The more vaccine doses an area of England has received, the greater the number of excess deaths it has experienced, an analysis of official data has found – adding to worries that the novel Covid vaccines are contributing to the sharp rise in excess deaths seen since mid-2021.
The analysis looked at excess death rates and vaccination rates for all 300-plus lower tier administrative areas in England. It used the pre-pandemic five-year average (2015-19) as a baseline and controlled for confounding factors such as age and deprivation by comparing the findings in the vaccination era to those in the first Covid wave, before vaccines were available (Figure 1).
In the first wave (March 15th to June 21st 2020) the areas which would go on to be more highly vaccinated had lower excess deaths on average (the reference vaccination rate is as of March 7th 2021, first dose only). This is a result of the healthy vaccinee effect, whereby people who choose to get vaccinated tend on average also to be people who had better health outcomes pre-vaccine (note that vaccination and health both tend to correlate with wealth). As a result, even if the vaccine was a placebo that had no effect, more-vaccinated areas would have fewer excess deaths on average than less-vaccinated areas. The downward slope in the chart above is thus a baseline for what happens after vaccine rollout. After the vaccination rollout, if the slope becomes steeper then it means that the more-vaccinated areas have even lower excess deaths than they did before the rollout, indicating the vaccine may be lowering the death rate and saving lives as intended. On the other hand, if the slope becomes shallower or reverses direction then it means something is counteracting the background health advantage of the more-vaccinated areas, suggesting the vaccines may be having the opposite effect of the intended one and increasing excess deaths.
The analysis looked at the three periods of excess deaths in England after the vaccine rollout (Figure 2). These are, broadly, the Alpha period of winter 2020-21 (December 20th 2020 to March 7th 2021), the Delta period of the second half of 2021 (June 27th 2021 to January 9th 2022) and the Omicron period of 2022 (March 27th 2022 to January 1st 2023) – though it’s important to keep in mind that for the Delta and Omicron periods many or most of the excess deaths were not Covid related.
The low vaccine coverage during the Alpha period, very early in the rollout, make the findings for that period uninformative and they have been omitted here.
The results for the double-dosed during the Delta period, on the other hand, are striking (Figure 3). (N.B. ‘double-dosed’ here doesn’t include triple-dosed; the 0% vaccinated point is the City of London.)
The downward slope of the pre-vaccine baseline (the healthy vaccinee effect) has gone completely, and now there is a shallow upward slope. Far from the more-vaccinated areas seeing improvement from the vaccine, then, those areas have seen their death rates increase so that they now are slightly higher on average than the less-vaccinated areas. This worrying finding is only confirmed when we look at the triple-dose data for the same period (Figure 4).
Once again, areas with higher third-dose coverage, far from seeing an improvement in outcomes over the pre-vaccination baseline, see excess deaths increase to the point that the more-boosted areas are slightly worse off than the less-boosted areas, the downward slope now reversed into a slight upward slope.
Worse, the upward slope only gets steeper as we move into 2022 and the Omicron period (Figure 5).
Here, the significant upward slope indicates that the excess deaths in 2022 are much more concentrated in more-vaccinated than less-vaccinated areas of England. This would be bad enough, but recall that the baseline is the ‘healthy vaccine effect’ whereby the excess death rates pre-vaccine were significantly lower in what would become the more-vaccinated areas. Putting the two charts side-by-side (Figure 6) shows the stark difference in excess death rates before and after the vaccine rollout.
The reversal in the slope is indicative of a major reversal in the health outcomes of the more-vaccinated areas. It may be that the reason for this change is not the vaccine – full data by vaccination status are required to confirm or refute this. But given that most of the other likely factors (e.g. age, deprivation, background health conditions) are controlled for by the fact that areas are being compared to their own historic baselines, it is hard to think what it could be. (To be fair, some of it may be mortality displacement from 2020 owing to more people in the less-vaccinated areas dying earlier on, though that can’t be all of it given the trend gets worse for the more-vaccinated areas over time rather than better.)
At any rate, it offers no support to the claim that the vaccines reduce overall deaths, suggesting that any finding that claims they do may be a result of the healthy vaccinee effect.
Data analyst Joel Smalley, who is behind the analysis, commented: “As always, remember, the burden is not on me to prove that Covid jabs result in higher excess deaths, the obligation is solely on the jab pushers to prove unequivocally that they reduce death.”
The Government has refused to carry out an investigation into the cause of the recent wave of tens of thousands of excess deaths in England. Perhaps this is why.
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Expurgated version of the headline
“Labour Hasn’t Done its Homework”
The policy may well be “crackers” but it plays well to the audience Labour plays to. But I don’t much care whether it is crackers or not, I just think it’s wrong because it is a politically motivated attack on people exercising their free choice to opt out of the state indoctrination camps.
Well said – this is the heart of the matter. Not only do private schools enable people to escape indoctrination, they supply employment to a tranche of the educated class – like the author – who in one way, shape or form object to overweening state power. The left longs to impoverish such heretics. Finally, as bastions of high standards and free thought (now somewhat compromised), private institutions doubly expose the abysmal failure of the comprehensive dump. With Stalinist tenacity and no care at all for real world fallout, the malignant, oppressive goons of the left want to stamp them out. The darkness, in matters of schooling, policing, health, banking, foreign policy (the long kow-tow to red Beijing), the church, the media, the arts, journalism, has never been more Stygian in my lifetime.
Indeed – I would not want to work in any school (and few schools would have me, as I am Literally Hitler) but if I had to then an independent school could be an option, if it had the right leadership.
I went to a local boys’ private school as a day pupil back in the 1980s on an assisted place. My parents were both working and, with a lot of sacrifices, were able to send my brother and me to the school. When my Mum lost her job at our local TV station as a result of the 1990s’ ITV franchise war closing many TV stations around the country, I left the school because I wasn’t happy there and restarted my A Levels at a further education college. My brother left when he finished his GCSEs.
Now, there’d be no possibility of people like my brother and me ever going there in the first place. A VAT increase would wipe out even more pupils and close many. I can imagine all the schools are looking to the super-rich from abroad, the same as the universities.
From what I understand, my old school is a co-educational school now – I haven’t been involved with old boys’ clubs or anything. It’s likely woke as hell, doing everything the leftists want.
My conclusion is that the wealthy leftists who now run much of the left in this country want these schools for their children and no one else’s. We’re in the odd situation here – one that’s happened with Democrats in the USA – where the left are run by the super-rich and the right of centre, usually self-made, are less rich.
I live in an area of north London where the private schools have been taking unfair advantage of their privileged tax status in engaging in extremely expensive luxurious development projects to the detriment of their resident neighbours. These projects are driven by the headmater wanting to create a legacy but primarily in trying to cater nowadays for an extremely wealthy international clientele rather than as used to be local children. Private schools and universities too need to go back to looking after the locals not foreigners, otherwise privately educated people like me, will also question why they should be having these tax advantages.
Well that may be the case for the schools you have in mind and possibly others, but it’s surely not the case for all of them. You could also argue that people sending their kids to those schools are saving taxpayer’s money so why not reward that in part?
I think universities are a different case as they are effectively subsidised by the taxpayer because student “loans” are not loans and are underwritten by the government. You could also argue that charging foreign students/pupils lots of money subsidises it for the locals.
Why are they not loans? Interest is charged and they are repayable (unless you can’t afford to repay them) – you can’t just walk away from them if you earn sufficient income over many years.
It’s a graduate tax, not a loan. What other “loan” products are simply forgiven if you “don’t have enough money” to pay them back? When you take out a loan, both parties risk something – the lender risks not getting their money back, the lendee risks a CCJ and ruined credit score, or bankrupty. Students loans are risk-free for students and universities. The effect has been to subsidise a huge increase in people going to university partly from those who graduate and earn decent money, which I don’t think completely unreasonable, and partly from general taxation because such a high % of “loans” are likely to be defaulted on.
I could equally ask what tax are you aware of that is calculated by reference to a principal advanced and and annual interest rate. It feels like a blend of the two, possibly.
None that I am aware of but calling it a loan was political theatre so they had to dress it up, though to be fair it’s capped in terms of the total amount paid which is unusual for a tax
I’ve always found the charitable status odd. Are the ‘fees’ in effect a donation to a charity? The private school I went to had a lot of rundown areas, substandard desks and the lockers were rusty, battered and falling to bits. When I was at the end of my first year there, loads of posh new lockers got put in the entry hall, covered in plastic wrapping. Great! I thought. We’ll have those next year. I forgot about them over the summer holiday.
In the sixth form, the school’s fortunes had turned somewhat. The yearly intake had dropped by 25 per cent and half my year group quit after GCSEs to do A Levels elsewhere, which was a shock to the school. I left at the end of the first year sixth form. One time, I was in the school basement in the only year I did in the sixth form, helping a porter with move some tables. Those hundreds of ‘new’ lockers were all down there, still wrapped in plastic. They’d used the money from the likes of my parents and the state to buy new gear to keep for future generations, long after I was gone. I felt somewhat aggrieved about that, given the state of the lockers being used the whole time I was there. The school went fully co-ed a couple of years after I left. When I was there the sixth form, the school had quite a few girls, but they managed a paltry eight when I was in the sixth form.
Apparently lots of ex-pupils still hang out together at the school’s old boys’ club. I couldn’t imagine doing that. I got the hell out of there and never went back. Never really saw anyone from there again unless I bumped into them by chance. Lots went to the further education college. I had nothing in common with them anyway, being an assisted place pupil.
That said, parents who use private health and send their kids to private school should be able to get significant tax relief for taking the burden off the state system.
I think the schools qualify as “charities” if they meet certain criteria, such as offering x assisted places or having their pupils doing local community work (helping old folks, teaching reading in schools, etc) or allowing local residents access to sports facilities.
Hello, Chips here, there are not “tax advantages”. There would be “tax advantages” if other people were paying for Education and it was taxed. But they aren’t. 93pc of the market is provided via a state-run, state-funded near monopoly. The VAT-free status of top schools is not far off equivalent, per pupil, to the tax-paid expense in the state sector.
Nobody pays VAT on education. Some people get their education for “free”. Those that pay handsomely are not using the “free” education they are entitled to, they are instead paying quantities of income tax etc to buy education a second time.
I’m pretty convinced that nobody in Labour cares about arcane stuff like second- and third-order effects. They simply need money. And hence, they’re looking for a way to raise indirect taxes people cannot avoid by clever tax evasion schemes. They’re going to raise whatever can be raised and find then out what the outcome will be.
Indeed – and if they can do that by taxing the “rich” then so much the better.
And ‘rich’, in the left’s view, means ‘middle class’. ‘Super rich’ don’t count as they’re the Labour donor class.
Indeed. Most people I know are middle class but are well off enough to live in areas with reasonable state schools, so they will be happy to continue voting Labour, as most of them already do.
There is the conundrum in Labour. From their ivory towers, their six figure salaries and plush lives, I doubt if any Labour politician even knows any poor people anymore (Maybe a cleaner or their gardener). They have no connection with the granite of our nation and cannot grasp the obvious truth that the ONLY people who are taxed in our country are the rich. The only way to make more taxes is to MAKE MORE PEOPLE RICH.
Its the age old story of the guy driving past the bus queue in his Rolls Royce. The Free marketeer will say. ‘Gosh, If I work hard, I might have one of those one day’, and the Socialist will say ‘Look at him, Why doesn’t he catch the bus like us.?’. C’est la vie comrade.
They have no connection with the granite of our nation and cannot grasp the obvious truth that the ONLY people who are taxed in our country are the rich.
That’s obviously wrong because there are plenty of indirect taxes on all kinds of things (and probably second-order indirect taxes, too, eg, assuming someone buys a beer, that someone pays alcohol duty on the price of the beer and VAT on the price of the beer plus alcohol duty — at least, that’s how it works in Germany) and these not only affect everyone, they also affect poorer people disproportionally because these have to spend a higher part of their income which is thus subject to such taxation.
I’m also pretty certain that I’m being taxed and while I earn enough to make savings, I’m far from rich. Rich people own property and can thus make handy amounts of money without working (I’m meanwhile paying £1000 per month as rent for a pretty run-down and chronically mould-infested flat which cannot really be heated in winter, at least not to temperatures people apparently take for granted, ie, something in excess of 15 degrees centigrade [probably less — occasional chattering of teeth on colder days is a regular occurence]).
Fair comment. I had income taxes in my mind when I was typing
.
Hello, Chips here. If Labour don’t care about the effects, which are not “arcane” they are the reality of people’s lives, they must not form a government.
I wonder what is your point….do you agree with me they won’t raise any tax, and will probably cost more, therefore it’s a terrible policy? Or do you instead believe it will raise £1.5bn or whatever, in which case please explain why my reasoning is wrong? Or do you think it’s OK for Labour to wage class war and never mind the cost….that harming posh people is a pleasure not a chore, even if poor people suffer in the process?
As I have done my best to explain in the article, it’s not a particularly “clever” tax evasion, to withdraw kids from private school, then quit work (or go part-time, or retire early); and it certainly isn’t “clever” if schools are forced to cut costs and in the process of destroying taxable activity, less tax is raised.
That’s genrally the route that the ‘politics of envy’ follow. My only concern would be that those hypocritical members of the Labour party, who decry private education but ensure their childen get the benefot from it, will have to get the same crap state education as us proles get.
The kind of people affected by this policy are not stupid.
There are many options open to them.
Many of their older offspring already now avoid swingeing university fees by studying overseas for a great deal less.
It is no surprise that the private tutor market is booming. By the way, what is the difference between private tutors and private education?
It is also no surprise that property prices continue to boom in the vicinity of the many outstanding state schools that do exist.
But the continued obsession of the labour party to reduce choice, diversity, in this country is a reaffirmation of their commitment to totalitarian socialism.
Therein lies the Conservative route back to power if only they were not so hopelessly dim……
Absolutely. There are burgeoning “British private schools” in Portugal at half the price. South Africa is an option too. As is home school.
Which is all part of why there is no money in this policy.
Many parents scarpe by to fund private education. If the cost increases they may send their children to state schools or they may reduce their expenditure on other things. The latter would reduce the tax take from (eg) home improvements, meals out and holiday spending.
Just as with private medical choice, this would make private choices more elitist which would no doubt be welcomed by Pimlico Plumbers, Blair and others who have managed to geta great deal of money for doing not much.
That’s a good point. In the UK private schools tend to be thought of as something for rich families but in low-income countries even very poor parents send their children to private schools, run on a shoestring budget, just to get better tuition. In the UK there may be at least some private schools that are not targeted at wealthy families – out of hours supplementary schools for cultural minorities come to mind.
These days, going to an elite private school makes it very difficult to get into Oxford or Cambridge, not that one would want to.
Labour fail to do their due diligence once again
it is not because we have money we send our children to independent schools but because the safeguarding failures and harmful curriculum within the state system.
Remove the VAT relief and those that are able to will sacrifice even more than they already have to keep their precious children from the State sponsored bricks and mortar schools. For those that would be unable to meet the cost increase we’ll not roll over and send them back to the cesspits but would find an alternative way be that online schooling, home-ed etc.
Thank you, I agree
Ironically, all that Labour’s policy will achieve is the closure of a large number of “lower grade” and therefore lower priced private schools ….. leaving a small number of extremely expensive, elitist institutions – stuffed with the children of the mega-wealthy.
That smaller number of extremely expensive, elitist institutions will continue to dominate the governmental (in the widest sense) Old Boy’s Club which is destroying this country …. with an even more concentrated Group-Think of individuals completely detached from the lives/life experiences of the vast majority of the population.
And State schools, which will have to cope with an influx of pupils forced out of the private sector, won’t have their standards raised; they’ll be lowered as the former private pupils will be a small minority. It is quite likely that the lefty teachers will actively discriminate against them.
State Education – already pretty bad – will sink to the levels of the Socialist NHS.
Thank you, yes I also doubt that State Schools are capable of absorbing an influx. Many have physical constraints. They don’t have the organisation in place. And the inflx won’t be evenly spread, it will be some schools with dozens or hundreds of ex-private school children at the gates.
Even if there was extra money (which there won’t be) the expansion programme will need to be driven by LEAs, and there’s no way they can deliver anything without swallowing half the expense in their own bureaucracy
There are at least two unintended tax consequence here.
My own observation over many years is that a significant subsidy to school fees is made by grandparents. If, in order to meet increased fees, grandparents increase that subsidy then the likelihood is that Inheritance Tax down the line will be reduced – assuming IHT still exists of course.
In addition, I’d like to see the exact calculations on an example school. VAT is a complex tax and having done some work in the past on VAT exemption for education, the outcomes of the application of VAT on fees and the consequential ability to reclaim VAT on purchases will create some unexpected consequences and anomalies, with no two schools being the same.
At the very least I would expect a blanket application of VAT on school fees to trigger a large raft of complex, expensive and time-consuming tax tribunal cases as each school makes a case for its own VAT treatment.
As always, Labour is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Outside of the super rich, us ordinary folks choose a private education for our kids because the state system is genrally poor. If the state system was improved, the demand for private education would fall away.But that will never happen as the Labour supporting teaching unions don’t believe in excellenc, or even improving people.