Thursday, March 07, 2024
Excess Deaths Since 2022 Primarily in Vaccinated, Official Data Suggest
Excess deaths since 2022 were primarily in the vaccinated, official data suggest, fuelling fears that the Covid vaccines may be playing a significant role in the high excess deaths in recent years.
Data from the Office for National Statistics show that the proportion of total deaths in England among unvaccinated people dropped sharply in early 2022, even as excess deaths soared. The proportion then remained low throughout the following two years, indicating that the additional deaths during this period were concentrated in the vaccinated.
Is this why the authorities continue to resist releasing the full data on deaths by vaccination status? A cross-party group of 21 MPs and peers are the latest to write to request the data be released. Are the authorities refusing because they know the data show excess deaths predominantly in the vaccinated?
The striking effect was seen in every age group. The charts showing these results can be seen below (find the data here, table 5). The blue lines show the total deaths by month in the age group (left-hand axis) while the red lines show the proportion of deaths in the unvaccinated in the age group (right-hand axis; unvaccinated here means receiving no doses). The most striking feature on each chart is the steep drop in the red line in early 2022, which denotes a sharp and sustained drop in the proportion of deaths in the unvaccinated and a corresponding rise in the proportion in the vaccinated.
Note this is not because more people got vaccinated at that time, as the number getting their first dose in these age groups was almost zero by this point (see chart below, taken from here, data here). People getting their first dose may affect the trends seen in 2021, particularly in the first part of the year, though the over-60s were largely done with first doses by June 2021.
It’s worth pointing out that by using only death data they avoid the problems with the ONS population estimates highlighted by Professor Norman Fenton and others that have tended to exaggerate the death rate in the unvaccinated.
Note that the red lines during 2022 and 2023 are mostly flat, particularly for those in their 60s, 70s and 80s, even during many of the peaks in total deaths. This is particularly noticeable during winter 2022-23, where despite a large peak in deaths the red lines stay largely flat. This suggests that vaccine efficacy against death, at least from the Omicron variants, is very low, since if the virus was disproportionately killing the unvaccinated (i.e., the vaccines were protecting the vaccinated) the proportion of deaths in the unvaccinated should spike during waves. That it usually does not suggests low vaccine efficacy.
These charts include no comparison with death rates before the vaccination period so don’t allow us to say very much about the pre-Omicron period as there is little to compare it to. However, there are notable spikes in the red lines for those over 70 during the Delta wave of late 2021. On first sight this would seem to indicate vaccine efficacy against the Delta variant during that winter. Things may not be so straightforward, however. Notice that the other largish spike for those over 80 is in summer 2022. Importantly, this was not associated with a Covid wave; instead it was associated with a heatwave – that was when the heat dome was sitting over Europe causing record temperatures. This is significant because the vaccine obviously does not protect against heatwaves. This means the reason for the summer 2022 spike is not vaccine efficacy. What is it then?
It seems likely it is related to the ‘healthy vaccinee effect’ i.e., the fact that people who take vaccines tend to be people with better background health outcomes than those who don’t take vaccines. A number of studies indicate that vaccinated people have a background death rate around half that of unvaccinated people (this is a background death rate not related to vaccine efficacy or safety).
The poorer background health of the unvaccinated group means that any general cause of death that disproportionately affects the frail or those with comorbidities, such as a virus epidemic or a heatwave, will naturally, other things being equal, disproportionately affect the unvaccinated group, for reasons unrelated to the vaccine. This would explain the summer 2022 spike in the red lines and it may also explain some or much of the spike during the Delta wave as well. Assuming this is right, it makes the lack of spikes during other waves, such as winter 2022-23, even more striking, as one would normally expect the unvaccinated group to be disproportionately affected by a virus wave or a winter, yet instead the lines remain flat. These flat red lines during waves of deaths are therefore also potentially indicative of a concentration of excess deaths in the vaccinated.
The headline finding from these charts is the striking concentration of excess deaths in the vaccinated after early 2022, just as Omicron appeared. This worrying observation may be why the authorities are keeping the full data, which would confirm or rule out such a finding, firmly under wraps.
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Lockdowns Are a “Failed Experiment”, Welsh First Minister Tells Covid Inquiry
The BBC reports that Wales’s First Minister Mark Drakeford has told the Covid Inquiry that local Covid lockdowns were a “failed experiment”.
He could have said it was a failed policy or intervention, but Drakeford chose to say lockdowns were an “experiment”.
An experiment is a scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery and test a hypothesis.
However, at the time, lockdowns were a policy enforced by law.
Mark Drakeford announced in May 2020 that the maximum fine for repeated breaches of the lockdown rules in Wales rose from £120 to £1,920. Up to June 8th, 2,282 Fixed Penalty Notices were issued for – as it seems now – failing to participate in an experiment. People in Wales were twice as likely as English to be fined for breaking lockdown rules. Some experiment.
We are at a loss to explain how the people who set the laws can do so based on experiments. As for experiments, where was the consent procedure, where was the control group and where was the evaluation?
The Welsh Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser for Health, Rob Orford, read from the evidence Drakeford provided to the inquiry that “in hindsight perhaps they weren’t the best idea”.
Yet again, we learned that policy wasn’t based on any evidence. “I’m not sure where the origin of the idea around local interventions came from, whether that was the U.K. Government or Welsh Government.”
We utterly reject the “hindsight” argument, which Sir John Edmunds also used as an excuse for some of his most extreme advice.
We reject it because we pointed out the obvious on April 8th 2020: you cannot affect the circulation of an endemic respiratory virus with any of the interventions known to us, including vaccines, which were not on the table then.
We pointed out that wrecking society and the economy to chase an evidence fallacy was the stuff of nightmares. We and the rest of society have paid a heavy price for this temerity.
Policy must be based on expertise and evidence. If there is no evidence, you either generate it or sit on your hands as the precautionary principle suggests, until such time as the costs and benefits of alternative actions are clear.
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Airline Fined $250,000 For Standing Down Worker Concerned With COVID-19
Australian national carrier Qantas has been fined $250,000 after standing down a worker—who was an elected health and safety representative—after he raised concerns about the risk of COVID-19 to staff cleaning aircraft that had arrived from China—an action the judge described as “shameful.”
Lift truck driver Theo Seremetidis was employed by subsidiary Qantas Ground Services (QGS) at Sydney International Airport, and was sidelined in early 2020, before which he had worked for Qantas for nearly seven years as a ground crew fleet member.
Last year, NSW District Court Judge David Russell found the airline engaged in discriminatory conduct, ruling that Mr. Seremetidis was unfairly cut off from other staff who were seeking his help.
“The conduct against Mr Seremetidis was quite shameful,” the judge said. “Even when he was stood down and under investigation, QGS attempted to manufacture additional reasons for its actions.”
Last week Qantas agreed to pay Mr. Seremetidis $21,000 for economic and non-economic loss.
On March 6, Judge Russell ordered that QGS be convicted and fined $250,000, finding that the company’s conduct involved significant culpability and was deliberate, rather than inadvertent and that QGS had “deliberately ignored” the consultation and other provisions of the Work Health and Safety Act. He said there was a “gross power imbalance” between Mr. Seremetidis and senior managers at QGS.
Mr. Seremetidis was “most conscientious” in carrying out his role as a health and safety representative, the judge found, staying up-to-date with official announcements about the pandemic and even doing research on his day off.
Judge Russell found QGS saw Mr. Seremetidis’s directions to cease unsafe work as a “threat” to the conduct of the business, in particular to its ability to clean and service aircraft and get them back in the air, and pointed out that the role of health and safety representatives was “vital” to the protection of workers and the running of any business.
During the hearing last year, Qantas said it had taken the action because Mr. Seremetidis had been “creating anxiety amongst the workforce.”
It was revealed the airline had told concerned workers that the risk of them contracting COVID-19 from their work was “negligible,” and they could not “be reasonably concerned about contracting the virus.”
Prosecutor Matthew Moir said Qantas gave priority to its commercial interests over the health and safety of its workers. But Qantas lawyer Bruce Hodgkinson argued the airline had been doing its best to deal with the fast-unfolding pandemic.
Qantas Apologises
A Qantas spokesperson said the airline accepted the penalties. “We agreed to compensation for Theo Seremetidis and the court has today made orders for that compensation to be paid,” the spokesperson said.
“We acknowledged in court the impact that this incident had on Mr. Seremetidis and apologised to him. Safety has always been our number one priority and we continue to encourage our employees to report all safety-related matters.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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