Using the crudest of datasets it looks like Israel's omicron wave peaked on January 26th 2022 by positive test result.
Quite how long the delay will be for the death toll to peak is a little hard to guess with omicron, but if it's three weeks then the hypervaccinated Israelis are in for a hard time over the next two weeks:
It's worth bearing in mind that it is currently almost impossible to die in a hospital in the UK without testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. I presume Israel is the same, so some of these fatalities may be incidentally positive test results, in which case the mortality peak will follow sooner than expected after that of "cases".
I have an elderly relative approaching end of life care for cancer who was hospitalised about a week ago and tested positive four days after admission. Incidentally she is unvaccinated and completely asymptomatic. Sadly she has now fallen and broken her hip, with an urgent repair planned for about now.
She is, undoubtedly, a covid hospitalisation statistic. The likely outcome seems uncertain.
Peter
80 comments:
Ok, I'll bite :) From what I've seen, especially from German and US data, double and triple vaccinated are still much likely to end up in hospital, in ICU or dead. In fact, many German hospitals are now complaining that their regular wards now get overrun while things are still comparatively quite in ICUs.
But I guess you are getting at incidental cases? This piece is interesting in that it tells a few examples of how Omicron can wreak havoc for those with preexisting conditions:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/health/omicron-chronic-illness.html
If those result in deaths, how do you count them?
PS: Just had a second look at the caption. What are you trying to say? That Pfizer bought Israel? This could be misconstrued by interested parties.
@Eric: have you been able to look at any numbers where they include people who have had the vax (or the booster, or whatever), but are still within two weeks of the last injection?
You can make *any* group look like they've got fewer deaths/lower morbidity than a control group, if you randomly assign two weeks of the experimental group's negative outcomes to the control group (or, alternately, just take a random two weeks of each experimental subject's observation time, and remove it from the data). Even if the experimental group and the control group are completely identical in every other way.
This is what we are doing by counting people in the first 2 weeks post-injection as "unvaccinated" or "not fully vaccinated" or even just being slightly more honest and dropping those weeks from the tally entirely. We've essentially been counting *all* negative outcomes for the unvaccinated, and *all minus two weeks* for the vaccinated. Or, in many cases, *All plus two weeks of the vaccinated's negative outcomes* for the unvaccinated, and *all minus two weeks* for the vaccinated.
Even if the injections were just straight-up saline, the vaccinated group would come out looking like it had lower mortality and morbidity numbers.
If you were going to subtract that two weeks in an honest way that doesn't screw with your results and give you false outcomes, you would need to match your cohorts, and then *also* subtract two weeks' worth of outcomes from the unvaccinated controls. This has not ever been done.
--addendum: you wouldn't subtract the two weeks randomly. You'd subtract it at the beginning.
@Eric
"But I guess you are getting at incidental cases? This piece is interesting in that it tells a few examples of how Omicron can wreak havoc for those with preexisting conditions:...If those result in deaths, how do you count them?"
I don't quite see how these anecdotal examples are relevant to how deaths are counted. Nobody's claiming that Covid does not wreak havoc for some with pre-existing conditions. The question is how do those deaths are categorized statistically. Both the CDC and the WHO have admitted that up to now they've counted anybody WITH Covid (testing was almost universal) as being hospitalized or died OF Covid—in many, if not most, countries where the WHO has any influence. They have even publicly acknowledged this results in overcounts of Covid hospitalizations and deaths.
Some research will very likely confirm a statement I heard in a video this morning that, prior to Covid, someone dying of, say, cancer, who was pushed over the edge by a case of the flu, would still be counted as a cancer death. Not so with Covid. (This example was specifically in Israel, but the speaker said it was pretty widespread practice.)
"They have even publicly acknowledged this results in overcounts of Covid hospitalizations and deaths."
Really? The whole point about the "died within 28 days of a positive test" is that it's a simple thing to count, and it's roughly right. It overcounts people that were hit by a bus or whatever, but undercounts people that die of covid more than 28 days after the last test. Anyone can look at a graph of "Covid" deaths and excess deaths to see there's a rough match. Presumably they can count deaths accurately! As Malcolm Kendrick has said, classifying cause of death is hard, and imprecise, often there are multiple conditions which makes it tricky. The "28 days" test gives standardisation across countries, and is timely, no doubt there are different practices for the cause of death on death certificates in different countries.
There's bound to be wide variation in how death is categorized. You bring up a lot of good points about that. I'm not sure logistical convenience can excuse counting someone run over by a bus as dying of Covid. And if they automatically test everyone admitted to the hospital for Covid, right there you have a whole lot of testing which is going to yield a whole lot of positive cases.
I've been meaning to catch up on Kendrick's blog posts, but currently I'm in the middle of reading his most excellent 2014 book Doctoring Data, highly recommended. A lot of sketchy practices on the part of public health and other actors have been going on for a long time, and are documented with great humor; a lot of it seems prescient in light of our Covid experience.
In the meantime, here's Fauci acknowledging the overcounting of hospitalizations. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/broken-leg-anthony-fauci-child-covid-19-hospitalizations-overblown I know I've seen Rochelle Walensky, the head of the CDCD, saying the same thing.
In the US, there are currently rougly 150 new cases per day and 100,000. If you average the US and Western Europe, it's more like 200 right now. You will test positive for about five days. So chances for someone being admitted to hospital to test positive should be 1000 in 100,000 or 1%. From anecdotal reports, the percentage of those being admitted who test positive seems to be much higher, which either means that they are being admitted for Covid or that undetected Covid causes other illness to flare up.
Eric " which either means that they are being admitted for Covid or that undetected Covid causes other illness to flare up"
An amusing but common anecdote from my daughter in law who is a nurse in an E.D. Everyone who turns up to hospital for anything gets a RAT straight away. One woman tested positive and didn't believe it so they tested again and, positive. She came in for a broken finger and only had a minor sniffle otherwise. I guess the finger must have flared up?
I realise there is a major logical weakness, a presupposition which everyone seems to have namely that the physical injury doesn't give rise to the covid symptoms. I can imagine a situation where physical shock, inflammation etc might tip the balance against an immune defence such that a person succumbs to a pathogen.
Another possibility: the tests are substantially inaccurate. A factor, not the sole factor.
In Queensland and NSW the reported daily deaths are pretty much all of vaccinated people, and that's probably why they are described from the media as "people without booster"...
Anecdotally, pretty much everyone vaccinated I know has been sick, nothing more than a cold, while all the unvaccinated friends are all good (and noticing this apparent contradiction, too). And here is Summer, a very hot Summer at the tropics.
Speaking as a medical student in Israel rotating through departments in a 1000 bed hospital... If any pt tests positive on arrival unless they absolutely need admission they are sent home. Almost everyone that gets admitted to the hospital has non covid chief complaints / reason for admission. Many departments have very few pts overall because there is still a big fear of catching covid at the hospital among the demographic of frequent customers. As a country with nearly free healthcare under normal circumstances the slightest paper cut may warrant a social visit to your nearest medical practitioner. At the same time the specialty departments are empty of pts there is a staffing shortage. Every time there is an exposure to a pt that returns a positive test a few hours later the provider needs to do a series of covid tests themselves each day and maybe even stay home a day. It is complicated and ever changing. ICUs are normal. The covid patients in them have been there a very long time. Some on ecmo some not. My experience may not be indicative of the whole country. Affluent zipcode and secular population. If I were to guestimate the percentage of admissions with positive covid I would say 1/10. And I would put the vaccination rate of admitted pts at about 9/10. However I would not say that all of the covid pts are unvaccinated. This is where data tells the true story since there are so many more vaccinated than not. What percentage of vaccinated admissions have covid vs unvaccinated? IDK.
European Medical Agency finally speaks some sense on repeat boosters. What took them so long while some were proposing to booster every four months?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-11/repeat-booster-shots-risk-overloading-immune-system-ema-says
Johns Hopkins economists have done a meta-analysis (for whatever that's worth) on lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical interventions with regards to Covid.
When I duckducked this, strangely enough it did not show up near the top of the hits. Imagine that.
I highly recommend reading at least the Concluding Observations starting on page 41 – it's only a couple of pages – but their final paragraph is
"The use of lockdowns is a unique feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century. However, lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument."
"A Literature Review and Meta Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID 19 Mortality"
https://www.scribd.com/document/556148192/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality
I do understand about evolving knowledge, but…
1. They told us not to wear a mask
2. They told us to sanitize surfaces and wash our groceries
3. They told us to stay home
4. They told us to wear a mask
5. They told us to wear two masks
6. They told us to stay at least 6 feet apart
7. They told us natural immunity was unreliable and of unknown durability
8. They told us the vaccine would solve all our problems
9. They told us vaccine immunity was superior to natural immunity
10. They blamed the unvaccinated when vaccine protection started waning
11. They blamed the unvaccinated when the vaccinated got infected with omicron in large numbers
12. They said a booster would solve all our problems
13. They blamed the unvaccinated when the booster did not solve all our problems
14. Breaking the chain: some authorities are now questioning the need for a fourth, or even repeating, boosters. Wow!
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 13 times, shame on me?
I don't know whether to despair for my species, or my sanity (after all, I could be completely wrong).
cavenewt,
Your number 8 is really the key, because all the stuff up until then was to "keep us safe" until the vaccines came along and restored normalcy.
Maybe it's wishful thinking, but my sense is the tide has been slowly turning as politicians cast about for an off-ramp from the traffic jam they created. So we're in kind of a transition from "COVID can kill us all" to "we have to learn to live with the virus." And thank goodness for Omicron, all two variants of it in their glorious transmissibility.
What puzzles me is that the vaccine-makers, the Albert Bourlas of the world, had to know of this outcome. They had to know their products would not work, at least not for long. They are not stupid people. They knew they were shooting systemically at a respiratory virus instead of in the mucosal compartment. They knew they were misfocused on single antigen. They knew they had paid lip service to testing and safety.
Why would they risk credibility on catastrophe? My first guess is that they counted on the pandemic burning out as pandemics do as the vaccines rolled out, and they would look like heroes. And I guess some people think they are.
It's nothing but a money grab. The End.
Captain - pretty spectacular one innit?
Cavenewt, that is a great summary! Somewhere after about #11 there's also telling us the virus is airbourne and wiping surfaces isn't much use, to contradict #2.
--- a study released today after tests on young healthy volunteers claims that single nasal droplet is enough.
But the whole sequence of events and pronouncements together with the clouds of statistical and modelling vapourware is a pervasive miasma of confusion.
Thanks guys. My point was, pretty much every single thing they've told us is turning out to have been worthless (see my comment immediately previous to the list).
This really crystallized for me when officialdom started talking about second boosters. And my friends are talking to me about second boosters. And I say "But the first ones haven't done much if any good, and neither have the original vaccines. Look at the official statistics!" And my friends look at me like I'm stupid. Some of these friends have PhD's, for gawd's sake.
LA_Bob
"my sense is the tide has been slowly turning as politicians cast about for an off-ramp from the traffic jam they created"
I've been reading https://www.coffeeandcovid.com every day, and he's been following what he calls Narrative 2.0, which is the powers-that-be tiptoeing backwards away from the abyss. More and more people are noticing this tendency, though it is by no means universal >cough< Germany >cough<. He's been linking it to the imminence of Biden's State of the Union address. He thinks Biden is going to announce the glorious transition from pandemic to endemicity. How much you wanna bet they credit the lockdowns and vaccines for this success?
Whatever, I'll take it. But we should scrutinize the gift horse's mouth very carefully. (i.e. hold people accountable and do our darndest to change systems to prevent this happening again.)
Different countries are at different stages in the pandemic. Those that are nearly through with Omicron are abondoning restrictions as they should. Still can't say I'm unhappy that things are progressing a little more slowly here:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/01/science/covid-deaths-united-states.html
(btw, those Dutch mortality data stick out again, given their high infection numbers throughout most of last year and up to now - either they count differntly or there's something in the Gouda cheese)
"or there's something in the Gouda cheese"
There certainly is - it's one of the very best for K2, but I don't think it's relevant for Rona or Covid.
Looking at excess deaths, the Z-scores by country at euromomo, https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by-country (you can clear the country list and just choose the ones you want), Germany seems to have done best:
https://imgur.com/a/iVF2I1x
Holland had a noticeable peak at end 2021, so I guess they just count Covid differently.
Kev—I think K2 increases bioavailability of D3 or something like that. There are combination supplements sold for that reason. And of course vitamin D is widly touted? Acknowledged? as being a big factor in minimizing Covid severity.
Holland is a country with huge amount of insulin resistant and hyperinsulinemic individuals. I call them the sanwhich lovers. Lots of seed oils and carbs every day. Same in all of the benelux.
cavenewt, I would not bet against Narrative 2.0, but I don't have high conviction the other way either.
Some weeks ago Jordan Peterson went on a rant, and one of his complaints was that Canada's COVID policy was driven by polling, thus politics (sorry if I've posted this before, I'm just not sure).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fhlSw72Z5M
We have the same problem in the USA, of course, but the Federal system guarantees the political problems are spread over 50 states and 435 congressional districts. Makes it tougher for the Chief Executive to ascertain which way the winds really blow. And the general consensus is the Democrats need a lot of help come November.
eric, I've watched a lot of Dr John Campbell lately and find his presentations useful. On 2/2 he discussed the high COVID mortality in the US, which he links strongly to "comorbidities", diabetes being the worst. Most people reading Peter know it's metabolic syndrome and its enormous incidence in the US that is likely the real problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K2aXZ4WXXU
He also briefly discusses a Nature Immunology paper -- which by chance I had seen the day before, thank you, Twitter -- that shows more tricks the innate immune system has up its sleeve. I'd guess eventually someone will figure out metsyn interferes with most of these tricks.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01114-w
From my pet distractor:
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/omicron-and-original-antigenic-sin
Pretty compelling except I'd like to know how the Omicron recovered never vaxxed were neutralizing Delta. Guess I'll have to read the paper...
Eric, one point that stands out to me about the matters discussed there is that in various labs,around the world, strains of CV19 are being propagated. Given all the consequences that the whole global pandemic may have arisen from a lab leak of the original strain, that raises a whole pile of interesting questions. Bits and pieces of virus up to including whole life virus are necessary also to manufacture source material for the various types of tests, vaccines etc.
Hmmmmmm?
O PETER... still believing the silly virus narrative? maybe you are not that smart after all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx2FFPhbNIY
Eric,
Perhaps this will help:
From eugyppius
"The authors subjected the convalescent plasma of their vaccinated and infected subjects to live virus and virus-like particle neutralisation assays. Basically, they introduced to the plasma either Delta and Omicron viruses, or synthetic particles with key Delta or Omicron proteins, to see how well the antibodies in the plasma neutralised these variants.'
Appears that the unvaccinated were not included:
from the study itself: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.25.22269794v1.full.pdf
"To investigate neutralizing antibody responses and the extent of cross-variant immunity, we analyzed 124 plasma samples from 53 patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infections"
Most assuredly politicization of the whole Covid response has obscured pandemic details and made a lot of things worse. This will be different for each country, and additionally globally has different countries influence each other.
When my kid was six he was on a soccer team. Maybe in other countries little-kid soccer is more sophisticated, but around here it's just a mob of kids around the ball with everybody trying to kick it at once. Depending on the individuals in the mob—size, determination, whatever—the ball goes in various unpredictable directions. Single-point Brownian motion, so to speak.
I can't help picturing the Covid response in each country as one of these soccer balls being kicked around by various factions of politicians, influential interested parties, pharmaceutical companies, you get the picture. Meanwhile us plebeians are on the sidelines watching the action.
Don, from Eugyppius' description, "conducted neutralisation assays on 144 plasma samples from 81 individuals, 63 of them double-vaccinated, and 18 of them boosted".
I read this as 63 double-vaccinated and among these 18 boosted, but I guess he meant 63 double + 18 triple = 81 total.
For his conclusion of OAS, he would have needed a control of unvaccinated but recovered from Omicron, which was not part of the study he draws on.
Hoever, these two studies linked in an article from Die Zeit seem to say that being vaxed and having recovered gives much better immunity to Delta than being unvaxed and recovered, so the opposite of what Eugyppious said. Haven't yet read them myself:
https://secureservercdn.net/50.62.198.70/1mx.c5c.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/MEDRXIV-2021-268439v1-Sigal_corr.pdf
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.01.22270263v1.full.pdf
"lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Maybe statisticians will, one day, recover from the unholy stench of lumping the recently jabbed in with the actual unvaxxed.
Obviously by doing this the post-jab effects, immunosuppression and all its cohorts, will escape general notice thus biasing the risk/benefit calculation toward the 'paydirt' shot at the expense of risks assumed by each and every one of the billions of people worldwide who accepted the jab(s)...
Thousands of good doctors have been bamboozled by this trickery and unlikely to 'forgive and forget' easily.
This is how the sausage is made:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-british-medical-journal-story
Some D0D numbers - be sure to save a copy.
https://www.rwmalonemd.com/s/Data-from-DoD.xlsx
,.,.
I never got over the fudge they did with iRNA LDL ..
look at the study http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1615664#t=comments
- find the table with mortality --
Then you might want to read this:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40256-021-00480-y
They pulled the plug when the placebo group mortality was almost statistically significant.
Paying large fines is seen as just a cost of doing business - the system is broken - the more willing to be immoral - the more they make.
Twas wrong for 5 years, but now it's correct, you see? Lolz
https://m.theepochtimes.com/exclusive-pentagon-responds-to-dod-whistleblowers-claim-of-spiking-disease-rates-in-the-military-after-covid-vaccine-mandate_4247785.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge
@ Passthecream Well, it was indeed something of a 'spectacular' money-grab on the back of the nebulous EUA double-edged 'opportunity', but as time goes by it's now becoming more of an unedifying and somewhat desperate damage limitation exercise for a plethora of self-righteous chancers, fallacious misinformed individuals, and many of the increasingly untrustworthy organizations and institutions, and not the least by all of those who got done.
A general comment about abuse of statistics, for example '…people who are boosted are 97 times less likely to die than the “unvaccinated”.'
Any time I see something about a ratio, or see the words 'relative risk', or something is 'X times more likely', my antennae start to quiver. Hyperlipid readers are familiar with this. But it's become glaring during the pandemic, if you pay attention, how general unfamiliarity with statistics is being taken advantage of.
Just yesterday I ran across something I had never heard of before, test-negative case control studies. As with relative risk, there may be a very specific purpose for this kind of thing, but when taken out of context it's incredibly misleading. In this case it's used to calculate vaccine efficacy…as in clinical studies for vaccine approval.
At some point point statistics is indistinguishable from numerology (apologies to Arthur C. Clarke, for twisting his point).
https://jembendell.com/2021/12/23/lies-damn-lies-and-hospitalisation-statistics/
https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid-19/2022/02/04/test-negative-case-control-studies-are-a-scam
Cave, for your enjoyment:
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/meinung/oesterreich-impfpflicht-impfgegner-corona-1.5518871
We weren't serious about this
February 1, 2022, 11:49 am
Austria: Soon 2 G in the gastronomy is no longer regulation, also the curfew is shifted backwards.Open detail view
Soon 2 G in the gastronomy is no longer regulation, also the curfew will be moved back.
This Tuesday, mandatory vaccination starts in Austria - so a little bit and somehow. What fear of popular anger and pressure from the business lobby can do.
Commentary by Cathrin Kahlweit
Officially, Austria will introduce compulsory vaccination on February 1, according to an announcement. In fact, it will probably take a few more days, because after the National Council, the second chamber, the Federal Council, still has to agree and the Federal President has to sign the law. But whether and when compulsory vaccination will formally come into force in Austria does not really matter anyway.
Since the government announced the mandatory measure in mid-January, it has done everything it can to undermine its own project, to soften it, to make it redundant. The basic idea, which was advanced across the EU, was a three-step plan: a few weeks of information and reminders, a few weeks of random checks, then staggered administrative fines for those who refuse to vaccinate. All of this, with some exceptions, for people 18 and older. The law was carefully worded from the start, but it made it clear: In Austria, you have to get vaccinated against Covid-19.
But that didn't last long; fear of popular anger - and pressure from the business lobby - won out. First, a long list of bait-and-switch offers, such as cash bonuses and vaccination lotteries, was added, then, just in time for the skiing vacations, relaxations for tourism and gastronomy followed. Duty has thus degenerated into a farce. 3 G in the workplace is allowed anyway, 2 G in retail ends in a few days. The so-called lockdown for the unvaccinated is lifted. Soon, negative tests will be allowed in restaurants and hotels again. The closing time will be moved back. Some of the rules for foreign tourists are different from those for Austrians. The message is clear: the law wasn't meant that way anyway.
One reason for the backtracking could now be seen in a local council election in Lower Austria: The powerful Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) plummeted by 20 points, and a right-wing populist anti-vaccination party came in at 17 percent from a standing start.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) - I translated the caption as Deepl didn't get it right
Captain, you linked to your own hard drive. I tried to search for the PDF but didn't get a match.
Let me put it this way, if a death rate of 1%/month among Pfizer vaccinated was real, we'd have seen it in Israel, where nearly 100% of vaccine used was this, or in German, where the Pfizer percentage was also very high.
If it is genuine (and that is a big if), maybe it was for another trial candidate? Remember this, especially the edit?
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2021/05/feeling-experimental.html
"Edit:
It has been pointed out to me that figure S3a is actually BNT162b1 and the vaccine actually selected for marketing was (sensibly) BNT162b2, which has a much milder effect on the lymphocyte count. So I have to consider that lymphopaenia might not be the mechanism or, if it is still the mechanism, it will only apply to those at the lower end of the box and whisker plots."
@ Eric, Oops
From John Dee's Cauldron, and seems to be genuine: This is the Pfizer data (...see the following pdf) they tried to get buried for 50 years.
Pfizer's own data is from the first 3-months of the Vaccine Rollout (the most significant chart can be found on page 7). A 3% death rate.
Out of 42,000 trial participants, 1227 died in the first 3-months.
At a death rate of just 1% per month, the human race would be extinct in less than 10 years.
This cannot be written off as 'no proof of causality'.
In addition, 31% of adult participants experienced long term adverse effects, and among children, the figure is 40%.
https://phmpt.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/5.3.6-postmarketing-experience.pdf
I am at a loss how to reconcile your statement and the report you posted.
42,000 trial participants vs. 42,086 case reports
chart on page 7 vs. there is a table on page 7
1227 vs. 1223 fatal events
Let me try to unpick this report: it is about adverse event reports received from all over the world during the first three months of rollout.
The number of vaccine doses shipping during this time is unfortunately greyed out in this PDF but we do know that a month later, 200 million doses had been shipped.
So the number of vaccinated "participants" by end of February would have been easily in the 10s of million.
I am at a loss how to reconcile your statement and the report you posted.
42,000 trial participants vs. 42,086 case reports
chart on page 7 vs. there is a table on page 7
1227 vs. 1223 fatal events
Let me try to unpick this report: it is about adverse event reports received from all over the world during the first three months of rollout.
The number of vaccine doses shipping during this time is unfortunately greyed out in this PDF but we do know that a month later, 200 million doses had been shipped.
So the number of vaccinated "participants" by end of February would have been easily in the 10s of million.
The adverse event reports could be as simply as someone died five days after being vaccinated. When you vaccinate millions, a countable number will die within days of being vaccinated, that is just statistics. It only becomes significant if they die more frequently, after correction for age etc. than would be expected.
To summarize, there is a 0,97% death rate / month among the adverse event reports, not trial participants nor vaccinated persons.
The adverse event or case reports could be as simply as someone died five days after being vaccinated. When you vaccinate millions, a countable number will die within days of being vaccinated, that is just statistics. They could have been hit by a bus after leaving the vaccination center, for all we know. It only becomes significant if they die more frequently, after correction for age etc. than would be expected.
To summarize, there is a 0,97% death rate / month among the case reports, not trial participants nor vaccinated persons.
Capt.
yours:
"Out of 42,000 trial participants, 1227 died in the first 3-months."
My reading for the reports is that
the report:
"Relevant cases (N=42086)" refers to adverse event's not to total doses potentially administered.
"It is estimated that approximately [(b) (4)] doses of BNT162b2 were shipped worldwide
from the receipt of the first temporary authorisation for emergency supply on 01 December
2020 through 28 February 2021.
I cannot evaluate the significance of this.
@ Eric I copied the statement and the pdf from 'Jon Dee's Cauldron' Blog. I found it very informative and thought others may also like to read it. Adverse events seem to be very much on their radar, as has surely come to pass, eh?
Well, seems that blog is really a private facebook group so I can't look at the original entry.
If that summary is from him, he is either reading challenged (I don't think one needs to be a scientist to understand what the report is about) or willfully spreading fake news. And you should check his statements before posting them elsewhere.
@ Eric, Well, I do regard Jon Dee's blogging efforts as quite brilliant, and I believe it's well worth others checking out what he does. However, that post on his (Cauldron) blog was from a.n.other.
Hey Cap'n, do you mean the Facebook group? I have not been able to find a standalone blog under either spelling of John/Jon.
@ Cave Yes, see the following. The guy is a wizard with data: https://www.facebook.com/groups/johndeecauldron https://www.facebook.com/groups/johndeealmanac
re: tiptoeing backwards ...
Interesting analysis by an Aussie of the UK data on vaccine effectiveness, I guess the authorities are starting to realise:
https://andrewmadry.substack.com/p/vaccine-effectiveness-time-to-recalibrate
My unvaccinated mother 1937 dob had covid twice - at winter 2021 and just recently. Both times almost symptoms free if you are not counting running nose and loss of her voice for 4 days last week. There was no temperature or even weakness/ However she is on keto since 2011
John Dee's Almanac is now also on Substack (as of a few weeks ago, since there was concern that the FB group might get deleted), so for anyone who doesn't want to join the FB group, you can see his posts here too: https://jdee.substack.com/
... His work makes me wish I had more knowledge of statistics. Sometimes I muddle through, but often when I read the posts, it's clear to me that I don't have enough math skills to evaluate whether what he's doing is valid or not. Which is a shame, since the topics he takes up are very interesting.
Malcolm, I read the piece you linked by Andrew Madry. Sounds compelling, and I can see absolutely no sleight of hands. Still does not match the reports for Germany by RKI, at least the most recent one I looked at about three weeks ago (note to self: look up the newest one).
Meanwhile, your namesake Malcolm Kendrick yesterday published an excellent new blog entry on IFR and CFR. From this:
"The recent REACT study in the UK, found that 65% of those infected with the Omicron variant in January 2022 had previously been diagnosed with COVID-19.9
Seven per cent more had symptoms strongly suggestive of previous infection but had not had a confirmatory test at the time. Ergo, very nearly three quarters of those getting COVID19 in January 2022 had been infected before.
The authors are now attempting to backtrack from this finding. Why? Because, if it is correct that the vast majority of people infected represent re-infections, it means that the infection rate must be extremely high, much higher than anyone admits.
It also follows that exposure and transmission is extremely high. This, in turn, means that the IFR is significantly lower than anyone admits – or indeed can admit.
It is no surprise then to find that those running the REACT study are based in Imperial College London. Which is where all the original IFR estimates came from. The lair of Neil Ferguson et all. The originator of the ‘justification’ figure. Those who are now doing all they can to suggest that the number of people who have been infected with COVID19 remains low.
Even more telling, although this is less easy to confirm, we have cases of people with three, or even four, infections. How can anyone get infected four times, when people around them have not been infected once? Are they dancing naked around a flagpole, breathing in deeply from an inverted loudhailer in a COVID19 ward?
No, they are not. The explanation is that those getting re-infected are those who are unable to simply shrug of COVID19, for whatever reasons. Their terrain was different. Which means that they will likely keep on getting infected as new variants appear. Hopefully in milder and milder versions.
On the other hand, if we look at those individuals who show no evidence of infection – those who have never suffered symptoms and developed no antibodies – it is not that they have never been exposed, or ‘infected’. It is that they have more robust defences. As Claude Bernard argued, the most important thing here is not the germ, it is the terrain. It always was, and always will be.
...
9: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/two-thirds-of-omicron-cases-are-reinfections-uk-study-suggests.html
"
I wonder if some of the UK data can be explained by the hypothesis that vaccination makes those who keep catching Covid even more susceptible.
If Malcolm is right and everyone in the UK has been exposed multiple times, maybe one should look at two control groups, non-vaccinated and never infected and non-vaccinated and recovered. Not sure what we would learn from this.
On the chance that it might encourage at least a couple more people to read it rather than go hunt it down, here's a link to the Malcolm Kendrick article:
"Some observations on the infection fatality rate of COVID19"
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2022/02/10/some-observations-on-the-infection-fatality-rate-of-covid19/
Here's anothe study that looks at waning rates of antibodies for other types human corona virus. I think that in itself is interesting. I don't think their conclusion that one needs vaccination to have lasting immunity necessarily follows from their work. However, just saw an Austrian study that shows just that in Omicron blood samples - going to dig for it.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(21)00219-6/fulltext
Found the Austrian preprint, seems to say just the opposite of the Californian study that according to Eugyppius shows OAS at work (my 2nd post of Feb 3rd). If anything, the Innsbruck study seems to say there is some kind of beneficial OAS going on.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.01.22270263v1.full
Here, we analyzed samples from BA.1 (Omicron) convalescent patients with different constellations of prior SARS-CoV-2 immunity regarding vaccination and previous infection with a non-Omicron variant and determined titers of neutralizing antibodies against different SARS-CoV-2 variants (D614G, Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma, Omicron).
We found high neutralizing antibody titers against all variants for vaccinated individuals after BA.1 breakthrough infection or for individuals after infection with a pre-omicron variant followed by BA.1 infection. In contrast, samples from naive unvaccinated individuals after BA.1 infection mainly contained neutralizing antibodies against BA.1 but only occasionally against the other variants.
We and others have previously shown that sera from unvaccinated individuals after Alpha (B.1.1.7), Beta (B.1.351) or Delta (B.1.617.2) variant infection only occasionally neutralize the Omicron variant.(1) Similarly, Omicron neutralizing antibodies are low and only short lived after one or two doses of CODID-19 vaccination, but enhanced in hybrid immune individuals (combination of vaccination and infection) or after a third booster dose of vaccination.(2, 3)
Just realized I should have stressed that this is the piece of information the Californian study could not deliver because it didn't have unvaccinated recovered patients. In the Austrian study, antibody levels against omicron were also lower in vaccinated patients than titers of neutralizing antibodies against other variants. However, they were comparable to the antibody levels of unvaccinated, recovered patients. So their apparent OAS didn't result in them responding less to Omicron, it is just that nobody mounts a strong response to Omicron which is why it can infect double and tripe vaccinated, too.
Now how to we roll in the finding that only a subset of the population is susceptible at all?
OK - the vaccine no longer prevents infection or transmission in a way that matters. The claim - often exaggerated is it prevents death and hospitalization in exchange for unknown risk.
BUT - so does vit-D - and if one gets a vit-D up to 60 - my hunch is it is much more effective than the vaccines. No such study exists.
Now if someone added a small preventative dose of IVM - and perhaps the rest of the prevention interventions listed on FLCCC - what is left of the narrative.
My earlier post - about the CIA and Eco-health - if true - explains why everything is bonkers - we have the CIA running healthcare in order to hide corruption.
Top-down medicine is insane - diversity of treatment is how we evolve to good treatment. By denying early treatment, I think we will see in time - that these clowns have culpability for countless lives lost world-wide.
There was an article about a soil sample that got contaminated via the lab - looks like the claim that it came from the lab is pretty much verified now. The project to circumvent the laws - (ban on GOF - Ban on biological weapons) was genocidal - and looks like it will kill even more from the economic disruptions that are just starting. The USA (where I live) is culpable for this disaster caused by a runaway agency - yes, looks like it was a Chinese lab, but it was US money and technology.
Kendrick's new take is excellent..
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2022/02/10/some-observations-on-the-infection-fatality-rate-of-covid19/
I'm inclined not to give too much weight to immunology studies that rely entirely, or almost entirely, on antibodies. There's a whole lot more to immunity than antibodies.
Apropos of karl's comment, "The extraordinary story of how patient access to COVID treatments was denied, eventually involving witch hunts of physicians who dared to treat patients" https://merylnass.substack.com/p/the-extraordinary-story-of-how-patient
CN interesting how misinformation has been criminalised. It would be good if that could be wielded against the statinators and their friends. Obviously however it is just a targeted pressure campaign for the current situation. But 'misinformation', what can I say? Such a crude tactic. All sorts of things are in the category of officially sanctioned misinformation including misinformation itself.
@Cavenewt - re antibodies
Those tests are useless - The way the information is stored in T-cells is only part of the problem. As is the rule in medicine, the narratives of what we know about the immune system are exaggerated - hubris rules. I also think the masking was about spreading fear - no one with a basic education in medicine believed masks would work with a virus - this was a military grade operation on the public - has resulted in great harm.
@Passthecream
Of course what they are doing is unconstitutional - where are the law suits?
"no one with a basic education in medicine believed masks would work with a virus"
If you are talking cloth masks or improperly worn medical masks, that may be true. But there's enough research out there to show that N95 and FFP2 work.
@ Karl, CN & PTC Masks (and the like) are nowt but the essential prop in propaganda. Nothing more. All the other insidious crap is just something of a worked-up follow on. A sort of interactive soap opera, if you will, along with its tedious catchphrases and utterances.
The political calumny is, of course, utterly outrageous. However, it does follow along the lines of classic double-edged opportunism that has just got a whole lot more out of control, and mostly due to 'revolving door' fixed-up Uber capitalism. aka it's a scam.
In some manner, 'We' have all been... fitted-up. We've all been royally had. We've been shafted. I used to rile at the price of printer ink, but these jokers went a whole lot further than that. Damn them.
I'm really at one in accepting Mass Formation Psychosis/Hysteria/Fervour as a very, very meaningful phenomenon (much like say Starlings swarming/murmuring etc., etc.) to help explain this, as that's something I have, as otherwise, keenly followed most of my life, for I have always been a bit too keen on being a 'viewer' on the outside looking in, but that collective behaviour now has something of a defining name.
The US Crusade in Vietnam (war), which impacted on me in Australia ('71-'72), and my time later in Iran with the UK/US calamity in '78 -'79 really brought much of that mass denialist-like fervour home to me - besides many other historical instances.
Today, folk often seek to talk about S2 & C19, but when you (me!) just lightly touch upon a comment shutdown instantly prevails! They DONT'T want anything to disturb 'their' choice of understanding (...much like Kierkegaards 'leap of faith' I suppose). For rarely, is their no going back. Jabbed after all is... jabbed. Mostly, 'they' only eat the dog food they've been offered. The fact is, and it's so true, in that it's easy to con folk than to explain to them that they have been conned. That, and being underwritten by fear, has proven mileage. Trying to offer up anything else on ANY like-minded subject just elicits flashes of... anger?
@ Eric FFP2 maybe, N95? No. N100 masks are possibly useful. I'm in London, and I'm a keen observer of all things Covid, and I do get about a bit, however, I have never seen anyone in the N100 mask that the experts have stated is the only 'N' mask that might be useful. Moreover, I have seen (in the supermarket) folk dressed in full germ-warfare military PPE and gas masks with canisters. Quite bizarre.
Meanwhile...
"[Scotland] Covid data will not be published over concerns it's misrepresented by anti-vaxxers" https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/19931641.covid-data-will-not-published-concerns-misrepresented-anti-vaxxers/
In the article, they gave the game away. First they offer a bunch of reasonable-sounding rationalizations for withholding the simple data. And then there's this apparently Freudian slip: "What we are going to do is do a lot more on the vaccine effectiveness side and try and make people understand how effective the vaccine is."
Another interesting statement had to do with modeling. Remember, it was that really horrible, inaccurate, grossly overstated model from an imperial College London searcher (Neil Ferguson, who has a track record for this sort of thing) that was the main impetus for all the lockdowns and other government actions. "The case rates, hospitalisation rates, the death rates are very simple statistics, whereas for the vaccine effectiveness studies we use modelling, we compare people who have tested negative to those who have tested positive and match them on their underlining co-morbidities. It’s a completely different method which is much more robust and that’s what we want people to focus on.”
Modeling is more robust than simple data. Check. It will yield results that they want people to focus on. Check.
karl—"As is the rule in medicine, the narratives of what we know about the immune system are exaggerated - hubris rules."
I'm 100% with you on that.
Not an expert at anything but wine, food, motorcycles and ridiculous politicians. We are in a serious mess right about now. Criminal acts have been committed by most of the public health officials in the world right now. Denying treatment with Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, and other drugs has allowed millions of people to die to simply enrich pharma and governments. The criminality of big pharma is beyond question just based on past performance...using Pfizer to produce untested vaccines is beyond idiocy given the 4.2 billion dollar fines they have already paid due to fraud criminality. Forcing people to take this poison, forcing people to give this poison to their children is simply evil and no punishment I can think of fits the crime. AND all of this because of statistics that were left to the stupidest animals on earth, politicians, to interpret brings us full circle to the the real guilty parties...us. We wanted to have others make decisions so we allowed the rise of the EXPERTS. Of course they screwed up and killed us...OF COURSE!
Sorry for the rant.
Dr. Kendrick exposes our idiocy...long snippet.
I just watched with interest, at first. My own bias has always been to be very wary of any expert consensus that springs into life. This is because it will almost always be a slave to the inherent problems with human thinking that ride roughshod over a disinterested pursuit of the truth. Particularly in a crisis.
Problems such as: groupthink, confirmation bias, fast thinking rather than slow thinking, deference to ‘experts’, the desperate need to come up with ‘the answer’ and stick to it, and suchlike. We all know what they are. They all came into play, as expected.
Anyway, a key question here was, how did their one per cent figure compare with more common or garden influenza? This is very hard to say. I have seen figures of 0.67% for the flu epidemic of 1967. I have seen far less. ‘Spanish flu’, the big daddy of them all, was estimated to have had an IFR of around two to three per cent.
But how accurate can these figures be? In the paper I quoted above, the IFR estimates for swine flu (HIN1pdm09) ranged from less than one death, per hundred thousand infections, to more than ten thousand. Yes, from one in a hundred thousand, all the way up to ten per cent. This is what scientists call…. A pretty wide range. You could call it other things.
Cutting to the chase, the reality is that, at the start of the COVID19 epidemic we had no idea what the IFR of a severe influenza epidemic was, nor did we know the IFR of COVID19. You would think that this would make any comparison somewhat tricky.
However, the mainstream consensus rapidly coalesced around two ‘facts’.
Fact one: a severe seasonal influenza has an IFR of around point one per cent. Or, to put it another way, one death per one thousand infections.
Fact two: COVID19 has an IFR of around one per cent. Which meant that COVID19 was going to be ten times as deadly. This, then, became our starting point.
@ CN and Karl. The immune system. Wow! It truly beggars belief at how good, and wondrous it is, but of course 'we' do f&)*%$"g it up big time. How... blankety-blank daft is that? Why?? Why?? F*"k-why??? Money, money, and more money, and of course ego. Never forget the ego. Folk like Fauci and Sir Wetty-betty need to get out a bit more. Some good, honest and decent grub, and basically you're good to go.
@Eric
If you have someone at high risk - telling them that any mask was going to protect them is simply evil.
N95 has only a small statistical reduction - and that is if it is worn correctly - and I've worn them for other uses - forcing people to wear an N95 for an 8hour shift is inhumane.
There are 2 false narratives - First is to ignore the pore sizes for N95 are 3x the size of the virion particle. The second fib is to cover the first - they talk of blocking droplets - BUT the 10um droplets they talk of evaporate in a second or so - leaving only the virion (the rapid rate is a function of surface area to volume - exponential). This is well described in engineering literature for sprays etc - and there is much more in papers dealing with clean rooms - where human particles - including virions cause defects. There was no way to prevent contamination if a human is in the same room as the wafer.
Viruses escape virus labs - it is not a matter of IF - only a matter of WHEN. The electronics industry had to go to hermetically sealed robots to deal with particles of this size - the labs need to do the same - but I don't think they should have built this virus in the first place - it turned out to be genocide.
In short - the masking was not just theater - but a purposeful nudge - a military PSYOPS. It was meant to spread fear. Had nothing to do with preventing spread.
@Eric
If you have someone at high risk - telling them that any mask was going to protect them is simply evil.
N95 has only a small statistical reduction - and that is if it is worn correctly - and I've worn them for other uses - forcing people to wear an N95 for an 8hour shift is inhumane.
There are 2 false narratives - First is to ignore the pore sizes for N95 are 3x the size of the virion particle. The second fib is to cover the first - they talk of blocking droplets - BUT the 10um droplets they talk of evaporate in a second or so - leaving only the virion (the rapid rate is a function of surface area to volume - exponential). This is well described in engineering literature for sprays etc - and there is much more in papers dealing with clean rooms - where human particles - including virions cause defects. There was no way to prevent contamination if a human is in the same room as the wafer.
Viruses escape virus labs - it is not a matter of IF - only a matter of WHEN. The electronics industry had to go to hermetically sealed robots to deal with particles of this size - the labs need to do the same - but I don't think they should have built this virus in the first place - it turned out to be genocide.
In short - the masking was not just theater - but a purposeful nudge - a military PSYOPS. It was meant to spread fear. Had nothing to do with preventing spread.
Karl,
In addition to the points you make, I've read that humidification from breathing reduces the effectiveness of masks -- any mask, including n95s. I'd be interested in your thoughts on this.
The NIH claimed this humidification might be beneficial in reducing COVID severity. The mask acts like a "humidifier" which promotes "mucociliary clearance".
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/researchers-propose-humidity-masks-may-lessen-severity-covid-19
I'm no pro at this stuff by a long shot, but it sounded like a stretch. Or maybe it works and mask-wearing promotes "herd immunity"!
Karl, you obviously have experience with cleanrooms and semicon manufacturing. We can probably agree that exhaled virus travels in aerosols and that synthetic masks capture aerosols and wick them dry.
For the benefit of other's, here's a nice paper that covidpilot over on Malcolm's blog found:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-04877-w
I think where you go wrong is in your assumption that a dry virus (which will be a problem if it ends up on a reticle or a wafer) can be infections. The virus has a lipid shell which will probably wrap itself around synthetic fibers right away. Even if it doesn't, the protusions will either snag on fibers or adhere through hydrogen bridges. If dry virus manages to blow off fibres again, its debris may still be detectable in PCR but it won't be infections. In fact, newest recommendations are that you can reuse masks after letting them dry at room temperature for a few days.
Eric, drying them out is a recommendation from a long time back. They get a bit funky though after you've already worn them. I'm in an area where wearing them at work is still mandatory and it isn't pleasant, causes a lot of sinusitis problems etc , and headaches it seems to me. Yuk. However one of my work sites is an R-7 school where staff mask up with P95 but student masking is optional. There have been some classroom sized outbreaks but none of the teaching staff have succumbed and they make the practical observation that the students who do wear masks are much less likely to catch the bug than those who do not.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069
Bob, I don't think humidity retention is a big factor. The volume of air trapped is on the order of 50 - 100 ml compared to a breathing volume of maybe 2 l.
Humid fibers are going to catch aerosols more efficiently, however, I'd be worried about droplets getting airborne again with sharp in- or exhalation.
Pass, this article is fairly recent and still recommends drying:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/27/well/live/reusing-respirator-masks-covid.html
We still bake them in the oven at 70°C. Our teenage kids have in time more and more resisted calls to bake their masks without ill effects. They have to wear them through their school day and manage to misplace or break them often before they become funky. If anything good has come of this its that the girl uses less make-up now.
Erik our climate is much warmer and drier than where you are so on a day here with temps in the mid to high 30s and humidity below 25% simply leaving them in the front of the car dries them out 'to a crisp'. Temp probably exceeds 50'C, often the steering wheel is too hot to touch before the aircon cuts in. But those sorts of temps make it even more onerous to wear the damn things indoors. I have a new theory: it's the nasal inflammation that helps keep the virus at bay!
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