In one of my 1st posts, I questioned how the claims of vaccine efficacy against death could be reconciled with what we saw in the summer of 2021, by which time a significant portion of the population (and a large majority of the elderly population) had been vaccinated.
The question to pose is "Ok, up to ~15% of seniors experienced a first time infection with no vaccine beforehand in summer 2021 - is that in the ballpark of how many experienced an infection before that point?" If it is in the ballpark then you have enough fuel to generate an AUC of senior deaths in the Delta wave that is higher than the AUC of 2020-May2021: Essentially, you can get a peak twice as high as the average in 2020 because you have all these first time infections squeezed into fewer months during the Delta wave.
Here is how that math works out. In blood donors, the 65+ were in the low 10s% seropositive in May 2021, though donors might introduce a bias for more risk-averse and pro-vax, it still should be ballpark for the future unvaxxed, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2784013 fig 3.
So now we have this idea, 10-20% of seniors had an infection before May 2021, this generated an AUC of deaths of "1 unit." Next, 16% of seniors are unvaxxed in May 2021, 10 - 20% of them have natural immunity, so if all of the ones without natural immunity are fuel for Delta, and let's say nine out of ten of those wind up infected with Delta, maybe 13% of all seniors are "unvaxxed with infection in Delta wave." So right away that's close to how many were unvaxxed and infected before May. Given that Delta is more severe, can you get AUC of "~1 unit" again in the Delta wave?
Yes. Easily.
Without the vaccines, but supposing that Delta infects nine out of ten of the 80-90% of seniors with no prior infection as of May 2021, what AUC is expected? ******Up to "7 units."******
Now, for me, this doesn't say that seniors should get vaccinated. It's a big number but plenty of seniors would have been fine - after all, there are plenty of unvaccinated people of all ages still around after Delta and up to today. But it's clear you can start from the expectation that seniors still had "7 units" of AUC deaths to generate in May 2021 and that amount never happened, either because the vaccines prevent death or they put off a lot of those still-to-occur first time infections until Omicron which was milder.
A lot of this comes down to a very common false premise when analyzing 2021 deaths which is to benchmark 2020 as "the worst the virus could do" when in most of the West (aside from NYC, Italy) it was just 1/5 to 1/9 of what it could do. Again, still not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but more than what we saw afterward.
Thanks for your reply.... having read much of your stuff, your confidence that it has high VE for older folks is one of the reasons a significant amount of doubt remains for me. Do you have any source to support "and let's say nine out of ten of those wind up infected with Delta"? That would not seem to align with the estimate of seroprevalence in 65+ of <20% as of Nov 2021 (https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab), unless you believe the vaccinated were significantly protected against infection at that time, and only the unvaxxed were being infected.
It's just the element I have thrown into the model. If you throw in .7 AR for the un-immune unvaxxed it's still close. Also have to consider that 2020's "1 unit" is deflated due to less available testing, so if you normalize for that then maybe Delta was actually only .7ish units. Etc. But specifically I don't recall any large scale seroprevalence that has vax status, since the big ones all use blood donors. Just small studies and usually only looking at previously infected.
The late Dr. Luc Montagnie of France said that vaccines are ineffective because RNA viruses mutate. Therefore, common sense would suggest that the weaker you are, the more likely you are to experience side effects from the vaccine.
Dr. Vinay Prasad probably also had the prejudice that "vaccine = good," even before the problem of how the controversial pseudo-mRNA works(The truth is that it's not a vaccine but a genetic product to get out of the law.).
Unfortunately, most doctors have this prejudice instilled in them by the pharmaceutical industry from the time they are medical students.
University astronomers in Galileo's time were also fixated on the "prejudice" of the geocentric theory.
In US 2020-2023 there are very different mortality patterns depending on geography (e.g. Northeast vs South), which can lead to Simpson's paradoxes when aggregating, It's great to focus on 2021 and state- and even county-level data tell the real story. See also work by Rancourt and colleagues.
Additionally, most early efficacy claims were published in the most favorable light possible by only showing relative rates and not absolute ones on what appear to be cherry-picked time windows and age strata, along with other shenanigans like 14- or 21-day delays in calling someone "vaccinated".
This is just covid deaths, but see the bulp of infections 5-6-7 months. This was typically the time delay for excess deaths to start rising -everywhere in the world (mid 2021 depending on the roll-up). And stubbornly stay high, without a normal variation and falls. It is like the frail never ended, there appered always new ones to replace the dead ones.
So the recurrent phenomena is, that the poison needs ca. 6 months to fully conquer it's victims.
Talking about pregnancies, 9 months after the fertile age group starts getting their elilxir, there is a 10% drop in births -everywhere once again. I wonder what Bradford Hill would have commented on this?
JR
ps. With all this data, even if there was some minor covid benefit for a few weeks, it does not matter a bit.
The question to pose is "Ok, up to ~15% of seniors experienced a first time infection with no vaccine beforehand in summer 2021 - is that in the ballpark of how many experienced an infection before that point?" If it is in the ballpark then you have enough fuel to generate an AUC of senior deaths in the Delta wave that is higher than the AUC of 2020-May2021: Essentially, you can get a peak twice as high as the average in 2020 because you have all these first time infections squeezed into fewer months during the Delta wave.
Here is how that math works out. In blood donors, the 65+ were in the low 10s% seropositive in May 2021, though donors might introduce a bias for more risk-averse and pro-vax, it still should be ballpark for the future unvaxxed, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2784013 fig 3.
So now we have this idea, 10-20% of seniors had an infection before May 2021, this generated an AUC of deaths of "1 unit." Next, 16% of seniors are unvaxxed in May 2021, 10 - 20% of them have natural immunity, so if all of the ones without natural immunity are fuel for Delta, and let's say nine out of ten of those wind up infected with Delta, maybe 13% of all seniors are "unvaxxed with infection in Delta wave." So right away that's close to how many were unvaxxed and infected before May. Given that Delta is more severe, can you get AUC of "~1 unit" again in the Delta wave?
Yes. Easily.
Without the vaccines, but supposing that Delta infects nine out of ten of the 80-90% of seniors with no prior infection as of May 2021, what AUC is expected? ******Up to "7 units."******
Now, for me, this doesn't say that seniors should get vaccinated. It's a big number but plenty of seniors would have been fine - after all, there are plenty of unvaccinated people of all ages still around after Delta and up to today. But it's clear you can start from the expectation that seniors still had "7 units" of AUC deaths to generate in May 2021 and that amount never happened, either because the vaccines prevent death or they put off a lot of those still-to-occur first time infections until Omicron which was milder.
A lot of this comes down to a very common false premise when analyzing 2021 deaths which is to benchmark 2020 as "the worst the virus could do" when in most of the West (aside from NYC, Italy) it was just 1/5 to 1/9 of what it could do. Again, still not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but more than what we saw afterward.
Thanks for your reply.... having read much of your stuff, your confidence that it has high VE for older folks is one of the reasons a significant amount of doubt remains for me. Do you have any source to support "and let's say nine out of ten of those wind up infected with Delta"? That would not seem to align with the estimate of seroprevalence in 65+ of <20% as of Nov 2021 (https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab), unless you believe the vaccinated were significantly protected against infection at that time, and only the unvaxxed were being infected.
It's just the element I have thrown into the model. If you throw in .7 AR for the un-immune unvaxxed it's still close. Also have to consider that 2020's "1 unit" is deflated due to less available testing, so if you normalize for that then maybe Delta was actually only .7ish units. Etc. But specifically I don't recall any large scale seroprevalence that has vax status, since the big ones all use blood donors. Just small studies and usually only looking at previously infected.
Oh dear, that data is not dispositive in favor of the vaccines... quite surprising.
There was never any evidence of efficacy. I remember those early months and claims in 2021 very well (as you do too) - especially from Prasad.
Never substantiated and the U.S. all-cause curves is suspect all the way around.
Wouldn't they just say that this is because the vaccine waned and this justified boosters?
The late Dr. Luc Montagnie of France said that vaccines are ineffective because RNA viruses mutate. Therefore, common sense would suggest that the weaker you are, the more likely you are to experience side effects from the vaccine.
Dr. Vinay Prasad probably also had the prejudice that "vaccine = good," even before the problem of how the controversial pseudo-mRNA works(The truth is that it's not a vaccine but a genetic product to get out of the law.).
Unfortunately, most doctors have this prejudice instilled in them by the pharmaceutical industry from the time they are medical students.
University astronomers in Galileo's time were also fixated on the "prejudice" of the geocentric theory.
In US 2020-2023 there are very different mortality patterns depending on geography (e.g. Northeast vs South), which can lead to Simpson's paradoxes when aggregating, It's great to focus on 2021 and state- and even county-level data tell the real story. See also work by Rancourt and colleagues.
Additionally, most early efficacy claims were published in the most favorable light possible by only showing relative rates and not absolute ones on what appear to be cherry-picked time windows and age strata, along with other shenanigans like 14- or 21-day delays in calling someone "vaccinated".
Time is proving them to be greatly exaggerated.
Hi, to begin with, have a look to Alberta Data from 2021
https://metatron.substack.com/p/alberta-just-inadvertently-confessed?s=r
This is just covid deaths, but see the bulp of infections 5-6-7 months. This was typically the time delay for excess deaths to start rising -everywhere in the world (mid 2021 depending on the roll-up). And stubbornly stay high, without a normal variation and falls. It is like the frail never ended, there appered always new ones to replace the dead ones.
So the recurrent phenomena is, that the poison needs ca. 6 months to fully conquer it's victims.
Talking about pregnancies, 9 months after the fertile age group starts getting their elilxir, there is a 10% drop in births -everywhere once again. I wonder what Bradford Hill would have commented on this?
JR
ps. With all this data, even if there was some minor covid benefit for a few weeks, it does not matter a bit.