Covid Vaccine Poll

[Steve (sdh2903)]

1 hour ago, jim_l said:

agree Steve , less obvious, but of course you have included children, mostly unvaccinated, and rarely (thankfully)  feature in admissions, I had intended specifically to refer to the adult population. 

 

 

Absolutely. I wasn't intending to post it as a completely 100% accurate representation it was simply an example of how data can be interpreted in different ways from both camps looking to confirm their views, but when you are sad enough to dig into the data, its not as straightforward. The data is gleaned from the phs site. I agree Its wrong to include 12 to 18 y/o imo but the data.gov.uk site seems to.

 

Regardless of your views on whether to take the vaccine or not this is the kind of thing that we are now seeing on a near daily basis. It's now only immoral idiots that don't get vaccinated apparently.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/times-radio-government-covid-labour-b1980766.html

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/justin-welby-archbishop-canterbury-vaccine-moral-b1980400.html

 

43 minutes ago, Blatman said:

Just waiting to see how that gets spun as not what it appears to be...

 

[MR.C]

Unfortunately its human nature, to take "A" then kick "B" on the way out.

[CosKev]

So two doses protects you well enough against Omicron🙄what a surprise.......

 

I wonder if they will now go back on calling double jabbed people unvaccinated?🤣

[jeff oakley]

As I said I feared that the government was swayed by the dire warming of the NHS being overwhelmed and the Sage members demanding action.

 

In Wales and Scotland they really went over the top as a result and England got off lighter. It will be interesting if they reverse any restrictions and let people have a Christmas and New Year as normal.

 

I suspect it is too late to get parties going in the hospitality sector.

 

Of course what this does is undermine the people who were demanding restrictions based on the science. They got it right with the first one and the Delta but who will listen next time, have they cried wolf once to often?

[AdamR]

@jim_l and @jeff oakley (and others), thank you for your considered and mature responses. Great to have open discussions in this way. I am always intrigued by the breadth of thought processes humans possess, for example I struggle to understand those who do not question things which come from those in positions of power. Anyway...

 

The red and green bar graph on the previous page does list the source of the data (genuine UK government data) - however it is presented in a way that is designed to try and show that the jabs don't work. I can't remember the site it was on, but I got to it via Vernon Coleman's website (known as a Covid skeptic). The bar graph with additional line on which jim posted afterwards is more reflective I think - providing the scales and axis labels are what I think they are.

 

 

Bigger picture stuff... considering the chat earlier about general risks in life: "Using the most up-to-date data we have available, the number of deaths from the week ending 13 March 2020 to the week ending 10 December 2021 was 1,049,277 in England and Wales; of these, 983,453 were recorded in England and 64,448 were recorded in Wales." - https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/10december2021

 

England Covid deaths are now at 128k total, thus making up 13% of all deaths since the pandemic began.

 

I appreciate if Covid was left to "run riot" the figure may have been higher, but what are people's thoughts on why we (as a nation) aren't putting as much effort into preventing the other causes of death?

 

These are the top 5 this year (totalling 169,000) other than Covid (69,000), and they have been for the past 5 years with flu a close 6th (source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2fpeoplepopulationandcommunity%2fbirthsdeathsandmarriages%2fdeaths%2fdatasets%2fmonthlymortalityanalysisenglandandwales%2fnovember2021/monthlymortalityanalysisnov2.xlsx).

 

- Dementia and Alzheimer's disease

- Ischaemic heart diseases

- Cerebrovascular diseases

- Malignant neoplasm of trachea, bronchus and lung

- Chronic lower respiratory diseases

 

We can't do much about the first one, but the other 4 (totalling 118,000 this year so far - getting on for double that of Covid) are health and lifestyle related.

 

Given that there also appears to be significant reduction in medical complications due to contracting Covid from living a generally healthy lifestyle, my proposition is that it would be a good use of resources to promote general health in order to assist with all of the main causes of death we are currently facing.

 

We have had some quite extreme interventions in relation to Covid, so maybe it could now be considered appropriate to (tongue slightly in cheek) make daily exercise compulsory, for McDonald's to shut 5 days a week, added sugar in food to be capped to a certain percentage, restaurant meals to be capped at a certain calorie level, cigarettes banned, etc.

 

I understand the above doesn't really sound achievable, but if you'd said 2 years ago that we'd all be made to stay inside for a couple of months we'd have thought that very strange too. With enough venom from our leaders, people will conform.

 

 

So, why the huge focus on Covid and medical interventions specific that disease, when I would say there is an argument that general increase in heath would assist with Covid and our other major causes of death / NHS drain. Thoughts on a postcard...

[CosKev]

21 minutes ago, AdamR said:

for example I struggle to understand those who do not question things which come from those in positions of power. Anyway...

 

This is one of the most scary things about this plandemic, people just accept what the government/their advisors tell them via the mainstream media 🤦‍♂️

 

Like my neighbour that told me I was the issue being unvaccinated and causing this covid crap to be prolonged!🤣🤣🤣

When asked why he couldn't give me a answer to what he said,but it's just been said so often on the news people believe it😏

[jim_l]

In the spirit of questioning what we are told, that it is all good news about Omicron and we have overreacted, why is this happening in London...and should we ignore it?  anyone?

 

Overreacted - three full attendance football matches, I am not sure. 

[AdamR]

On 21/12/2021 at 22:40, jim_l said:

Turn my back for day and there is war and peace to read on here, but didn’t want to ignore this question.

 

As far as I can see though, that you have made that case purely in ‘live or die’ terms, if you factored in the extent to which a vaccine might lower the severity and prevent you getting long Covid, that might move the risk/benefit slider a little.

 

Having seen the research and reason on here, which is excellent on both sides, it seems that we don’t  really have all of the data to model this. 

 

We are missing a clear analysis of what “deaths reported as possibly linked to a vaccine” actually means, overall and in age groups, and we are missing a clear analysis of long Covid, 'how many does this affect, and how badly, by age? '

 

And thank you for responding Jim! Your balanced input is a credit to this thread.

 

Personally I haven't only considered this in 'live or die' terms. I appreciate there is a risk of what is being termed long Covid. This is defined as symptoms persisting for more than 4 weeks since the first infection, that cannot be explained by anything else.

 

Rates of 'long Covid' are self-reported (the self bit may be significant, I am unsure) to be hovering around 1.5-1.7% of those who have had Covid (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/prevalenceofongoingsymptomsfollowingcoronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/7october2021). I am no expert, but with the main 'symptoms' of this being fatigue, shortness of breath, loss of smell and difficulty concentrating, I an unsure how this can be differentiated from normal (eg. what you'd get from having flu) viral fatigue.

 

I have also seen the 'horror stories' of 'super dooper fit and healthy people' being hit harder by 'long Covid' than others - I would argue this is to be expected, as they have 'further to fall' following a period of no training. For example, this study showed that cardiovascular performance (VO2 Max) of well-trained cyclists reduced significantly - down to 95% output (doesn't sound a lot but yes that is significant!) - at 7 days after stopping training, with other indicitave factors such as blood lactate concentration and respiratory exchange ratio changing at a similar rate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236590070_Detraining.

 

All of this also depends on actually having contracted Covid, of course. Lifestyle factors come into play here in my opinion, and with a relatively secluded / reclusive lifestyle compared with many, I would say contraction risk for an individual such as myself is well below average. Indeed, I have had no need to take any form of Covid test until last week (negative).

 

To consider in balance to the risk of long Covid, there is also the possibility of a health issue (that isn't death) from the jab. Now, I do appreciate that data on this is sketchy, but there are some sources.

 

One is Pfizer's own 'yellow card' report. I appreciate this is only one of the jabs, but it seems to be most common right now: https://phmpt.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/5.3.6-postmarketing-experience.pdf

 

- This is Pfizer's own report and listed as confidential so we can assume it is for internal use. I think this adds weight to the contents, as it is not being presented for the outside world - but may be wrong.

 

- Within 42000 'yellow card' reports, there were:

 

Recovered/Recovering: 19582 (46%)

Recovered with sequelae (long term side effects not expected to clear up): 520 (1.2% - not much less than long Covid)

Not recovered at the time of report (study length was 2 months): 11361 (27% - much higher than long Covid)

Fatal: 1223 (2.9% - I raised my eyebrows at this. While the report doesn't confirm if these deaths were directly DUE to the jab or just 'deaths before the end of the study after having had the jab', the value is high compared with the Covid mortality rate in England so far of 1.3%).

Unknown (I am going to count many of these to be 'recovered', since no news is generally good news): 9400 (22%)

 

 

OpenVAERS is another source: https://openvaers.com/. As far as I can work out, reports to the database from which this site is built can be added by the general public, so I am unsure how reliable this data is, but I would say that mortality reporting is fairly non-opinionated (its a 1 or a 0!). The reports also include a 'time to death after jab administered', which to me is a fairly useful metric to get an understanding of how closely the two events are linked: https://openvaers.com/covid-data/mortality

 

Heart attacks are also listed separately: https://openvaers.com/covid-data/cardiac

 

 

The UK's yellow card reports (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions/coronavirus-vaccine-summary-of-yellow-card-reporting#yellow-card-reports) show 327,000 reports (from 128m England jabs).

 

Based up on the same categorisation and percentages as the Pfizer report above, and being generous by dividing all the numbers by 2.5 (assuming people have had 2.5 jabs on average), this would indicate that there are the following number of English citizens:

 

Recovered with sequelae (long term side effects not expected to clear up): 1570

Not recovered at 2 months since the jab: 35315.

Fatal: 3793

 

None of this is age-biased, and I am sure a data scientist would be able to find flaws in the logic, but it still feels to me that there is a large group of our population - the young and the healthy - who may be better served by not taking the jabs (even considering their interactions with and effects on others, knowing what we do now about how the jabs affect contraction and transmission).

 

Counting back to the cumulative risk way of looking at things, my risk isn't significantly higher whether I get jabbed or not - especially when you consider an average week includes mountain biking, using a lathe, using an angle grinder and driving a car.

 

 

My personal healthcare 'regime' is heavily based upon not trying to mess with nature. I am extreme in this, but I won't put anything in my body that I can't pronounce, can't immediately envisage in my mind's eye how it looks, or isn't known to be beneficial to human bodily function. Anyone intrigued by this, read the back of the packaging of everything that goes in your trolley next time you go to the shop. I find it... enlightening.

 

So, am I looking at this with confirmation bias? Honestly, I would say yes. I am looking for a reason not to put something unknown in my body. And I do believe - even with all the data above - the jabs being foisted upon us are still an unknown; especially compared with drinking only water, eating only stuff that grows out of the ground, and raising your heart rate for 3-6 hours a week.

 

(War and peace again, dammit).

[AdamR]

8 hours ago, jim_l said:

 

I don't think this can be ignored - but it does display a reduction (in percentage terms) in hospitalisation vs number of cases this time round. Cases are accelerating rapidly away from hospitalisations at quite a rate on that graph, unlike December 2020.

 

To balance, we are also doing more testing these last few weeks, so it is expected that number of cases will rise significantly.

 

If cases go stratospheric, there is the possibility of reaching a similar number of hospitalisations to a year ago.

 

Perhaps that data is also presented to make it appear a certain way. April 20 for example is odd - approx 5x more hospitalisations than cases, even considering the quoted 7 day lag. That would be... unexpected.

[Kit Car Electronics]

1 hour ago, AdamR said:

 

I don't think this can be ignored - but it does display a reduction (in percentage terms) in hospitalisation vs number of cases this time round. Cases are accelerating rapidly away from hospitalisations at quite a rate on that graph, unlike December 2020.

 

To balance, we are also doing more testing these last few weeks, so it is expected that number of cases will rise significantly.

 

If cases go stratospheric, there is the possibility of reaching a similar number of hospitalisations to a year ago.

 

Perhaps that data is also presented to make it appear a certain way. April 20 for example is odd - approx 5x more hospitalisations than cases, even considering the quoted 7 day lag. That would be... unexpected.

 

As you say, the more we test, the more we will find. 

 

April 20 was before we had any serious testing capability, hence high hospitalisation vs reported cases

 

Meanwhile, our ability to travel freely to other countries is heavily influenced by our obsessive reporting, maybe this should be more focused on hospitalisation rates rather than the headline-grabbing case rates

Edited December 23, 2021 by Kit Car Electronics

[jeff oakley]

One of the issues in London is the very low uptake of vaccine 68% had first dose 62% second dose,

 

various reasons, trust, too many distrust vaccines, are not registered with any GP, believe stories about trying to keep births down to them etc. 

 

They live in a city dense population close contact so spread is quick and easy

 

In South West, best uptake at almost 90%, sparse areas wide open field and sea air.

 

If it stays as it is no need for action other than to encourage vaccine uptake, which will help now and in the future as variants develop

 

[Blatman]

16 hours ago, CosKev said:

So two doses protects you well enough against Omicron🙄what a surprise.......

 

I wonder if they will now go back on calling double jabbed people unvaccinated?🤣

 

The 69% reduction only counts for people who are RE-INFECTED with Covid-19.

 

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-50-Severity-Omicron/

 

Quote

"High historical infection attack rates and observed reinfection rates with Omicron mean it is necessary to correct hazard ratio estimates to accurately quantify intrinsic differences in severity between Omicron and Delta and to assess the protection afforded by past infection. The resulting adjustments are moderate (typically less than an increase of 0.2 in the hazard ratio for Omicron vs Delta and a reduction of approximately 0.1 in the hazard ratio for reinfections vs primary infections) but significant for evaluating severity overall. Using a hospital stay of 1+ days as the endpoint, the adjusted estimate of the relative risk of reinfections versus primary cases is 0.31, a 69% reduction in hospitalisation risk"

 

[CosKev]

9 minutes ago, Blatman said:

The 69% reduction only counts for people who are RE-INFECTED with Covid-19.

 

Wonder if ITV will be pulled up for that last night then😳

They stated it was breaking news within the last hour🤷🏾‍♂️

[Steve (sdh2903)]

Not sure if boris will like this.

 

https://news.sky.com/story/booster-vaccine-programmes-likely-to-prolong-the-pandemic-who-chief-warns-12502269

[jim_l]

I am conscious that we are having a fairly protracted discussion here and, in the past, we have been asked to ‘rein it in’. If anyone has seen enough of this, please do drop a hint, I would not be the least bit offended, the participants could easily take it off line.

 

Having said that, most of the spanners are away, and this is far and away the most informed and civil discussion I have seen on the subject.

 

With my ‘in the spirit of questioning’ post I was being a little facetious. We had been asked why people are not more questioning of what they are told by Govt. media, etc, but then presented with a screenshot appearing to show that all is rosy on the Omicron front, which contradicts what we are seeing in the real world, so, I questioned.

 

In the same report it says, amongst other things ‘these reductions  should be balanced against the much larger risk of infection with Omicron, due to reduction in protection acquired from both vaccination and natural infection’. Add that to the slide and we have more balance, and a possible part explanation for what is going on in London.

 

Government data shows testing to be fairly flat since April, with at most a doubling in the last few weeks.  I know I am testing two or three times weekly with the approach of Christmas and the ready availability of tests (I was handed three boxes on my way out of Tesco) It is confounded, many people test many times and most cases map onto multiple tests, but it leaves me struggling to use testing to explain case rates going from 2,000 to 20,000.

 

Briefly looking at your extensive research Adam, confirmation bias or not (we are all guilty of it!) most people don’t have that capacity, they have to trust the government to advise them (or hairdressers on twitter, whichever). The government cannot present us with an algorithm (remember the outcry last year when the message changed from ‘stay at home’ to ‘stay at home unless..’.  Most people in your age group will be at much higher risk than you.  and many people are getting the decision wrong.

 

On your very valid and interesting point about general health in reducing the risk, it lands in two categories:

• Stuff we can do to help now or soon, such as eating healthily to boost our immune systems.
• Stuff that would better protect us against future pandemics (some of these comorbidities are decades in the making)

..more to discuss on that