The ZOE Covid Study App (which recently changed its estimates again, which doesn’t exactly instil confidence) released a study earlier in the month (or rather a press release with no link to an actual study) which claimed natural immunity following infection “only gave 65% protection against catching it again”. This compared to 71% protection from the AstraZeneca vaccine (rising to 90% for those who had tested positive for Covid before) and 87% protection from the Pfizer vaccine (rising to 95% for the previously test-positive). The researchers say the results came from during the U.K. Delta wave.
This is a surprisingly low estimate for the protection given by natural immunity. Other estimates have tended to be more like 80% against testing positive and 90% against symptomatic infection. A recent study from Israel (not yet peer-reviewed) found natural immunity was 13 times better than Pfizer vaccination at preventing PCR positives during the Delta surge and 27 times better at preventing symptomatic infection.
The ZOE result is similar, however, to a recent (very flawed) study based on the ONS infection survey, which claimed to find just 55% protection from natural infection. A similarly flawed study from Oxford University, also based on the ONS survey, found natural infection just 66% effective.
The main problem with the ZOE study is that it only looks at infections from May and June 2021. This was mostly a time of very low prevalence, though with the beginnings of the Delta surge occurring in the latter half.
It was also a period in which infections occurred largely in the unvaccinated (for reasons that remain somewhat unclear), pre-dating the surge in infections in the vaccinated that occurred from the second half of July.
Significantly, it was a period in which, according to analysis of Government data by HART, almost all positive tests were from asymptomatic individuals.
As Clare Craig points out, this means many are likely to be false positives.
The question is, why do a study on such an anomalous period, and leave out the more than three months of data following it when reported infections in the vaccinated surged?
It seems safe to say that this is yet another study with serious flaws which gives a misleadingly high impression of the protection from vaccines, and a misleadingly low impression of the protection from natural immunity.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
What can be imposed by the stroke of a pen may be reversed by the stroke of a pen. It seems like tyranny to me.
Yes, unless too much time passes between imposition and attempted reversal by strokes of said pen…
Can anybody who voted for the Uniparty justifiably complain about energy prices?
If the FD or any director of a listed company misled the markets and investors in the way the Labour Party has, they would be in a world of trouble. How can politicians not be accountable?
Well we have laws made by lawyers, defended by lawyers and profited from by lawyers. The same with Starmer‘s immigration lawyer friends! In any other profession it would be a conflict of interest. They make the mafia look like pillars of virtue. I do fear for the future with these charlatans in control.
And we have populations begging for mummy and daddy lawyers to protect them by making more and more bad things illegal. Because everyone knows that if you want to stop bad things from happening, the solution is simply to make them illegal! The problem is all those people who will persist in not following orders!
An order is an order!
Yes, since Tony the Liar banned legally held handguns following the failure of the Police in letting an unstable person own a handgun, not a single person has been shot…….
Befehl ist Befehl! Didn’t work for them in the long run. Let us hope.
Is it sure that people want that? Couldn’t it be politicians instead who claim that whatever they’re doing must be what people wanted because they voted for them?
The charlatans should be fearing for their own future, because when we’ve finished with them they won’t even be able to find employment in a septic tank let alone a think tank.
And even non lawyers – the name Reynolds comes to mind.
Because the system is designed in this way: People vote for certain politicians and don’t vote for certain other politicians. And this manifests itself in the form of certain politicians becoming MPs while others don’t. Parliament is sovereign, that is, it may decide whatever a majority of MPs support when there’s a vote. Which implies that the people who voted for the politicians have no voice in the matter. All they can do is wait until the next general election and vote for a different politician in the hope that enough other people also vote for the same different politician and the politician will actually behave differently after he got elected.
That’s a bit like pulling coloured balls out of a black box. You may want a red ball. But you’ll get whatever you pulled out and this may or may not be red ball. If it’s not, you can try again in about five years’ time. There’s obviously no guarantee that any of the balls in the box are actually red. The people who put the balls into the box may have put only blue and pink balls into it because they don’t want you to be able to get a red ball. But they don’t have to admit this.
Why this system is referred to as democracy escapes me, but the epithet is commonly used.
How can politicians not be accountable?
Parliament persists, MPs are ‘here today and gone tomorrow’ (provided your definition of ‘tomorrow’ is loose enough).
It was the bigger boys what done it.
The MP and Minister benefits persist when they leave and or change role. Either the responsibility for their actions persist or their benefits stop.
Any sensible society would have a combination of both.
He fears that to turn around now would make him look weak and stupid.
Ed, if you’re reading this, that ship has very much sailed, son. Abandon your hubris and get that gas out of the ground.
Ain’t gonna happen. He has his orders.
If only Britain had its own oil and gas….oh, wait a minute!
I’m sure none of the following, which have happened to a greater or lesser degree in the UK and Europe, had any bearing on gas prices:
The abandonment of coal
Not exploring for new oil and gas
The drift away from nuclear
Government: We’re going to push intermittent sources that require backup at close to 100% of demand, and steer away from non-intermittent sources except gas
Also Government: It’s not our fault gas prices have risen!
More conspiracy theories.
I have come to expect this from you, tof
It’s a strange one isn’t it – with this lot 1+1=435
Latest non-sequiturs spouted by architect of the 2008 Climate Claptrap Act, sponsor of the Climate Claptrap Committee, latterday Minister of Energy Insecurity, arch energy-criminal, and major fruitcake of Marxist loins, Edward Samuel Miliband Minor.
Most expediently dealt with by granting an overblown and overpaid UN Saving the World charity gig in New York, alongside big brother and lesser Marxist fruitcake, David Wright Miliband Major.
Alternatively suitably erected, redundant lampost to be identified. Plenty to choose from, turned off years ago to Save the Planet, in villages, suburbs, provincial towns and fashionable urban regenerations up and down the land. Little reminder of Benito Mussolini’s fate brought home to roost in Islington.
Meanwhile Total, Tullow and China National Offshore Oil to press ahead with liberating the 6.5 billion barrels of oil waiting beneath Western Uganda’s soil. Route to the energy-prosperity that, starting in earnest two hundred years ago, lifted the developed world out of the long goodbye to feudalism and medieval squalor.
Leaving the fruitcakes to play deeply meaningless net-zero sum games on the 42nd floor of an office in Manhattan, air-conditioned by whatever energy source the newly-appointed U.S. Energy Secretary oversees to be most reliable, expedient and cost-effective.
Bring it on.
If only Putin hadn’t blown up his own pipeline…
Maybe our politicians don’t worry because they all have wives like Rory Stewart’s, who seemingly has a charity , helping poor Afghani women, understand Modernist art, that USAID, was bunging millions of dollars into …..Rory is very upset the next million has been stopped, by that barsteward Trump, upset for the poor Afghani women, naturally…..
Rather like the cover up by the Police and Government over the images etc of the Southport killer, it seems to me that the mainstream media has also been bought by the Government, they could front page this editorial, after all the economy is heading for one massive crash where I suspect the IMF will be bought in, or possibly China as Kier seems good friends with them. If the mass of people in this country could get hold of detail like this in the Sun, or the Mirror for example, lets forget the BBC as its a Government department then Labour would be out on its ear within a month.
Rachel from Accounts has put the UK into a debt spiral thanks to her having learnt nothing about economics when getting a Masters at the LSE. The bond markets are making government debt more expensive while her budget is shrinking the tax take at the same time she is chucking money around. You do not have to be Wilkins Macawber to see a problem. Laffer’s Law is in play as hikes in tax are going to bring in less revenue while also increasing government costs. No doubt a UK DOGE could unearth £billions – far in excess of a blackhole – as cutting government spending is the only way forward.
Just show how clueless Rachel is, she is crawling to the Big Bankers for help and ideas to get her out of the hole she has dug for herself that is even bigger than the Godstone Sinkhole. Merchant bankers and dealmakers are hardly going to have a clue and like many big organisations, the CEOs are not au fait with how their businesses actually work. Talking to the SMEs would bear more fruit but I guess the truth will hurt her too much.
The big banks and consultants advice will be… use more big banks and consultants services – funny that
Strange as it sounds, I do feel a bit sorry for Milibrain. Either he has significant learning difficulties, in which case he probably qualifies for some kind of educational support that he’s clearly not getting… Or he knows that he’s lying to us from dawn to dusk on a daily basis, which must be both mentally exhausting and bad for his self-esteem, and he will be struggling to sleep at night.
I recommend sitting him down in a room with US energy secretary Chris Wright, and not letting him leave until he’s got a grasp of reality.
You’re a kind-hearted soul, mrbu.
I blame Thatcher for introducing Care in the Community and closing the mental hospitals. Is there a better example of this policy in action.
I’d be happy to teach him, me and my pair of large pliers.
Can’t feel sorry, sorry! He is either an idiot, or deranged, or bought off – or perhaps all three
I’d vote for all three.
Thinking about it more, you are probably right…
Milimaniac is looking increasingly deranged. I reckon it’s because he is torn between his brainwashing and a newly perceived sense of reality as it plays out in actuality. Starmer has the same look sometimes. And soggy-ball-faced Yvette. Ange still looks the preening same – she has not been brainwashed as she has no brain. And reality, to her, just equates to the contents of her purse, and a hazy dream that soon she will be PM – courtesy of her union mates.
Run to the mountains. Burn wood for your heat. Learn to hunt. Learn how to preserve meat.
Last para says it all. No British Government energy policy seemed to exist for about three decades .. but in fact it did exist, it just wasn’t written down anywhere that any voter could read it……………….
As for Miliband minimus, he is just spouting lies and nonsense, yet seemingly can’t be seriously challenged or brought to heel. He must have the pictures of Starmer with a donkey
How does blackmailing the donkey help?
Why why why WHY aren’t Reform showing the very obvious calculations that show this Labour, and former Tory position as a total and utter sham?
LITERALLY EXPLAIN TO PEOPLE YOUR BILLS ARE SO HIGH DUE TO NETZERO… if Labour disagree, then they can show their ‘maths’ to the population… and we’ll all see its total bollocks
Because Farage is blowing with the wind, he doesn’t lead , he follows….Get Rupert Lowe in, he is a leader.
I’m pretty sure I watched a news conference from them last week on this very topic Trouble is MSM refuse to cover them
I’ll have to see if I can find that – I heard a bit on here, but it all seemed a bit tame. I get the approach they were taking with taxing the subsidies, as you can’t cancel existing contracts without scaring the horses
Ed: If I move this way through a magnetic field going that way the electricity should come out of my head… or is it my arse?
The Labour party has to keep its wind and solar owning donors happy. Is the S on his hard hat for Satan ?
I have lived in the Uk for 27 yrs. what I have never understood is why a politician, who is damaging your economy, your quality of life is allowed to keep his/her job.
Unfortunately in a ‘democracy’ you have to wait for the election cycle to replace them with another incompetent buffoon. Oh, and there really is no ‘opposition’ party…In the words of the prophet, we’re f*cked.