Another week, another Vaccine Surveillance report (now published by the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the successor to Public Health England), and with it more worrying news on the vaccine front.
Infection rates in the double-vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated continue to rise, meaning unadjusted vaccine effectiveness continues to decline. Infection rates are now higher in the double-vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated by 124% in those in their 40s, 103% in those in their 50s and 60s and 101% in those in their 70s, corresponding to unadjusted vaccine effectiveness estimates of minus-124%, minus-103% and minus-101% respectively. For those over 80 the unadjusted vaccine effectiveness is minus-34% while for those in their 30s it is minus-27%. For 18-29 year-olds it is 25%, so still positive but low, while for under-18s it is 90%, the only age group showing high efficacy. Vaccine effectiveness against emergency hospital admission and death continues to hold up, though with some indication of gradual slide, particularly in older age groups (see below). (For definitions and limitations, see here.)
The UKHSA has continued to receive criticism for publishing this data, with claims that the figures used for the unvaccinated population are unreliable and likely too high, artificially suppressing the infection rate and vaccine effectiveness. Cambridge statistician Professor David Spiegelhalter put out a scathing tweet on these lines on Friday, but he didn’t elaborate on his claim or link to an article explaining it further.
Professors Norman Fenton and Martin Neil have argued that in fact the PHE/UKHSA data may underestimate the number of unvaccinated rather than overestimate them, which would have the reverse effect.
Either way though, what wouldn’t change is the fact of the large and fast decline in effectiveness against infection. This is now generally acknowledged among many scientists (likely caused by waning over time or new variants or both), though has not had the logical impact on Government policy one might have expected and hoped for of eliminating the rationale for vaccine passports and mandates.
A further point revealed for the first time in this week’s surveillance report is that the vaccines may actually hobble the body’s ability to develop the strongest immunity once infected. As noted by Alex Berenson, the report mentions (in passing) that “recent observations from U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) surveillance data” show that “N antibody levels appear to be lower in individuals who acquire infection following two doses of vaccination”.
The report does not elaborate on this, but on the face of it it is a startling admission. It is basically saying that a certain kind of antibody which is not produced by the vaccines but is usually produced by infection (and hence is used by PHE/UKHSA to identify those with antibodies-from-infection) is not produced so well by those who are infected post-vaccination. Insofar as this is true it means the vaccines may actually prevent the immune system from developing the strongest form of protection against reinfection. This phenomenon of the immune system being in some way hobbled by the way it first encounters a pathogen is well-known and is referred to as original antigenic sin.
There would be a number of implications of this. It would mean that since the vaccine rollout got going the prevalence of N antibodies in the population has ceased to be a reliable measure of how many people are previously infected (which might explain why it has been rising so slowly during the Delta surge). It would also mean the vaccines may make reinfections and serious illness upon reinfection more likely. Plus likely other things as well.
This is something that should be investigated fully and the results published so that its impact can be properly assessed and understood.
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In the final stages of their grasping attempt to keep control they will make more and more blatant attacks on human liberty. At the same time the grasp will always be weaker than it was before. Like unto a Chinese finger trap where the more they try the weaker they become. The final few months will be nasty and when they leave the building there will be a nasty vacuum. It will take decades just to disentangle and rectify the evil structures that they have created
In fairness to the SC justices, the social media scum where only too happy to censor, the federal government and their agents where pushing at an open door.
I’m not sure they were to be honest, although they are large organisations now with many people, some of whom perhaps were happy to be censors.
But on the whole, companies don’t want to be regulated. Social media companies much prefer the early days when anything went and nobody bothered them about what was on their platforms.
So that the government was coercing social media companies to censor people isn’t refuted. It’s just that the harm previously or ongoing to the plaintiffs is unproven, is that it?
The law is an ass.
I think the issue is that the previous concrete harm is now over and the present and future harm is hypothetical. It’s just about plausible, though Thomas dissented and I rarely disagree with him about anything. The underlying principle is that the court isn’t there to scrutinise the executive or legislative branches, but to resolve ongoing disputes between injured and injuring parties – I think that’s a good principle, perhaps in this case not applied correctly.
It’s already important that the censorship is recognised and recognised to be probably illegal. Maybe the mistake was not to have dealt with this while the censorship was ongoing.
In better news the court ruled here that federal courts have the authority to say what the law is even if “expert” executive agencies disagree with them about what the law says. This overturns precedent whereby the court deferred to “experts”. This has potential implications for example on the leeway a body like the CDC has: 22-451 Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (06/28/2024) (supremecourt.gov)
I don’t even know why it comes a surprise that corporate and state power have become fully merged. Surely this is the obvious goal and ultimate endpoint of power centralised to the maximum. And of course it is a mathematical surety that this snowball will accelerate as it fattens. A runaway train doesn’t do it justice because a runaway train gets faster but doesn’t get bigger. We enter a time of the giant snowball where they are defeated internationally and the only option left to them is to cannibalise their own countries in an effort to extract the last drop of blood. And they will do that because they don’t just want 99 percent of your vitality they want all of it.
The similarities between this case and the Finch / Surrey Council case are remarkable but in contradictory ways.
Leggatt in the Finch case managed to extend the law, albeit in only one direction, such that he deliberately flouted the bedrock of law itself and effectively disregarded the reasonableness principle which is that determinations should be based on what would be reasonable to the common man. To infer that a decision to grant a drilling permit such that the potential outputs of the drilling should be taken in to account is proper cart before the horse stuff. Leggatt made the grotesque assumption that any oil derived from drilling would lead to CO2 emissions without even taking in to account the many ways in which crude oil is used. Furthermore, and by extension he obviously was of the opinion that CO2 is in itself bad. His opinion,which many dispute, was used to rewrite law. Perhaps he could advise his scientific credentials.
In the US the majority judges chose to shrink their viewpoint – just because Government agencies have threatened social media companies in the past does not mean they will use similar tactics in the future. And Joe Biden is really a saint sent to save the U. S. A.
Like virtually everything in the world today language is being stretched, manipulated beyond reasonableness and mangled in order to serve political purposes. Wholly symptomatic of this abuse is the now frequent appearance of the word ‘lawfare’ where the law is being routinely abused in search of malevolent ends – the above two cases being prime examples.
On a more vicious front lawfare is being used to shut down dissenting voices eg Tommy Robinson, Reinar Fuellmich, the ex Ambassador to Azerbaijan (?), Alex Bellfield, Julian Assange and certainly others I have missed.
Orwellian times indeed.
I think the Finch case is nuanced. There is not necessarily anything wrong with the notion that a licence for a new product should include understanding and accounting for the known knowns, and how or if it will leave a trail of pollution, such that you might not want it after all. The problem with the Finch case is that the judges on the one hand believe we know more than we do, and on the other have not invoked a reasonable cost benefit criteria for assessing what we do, and finally have not sought to remedy unclear regulation by sending it back to parliament and have instead made a decision themselves – which actually makes everything worse.
” “That’s a nice little social media platform you’ve got there – be a real shame if the Federal Trade Commission opened an antitrust investigation into it,” etc”
That’s not so subtle. What they are doing is bypassing the 1st Amendment onto social media platforms.
We should remember the social media platforms were very willing to do the Administration’s bidding on most things. The radical left seem to be in control in the whole of the swamp and most of the boardrooms of America.
This is outcome of this decision is best discussed by a constitutional legal expert. Do you have one daily sceptic?
Hi Freddie
The American principle of “a man of standing” i.e. someone who is actually inured and so there is a case to answer (which is a principle which may of course apply elsewhere), is a key reason why the American constitution did not save its people from the overreach of covid, and also will not do so over net zero issues – when in principle it should. It can only fight a rear guard action when of course it’s too late and people have been injured.
The principle skews the basis of law making in favour of the meddling progressives.
Surely any new law or action is not required to have a single man of standing. Instead new laws are based on cost benefit analysis based on your average man in the street – not some literal man of standing.
So where the defence of a constitution is concerned the same principle should apply. If the Government or someone were to do such and such it would likely undermine people’s constitutional rights.
Until we get ‘constitutional court systems’ which can actively defend constitutions based on principle rather than waiting for someone to be injured and then them being able to afford to stand up to a government in court, injustice will continue to reign.