Unbelievable UK Vaccine Report Update

The UK has published it latest weekly vaccine surveillance report and there are some really astounding things to comment and share. The 1st thing that jumped out was the revision in how table 12 is presented. This table shows the rates/100K of cases, hospitalizations and deaths. In previous reports, it showed unvaccinated rates vs. rates among the twice dosed population. In the most recent report, it replaces the twice dosed with the triple dosed:

I found this annoying & odd right from the start. Annoying because it makes comparisons to previous reports trickier & odd because you would think they could just add the information on the triple dosed without removing the information on the double doused.

For the 1st point, we can try to work around this. In order to keep consistent reporting with previous weeks, we need to know the population of double (but not triple) dosed. After reading Eugyppius' post , I realized that a pretty solid estimate of that population is to simply take the reported population of 2 dosed cohorts from the week 2 report and subtract off the 3 dosed cohorts of the week 3 report. This would miss any newly double dosed, but that is a sure to be a small number at this stage (at least for the older groups).

Now we get to the part about it being odd that the UK omits the data on rates for the doubly dosed. After reading Eugyppius and looking at the details of the data, a cynic might conclude that the omission is purposeful to hide something ugly. Below are the rates of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths for the last two UK reports by vax status.

Cases:

Already evident in previous weeks that for all but the youngest group, the vaccinated were getting infected at higher rates than the unvaccinated. Now, by separating the double vs. triple vaxxed, it looks somewhat better for the triple, but at the expense of making the double vaxxed look even worse (a theme that will continue below). In several age groups, it would appear the 2x vaxxed are infected at 4-5x the rate of the unvaccinated.

Hospitalizations:

The triple vaxxed have far better rates than the unvaccinated & better rates than the 2x vaxxed of the previous report. On the other hand, now looking at double (not triple) vaxxed, it appears they have higher rates of hospitalization for all ages >60, and comparable rates for 18-59!

Deaths <28 Days:

Very similar story as above. Slicing the data this way shows negative efficacy for double (not boosted) folks in the older brackets.

Deaths <60 days:

Again, similar story. In this case, the rate of death of the unboosted fully vaxxed is basically 2x as high for the over 70 year olds. Crazy.

All of this being said, what is actually happening in the UK (i.e. who/how many are being vaccinated, who/how many are being infected, hospitalized, and dying) could not have changed that much in a few weeks. What this really tells me is that depending on how the authorities decided to slice, categorize, and present the data, a very different picture can emerge. I don’t think it’s a coincidence given how the numbers look above that the rates for the double vaxxed were not included in the report, but it is disappointing that we can’t trust that information is being shared in a transparent and accurate way.

El Gato shares some thoughts on how the way this data is shared inherently will make the boosted look better (but the twice vaxxed look worse).