My last post was critical of an Alex Berenson post that used all-cause mortality data in what I (and many others) thought was a very misleading way. Alex had a follow up today in which, in my opinion, he failed to substantively address the criticisms. Nevertheless, he did bring up a good point that is worth discussion and investigation.
you say «i know of no reason that a Covid vaccine would reduce your chances of dying of something other than Covid, therefore the logical conclusion is that the full vaccinated are a generally healthier group than the unvaccinated.».
but i believe the lower mortality in the full vaxed is a result of the mortality increase between the 1st and 2nd dose, which serves as a kind of culling.
Mathew Crawford attributes the unusual health of the fully-vaccinated group to survivorship bias and the 'dry tinder' effect, as mentioned by another commenter. If vaccination weeds out susceptible individuals by the same types of mechanisms that Covid causes deaths wouldn't the doubly-vaccinated population tend to be more robust, at least initially?
Thank you! Your analysis fits my personal experience, but I could have made an argument either way. It's counter-intuitive that healthy people with low risk would take an experimental jab using experimental tech. Perhaps an indicator of the success of the psy-op?
Have you seen this article by Justin Hart? If ~60% of those who are jabbed have claim prior infection, it would have serious implications for VE. How much of what is claimed as vaxx protection is really immunity from infection?
I just stumbled across this excellent video that - among other things - compares all-cause mortality rates between vaxxed and unvaxxed in the UK. An attempt is made to explain the unusual spikes in the data. Ultimately they conclude that "the data provides no real evidence that the benefits of the Covid vaccines outweigh the risks."
What is your estimation of the veracity of death certificates in the UK? Here in the US, death certificate procedures were completely and officially rewritten in March/April 2020 to make sure that COVID deaths would be the predominant cause of death in any tangentially related case.
It includes several helpful plots with the various vaccination categories:
(unvaccinated => <21 days after 1st dose => >21 days after 2nd dose => vaccinated)
I think it important to keep in mind the flux between the categories and consider both their relative and actual size when reviewing the death rates for the same periods of time.
Interestingly, just as the successive age-groups were prioritised in the UK vaccine rollout, so too can the rises and peaks in the >21 dose category be seen successively staggered.
Not only are they time lagged to match the order of the rollout but they appear to peak after the vast majority have received the 2nd dose and moved in to the next category, vaccinated.
The numbers in the >21 days after 1st dose category really start to dwindle round mid April and since the start of June represent a smaller group than the unvaccinated. My suspicion is that those who remain longer in the >21 days after 1st dose were mostly, and for whatever reason, in too poor health to receive the second dose, so therefore the higher death rates are perhaps to be expected.
Nevertheless, there is still something really nagging about this large discrepancy that I can't put my finger on.
The fully vaccinated group does not reach 1 million individuals until week 11. The precise details of the UK roll-out will be really important in that period, for both the fully-vaccinated and unvaccinated group. I am speculating but a sensible roll-out would have targeted the vulnerable, institutionalised elderly but bypassed terminal/palliative/end of life care patients. While you want to treat those at greatest risk first there is no point treating those literally on the brink of death, and it is likely some bureaucrat will also have realised that this would risk making bad-looking numbers during a period of intense scrutiny, so made efforts to control what was probably a pretty haphazard start to vaccine roll-out.
You still have normal winter mortality to deal with, and without fully understanding the age-adjustment it is difficult to see whether either overall or not-covid deaths are within expectations.
The "between jabs" group is genuinely concerning. Some of these will be, as you say, second jab refusers, but I think most are just logistics (double jabbers with >21 days between doses) - see the rapid decline in this population after week 19. Is there any possibility that the mortality spike is an artefact of calculating the populations and unknown death dates to week ends so we are somehow dividing the right number of deaths by too little time "at-risk"? Why does the mortality spike from week 16? That is when the population starts to fall but presumably we now have younger people coming into the "between jabs" group. I can only agree "more research is needed".
What we really need is a "modified intent to treat" analysis for all death from time of first dose, irrespective of what happened afterwards. The treatment and control populations are still gong to be very different at every timepoint, but is it possible to do this with the available data?
Thanks for showing how relative health might affect the data-- this supposition was counterintuitive to me (in part because the covid vax campaign has been like the flu vax campaign on steroids-- my assumption was that everyone and anyone at risk or elderly had mostly been covid jabbed at this point).
hi! and thank you for your work.
you say «i know of no reason that a Covid vaccine would reduce your chances of dying of something other than Covid, therefore the logical conclusion is that the full vaccinated are a generally healthier group than the unvaccinated.».
but i believe the lower mortality in the full vaxed is a result of the mortality increase between the 1st and 2nd dose, which serves as a kind of culling.
i've read it's called a 'dry tinder' effect.
Mathew Crawford attributes the unusual health of the fully-vaccinated group to survivorship bias and the 'dry tinder' effect, as mentioned by another commenter. If vaccination weeds out susceptible individuals by the same types of mechanisms that Covid causes deaths wouldn't the doubly-vaccinated population tend to be more robust, at least initially?
Thank you! Your analysis fits my personal experience, but I could have made an argument either way. It's counter-intuitive that healthy people with low risk would take an experimental jab using experimental tech. Perhaps an indicator of the success of the psy-op?
Have you seen this article by Justin Hart? If ~60% of those who are jabbed have claim prior infection, it would have serious implications for VE. How much of what is claimed as vaxx protection is really immunity from infection?
Really curious if there is similar UK data.
https://covidreason.substack.com/p/reminder-over-60-of-the-vaccinated
I just stumbled across this excellent video that - among other things - compares all-cause mortality rates between vaxxed and unvaxxed in the UK. An attempt is made to explain the unusual spikes in the data. Ultimately they conclude that "the data provides no real evidence that the benefits of the Covid vaccines outweigh the risks."
https://youtu.be/6umArFc-fdc
What is your estimation of the veracity of death certificates in the UK? Here in the US, death certificate procedures were completely and officially rewritten in March/April 2020 to make sure that COVID deaths would be the predominant cause of death in any tangentially related case.
Hello T Coddington, have you seen this analysis by William M Briggs using the same data from UK but age-specific?
Vax Has Slight But Waning Edge In Old But Harms The Young
https://wmbriggs.com/post/38161/
It includes several helpful plots with the various vaccination categories:
(unvaccinated => <21 days after 1st dose => >21 days after 2nd dose => vaccinated)
I think it important to keep in mind the flux between the categories and consider both their relative and actual size when reviewing the death rates for the same periods of time.
Interestingly, just as the successive age-groups were prioritised in the UK vaccine rollout, so too can the rises and peaks in the >21 dose category be seen successively staggered.
Not only are they time lagged to match the order of the rollout but they appear to peak after the vast majority have received the 2nd dose and moved in to the next category, vaccinated.
The numbers in the >21 days after 1st dose category really start to dwindle round mid April and since the start of June represent a smaller group than the unvaccinated. My suspicion is that those who remain longer in the >21 days after 1st dose were mostly, and for whatever reason, in too poor health to receive the second dose, so therefore the higher death rates are perhaps to be expected.
Nevertheless, there is still something really nagging about this large discrepancy that I can't put my finger on.
Would much appreciate your thoughts.
The fully vaccinated group does not reach 1 million individuals until week 11. The precise details of the UK roll-out will be really important in that period, for both the fully-vaccinated and unvaccinated group. I am speculating but a sensible roll-out would have targeted the vulnerable, institutionalised elderly but bypassed terminal/palliative/end of life care patients. While you want to treat those at greatest risk first there is no point treating those literally on the brink of death, and it is likely some bureaucrat will also have realised that this would risk making bad-looking numbers during a period of intense scrutiny, so made efforts to control what was probably a pretty haphazard start to vaccine roll-out.
You still have normal winter mortality to deal with, and without fully understanding the age-adjustment it is difficult to see whether either overall or not-covid deaths are within expectations.
The "between jabs" group is genuinely concerning. Some of these will be, as you say, second jab refusers, but I think most are just logistics (double jabbers with >21 days between doses) - see the rapid decline in this population after week 19. Is there any possibility that the mortality spike is an artefact of calculating the populations and unknown death dates to week ends so we are somehow dividing the right number of deaths by too little time "at-risk"? Why does the mortality spike from week 16? That is when the population starts to fall but presumably we now have younger people coming into the "between jabs" group. I can only agree "more research is needed".
What we really need is a "modified intent to treat" analysis for all death from time of first dose, irrespective of what happened afterwards. The treatment and control populations are still gong to be very different at every timepoint, but is it possible to do this with the available data?
Why can't we look at all cause mortality of 50-59 year olds, instead of 18-59?
Thanks for showing how relative health might affect the data-- this supposition was counterintuitive to me (in part because the covid vax campaign has been like the flu vax campaign on steroids-- my assumption was that everyone and anyone at risk or elderly had mostly been covid jabbed at this point).
Do you know of any data on the apparent increase in cardiac issues / clotting in sportsmen and women.
The UK has had four collapse in the last four days and of course the media remains silent.
Bartram also has some analysis of this, along similar lines.
https://bartram.substack.com/p/on-the-impact-of-the-vaccines-on
There's also some statistical artifacts of the lag from infection to death that overstates VE during the initial vax program.
https://bartram.substack.com/p/the-importance-of-the-delay-between
https://bartram.substack.com/p/the-importance-of-the-delay-between-6e5