A dailysceptic article on the phenomenon of negative vaccine efficacy points out how routinely analysts still assume an efficacy minimum of zero, despite some negative vaccine efficacy examples having been well researched.
However what most caught my attention was this.
Nonetheless, despite my harsh words about IFR education above, we must acknowledge that the UKHSA is so far standing by the basic moral and foundational principles of public statistics. Their answer to the confounders and denominators debate is clearly written, straightforward, reasonable and ends by saying:
We believe that transparency – coupled with explanation – remains the best way to deal with misinformation.
That’s absolutely true. The deep exploration of obscure but important topics by independent parties is possible in the U.K. largely because the HSA is not only publishing statistics in both raw and processed forms, but has continued to do so even in the face of pressure tactics from organisations like Full Fact and the so-called Office for Statistical Regulation (whose contribution to these matters has so far been quite worthless). England is one of the very few countries in the world in which this level of conversation is possible, as most public health agencies have long ago decided not to trust the population with raw data in useful form. While the outcomes may or may not be “increasing vaccine confidence in this country and worldwide”, as the HSA goes on to say, there are actually things more important than vaccines that people need confidence in – like government and society itself. Trustworthy and rigorously debated government statistics are a fundamental pillar on which democratic legitimacy and thus social stability rests. Other parts of the world should learn from the British government’s example.
One such other part of the world is the USA. The FDA wants to keep its Pfizer vaccine approval data under wraps until 2076. They took 108 days to approve, but would like another 20,000 days before we can check their work.
To be sure, the context is different. Last year, they were deciding whether the data supported letting Americans take the vaccine. This year, the issue is whether the data supports forcing Americans to take the vaccine.
If they thought that research to justify denying choice should meet a higher standard than research to justify allowing choice, I’d understand. A woman I know in the States teaches pre-calc to students over the web, under the aegis of a teaching company that also does US-government-funded work. She has a platelets issue that makes her reluctant to take the vaccine, but her employers have told her the US government insists that all their employees be vaccinated – even those who only ever teach remotely from their homes. I can see you’d need many days of data analysis to extract a justification for that!
Sadly, I fear it is their lack of statistical justification that they are hiding.
‘They’ are desperate to eliminate a control group, or at least a control group that anyone in Washington or London gives a damn about (they don’t really care about Africa or Bangladesh), because as the appalling effects of these notvaxes work their way through the population, they think they won’t have to take the fall for their grotesque errors of judgement if there is no visible group which isn’t suffering in the same way.
The wheels are just starting to fall off, as people start to connect the dots – a third, a fourth, how many do I have to take? I keep feeling very ill after each booster! No one I know is dying from the virus!?? – hence the desperation becoming apparent in ever more restrictive and counterproductive measures from the politicians and the hysterical campaigns in the media.
At the moment, as a unvaxxed person recovering from Covid, my reception is approximately 4.5 worse than when I was the only Leaver in my village, but luckily, the experience of 2016 and its aftermath have left me inured to what neighbours think.
I do take some comfort in the number of people who have said to me that they wished they had voted differently in 2016. There is a discernible groundswell of those who are not persuaded to take the ‘booster’, and the widespread rioting on the Continent and in Australia provides hope.
There will be a control group. They will be found out.
The point of inflection will occur when the Left-media start referring to the vaccines as the “Trump vaccines”, or when they at least begin pointedly attributing them to Trump.
That’s when you will know that the vaccine wheels have finally fallen off and bounced into the ditch.
This isn’t down to some counterintuitive consequence of Bayesian probability, is it….
Looks like it’s too “hot” for a professional to touch and find out. A shame.
Yes, because comparisons like this, would not be possible.
But while they are, they are a teensy weensy bit embarrasing.
Berensen* ‘excelefies’ the ONS ( or whatever the ONS is called these days ) here.
*another New York Times refugee.
Just to play Lucifer’s lawyer, suppose this is a cock up? Big pharma genuinely thought they could produce a covid killer? They conspired with governments to get people vaxxed but then it turns out the vax isn’t that effective after all. The government is in a hole and digging furiously.
I note that the official story of the European surge is that it is not a new variant, but that the vaccine has “worn off” so boosters are required. A more cynical explanation is that the vaccine was ok in the summer but simply can’t cope with the virus becoming more active in the winter.
Before applause for UK published data becomes thunderous, where is it published, who sees it and who explains?
Certainly nothing like this happens at the BBC or in the Press. Government ‘sages’ and Ministers don’t hold Press Conferences explaining the figures, that 70% of hospitalisations for CoVid are vaccinated, and 80% of deaths are vaccinated, the majority double dosed.
Who is explaining that data shows that certain important antibodies present in post-CoVid infected individuals are not present in vaccinated individuals and are diminished in vaccinated individuals subsequently getting CoVid, meaning that vaccinated people can continually get CoVid and pass it on because this could result in something called ‘original antigen sin’?(Google it… it is a real thing.)
So the value of the published data is only for people who make a point of looking at the published data, who can understand and analyse and blog about it – and people who have the curiosity to dig around and find the info.
Attempts at wider publication of anything that challenges the narrative is of course filtered out by the MSM. So it’s great they are publishing data, but in the current climate it is of little benefit, particularly with an alarmingly disinterested public.
The vaccination issue seems quite odd.
As far as I can work out, it does not stop you getting infected by viruses.
It just stops you getting sick from the viruses.
But you can still pass them on to other people.
The strange bit is how the whole issue of getting vaccinated has come to be regarded as a social duty – what you must do for your fellow man (sorry, person) when it does not help in not passing the viruses on.
In fact you might be less likely to know you have some hanging around inside you and thus less cautious.
Okay, many of them would be somewhat disabled?
In terms of not overloading health services I guess it can be seen to make sense.
I do still see some benefit in wearing masks, and especially, in distancing from others.
Whether or not to accept these medications must be a personal decision between an individual person and their doctor. Any effort by international governments and organisations (including Corporate organisations) to influence such an important personal decision, is quite wrong.
Medicine must return to a personal relationship of trust between doctor and individual patient. The Collectivist “Public Health” approach, is subverting this. It is quite true that one’s doctor has a moral duty to give health advice before one becomes ill (not “just” to try and cure you once you become ill) – but it must be on the basis of trust between an individual person (a reasoning “I” moral agent – the human person that David Hume falsely denied) and their doctor.
This goes back to the basic foundation of understanding that a human is a person (a moral agent – a human being, someone NOT just something). The Free Will (the moral personhood) of human beings must be respected – against the false philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham and-so-on.
Philosophy is a “scary” word – but, in this context, it is just about what one believes a human to be.
To deny that humans are beings (that humans are moral agents – have free will), but then turn round and demand that humans be treated “as if” they were beings, is a terrible contradiction.
If we are just “something” NOT also “someone” (if there is no such thing as human personhood – moral agency, free will) then demanding that politics treats us “as if” we were human beings (when, according to false philosophy, there is no such thing as human personhood) just will not work.
Accept the view of the “nature of man” (what a human is), of Hobbes, Hume, Bentham and-so-on, and there is ground to stand upon when opposing lockdowns, vaccine mandates – OR ANYTHING ELSE.
As Glenn Reynolds is wont to say, embrace the power of “and”, RlJ. Yes, I think it is a cock-up. A cocked-up conspiracy. One of the principal reasons to be sceptical of conspiracy theories is that they take a vast amount of organisation; the sight of this one flailing around in abject panic is a great example of why they’re rare.
But the reason I scrolled down to comment is that an organisation calling itself “Full Fact” attempting to prevent the HSA from publishing the full facts is the 2020s-so-far in a nutshell.
No need to be the devil to advocate that. I have no doubt the Oxford scientists behind the AstraZenica vaccine worked hard to produce a functioning vaccine on short timescales, testing for risks as they could within those timescales, and it has positive risk/benefit statistics for certain age and comorbidity populations. I never in the slightest minded having the opportunity to take it.
The UK Health Secretary (Sajid Javid) has stated today that he will “never” accept compulsory vaccines. (The words “It’s something I don’t think we’ll ever look at” also crept into the conversation – politicians, eh, always so very qualified. 🙂 And like the UKHSA in my OP, he is very into ‘encouraging’. But the ‘never’ seems to be making the news, which is good.)
That still leaves lots of opportunity for people like us to review over-selling, exaggeration, panic porn, one-sided reporting and etc. (and one-other-sided reporting when seen, but there seems to be more of the stuff I list), along with being vigilant to detect “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste” wherever it rears its ugly head.
However Javid’s ‘never’ seems like another area where (for all our government’s many faults)
This will never happen.
0% chance.
Imagine that two years from now, people start dying from some complication of the vaccine. Not a lot of people … maybe 0.5% of vaccine recipients.
I could easily see CNN and MSNBC referring to the vaccine in their stories as the “Trump vaccine”. In fact, I am absolutely sure that they would do exactly that.
Uh-oh.
And I think you’re right, Ferox. Especially if the current panic dies down and there’s a bit of a delay before any long-term adverse effects become apparent. Say ten years rather than two. They’ll dig out all the footage of Trump endorsing “Project Warp Speed”, everything they have on his “germophobia”, put 2 and 2 together to make 22, and try to pin it all on his personal psychology.
Some people are already suffering major adverse health events (and even in certain cases death) from complications caused by taking the vaccine. And in response to this, the Fake News Media is doing exactly what I expected them to do: not reporting on these cases, smearing scientists who discuss it, labeling the data showing this as “misinformation”, intentionally mischaracterizing what is happening, minimizing the downsides of taking the vaccine, and demonizing as “conspiracy theorists” and “anti-vaxxers” any scientists or doctors who voice misgivings about the safety or efficacy of the vaccine.
Since the November 2020 election the Fake News Media has had thousands of opportunities to blame Trump for negative consequences of taking the vaccine. Instead, though, the Fake News Media has in virtually every single case since November 2020 taken the road of minimizing the negative consequences of taking the vaccine or simply denying that such negative consequences exist at all.
This will continue – and, in fact, only get worse.
Anyone who thinks the media will blame Trump for anything bad about the vaccine is living in a complete dream world because such people clearly do not understand what is motivating the media to cover COVID-19, the COVID-19 vaccines, the lockdowns, ivermectin (“horse dewormer”), hydroxychloroquine, zinc, vitamin D, vitamin C, natural immunity, the origins of the virus itself, and so much more not only in a biased manner but in such a transparently disingenuous and extraordinarily insidious manner.
This is much bigger than Trump.
They may blame hurricanes and government debt and political polarization and economic malaise and unemployment and declining societal trust and economic inequality and corruption on Trump, but not the vaccine.
Mandatory vaccines and boosters/top-off vaccines for all humans on earth is the goal – eventually. This is what the globalists, Klaus Schwab, Pfizer, Moderna, Fauci, Gates Foundation, United Nations, WEF, World Bank, etc all want. Regular vaccines for all.
Shlomo – I’d like to think you are right – but for all eight years of the Obama administration, everything bad was George W. Bush’ fault. If you are an insane leftist (a moderately accurate description of most media) everything is some Republican’s fault. In the USA, of course. Other nations have their own loonies and their own favorite villains.
Shlomo Maistre is correct on this – it is part of something much bigger than undermining President Trump. Besides – most people, in most American States no longer believe the media – or the endless lies of the education system.
This growth of disbelief in the agitprop of the education system and the “mainstream” media is a very GOOD development – it means there is actually hope for the world.
It is not enough on its own – people need to find out the truth about various things, not just disbelieve the lies. But it is a good start.
I’m with Shlomo Maistre and the Paul Marks Organization on this one. The objective of the exercise is to create dependency on regular shots, with the elites as the dealers and the rest of us as the junkies.
In that vein (pun intended), I recently skimmed something that talked about a deficit in “killer T cells” having been observed in vaccine recipients. Apparently these are a different type of T cell to those taken out by HIV, but the proximity to Fauci’s wheelhouse is not lost on me. Hypothetically, what if the plan were to cripple the human immune system, so that our ability to fight off infection became dependent upon regular injections of some type? The business model has already been established with certain skin lightening products sold in South and Central America where, once applied, the only way to prevent one’s face from becoming a mass of scabs is with regular repeat applications of the same nasty stuff.
NB: I am NOT saying that this is the case, merely that at a very superficial level it appears consistent with known facts. Of course, the fact that it appears to be cobbled together from existing bits and pieces may be felt to add credibility, given how most innovations result from incremental rather than catastrophic development.
Interesting talk of “T” cells from the other rob.
I know of two people, double “vaccinated”, who have suffered really bad colds, worse than they’ve ever had before: one’s in her 80s, the other in her late 50s.
Of course this could be down to spending the last two years masked up, with little exposure to the normal round of coughs and sneezes.
“Since the November 2020 election the Fake News Media has had thousands of opportunities to blame Trump for negative consequences of taking the vaccine. Instead, though, the Fake News Media has in virtually every single case since November 2020 taken the road of minimizing the negative consequences of taking the vaccine or simply denying that such negative consequences exist at all.”
And you think that their failure to blame Trump for any vaccine failures so far will somehow prevent them doing so in the future if that suits the ‘narrative’ of the moment? The MSM are not exactly unaverse to doing 180 degree flips when they need to. Remember when the Left weren’t going to take ‘Trump’s vaccine’? And now if you don’t take it they want to either lock you up or forcibly inject you with it?
If there needs to be a fall guy for a completely undeniable vaccine failure in the future, who do you think they’ll be blaming, anyone on the Left who has been pushing them non-stop for years, or someone on the Right? If a vaccine scapegoat is needed, Trump will be first in line. He started the programme, the first shots went into arms under his official Presidency, there’s plenty of footage of him telling people to get jabbed. Of course they’ll blame him, they’ve blamed him for everything else.
Many doctors and scientists have come forward and suggested that taking the COVID-19 booster shots on a regular basis for many years will, in fact, substantially weaken and do irreparable harm to the recipient’s immune system. Luc Montagnier, the most decorated and famous doctor in France, is one such doctor who said this. Luc Montagnier won the Nobel Prize in medicine and he is no longer allowed on French TV after having said this on TV last year.
All doctors and scientists who say this are, of course, banned, censored, demonized, and vilified for saying so.
The Fake News Media, it must be said every day, is an Enemy of the American People.
They are scum, seditious in their reporting (see Russia Collusion Hoax) and endlessly arrogant in their smug and loathsome hatred of the white working man.
Such scum are in desperate need of a taut rope and a short drop.
Amen.
the other rob,
Yes indeed, this is the goal and they consider this to be of the utmost, critical importance.
Why?
It’s only odd, if you’ve been brought up in the idea that a vaccine is a short cut to full bodily immunity.
If you’ve got those old fashoned ideas lodged in your head, before long ‘they’ may actually be coming for you.
At work, one of my colleagues, has just got a dose of COVID-19, apparently brought in to her family by her school age children. She’s double vaccinated but still caught it. She knows she’s got it, because of the symptoms, including; loss of smell, chronic fatague, high temperature, persistant cough. So much for not getting sick.
So, yes. The vaccine doesn’t work. But doen’t worry, it stopps you getting hospitalized. Just like the other 95% of the population who never end up in hospital for a cough, cold or influenza.
Yea, yer won’t get hospitalized for COVID-19. But myocarditis, Bell’s Palsy, stroke, or an infinate variety of unusual cancers, that’s another thing.
For the record, I first predicted the pivot to the ‘Trump vaccine’ description as the tipping point in the whole COVID sage, on these very pages, sevrral weeks ago.
Jim has the exact right way of it, IMHO. When the narrative has to be redirected, any and all means will be used to redirect the rudder. I will now boldly predict that a negative racial impact of the vaccine(s) will be ‘discovered’, and the entire media narrative will pivot in lockstep – and then they will be universally known as the ‘Trump vaccines’. Sometime around late 2023/early 2024. Remember, in 1984, the key was not that the narrative can change – the key was that the narrative, once changed, became the only narrative, past, presnt and future. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
The Paul Marks Organization. I love it! No offence, Paul Marks, it’s an affectionate leg-pull.
llater,
llamas
@ the other rob.
‘Junkies’ – ‘jabby junkies’…coined a new phrase to respond to those celebrating their 4th, 5th, 6th shot and accusing me of being an anti-vaxer.
There is increasing evidence of serious heart problems from the American Covid vaccines. Remember ALL American Federal Government agencies are corrupt – trust nothing they say, on any subject.
The first order of business when (and IF) a conservative President and Congress take charge in January 2025 must be to repeal Civil Service protections. All of the bureaucrats must be removed (fired) – a clean sweep.
For example, the restriction of Early Treatment to AFTER a patient is hospitalised (i.e. making Early Treatment NOT Early) cost hundreds of thousands of lives in the United States.
Think about that – they killed (or, technically, “allowed to die”) hundreds of thousands of people.
The Federal health bureaucracy, and the rest of the bureaucracy (including the “security” and “Justice” bureaucracy – or “Deep State”) must be removed.
Via the wonders of modern technology I have personally watched the head of the American CDC (the Centre for Disease Control) saying that the vaccines prevent someone getting Covid and passing on Covid – the lady was lying, blatantly lying. And if they will lie about that – they will lie about anything.
Remember the American government now says that the 1930s were cold – when they were hot. They lie even about basic things such as historic temperature data.
Trusting one’s health to the American government is insane – utterly insane.
The utter corruption of the American education system (most schools and universities) and the “mainstream” media is despicable. Rather than challenge the lies of the government bureaucracy – they act as a vast echo chamber for the lies of the bureaucracy. Sadly this is becoming normal in most countries – not just the United States. The bureaucracy is “educated” in the corrupted schools and universities – as is the “mainstream” media.
@ Paul Marks:
As I recall – early this year – Twatcock appeared on the telly one morning, claiming the vaccines would stop you passing CV onto others. By afternoon the same day, the head of Pfizer had to publicly contradict him, admiting they had not carried out any testing on that aspect…
Dare to suggest the 2020 election was rigged, and the FBI will break your door down.
@ Shlomo Maistre –
Pfizer Documented 158,893 Adverse Events with 25,957 Nervous System Disorders in First Few Months of Distribution
Interesting. I have been saying that in my personal life, to friends and family, for several months now. It is time for a return to the Spoils System, wherein the incoming administration places friendly people in all the civil service spots.
Ideally, civil servants would be apolitical professionals, but in the last several years, and especially during the Trump impeachment debacle, we have seen definitively that this is not the case.
So fire them all, every four years. Or even better, fire them all and replace only half of them each time. In that way, we would end up with a reasonably sized government after a half-century.
They certainly aren’t in the UK:
Rishi Sunak’s freeports plan ‘nobbled by the Blob
And Paul Dacre claimed that:
Dacre may be a rather divisive individual, but he’s spot on with that observation, which calls to mind the astonishing accuracy of “Yes Minister” & “Yes Prime Minister” 40odd years ago…
The Federal Bureaucracy was always pro Big Government – after all it is a bureaucracy. But there has been a change in recent years – especially during the Clinton and Obama Administrations (and President Bush was useless in reversing any of it).
The Federal Bureaucracy is now totally politized – they lie without shame, and (yes Dave Ward) they are happy to use violence against political opponents, with only fig leaf excuses.
The Federal Bureaucracy, the “Administrative State”, must go.
It isn’t Rishi Sunak’s idea/plan.
The same proposals were made under Margaret Thatcher’s administration, and never so far as I’m aware, implemented.
The ‘blob’ may have been rather smaller back then, but it was just as effective.
Yes APL – yes indeed.
The “blog” is horribly effective – and not just in blocking good policies, but also promoting bad policies.
Indeed policy in most Western countries has been dominated by it since the agreeing of the “legally nonbinding” Agenda 21 at the start of the 1990s.
Almost as soon as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were out of office, “legally nonbinding” Agenda 21 was agreed (which was developed into Agenda 2030 or just Corporate State “Sustainable Development”) and if anyone thinks that an agenda agreed at the start of the 1990s was a “reaction” to the C02 causes Global Warming theory, or to Covid 19, then I have a nice bridge to sell them.
The agenda “reaction” to a disease that hit almost 30 years later? Or a “reaction” to James Hanson’s C02 causes Global Warming theory which had only been out for a couple of years? Detailed government (and Corporate) control of just about everything, detailed policies (which would have taken a very long time to work out and agree). Again if anyone thinks Agenda 21 (and all the rest of it) was a reaction to the C02 Global Warming theory then I have a nice bridge to sell them. After all, for example, Dr Schwab’s book “Stakeholder Capitalism” was published in 1971 – how can it be a “reaction” to things that did not exist till many years after this date?
I remember a Californian lawyer who specialised in land and development issues (the lady is dead now) – a Democrat, till she started to see that the “legally nonbinding” agenda was being put into State and local regulations on land and development that were very much legally BINDING (not “nonbinding”).
Remember such groups as the World Economic Forum (very much part of “the blob”) act as if David Ricardo’s theories on LAND (which are totally false) are actually true.
They want government and corporate control of land – with people “nudged” into “smart cities”.
Not a “conspiracy theory” – as they openly say so.
These are indeed, puzzling times.
September
August
Although I don’t really know if the BBC is taking the piss with its headline, “Investigation into spike …”, if only.
The second link in my 20:43 post seems to have been mangled, it should have been to this link.
Circulation a reputable paper, identifying a likely causal link between the anti COVID-19 ‘vaccine’, and the ‘rash’ of heart attacks, thrombosis, myocarditis, etc, leading to the higher mortality rates we are currently witnessing.