A new study from University College London published yesterday claims to find that a single vaccine dose provides 62% protection against COVID-19 for care home residents.
The Government-funded study looked at data from more than 10,000 care home residents in England with an average age of 86, between December and mid-March, comparing the number of infections occurring in vaccinated and unvaccinated groups (as determined by a PCR test). It found that a single vaccine dose was effective at preventing 56% of infections after four weeks, rising to 62% of infections after five weeks.
It is the first major study to show vaccine efficacy in the most vulnerable, with Minister for Care Helen Whately saying it is “brilliant to see this [vaccine] is having the positive effect the science suggested, not only by preventing death, but also reducing the chance of infection”.
But have we been given the full picture? Below is the table the 62% figure comes from. It’s the 0.38 after 35-48 days (5-7 weeks) among the figures circled in red. The 56% protection is the 0.44 above it.
Notice two things. First, what the story on the UCL website and in newspaper reports doesn’t mention is that the protection figure drops from 62% to 51% (0.49) after seven weeks (circled red), which is somewhat less impressive. Secondly, the infection rate in the three weeks following vaccination rises significantly (circled orange), with the rate at 2-3 weeks hitting 26.21 vs 21.39 in the unvaccinated, a 22.5% increase. As Lockdown Sceptics has reported before, this increased infection rate post-vaccination has also been found in other studies, with a PHE study finding a 48% increase in infection risk in the over-80s group 4-9 days after receiving the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, the American FDA Emergency Use Authorisation for the Pfizer vaccine finding 40% higher “suspected Covid” in the first week after vaccination, and a large Danish study finding a 40% increase in infection risk among nursing home residents in the 14 days following the first Pfizer dose.
In this study, the increased infection risk disappears when controls are applied for a number of potential confounding factors including age, sex, prior infection, and local viral prevalence. However, this adjusting process is somewhat opaque (see the description of it under the table) and the resulting confidence intervals for the adjusted hazard ratios are wide enough to drive a bus through. Given the initial sample size is over 10,000, this suggests the adjusting process is brutal and leaves little data in the control groups for comparison.
Drilling down into the data for the two vaccines, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, is even more revealing.
We find, first of all, that the elevated infection risk post-vaccine mainly relates to the Pfizer jab, with the infection rate spike hitting 80% in the second week after the jab in the unadjusted infection figures (circled red). On this occasion even the adjusting process is unable to eliminate it completely (the 1.11 to the right, an 11% decrease in protection). The AstraZeneca jab by comparison only sees a mild spike of 17% in the third week after the jab in the unadjusted infection rate.
However, it’s not all good news for the Oxford vaccine, as it turns out the lower efficacy after seven weeks noted above is largely from the AstraZeneca vaccine. The unadjusted figures actually show a higher rate of infection among those vaccinated with the Oxford shot after seven weeks than among the unvaccinated (circled orange). Furthermore, the adjusted hazard ratio shows only a 36% improvement for the AstraZeneca vaccine, compared to a 62% improvement for the Pfizer vaccine after seven weeks. The confidence intervals are, again, wide, but even so this is not a great result for AstraZeneca.
It’s hard not to come away with a sense that the results of this study are being spun to make the vaccines look better than the full data suggests. Was the combining of the figures for both vaccines designed to spare AstraZeneca’s blushes and maintain confidence in the beleaguered shot? Was the use of the better efficacy figures for five weeks instead of seven weeks done to make the vaccines look good? What are we to make of the 80% infection spike after receiving the Pfizer vaccine, and the heavy controls applied that dampen the impact of it in the final results?
Do you ever get the sense that you’re not being told the full, unvarnished truth?
Stop Press: Dr Clare Craig, a frequent contributor to Lockdown Sceptics, has a “rapid response” in the BMJ today, replying to an opinion article blaming vaccinated individuals themselves for causing the post-vaccination spikes. We need to look beyond behavioural change, she says, to a possible effect of the vaccine itself. Good to see these things being raised in the pages of the BMJ.
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The only person in the World who got it right about lockdowns has now been bought by the Medical Mafia. A sad day indeed.
Did Anders get the message?
More thoughts as well.
It occurs that one way that a ruthless institution could remove effective opposition to its nefarious schemes would be to use its practically unlimited budget to recruit, neuter, and ideally ultimately frame, discredit and disgrace anyone who stands against it.
I’m certain that doesn’t apply here though.
Sure of it.
We have all read the facts. The data was fudged, the tests were useless, the statistics artificially inflated, and many deaths were intentionally caused through institutionalized medical negligence. Hospitals received funding bonuses as payoffs.
None of that had anything to do with bad data, or pessimistic models. They did it all on purpose, all of it.
https://off-guardian.org/2022/03/07/dont-believe-the-medias-fake-post-mortem-the-pandemic-was-not-a-mistake/
Tegnell did a great job of standing up to the lockdown thuggery, and somewhat resisted the worst aspects of the covid panic, but in the end he is very much part of the technocratic collectivist public health borg. Credit where it is due, and he certainly provided a vital example in the early days of the panic, but no hero worship.
I don’t think they’d give a real sceptic a job at the WHO. Tegnell took a more measured and sensible approach than most, but that’s not saying much. I suppose better him than some of the others, but the WHO is beyond saving IMO, short of removing the senior leadership and pruning their remit drastically. Ditto most other “public health” organisations worldwide.
As the WHO’s biggest individual funder should currently be facing charges of crimes against humanity, you do have to ask why people still think the WHO is worth saving?
I think it needs shutting down, starting again and having Bill Gates et al told in no uncertain terms that they will be shot dead if they come within 1 million miles of the new organisation.
Another day of anti-borg bigotry on DS, I see. Your hatred will ultimately be futile.
I just can’t help myself.
I’m going to look on the bright side and hope that he’ll bring more trustworthiness to the WHO. They certainly seem to have lost a lot of that since Gates bought them.
This will only be a good thing if Gates discovers a conscience and goes off to live in a monastery and the current head is retired.
It is humility that he sorely lacks.
He is one of the few “experts” appointed by governments who admitted some of his worst mistakes (letting Covid into old peoples homes, closing colleges but not schools of course) and making apologies at the time for those mistakes.
Seems to have enormously more humility that the malicious red-nosed clowns foisted on most populations, notably UK
That’s about as likely as Microsoft releasing a version of Windows that isn’t full of bugs.
Gates discovers a conscience
ROTFLMAO. That’s going to happen shortly after rivers start flowing from the sea to their springs.
We are told: ‘Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.’
But I want to apply profanity and abuse to Mr Gates, not to this forum.
There’s a common view that the WHO went off the rails, i.e. was taken over by undesirable people 20-25 years ago. It worked well before that.
‘Anders Tegnell Lands Job at WHO’, and is immediately enrolled on a course of ‘reconditioning’.
Tegnell was likely made an offer he couldn’t refuse and perhaps it was not all about money.
Exactly. It was either ‘work under the thumb of the WHO’ or ‘you’ll never work again’…..
Mark Lynas changed his tune on GMOs and now pushes the oxymoronically-named-because-it’s-Gates-funded ‘Cornell Alliance for Science’. Anders Tegnell might well have followed the same path.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/09/mark-lynas-truth-treachery-gm
Yanis Varoufakis, when Greek finance minister in 2010 backed down in the face of the EU demands. I remember reading (in a Guardian article I think – can’t find the reference), when asked why, he said “I didn’t want to die”.
Everyone has their price and, regretably, for some that might mean their life. History shows that psychopathy knows no limits. That’s the power of lack of empathy and lack of moral compass. The medico-industrial complex is famous for both.
LMAO !
So he should have imposed pointless and damaging measures which made no discernible difference to the spread of The Deadly Virus in any of the many countries which imposed them. Right…
The money too good to resist, Anders?
Well, having become increasingly cynical over the last few years (and decades) I just hope he has not been bought.
p.s. Looking at some of the other comments, I see I am not completely alone!
Sodium azide detected on rapid antigen swabs.
Who (sorry) did the Swedes replace him with?
No, Who’s on first.
Is this to ensure he is “on message” the next time the psychopaths posing as our representatives try the pandemic stunt?
In the face of a virus that is overall about as deadly as the flu, he believes in social distancing, reducing human and economic activity and in using rushed, experimental vaccines.
Swedes, like the Japanese, are an obedient bunch is all.
For all I know he may believe in Rudolph the Red- Nosed Reindeer
But so far as I am aware, he stood fast against mandates enforcing all those stupid things, especially for the young.
So I suggest he deserves a fair amount of respect.
Clearly far more than the King and the Government in Sweden.
He consistently rejected the mediaeval superstition of lockdown.
That is more than good enough.
Ivermectin has been distributed by the WHO to infected areas as a treatment for parasitic infections for over 30 years. Especially in certain African countries, Mexico and India, it has been confirmed to be safe to distribute directly to people. In addition, ivermectin has been reported to suppress the invasion of SARS-CoV-2 into cells and inhibit replication. You can get your ivm by visiting https://ivmpharmacy.com
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60681288
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/mar/01/mandatory-covid-jabs-dropped-nhs-staff-england-march-health-social-care-workers-law-vaccinated-sajid-javid?fr=operanews
Why the collective amnesia. This site has lost the way. The swing parks were locked up. The children were masked in class . The figures were manipulated. People have been injected to keep their jobs and now they don’t need to be. Where is the retribution. Where is the payback. Oh. Let’s all look over there at Ukraine and worry about the price of petrol. No way. The experts need held to account. Where is the push back. Where is Bruce Reynolds? I can’t believe this site is adopting ‘i told you so’ attitude. We need to prosecute those who took our freedom. And when I see people still rubbing the hands to stop a respiratory virus, and wearing masks alone in a car, I don’t berate them, I despair that the y have been manipulated by a bunch of pricks. Where is the payback? The whole thing was a shitshiw but now it’s over/ there’s a war 9n, it’s all ok? Fuck that.
Bloody dead right. Bastards.
“We might also hope he will be a sceptical influence in any development of future pandemic guidance to avoid lockdowns and other draconian measures being normalised.”
Why are future “pandemics” and their plans for, seemingly common features of health discussions nowadays? It’s almost like these things were as common as the common cold.
Any ideas Billy G?
“It’s almost like these things were”…planned.
We might hope, but he’s probably took the ‘shilling’.
Still a hero of 2020 and there were very few of them around.
Can you imagine where we would have been without the Swedish data?
If you can’t beat ’em. . .
Keep your friends close….
This will be so they can corrupt him.
Keep your friends close but your enemies even closer (Machiavelli)
This is a really worrying development. Anders will be bullied and silenced when he gets to his position at WHO. I believe this corrupt organisation needs to be disbanded and those who have funded it need to be investigated. That includes UK Government, The Gates Foundation and USA Government. There has been much skulduggery over the years this disgraceful organisation has been in place. A NWO concept that needs to go.
Better the enemy inside the tent pissing out. The WHO’s global pandemic and digital ID plan is due for completion by 2024 when all 194 member states cede their health sovereignty to this unelected, CCP influenced organisation – keep your eyes on what our Minister for Health is signing. Tegnell will never be seen or heard from again in the media.
Tegnell’s appointment smells suspiciously like a sop to opponents of the nefarious plan to transfer power over future pandemic policies from individual nations to the much-criticised World Health Organisation (WHO)
For weeks, representatives of 194 UN member states have met in Geneva to negotitate away their historical health sovereignty to an un-elected and arguably corrupt and incompetent bureaucracy financially behoven to Bill Gates and Big Pharma.
Under the terms of a binding “international agreement on the prevention and control of pandemics”, national leaders would in future be legally obliged to impose WHO “solutions” – including lockdowns and/or mandatory mass vaccination – whether they and the electorates they are meant to serve want them or not.
WEF acolyte (and enthusiastic “Build Back Better” choristor) Boris Johnson actually called for the unaccountable WHO to be handed control months ago, with scarcely a mention by the toothless UK media “watchdogs’.
If passed, this egregious power grab would represent a new world order for health and a stepping stone towards the “global governance” goal of the WEF/UNWorld Bank-led “Great Reset” – which the dying legacy media, on life support from government and Big Pharma sponsorship, pathetically continues to call a conspiracy theory”.
Implementation was initially scheduled for May 1, but has been postponed following an unexpected surge of opposition – largely as a result of widespread exposure of the hush-hush negotiations via independent news channels and social media.
Delaying the passage of this toxic legislative garbage is not enough. It must be recognised for the traitorous sell-out it truly is and consigned to the dustbin of history.
https://www.ross-shirejournal.co.uk/news/national/boris-johnson-calls-for-new-international-treaty-on-pandemic-preparedness-21367/
This looks like a case of the WHO neutralising opposition buying future conformity.
Let’s hope he is able to bring a bit of measured scepticism to the WHO (a mostly political organisation) and counter The Science(tm) with Science.
I suspect he will be outnumbered!
another bites the dust…
i you cannot fight them, have them join.
Prof Karol Sakora once worked for WHO although I believe that he left the body due to disagreements over its direction. . Anders Tegnell’s appointment is to be welcomed so long as he does not become isolated. He was about to retire from his job in Sweden anyway. WHO has shown a little discernment in its appointment process for a change. We should be mindful of who WHO might have appointed if he had not put himself forward.
I was in Sweden in December & January when new restrictions and regular press conferences were being held. I did not see Dr. Anders Tegnell once. His WHO appointment is not really of a surprise as I remember thinking he had definitely ticked their box on the “fantastic vaccines” during his second interview with Freddie Sayers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZRR5zZ0I0s
Perhaps they’ve taken him in for a course of indoctrination.