There follows a guest post by the academic economist who wrote a short post a few days ago about the apparent failure of the vaccine roll-out to reduce the number of over-60s being admitted to hospital with COVID-19 as a percentage of the number of over-60s testing positive rate. It generated a lively discussion in the comments so I asked the author to expand on it.
In the following short essay, I am going to examine whether the vaccines are preventing hospitalisations. We already know that the vaccines are not proving very effective at suppressing cases – which appear to be soaring in many countries, and notably the United Kingdom, in spite of the successful vaccine roll out and even though we are in summer and last summer cases remained suppressed. Some of us expected this to happen. The vaccine trials were rushed, the studies were of dubious quality, and they were released by drug companies who had a vested commercial interest in claiming high efficacy for the vaccines.
In addition to this, it should be obvious to anyone who gives it any thought that vaccines do not suppress highly contagious respiratory illnesses; more than half of Americans get flu shots every year, yet the United States has a flu season that is every bit as bad as Europe – which does not have high rates of annual flu vaccinations. A cynic might say that the flu vaccine business is much like the cosmetic business: a hustle by pharmaceutical companies to sell medicine to people who are not ill thereby massively expanding their market.
Now that it has become obvious that the vaccines are not preventing the spread of the virus, the public health clown show is doing what it does best: moving the goalposts. They are acting as if we knew all along that the vaccines did not prevent transmission. Instead, they tell us, the vaccines are there to prevent serious illness and death. We are supposed to ignore the fact that they are also insisting that groups that are not at-risk take the vaccine, but no matter – water under the bridge and if hundreds of young people die from blood clots or heart inflammation, so be it, better than Whitty and Vallance having to (gasp!) admit they were wrong.
Okay, well let us do what these clods never do: let’s test their hypothesis against the data. We are going to use data from Scotland (see here, here and here). Why? Because Scotland has had an outbreak that rivals previous outbreaks. The U.K. has not. It may appear the U.K. has had a full-on outbreak if you simply look at case data, but this is misleading. Testing has increased due to the proliferation of lateral flow testing. When we control for testing and look at the percent of tests that are positive rather than cases, we see this clearly.
Okay, so Scotland has a verified outbreak. How do we check whether the vaccines are preventing serious illness? Well, we know that serious illness only really occurs in older groups. We also know that older groups are more heavily vaccinated than younger groups. In fact, in Scotland almost 100% of over-60s are fully vaccinated. This provides us with a very nice natural experiment.
What we need to check is whether the correlation between positive cases among the over-60s and hospitalisations has broken down. In the pre-vaccination period we know that a certain percentage of positive cases among the over-60s would go on to become hospital patients. Well, if the public health boffins are correct and the vaccine prevents hospitalisations then fewer people should be being hospitalised relative to the number of cases. Do we see this?
Maybe. Squint and you will miss is. Hospitalisations do not appear to be rising quite as fast as cases in the over-60s. But let us not forget that testing has increased. So, what we really need to do is construct a positive test rate for the over-60s. With a bit of digging and applying a few statistical tricks, we can do this.
No squinting required this time around. The link has not been broken at all. The slight break between hospitalisations and cases in the over-60s is fully explained by the rise in testing. Control for this and the break disappears. Just as many people over the age of 60 are being hospitalised today in Scotland relative to the number of over-60s testing positive as they were before the vaccine roll-out began. The real-world evidence suggests that the vaccines are not, in fact, preventing serious illness. This confirms the impression we get reading the Scottish press. The Herald reports ‘Covid hospital admissions triple in over-60s — and nearly half of patients fully vaccinated’ – in fact, half is probably an understatement.
What about the link between hospitalisations and deaths? Perhaps the vaccines aren’t preventing serious illness, but maybe they’re preventing people with serious illness from dying?
Again, squint and you will miss it. Deaths are rising together with hospitalisations. If there are slightly fewer deaths relative to hospitalisations this could well be due to the better treatments for Covid that we know have been developed. Anyway, the notion that the vaccines will stop our hospitals from being overwhelmed – (were they ever really overwhelmed?) – is nonsense.
As we move into autumn and cases rise, it seems possible that the vaccines may fail spectacularly. What happens next? A rational society would turn on the public health buffoons and the greedy pharmaceutical companies. A rational society would take seriously the grim statistics on vaccine fatalities being reported to the Government’s Yellow Card system.
But we do not live in a rational society. We live in a society gripped by hysteria and fear; a society where control at both a governmental level and in day-to-day interactions has been handed over to the most neurotic and stupid among us. What will likely happen then is that these people double down. Rather than admit they were wrong they will get angry and project that anger on the people who doubted them. Those who have chosen not to get vaccinated will become increasingly vilified. They will be blamed for the hospitals stuffed full of fully vaccinated elderly people. Boosters will be insisted upon – and the dodgy pharmaceutical companies will continue to rake it in as they peddle untested drugs.
Either that, or our leaders grow spines and put a stop to this madness.
Stop Press: Covid hospital admissions among over-65s are a third of the level they would be if Britain didn’t have vaccines, according to PHE. MailOnline has more.
Stop Press 2: The Swiss Doctor has weighed in on this subject with a typically measured and erudite post.
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COP28: comedy gold…..the gift that keeps giving…..after flying there on private executive jets, they’ll probably have a side meeting on how to get there on their private yachts next time….oh…hang on…..
https://www.cop28.com/en/schedule/responsible-yachting-today-tomorrow
Yes, I saw that one about responsible yachting. To me, a yacht has masts and sails which can be made of wood and cloth so what’s the problem? Hmmmmm
I used to follow a YT channel of a couple who were crossing oceans in a sailing boat – high tech materials, and a battery to work their high tech comms equipment that enabled them to get where they needed to go safely –
satellite, radar, GPS etc. All very “green”.
I saw them. I think they had a baby with them too. It was very inspiring. Travel around the world on your own with no laws, government regulations or limits of where to go (well almost).
A prepper’s ideal final escape from the techno totalitarian nightmare.
It was during lockdown in part so they largely avoided all that crap
The discussion will focus on a variety of technical solutions developed to make the yachting experience more responsible and sustainable. Sunreef Yachts Eco representatives will share an insight into the R&D activity of the company and practical solutions that can be implemented to ensure cleaner boating. This will include a conversation about electric, hybrid and hydrogen propulsion, battery technology, plant-based composites, bottom paints, modern photovoltaics, sustainable interior finishing, water management, energy management, air conditioning. The focus will also be on the evolution of technology and future trends.
My emphasis in bold. I can see that they are not talking about the yachts I had in mind i.e. your little sailing boat with its entirely sustainable profile involving things like sails, ropes, rudders, tillers, hulls and masts often made of wood but yachts for the super wealthy with their ‘air conditioning’ and ‘energy management’ requirements! I had a look at Sunreef’s range – some of them even have helipads. So, not the yachts for thee and thou but the yachts for they and them!
There is “science” and then there are “myths”. ———-There is no evidence that CO2 is causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate. It certainly has not done so up till now and we keep getting told that the CO2 that we have “pumped” into the atmosphere since the 1700’s is causing climate change. But that is falsified by the fact that there is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event. Yet computer models full of assumptions, guesses and speculations where basic parameters are either poorly understood or totally unknown are presented as “the science”——MODELS ARE NOT SCIENCE, and guess what ? They have all been totally wrong till now anyway. —-So if it is clearly not about science, what is it about? —————CO2 is the one gas that can be directly tied to Industrial Capitalism, and I am afraid that is what it is really about. The wealthiest people and countries emit the most and the poorest people and countries emit the least. The wealthiest people who live in the prosperous west are to stop emitting CO2 , which really means they are to stop using fossil fuels because we can afford to dabble in expensive niche technologies ike wind and sun and we are to send money to poorer people by way of bribes to tell them to leave their fossil fuels in the ground——-“Reparations” or “climate justice” or some other eco socialist terminology is used that really is about total control of the worlds wealth and resources, and the excuse for all of this anti capitalist central planning is “climate change”, the greatest pseudo scientific fraud ever.
“The wealthiest people who live in the prosperous west are to stop emitting CO2 …”
Well, not quite, since all human beings are CO2 generators: with every breath we breathe, we exhale 100 times the amount of CO2 we inhale. I learned that in biology at school – a long time ago, when schools used to educate. We are, after all, animals that survive by converting O2 to CO2. So those of us who really believe CO2 is destroying the planet need to … hold their breath!
Another cracker from Mr Morrison, thank you.
It was a pleasure to meet you briefly on Monday evening at Lola’s.
Always like reading Mr Morrison he has a terrific sense of humour and the way his takes the p*** out of these climate change net zero freaks is second to none.
I noticed the Met Office were panicked yesterday into releasing a YouTube video on the 1.5%.
Funnily enough, they didn’t mention any of the points raised above!
Another fact recently established in a study shows that a total transformation to so-called ‘renewables’ would require a further 80 million kilometres of high voltage transmission cabling – or in layman’s terms 80 million kilometres of steel wire and pylons.
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/12/your-clean-green-future-needs-another-80-million-km-of-high-voltage-lines/
There is no intention to make “a total transformation to so-called ‘renewables’ “. That is simply a myth. The intention is to reduce the population such that the elites have everything to themselves with a slave population to service them.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-cop-squad-are-coming-for-our-cows/
As many of us here know attacks on food supplies are an integral part of the depopulation plan. So they are going to reduce methane – in other words cattle.
Here we go again.
The people intent on selling vegan replacement products for meat and dairy have hitched their waggons to chlimate cange a long time ago. They’d obviously very much like to get some of the money, too, and if government could be persuaded to outlaw competing products people preferably buy, this would also help the bottom line a lot.
Just as with COVID, whoever can tries to exploit the scam to further his own agenda, whatever it might be.
“Climate change” is a desperate operation by the western world order to cling on to global power, against the tide of the growing wealth and influence of non western powers.
When you put yourself in the mindset that most of the people in positions of power are sociopaths, everything makes perfect sense.
If you think that people in positions of power are trying to serve the common good, you’re not only completely lost, you’re a useful idiot. Fodder for their cannon.
Anything that seems like serving the common good is nothing more than the temporary and absolute minimum alignment of interests required for the sociopaths to get their way.
Ridiculous. Asia won’t follow the West as it commits economic suicide.
What is “doing an Ali Jaber?”
Blowing a firkin hole in someone’s argument so big that they have no possibility of reply.
Excellent, HP! I’ll have to remember that one!
Thanks Aethelred
Monro. You literally couldn’t make this up! The have yachts on sustainable sailing while telling the rest of us to stay in harbour!
At least Al Jaber has a scientific training (Chemical Engineering), in contrast to most of these climate grifters. Mary Robinson (who I met as a guest speaker at a conference) is an incredibly self important member of The EUOirish elite. Like the old drunk Higgins and others she lives in a bubble sealed off from the chaotic country she has created. Looking forward to seeing her try hard not to patronise Connor McGregor when he enters the fray!
A Conservative sub 60 seats election result will put a lid on this climate nonsense.
Imagine the naivete of people who believe anybody can measure a single temperature for the earth and to 1.5 degrees! Temperatures are infinite and chaotic all over the earth and can vary 10 degrees or more within a 100 mile radius. From daytime to nighttime they can vary 30 degrees. And then to set political goals set on this! Pseudoscience at It’s best.
Two reasons Chris Morrison is my favourite writer here:
Where can I see more of him?
Charring Cross Station, outside WH Smith 4-45 pm Sunday. Will be carrying a brolly, wearing a Ganex raincoat and sporting a red rose.