used a figure of 8% for the percentage of over-75s unvaccinated in NIMS; the correct figure is 5%. The overall argument is unaffected.
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Interesting stuff. Your final paragraph says it all, it’s so odd that these reports have totally contradictory data yet no attempt to rationalise it.
As an aside, I note with amusement that there were more ‘covid’ admissions to UK hospitals in 2nd quarter (April-June) 2022 than in 2nd quarter 2022.
Should one of your 2022s be 2020?
Yes, you’re right. There were 103,000 hospitalizations in 2nd quarter 2020 & 104,000 hospitalizations in 2nd quarter 2022, despite a far more benign variant, masses if natural immunity & improved treatment.
Indeed
Hospitalisation and any other Covid stats are questionable and largely seem meaningless but if you just make the comparison on what is a fairly like for like basis it makes it obvious that evidence for the “vaccines” working is difficult to find
I like to point out to people that the most recent sustained period with under 50 Covid deaths a day was April to July 2021.
Thanks for doing this.
Since the vaccines have been rolled out has the rate of all-cause mortality increased, stayed about the same or decreased?
Excess deaths for those aged over 45 rose to about 4-5 standard deviations above normal for the second half of last year. They dropped to ‘normal’ for Jan-April, and then rose back up to about 4 standard deviations above normal.
This pattern isn’t seen in those aged 0-14 and isn’t so extreme for those aged 15-45 (about 2 standard deviations increase only).
Thanks. Obviously there are many factors at work due to the huge interference in human life that there has been as a result of the covid panic, but wouldn’t you generally expect all-cause mortality to drop, rather than go up, when rolling out an “effective vaccine” for a “deadly pandemic”?
Regardless of anything else, you’d expect consistent data demonstrating that the billions spent on the “vaccines” had offered reasonable value for money, compared to other medical interventions where the benefits per £ spent are much better known.
This video discusses the latest CoViD19 booster that may be available from next month and also looks at issues with the influenza vaccine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSiQ1nR_gYs&t=50s
I haven’t watched it all the way through.
John, do you think that there are reasons for concern with the covid vaccines or whether side effects are broadly in line with the influenza vaccine etc? I am not trying to troll you here or catch you out. As I have said before, my position is that there is cause for concern. However, much of the supporting evidence is either anecdotal or as amanuensis suggests, implied.You seem to have a sound knowledge of pharmacology which I don’t have and which helps gives a different take on things. Basically, I am trying to make sense of a mass of seemingly confusing & contradictory information. Anything which can help with this is welcome.
You and me both. There is one paper (Engler et al 2015) that suggests the reporting of adverse effects from smallpox and influenza vaccines maybe under reported by a passive monitoring system.
This is the conclusion from the abstract
”Passive surveillance significantly underestimates the true incidence of myocarditis/pericar- ditis after smallpox immunization. Evidence of subclinical transient cardiac muscle injury post-vaccinia immunization is a finding that requires further study to include long-term out- comes surveillance. Active safety surveillance is needed to identify adverse events that are not well understood or previously recognized.”
The paper is available online at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118283
Thanks for this. So possibly, we might even have a situation where side effects are under reported for the ‘flu vaccines. and relatively over reported for covid vaccines Basically, we just don’t know. In the meantime it is a question of making whatever fits best for each person until more robust information comes to light which it eventually will (I hope). Soon we’ll need to have new mental health catagories of vaccine information overload or vaccine confusion syndrome.
That would be my position as well. Also, not everyone has the same reaction to vaccines either good or ill due to genetic differences, medical history, physical fitness, mental health as all of these have an impact on the immune system.
Double vaccinated are also single vaccinated, as triple vaccinated are also single and double vaccinated.
Those three bars should be stacked otherwise it is misleading because compromising of the immune system is cumulative, and is not repaired by an additional dose.
The graphic as presented implies triple vaccinated are better protected than double for example, but had they not had the third dose wouldn’t they be in the double dose category and double dosers in the single dose group?
In summary: the so-called vaccines have no beneficial effect – except to shareholders of the producers.
There is an implied ‘only’ in the data I’m presenting; one and two doses have only had one or two doses.
The failure (my fault) is not writing ‘three or more doses’ for the three doses category.
Serious question, what is the mechanism by which the immune system is damaged? Which part is damaged beyond repair, complement, innate or adaptive?
Damaged being repair is probably a bit of an exaggeration. If that was the case, everyone would be dying within weeks. Innate seems to be compromised via interfering with interferon (ha) and there seems to be reprogramming of T and B cell responses. I’ve read a few alarming articles about how the immune system seems to be developing tolerance to the spike protein and 4 doses seems to be the sweet spot in converting your B cell response to IgG4 which is very bad news. IgG4 does not result in the destruction of whatever it is binding to. It also seems like once B cells have made this switch, it’s impossible for them to go back. Once a victim has tolerance to the spike protein this seems like it will lead to persistent infection with little in the way of symptoms while the spike protein is quietly damaging everything it encounters. Please note, I am a lay person with this sort of stuff so I am only summarising things that I’ve read without being able to critically appraise the subject matter
The RIVM published a new admissions/vaxx status report for NL on Tuesday 2 August, at which time it announced a new way of presenting the data, as VE was no longer reliable due to the fact so many people had been naturally infected (sound familiar?).
In any event, now they are using relative risk reduction, whereby, if I understand the table correctly, all the negative numbers mean x% less chance of ending up in hospital/ICU. So what do the positive numbers mean?
Also, the absolute numbers in Table 1 on p. 8 do not seem to really match up with the RRR numbers in Table 2 on p. 9. I didn’t calculate anything, not my strength, but the absolute numbers look worse than the RRR numbers. Obviously that was the reason for the change in format, but even then it looks out of whack and a very nasty sleight of hand most unbecoming the Dutch health authorities, for whom I previously had some respect.
I’d love your take on it, as the numbers are a bit beyond me. If you need anything translated into English, let me know.
https://www.rivm.nl/sites/default/files/2022-08/Rapportage_covid19_ziekenhuisopname_vaccinatiestatus_02082022.pdf
Sorry I can’t give a proper link, never have figured out how, anything techie is not for me.
Thanks JD — I’ll have a look at this (I’ll get my Dutch->English dictionary down off the shelf…)
Dr Mike Yeadon – Fraud, Fear and How Herd Mentality Has Brought Us to the Edge
https://heartsofoak.org/dr-mike-yeadon-fraud-fear-and-how-herd-mentality-has-brought-us-to-the-edge/ dr-mike-yeadon-fraud-fear-and-how-herd-mentality-has-brought-us-to-the-edge/
by Peter McIlvenna
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