Excess mortality data from Europe, Israel, Singapore and Australia suggest that vaccine effectiveness against death has been overestimated. In Europe and Israel, post-vaccination waves were sometimes as or more deadly than pre-vaccination waves. And countries like Singapore and Australia saw sizeable upticks in excess mortality even after vaccinating a very large percentage of the population.
So while the vaccines do offer protection against serious illness and death, their effectiveness is unlikely to be as high as 90%.
Another interesting country to look at in this regard is South Korea. After containing the virus for the first two years of the pandemic, the country experienced a major outbreak in February of this year. By that point, Korea had double vaccinated 86% of its population, and around 90% of over 80s.
Like Singapore, Korea has one of the world’s highest vaccination rates. At the end of 2021, 83% of Koreans were double vaccinated, compared to only 70% of Britons and only 63% of Americans (see chart below).
If vaccine effectiveness against death is as high as 90%, you would not have expected to see a large rise in excess mortality when Korea’s outbreak hit. However, there was a large rise. By the end of March, mortality was 67% higher than normal (see below). This is a greater increase than France saw during the spring of 2020!
On the other hand, if we compare South Korea with Hong Kong – where more than half of over 80s chose not to get vaccinated – we see that excess mortality was even higher (see below). This suggests that while vaccine effectiveness may not be as high as 90%, it is greater than zero. Note that South Korea versus Hong Kong provides a useful comparison, since both are in East Asia, neither had a previous wave, and both got hit at the same time (with the same variant).
Excess mortality data from around the world suggest that vaccine effectiveness has been overestimated. Even countries that achieved very high vaccination rates before the virus got a foothold saw mortality jump once the virus started spreading.
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Of course, South Korea used to the model for zero Covid policies.
Perhaps the answer is as simple as Anders Tegnell laid out 2 years ago – all the measures taken would, at best, only delay the spread of the virus, of who got it and when. Those who would not be able to overcome the virus, would succumb to it and in the end, the number of deaths under the curve, whatever the curve itself looked like, would be similar across the countries.
If the vaxxes do provide any protection, it is temporary. We do not know if repeated poking will in fact not simply do away with whatever protection these vaxxes are supposed to provide, whether the continued burdening of the immune system may not make it shut up shop altogether. Even if repeated poking did not do this, it would be impossible to ensure that every person is “protected” all the time. The original seasonality of the virus seems to have disappeared, some say due to the over-vaxxing, so it seems fair to say that those people who will succumb to the virus if not protected, will at some point encounter the virus while unprotected and then yet succumb. Or perhaps some people never clear the virus and the vaxx, by initially protecting against the worst symptoms, merely conceals this fact and delays progression, and at some point the virus will either be cleared by the immune system – or not.
The countries with the worst mortality numbers since Omicron appeared are, if I’m not mistaken, by and large those that initially had the lowest mortality numbers. They just seem to be catching up.
And I keep wondering if some of the ‘vaccine protecting death and hospitalisations’ is not really true. Another factor that should be considered is that a less virulent strain appeared at the time of the start of the vaccination campaign.
Perhaps a less virulent strain appeared, but there was a difference already. In the first wave known treatments for immune systems going haywire were not used – I believe one of the original gamechangers was the use of dexamethasone, something that should have been used from the outset but which, along with other common go-tos was advised not to be used, along with HCQ and ivermectin, even though studies from the original SARS and MERS showed they might be effective. In NL a lot of high-risk patients were treated at home from the summer of 2020 on, with steroids, antibiotics and oxygen.
Personally I don’t think the vaxx does anything at all (apart from the adverse effects, they are definitely for real). Most people simply never got that sick with the virus to start with, so to categorically state it stopped people from getting sick would be very difficult to prove.
UKHSA data for the past year (if I’m not mistaken) shows that approx. 80% of those ending up in hospital and dying were fully vaxxed. If one were to assume that 80% of the population was vaxxed, this sounds like a wash to me.
mRNA was deemed too toxic for human use for years, even the EMA advised against a 4th shot as they did not know what effects this would have on the immune system, yet we are headed for a(n) (untested) 5th shot of something that certainly does nothing to stop infection or transmission and by no means is 100% effective against hospitalisation and death. It would, however, appear to melt the brains of at least some people who took it to the point they can no longer think for themselves.
Yes, you can alter the shape of the curve, but you can’t alter the area under it.
Curiously, even Johnson knew that when he talked of “flattening the sombrero”, how come this information was forgotten so rapidly?
On March 25th 2022 the covid fatality rate in South Korea peaked at 7.01/m. Like all Asian countries the covid peak came after vaccine rollout.
This peak of 7/m was about 1/3rd of the highest peaks reached anywhere in the world at any time.
At a time when the dominant variant was the benign omicron variant, when 90% of the population had been jabbed, when a good percentage already had natural immunity, in a society where there are fewer obese people than in the West, we still see high fatality rates?
Are the vaccine advocates claiming that in the absence of vaccines the rate in South Korea in March would have been 70/m, 3x higher than the peak ever achieved anywhere?
“Dissolving Illusions: Disease Vaccines and the Forgotten History” by Humphries and Bystrianyk
Compulsory reading.
Please follow Joel Smalley, Jessica Rose, elgato and others on substack.
Yes, but finding them may be difficult.
I don’t bookmark sites or memorise the address, I just search the name. In the past week or so it’s been difficult to find Alex Berenson and Jessica Rose (Unacceptable Jessica), something not a problem before. In fact, for Berenson you get a ‘profile not found’ substack, which is actually his substack. The Cat is still findable, fortunately, he’s fab.
“So while the vaccines do offer protection against serious illness and death,”
Why do you insist on putting this nonsense in any articles about the gene therapy treatment knowing full well it’s absolute tosh? Presumably it’s because Ofcom or whoever will be after you to close you down. Come on grow some …..!
“This suggests that while vaccine effectiveness may not be as high as 90%, it is greater than zero.”
History will tell whether or not this is the case but thanks. You have proved your worth. This is a serious forum for discussion. Hats off.