It’s official: I am spouting misinformation about the Covid vaccines. Full Fact – the Google, Facebook and George Soros-funded outfit that Ofcom has said it relies on to tell it what to censor regarding COVID-19 – has ‘fact checked‘ my recent piece on PHE data showing negative vaccine effectiveness in August and branded it “incorrect”.
Writer Leo Benedictus – henceforth to be known as the Oracle – takes particular issue with the headline, which he says “falsely claims that a report from Public Health England (PHE) shows the COVID-19 vaccines having ‘negative effectiveness’ in the over-40s”.
“This is not true about the COVID-19 vaccines – nor is it true that the PHE report shows this,” the Oracle declares. Except it is. The data contained in the report is completely clear, and the calculation of unadjusted vaccine effectiveness from that data is straightforward.
According to the Oracle, however, this is not a valid way of estimating vaccine effectiveness. Benedictus quotes the PHE report stating as much – “The vaccination status of cases, inpatients and deaths is not the most appropriate method to assess vaccine effectiveness and there is a high risk of misinterpretation” – and notes that I too quote this. What he fails to acknowledge, though, is that I also examine the reason PHE gives for this claim and counter it.
The only substantive reason PHE gives that vaccine effectiveness might be underestimated in its data is that “vaccination has been prioritised in individuals who are more susceptible or more at risk of severe disease”. In other words, the high-risk are over-represented in the vaccinated and this skews the sample. I countered that the large majority of the older age groups are now vaccinated so this bias should be very much reduced. Of course, we also need to ask why, if this is supposedly the key confounder of the data presented, we are not also provided with the necessary data on risk categories so that it can be duly quantified and accounted for.
Benedictus reiterates PHE’s claim that vaccine effectiveness should only be estimated via the published studies. However, as I noted in my article, these studies are riddled with serious problems and inconsistencies that bring their findings into question. They are also out of date since they don’t cover the Delta surge, which is the first time the vaccines have really been stress-tested in the U.K.
Benedictus spends half the ‘fact check’ in a bizarre attempt to argue that my vaccine effectiveness calculation is wrong because I used the data PHE itself used for the size of the unvaccinated population. He points out it is different to the ONS figures on this. Er, take that one up with PHE, Leo.
It does seem at times that Benedictus is fact-checking the PHE report rather than my article. At one point he takes the report to task because one of its charts sowed confusion as it “seemed to show for the month in question (August 9th to September 5th) that people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s were more likely to test positive for Covid if they had been vaccinated than if they hadn’t”.
Except the chart didn’t ‘seem’ to show that; it did show that. Again though we are told that this data does “not give a reliable estimate of vaccine effectiveness” because of biases in the samples.
But who defines what makes an estimate of vaccine effectiveness ‘reliable’ enough to be permitted without being labelled false? All vaccine efficacy estimates have limitations arising from the limitations of the data, including those produced by PHE. I was careful to acknowledge the limitations of the estimates I was making, saying they were unadjusted for risk factors – though argued that this shouldn’t matter so much anymore given high coverage. There’s also the point that being high-risk may affect the risk of serious disease and death but there’s no reason to think it will have an impact on infection rates (save for the small number of immuno-compromised).
The unmistakable impression here is of a gatekeeping exercise by the Government and its outriders to ensure it controls the concept of vaccine effectiveness and no one unauthorised is allowed to make an estimate of it. Thus the availability of the data is carefully controlled and we only get a month at a time and without the additional data that would allow us to control for the supposed biases that the report tells us the data includes and which ‘invalidate’ any attempt to make an unauthorised calculation of vaccine effectiveness.
None of this concept-policing does anything to alter the facts, however. In recent weeks reported infection rates have been higher in the double vaccinated than in the unvaccinated for the over-40s. That means that, for this period, (unadjusted) vaccine effectiveness is negative in those age groups.
PHE has published two new reports since my article and in each the unadjusted vaccine efficacy has declined further. Here is the table using data from the latest report, covering August 23rd to September 19th (the related chart from the report itself is above).
It shows that in the two weeks since my article the vaccine effectiveness has dropped further, with unadjusted vaccine effectiveness in the over-40s now hitting as low as minus-53% among people in their 60s. This means that, on this data for this age group, the double vaccinated experienced a 53% higher reported infection rate than the unvaccinated in the past month. And that’s a fact.
Stop Press: Professor Norman Fenton and Professor Martin Neil on the Probability and Risk site have used age-adjusted all-cause mortality to estimate vaccine effectiveness and found that mortality rates are currently higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.
Stop Press 2: Professor David Paton has produced a good Twitter thread responding to one of the more well-informed critics of this (and other) pieces citing the PHE data.
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Isn’t this criminal collusion between a government minister and an extremist Green organisation?
Blatant stitch-up.
They are in the bubble of ‘there is no truth but my truth’ therefore this patent act of self harm for our nation passes by as ‘doing the right thing by the World’.
As with failing to commit to nuclear in 2010, the seeds of our destruction are sown by those who will be affected least by the consequences.
It is “doing the right thing” by the UN and WEF. It essentially means our own politicians are happy to impoverish us by removing reliable affordable energy so they can get a little gold star on their lapel from the Technocrats and their Sustainable Development Agenda that thinks western standard of living is too high.——– Because the west became prosperous using fossil fuels and because they are a finite resource we are to STOP using them and the excuse for that is climate change. But once you look into this issue you find it is only a smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency for political purposes.
follow the money
How can these decisions be made while all 650 skiving C-nts are on the beach ???
We knew what these duffers were going to do.
We knew that the ‘pot bangers’ needed a dose of all this.
Next May we will see what the ‘if it saves one life’ merchants make of all this self indulgent, virtue signalling idiocy as it kicks them in the trossachs.
What’s due in May ?
Yes, Millibrain truly has several screws loose.
Out of curiosity and off topic, is there anyone with an opinion on what currency or commodity to buy into? Seems like the pound and dollar are due for a collapse…
Silver, and keep it under the mattress.
Gold or silver with Monetary Metals in Arizona. They do leases and bonds on silver and gold that pay interest in gold.
I have no stake only because I cannot sfford 10 ounces of gold.
Gold is free of capital gains tax and VAT.
The collective insanity of these parasites borders on treason. They are selling their country out
It has crossed the border and is an illegal immigrant there. It deserves swift and firm action.
Ah yes, I’ll take that segue, thanks. Immigrants…I can’t quite believe this. Well I can, but I’m as incredulous as these ladies, to be honest. They obviously have money to burn. ”Erm..erm, uh…” This bloke can hardly construct a sentence and rivals Kamala Harris in the basic art of speech;
”Insane exchange where it transpires The Government are always paying for 5,000 empty hotel beds “just in case” they need them for illegal immigrants.
The meeting delegates can’t quite believe what they’re hearing.”
https://x.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/1828565487141224457
Much better to talk about the portrait of Thatcher!
Welcome to the UK – twinned with Venezuela
at least Venzuela is interested in accessing and monetizing its Oil & Gas resources
Watch: Colorado Residents Sound Alarm as Venezuelan GANGS TAKE OVER Entire Apartment Complex (infowars.com)
Yes, and here’s what the Venezuelans are doing in the USA:
BREAKING VIDEOS: Illegal Alien Hordes Now Hijacking School Buses As Apartment Complexes Across US Are Taken Over By Armed Venezuelan Gangs! (infowars.com)
Shock Video: Venezuelan ‘Migrant’ Delivering for Amazon Runs Over Mother Pushing Stroller, Flees Scene (infowars.com)
And here’s what the Marxist Pope says about it, as he is pictured here washing their feet:
Pope Francis says Deliberately Opposing Migration ‘Is a Grave Sin’ (infowars.com)
As Alex Jones pointed out, have you seen the huge walls of the Vatican? The Marxist Pope houses no illegal aliens there, and the Vatican is well protected by those walls.
This sets the precedent that any half wit climate activist can sue you for anything whatsoever that they claim affects climate. —-eg Having a car. Flying in a plane to Tenerife. (or Davos) Eating a fillet steak. Not getting a heat pump. Not getting a Smart Meter. Infact everything that humans do involves the release of some CO2 which means that every human activity can be challenged by lunatic activists, but also by pretend to save the planet politicians who know that controlling CO2 gives them the power to control every human activity, and that is what Climate Change policies are really for, with climate simply the excuse for that eco socialism.
Why place a handful of neat riggs in these North Sea fields producing reliable and efficient fuel for reliable and efficient ICE vehicles when you could instead smother them with hundreds of monstrous, bird-shredding, inefficient and unreliable jumped up windmills producing intermittent power for inefficient and unreliable jumped-up Scalextric cars?
I mean, come on…
This is the most dangerous human being in the UK, and the only reason he now has this power over our well being and prosperity is because the Conservatives turned into just another bunch of Liberals and truly made a pigs ear of an 80 seat majority to allow these cretinous goons that not so many voted for to now have us over an eco socialist barrel
—-I am warning everyone now that you will be forced into having a smart meter and a heat pump, petrol and diesel will be taxed to kingdom come and everything in your shopping trolley will be assessed for its carbon footprint, and all because…….the Tories made a total hash of it.
“and all because…….the Tories made a total hash of it.”
That implies they wanted to do the right thing. There is no evidence of that.
That was quite a subtle reply. ———But you know what I mean.
Yeah, no criticism Varmint, just that as time goes on you increasingly, reluctantly draw the conclusion that almost no politician or associated hanger-on is in it for the good of the people or country (any more). Quite the opposite.
And quite sobering and depressing.
Or as Mark Twain said “Politicians are like diapers, they need changed often and for the same reason”. —–They don’t work for us anymore. They work for the UN/WEF.
I like that quote. But the canvassing bloke who knocked at my door prior to this last election, did not, which makes me smile even more every time I hear or read the quote
With Labour set to make another tax raid on the oil and gas industry, you wonder whether Equinor and Shell were actually going to develop these fields in the next 5 years anyway.
A bit riçh of ClaireCoutinho.