Yes, Omicron infections appear to be accelerated by the vaccines
Aligning UK data on cases, vaccinations with data on variants
The question of whether the vaccines has increased the infections of Omicron is a topic that has been addressed by others, including El Gato Malo here , but perhaps I can add to the evidence in the affirmative with some new ways of looking at the data. I begin with data from the UK Weekly Surveillance reports. This set of reports supported a number of posts & also are the basis for a set of Dashboards I shared to monitor weekly updates:
Beginning Sept 9th, 2021 on weekly basis this report would contain information on cases, hospitalizations, and deaths by vaccination status and age. This practice was discontinued following the March 31, 2022 report. Nevertheless, this time period provides sufficient data for the analysis in this post.
My second data source for this analysis is Our World in Data tables on COVID variants presence in various countries at various times. Our World in Data sources their raw data in turn from the GISAID organization, who is acknowledged here (per their request on their site) as the ultimate data provider.
Since the data in the UK reports were for 4 week periods, I basically matched the midpoint of the 4 week period to the surveillance date in the variants data (which appear to have been collected biweekly) to provide a representation of the mix of variants present during that 4 week period. For example, the 1st period with data included in the UK Report is weeks 32-35 of 2021. This was 8/9/21 - 9/5/21, so I represented this period with the mix of variants present at 8/23/21 (midpoint), or possibly one week earlier if the midpoint date did not align with the biweekly schedule of variant reports. During the time of data available (8/9/21 - 3/27/22) the UK went from essentially all Delta cases to all Omicron cases. Therefore, my charts will focus on those two variants (the variant data is actually tracking many sub variants of Omicron, I have aggregated all Omicron sub variants together for simplicity).
What you will see below, broken down by age, will be a charts showing
COVID case rates per 100K for “Not fully vaccinated” and “Fully vaccinated” populations over time. The latter category includes people with 1+ doses of J&J and/or 2+ doses of Pfizer/Moderna (i.e. includes regular schedule folks & boosted folks).
% of cases Delta & Omicron over time
I don’t know what to make of the Under 18 group, to be honest, but I didn’t want to exclude it so as not to be accused of hiding data (in general, I’m not particularly concerned about the <18 group since COVID is so rarely severe for them). For all other age groups, I don’t think the charts could be more striking or clear. Delta is quickly replaced by Omicron between the 2021 week 47-50 and the week 51-02 reports (note the UK did not report for week 48-51 period, due to winter holidays). At the same exact time, case rates per 100K grow much more quickly among the Fully Vaccinated compared to the Not Fully Vaccinated and remain significantly higher through the end of the periods for which the UK included in their reports. While I am sure this does not rise to the level of academic rigor needed to prove Omicron infections are enhanced by the vaccine, it sure is enough to convince me.
Note, this does not answer the question of whether the vaccine still improves your outcome if you do get COVID (I am thinking through how to best tease that out of this data), but whatever benefit that may have would need to be balanced by your increased chance of getting COVID because of the vaccine. I.e. if being vaccinated increases your likelihood of getting COVID by 50%, the vaccine better be at least 50% effective against severe outcomes to make it a neutral choice (this of course is ignoring any other negative side effects of the vaccine, which is generous at best).
Acknowledgement to GISAID
We gratefully acknowledge all data contributors, i.e., the Authors and their Originating laboratories responsible for obtaining the specimens, and their Submitting laboratories for generating the genetic sequence and metadata and sharing via the GISAID Initiative, on which this research is based.
Bravo. I would note that triple-dosing overlaps with the run up to Omi in the elderly and with the Omi switch in younger adults. So you can see the elderly course-correcting after triple dosing in the weeks 40 and onward.
This raises the question of whether, without that course correction, rates would continue to elevate relative to unvaxxed. Presumably if there were enough “susceptibles” it could have kept raising into the winter. And so it would seem that Omi escapes the likely transient protection of third doses.
Does it actually “exploit” the vax in any way, or is this just a case of removing temporary positive efficacy from the group so that now only negative efficacy remains? Or is negative efficacy an illusion due to broken denominators for the unvaxxed, in which case all that is shown is Omi removing temporary positive efficacy (classic vaccine escape)? I would say I am mostly leaning to the middle option. Omi is only “enhanced” by the vaccine in that there’s no more temporary positive efficacy to hide negative efficacy.
One has to wonder why the government health agencies aren't doing this research! Or maybe they are (which is why they stopped publishing data which was clearly unfavourable to the jabs). The general population who trusted the NHS and rolled up their sleeves again and again have clearly been taken for fools. The vaccines seem to just enhance your chances of re-infection (alongside your chances of death from the side effects of the jabs).