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Covid Vaccine - Is it worth having it?

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This vaccine hasn’t finished it’s clinical trials yet and has only been granted emergency approval by medical authorities. For comparison, the second fastest vaccine development approval ever, was for the Ebola vaccine, and that took 4 years.

Here in the USA it is approved. If you want a broader understanding of how they managed to get the vaccine developed so early, you'll appreciate this article. To quote a section:

"Technically, mRNA vaccines are not new. They, along with other RNA therapeutics, have been in development for decades, and many mRNA vaccines were in phase 1, 2, and 3 trials before the COVID-19 vaccines were created.

There simply has not been the level of urgency to produce them to combat a virus as we have seen in this pandemic. The arrival of SARS-CoV-2 highlighted the critical need for solutions, and the development of mRNA vaccines along with other oligonucleotide therapies became an urgent priority. (Read more about oligonucleotide therapeutics in the fight against COVID-19 here.)"

https://www.oligotherapeutics.org/facts-about-mrna-vaccines-and-the-decades-of-research-that-went-into-creating-them/

Reply 61

PilgrimOfTruth

Original post by expatmum

Make your own choice about the vaccine, but don't forget that a) you have a responsibility to people around you and b) nobody knows what's coming next - better to have some protection than none.

a) No I don't. Everyone is responsible for their own health, their own chosen lifestyles, their own eating regimes and their own risk taking activities.

b) I have what I believe to be the best, strongest and longest lasting protection which in my opinion is natural immunity.

Reply 62

PilgrimOfTruth

Original post by Jamie

Guessing this is a typo and you mean most people dying of Covid are UNVACCINATED.

Actually I think it depends how you look at the data.

If you look at the hospitalisations and deaths attributed to the Delta Variant in the UK then what you find is that proportionately more FULLY VACCINATED people are being hospitalised with and are dying of the Delta variant than the unvaccinated. Here's the UK Gov data that shows this:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1014926/Technical_Briefing_22_21_09_02.pdf

Pages 21 and 22 in Table 5 of the document refer:

Total Cases among the Fully Vaccinated was 113,823

Total Cases among the Unvaccinated was 219,716

A total of 3,172 of the 113,823 fully vaccinated cases resulted in overnight hospitalisation or 2.7%

A total of 5,064 of the 219,716 unvaccinated cases resulted in overnight hospitalisation or 2.3%

Thus proportionately more fully vaccinated people are being hospitalised than unvaccinated people.

Now let's check the deaths:

A total of 1,091 of the 113,823 fully vaccinated cases resulted in death or 0.95%

A total of 536 of the 219,716 unvaccinated cases resulted in death or 0.24%

Thus proportionately more fully vaccinated people are dying from Delta variant than unvaccinated people.

Of course you'll not find the MSM telling the public about this !

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 63

expatmum

Original post by PilgrimOfTruth

Sorry - this comment was directed at the OP, as she lives with her grandmother.

Reply 64

black tea

Original post by expatmum

To throw in a perspective from across the pond, here in my part of the USA under 50% of people are fully vaccinated. Delta is rife, and people are still not getting vaccinated. Last week a local high school had to suspend their (American) football season when a coach and the eighteen year old quarterback (probably one of the fittest kids in a school of over 2000) were both hospitalized with Covid. Both unvaccinated. You have the luxury of living in a place where the vast majority of people are at least semi vaccinated, and therefore chains of infection are constantly weakened, or broken. We don't. That you even have this choice, and are not surrounded by people falling like flies, overwhelmed hospitals, cancelled elective surgeries, full ICU's and 10 hour waits in the emergency room (God forbid any of my family get sick with anything else during this time) is thanks to the millions of people in the UK who are vaccinated. Oh, and to @black tea who thinks that most people that are dying of Covid are vaccinated, here in the USA (and I can't believe it's that different in the UK) 95% of people in the ICU's are unvaccinated, and it tends to be that the only people who go home are vaccinated, nearly all the rest die (bearing in mind ICU is the last chance ward). I live near a large research hospital and some of my friends are doctors - they are not meeting many vaccinated people, believe me. @PilgrimOfTruth, talking about the blood clot risk - you're way more likely to get a blood clot from Covid than from the vaccine. I spoke to a friend who is a neuroradiologist and he mainly spends his days looking at brain scans where covid has 'gone vascular' and the brain is full of tiny bleeds, which keep happening until they affect some vital area and the organs start shutting down. Or his colleague who specializes in chest x-rays and says the scans he's looking at of peoples lungs with the Delta variant are much, much worse than the ones he saw last year - where the x-ray is meant to be black it's basically pretty much all white, with fluid and inflammation. Make your own choice about the vaccine, but don't forget that a) you have a responsibility to people around you and b) nobody knows what's coming next - better to have some protection than none.

I have a relative who currently works on a respiratory ward in a large city. Their experience is that most post people dying on their ward from covid at the moment are vaccinated. They do have a lot of people who are unvaccinated, many of who whom have been very unwell and spent time in ICU, but these are not the ones dying (though that is not to say that they don't die in ICU/HDU and just don't make it back to the respiratory ward). The people who are vaccinated are generally younger so have a higher chance of surviving based on that fact alone, however they do require a lot more rehab and time in hospital from what I have been told.

Oh, and our local hospitals are now cancelling elective surgeries again thanks to covid. Apparently, things are likely to get worse in the next few weeks and hospitals are going to get overwhelmed again :frown:

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 65

PilgrimOfTruth

Original post by black tea

Apparently, things are likely to get worse in the next few weeks and hospitals are going to get overwhelmed again :frown:

In which case it remains utterly criminal that they are not recommending and approving re-purposed drugs like Ivermectin imo.

Reply 66

Talon

Original post by PilgrimOfTruth

In which case it remains utterly criminal that they are not recommending and approving re-purposed drugs like Ivermectin imo.

Ivermectin is an anti-parasite drug and there is no conclusive proof that it does anything to treat covid-19. Studies that have claimed this have been found to be flawed. I am astounded that you would advocate such a drug with so little evidence of effectiveness and yet object to the various vaccines which have shown a lot of evidence of effectiveness at reducing serious illness and death. There are studies that show other treatments have some effectiveness and some of these have already been approved for use in the UK and US. It is, however, better to stop people having to be admitted to hospital where such drugs would be used, which is the benefit of a vaccine.

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 67

Anngelinaaaaaa

Original post by -j dawg-

I've actually had this question in my head for a while now.

I don't want the Vaccine. And I mean it.
Before you say anything, No i don't scroll through websites online about how bad it is. I just don't want it.

Yes I am afraid of needles but thats not the point of me not wanting it, i'm just not into it.

The other thing is that yesterday my family were discussing about me getting the vaccine, it it was offered to me. I kindly told them "No I don't want it". They didn't like that, hence getting mad. They said "Well, we'll force you to have it, and we mean it. You will have it whether you like it or not". And starting shouting on how they will force me, and sign me up for a vaccine, even without my knowledge.

I have tried being reasonal about it. But should I get it, if i'm offered it?

(sorry for it being long and not making sense-)

thanks!
stay safe :smile:

Bye!

I can completely empathise with you on this one.
I do plan on having the Covid vaccine, however not yet. By all means, I am definitely not anti-vax and I have had plenty of vaccines in the past, side effects included that have had a permanent impact on my life such as hearing loss. At the end of the day, I myself do not want the vaccine yet. No I also don't spend my time looking through websites. I personally think the vaccine was rolled out way too quickly with not enough time to see what effect it would actually have on the general public and their health. Yes people were dying and yes something needed to be done. I just don't think enough time and resources were actually put into consideration when the vaccine was created. I'm a person that wants to be vaccinated but do I really want to put my health at risk for possible permanent side effects? No not really. The benefits may outweigh the risks in the long run however I would much rather watch from the side lines and miss out of a few things in life until I have a better understanding and grasp with exactly what the vaccine is doing to my body. I know many people that have had Covid, then been vaccinated and have had Covid again but worse than before. One of my close, fully vaccinated friends died from the delta variant of Covid and it was devastating news to have. There is no telling you what your own personal experience will be like if you should decide to have it.

At the end of the day, no one can force you to have the vaccine just like someone can't force you to jump off a cliff. Yes because you are under 18 your parents do have authority over yourself and what medical resources you receive, but they do need to take your feelings and what you want into consideration because its your life and your health. You have to make your choices whether they are good or bad. Its your life and you give consent to all medical procedures that happen to you

Hope this is some help for you :smile:

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 68

PilgrimOfTruth

Original post by Talon

Ivermectin is an anti-parasite drug and there is no conclusive proof that it does anything to treat covid-19.

You're simply parroting MSM propaganda here. Ivermectin is certainly an anti-parasitic but it can also be repurposed as an anti-viral and there's plenty of evidence for this. It is this broad anti-viral attribute that makes Ivermectin useful in the fight against Covid imo.

The broad spectrum antiviral ivermectin targets the host nuclear transport importin α/β1 heterodimer
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32135219/

"we show for the first time that ivermectin can limit infection by the DENV-related West Nile virus at low (μM) concentrations. Since it is FDA approved for parasitic indications, ivermectin merits closer consideration as a broad spectrum antiviral of interest"

The FDA-approved drug ivermectin inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32251768/

"We report here that Ivermectin, an FDA-approved anti-parasitic previously shown to have broad-spectrum anti-viral activity in vitro, is an inhibitor of the causative virus (SARS-CoV-2)"

It's disingenuous to simply talk about Ivermectin as an anti-parasitic or "horse dewormer". It has other uses.

I also believe there are plenty of studies showing the effectiveness of Ivermectin and most can be found here:

Database of all ivermectin COVID-19 studies. 118 studies, 76 peer reviewed, 64 with results comparing treatment and control groups

https://c19ivermectin.com/

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 69

Nefarious

Original post by PilgrimOfTruth

Database of all ivermectin COVID-19 studies. 118 studies, 76 peer reviewed, 64 with results comparing treatment and control groups

https://c19ivermectin.com/

I've debunked that pile of papers on Ivermectin before. (Not on TSR) it's doing the rounds amongst conspiracy nuts, none of whom have read even a fraction of its content.

In case you'd like to actually educate yourself I'll pull out two of the most important papers from that dump, systemic reviews that the disingeneous knobs who made that site included because they only cared about the headline statistics in the abstract rather than what the papers actually say about Ivermectin.

Don't trust enormous dumps of papers you haven't read, the person sending them to you is trying to dazzle you with a massive volume of text that you have neither the time nor the tools to read in full and understand. They hope that because of this you'll accept their commentary on the text in lieu of actually reading the primary material. (Parroting back this bull-**** commentary is often refered to by those doing it as "doing my own research")

The first paper is this systemic review by Bryant et. al. https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Fulltext/2021/08000/Ivermectin_for_Prevention_and_Treatment_of.7.aspx

The second is this systemic review by Hariyanto et. al. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rmv.2265

Both are fairly reasonable papers from that ivermectin dump exploring at the highest order of evidence the indications for Ivermectin use in Covid-19 across a large group of studies. Both got into that dump on the basis that they both conclude that there is some evidence that ivermectin might possibly in the future be useful to manage covid-19. That's not the important bit of either paper, the important bit no one is reading in these systemic reviews is the critical analyis of the papers.

Both Bryant et. al. and Hariyanto et. al. describe the quality of evidence as of generally poor quality; Hariyanto et al. highlighting widespread prevelance of flawed methodology, small sample sizes and limited common ground between a diverse range of study designs that make amalgamating the results across the whole body of evidence challenging. It should also be noted that most of the higher quality studies in the Hariyanto review showed a worsening of outcomes when covid patients were treated with Ivermectin even if most of papers, and the overall synthesis of the statistics, showed a good outcome when ivermectin was used. To be fair to the authors of the ivermectin trials there's plenty of good reasons that their trials aren't especially useful right now. Trials that would include the type of research they would need to provide that superior quality evidence aren't easy to get approved, funded and completed.

Neither of these papers consider Ivermectin a dead end, Hariyanto et al. wanting more research before making any decision on the effectiveness of the drug while Bryant et al. concluded that even with the sketchy quality of evidence it's worth considering it's use anyway because they consider the known side effects of Ivermectin minor enough that even a chance it will help in managing the pandemic is worth it. For the record I disagree with their conclusion that the side effects of Ivermectin are known to be minor, especially when you factor in the more compromised condition of severely ill Covid-19 patients relative to patient groups that have previously been treated for other conditions with ivermectin ( which they don't seem to have considered.)

There's a difference between a promising prospective treatment and a proven treatment. Time the drug has been around isn't what makes a treatment proven, Ivermectin has been around ages but it's recieved a relatively small amount of attention, lab hours and trial days. The vaccines on the other hand are a proven preventative not beacuse they've been around a long time, but because they have recieved many, many more hours of study from many more people. If you're excited about Ivermectin you should be even more overjoyed about the vaccine because the evidence for it's benefts next to the risk of its rare side effects are much better understood and are tilted even more in the vaccine's favour, and hey, if it somehow turns out ivermectin is actually useful why not both.

(Incidentally I would not be suprised if the people maintaining that site speculated hard on Ivermectin when initial studies looked promising and are now sitting on pallets of the stuff in storage ticking down towards its expiry dates, with no prospect of making back their money.
Selling Ivermectin might not have as much scope for profit as owning the exclusive patent for a novel drug, but there's still massive money to be made, especially early on when demand would temporarily outstrip supply. People will have gambled on being able to flip it.)

EDIT: If you want to look at some top quality evidence that the authors of that craptastic site wouldn't dream of including here's the cochrane library entry on the treatment and/or prevention of Covid-19. https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD015017.pub2/epdf/full

The authors literally couldn't be clearer: "We are uncertain whether ivermectin compared to placebo or standard of care reduces or increases mortality"

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 70

Talon

Original post by PilgrimOfTruth

I never said it had no effect, I said there was little evidence of its effectiveness. Your other evidence is flawed. The fact remains that the Pfizer vaccine is approved by the FDA for use against covid-19, ivectermin is not. It is also dangerous to promote ivectermin before it is approved for use as it is available for purchase off the shelf. Due to people like you promoting it, some people have taken it upon themselves to buy and use. If it does prove to be effective, we would need to know at what time it should be administered and at what dose. Once again, the evidence is not there.

Reply 71

Anonymous #9

Original post by bwh0

Yes but there are explainations as to why this isn't as big of a risk as it seems. It depends on each vaccine

So with astra Zeneca the team that worked on it was working on vaccines for coronaviruses for over a decade. They just tweaked it for this specific virus. This would suggest that how it works and ti's safety would be very similar to the vaccine they'd been working on for over 10 years as its just the specific antigen from the covid19 thats changed (I believe thats the part that changed, I read soemthing a while back but can't completely remember)

Now most other vaccines are RNA. Based on how these work it's unlikely that they'd be able to interfere with body systems enough to cause long lasting effects

Reply 72

Napp

Original post by PilgrimOfTruth

This is totally false. The various vaccine adverse event databases across the world have 1000s of very serious adverse events reported which include instances of Bell's Palsy, Guillian Barre Syndrome, Thromboses (blood clots) and numerous deaths.[1]

Bell's Palsy cases also occurred even during the vaccine trials themselves [2]

These are life changing adverse events that should not be taken lightly. Thankfully the instances of them are relatively very small but they represent a risk nonetheless.

Your need to insult people choosing not to take the vaccines is poor. There are plenty of very good reasons imo to refuse the vaccines.
They DO represent a level of risk, they are still being tested [3] and their long term safety is yet to be established.

Citations

[1] - The US VAERS system currently lists 5,693 fatality reports pertaining to Covid vaccines

https://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html

The EU equivalent Eudra Vigilance system reports the following fatal events:

https://www.adrreports.eu/en/search_subst.html#

Moderna Vaccine - 6,299 fatalities
Pfizer Vaccine - 11,710 fatalities
AstraZeneca - 4,925 fatalities

[2] - https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download

"the safety database revealed an imbalance of cases of Bell’s palsy (4 in the vaccine group and none in the placebo group)"

[3] - https://www.modernatx.com/covid19vaccine-eua/providers/clinical-trial-data

"Participants were monitored for unsolicited adverse events for up to 28 days following each dose and follow-up is ongoing.
Serious adverse events and medically attended adverse events will be recorded for the entire study duration of 2 years. "

You've been told to stop[ misusing statistics (and to actually read the papers before trying to misuse them). Suffice it to say the highlighted is quite clearly a lie

Reply 73

2PllsIPp

Original post by PilgrimOfTruth

Actually I think it depends how you look at the data.

If you look at the hospitalisations and deaths attributed to the Delta Variant in the UK then what you find is that proportionately more FULLY VACCINATED people are being hospitalised with and are dying of the Delta variant than the unvaccinated. Here's the UK Gov data that shows this:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201

Pages 21 and 22 in Table 5 of the document refer:

Total Cases among the Fully Vaccinated was 113,823

Total Cases among the Unvaccinated was 219,716

A total of 3,172 of the 113,823 fully vaccinated cases resulted in overnight hospitalisation or 2.7%

A total of 5,064 of the 219,716 unvaccinated cases resulted in overnight hospitalisation or 2.3%

Thus proportionately more fully vaccinated people are being hospitalised than unvaccinated people.

Now let's check the deaths:

A total of 1,091 of the 113,823 fully vaccinated cases resulted in death or 0.95%

A total of 536 of the 219,716 unvaccinated cases resulted in death or 0.24%

Thus proportionately more fully vaccinated people are dying from Delta variant than unvaccinated people.

Of course you'll not find the MSM telling the public about this !

A basic mistake you've made is to use the total numbers. Now, we know that the older you are, the more vulnerabe you are. Also the younger you are the less likely you are to be vaccinated. This simple error has introduced heavy bias into your calculations.
Why don't you try running your vaxxed Vs unvaxxed calculations again but this time separately for those aged under 50 and those aged over 50, the data of which is already in the that table for you. You'll come to a very different conclusion.

Furthermore, these figures are only for those who have already got covid. So, considering that (all things equal) you are far less likely develop covid if you're double jabbed, the difference will be even greater. A quote from that same PHE briefing you cited:
"2 doses of the vaccine remain highly effective, with 60 to 85% effectiveness against infection, 90 to 99% effectiveness against hospitalisation, 90 to 95% against mortality and 65 to 99% against symptomatic disease"

Again, this is why I stress that you take a basic stats course before you carry on with this malarkey. I wish MSM would tell you not to take one; that might spur you to actually do it.

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 74

PilgrimOfTruth

Original post by Nefarious

The vaccines on the other hand are a proven preventative not beacuse they've been around a long time, but because they have recieved many, many more hours of study from many more people.

Actually in terms of the "vaccines" efficacy you're wrong. That was determined from just 170 cases of Covid despite the vaccine trials using some 42,000 participants [1]. Only short term safety has been established with the "vaccines", long term safety is not established yet, tests are on-going and won't complete until 2022/2023 [2].

Ivermectin is extremely safe and was declared so by Chris Whitty himself in a study he penned where he states:

"Ivermectin . . . was licensed for human use and was used in mass drug administration programs to control river blindness; it was administered to >80 million adults and children. The drug has proven to be safe. Doses up to 10 times the approved limit are well tolerated by healthy volunteers"

Journal Of Infectious Diseases
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/202/1/113/888773

For most of the vaccination programs the "vaccines" have only been granted Emergency Usage Approval. It's criminal that likewise Ivermectin was not also given EUA. It could have saved countless lives imo. It has been used in India, Paraguay and Peru with significant effect. It's a win win situation to use it. It's massively safe as a drug, been used in humans for over 50 years and administered to millions of people as the above citation attests. If it were used and it turned out that it wasn't effective then no harm done, we tried. If it turned out to be effective then we save lives and prevent hospitals being overwhelmed. Win win.

Instead its use is imo being aggressively suppressed to protect the vaccine business.

Don’t mention Ivermectin; it’ll upset the vaccine rollout

https://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2021/05/12/mailbox-ivermectin

Citations:

[1] - PFIZER TRIAL
https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-conclude-phase-3-study-covid-19-vaccine

[2] - PFIZER TRIAL
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577
"Assessment of long-term safety and efficacy for this vaccine will occur, but it cannot be in the context of maintaining a placebo group for the planned follow-up period of 2 years after the second dose.

MODERNA TRIAL
https://www.modernatx.com/covid19vaccine-eua/providers/clinical-trial-data

"Participants were monitored for unsolicited adverse events for up to 28 days following each dose and follow-up is ongoing.
Serious adverse events and medically attended adverse events will be recorded for the entire study duration of 2 years."

Reply 75

audstrawb

Original post by -j dawg-

Bye!

coming from someone who has had both vaccines with an extreme phobia of needles i'd honestly say its not that bad if thats ur reason for not getting it. But otherwise id recommend doing ur own research, don't go off what family or social media is telling you, genuinely search up the things ur worried about and see if its true or not. lots of my friends have had the vaccine and lots haven't for their own reasons- its entirely a personal preference so don't feel guilt tripped into getting it. you are young anyway so getting covid isn't something you really need to worry about, unless you have vunerable people around you that you'd like to keep safe eg grandparents or parents. For me i was concerned about fertility with the vaccine as i saw some rumours floating around that the vaccine could cause problems with it. However, i researched and found that this wasn't true so i chose to get the vaccine and haven't had any symptoms since really, apart from a sore arm

Reply 76

Kallisto

Entertainment Forum Helper

If it is about the side effects you are afraid of: I had my second vaccination since four weeks and I am fine. It is still up to you whether you take it or not, I don't try to persuade you.

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 77

RetiredAccount89

Original post by PilgrimOfTruth

Actually I think it depends how you look at the data.

If you look at the hospitalisations and deaths attributed to the Delta Variant in the UK then what you find is that proportionately more FULLY VACCINATED people are being hospitalised with and are dying of the Delta variant than the unvaccinated. Here's the UK Gov data that shows this:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201

Pages 21 and 22 in Table 5 of the document refer:

Total Cases among the Fully Vaccinated was 113,823

Total Cases among the Unvaccinated was 219,716

A total of 3,172 of the 113,823 fully vaccinated cases resulted in overnight hospitalisation or 2.7%

A total of 5,064 of the 219,716 unvaccinated cases resulted in overnight hospitalisation or 2.3%

Thus proportionately more fully vaccinated people are being hospitalised than unvaccinated people.

Now let's check the deaths:

A total of 1,091 of the 113,823 fully vaccinated cases resulted in death or 0.95%

A total of 536 of the 219,716 unvaccinated cases resulted in death or 0.24%

Thus proportionately more fully vaccinated people are dying from Delta variant than unvaccinated people.

Of course you'll not find the MSM telling the public about this !

Without wanting to patronise, nor engage, this post demonstrates how you can razzle dazzle someone with numbers but without understanding behind it.

The below is a good explanation of the statistics.

More vaccinated people are dying of the delta variant of covid than unvaccinated people, according to a recent report from Public Health England. The report shows that 489 of 742 people (65.9%) who died of the delta variant within 28 days of a positive covid test between 1 February 2021 and 2 August 2021, had received at least one dose of the vaccine. 54.1% (402 of 742) had received both doses. This seems like an alarming set of statistics, but with an imperfect vaccine and high vaccination coverage, it is exactly what we would expect.

Here’s a simple thought experiment: imagine everyone is now fully protected with covid vaccines—which are excellent, but not 100% effective at preventing death. Some people who get infected with covid will still die, although far fewer than without vaccinations. With complete vaccination coverage all of these people will be fully vaccinated—100%. That doesn’t mean vaccines aren’t effective at reducing death—the overall number of people dying from covid will have been reduced dramatically.

The risk of dying from covid doubles roughly every seven years older a patient is. The 35-year difference between a 45-year-old and a 80-year-old means the risk of death between the two patients has doubled five times—equivalently it has increased by a factor of 32. An unvaccinated 70-year-old might be 32 times more likely to die of covid than an unvaccinated 35-year-old. This dramatic variation of the risk profile with age means that even excellent vaccines don’t reduce the risk of death for older people to below the risk for some younger demographics.

Data from Public Health England suggest that being double vaccinated reduces the risk of hospital admission with the now-dominant delta variant by around 96%. Even conservatively assuming the vaccines are no more effective at preventing death than hospital admission (actually, they are likely to be more effective at preventing death) this means the risk of death for double vaccinated people has been cut to less than one-twentieth of the value for unvaccinated people with the same underlying risk profile.

However, the 20-fold decrease in risk afforded by the vaccine isn’t enough to offset the 32-fold increase in underlying risk of death of a 80-year-old compared to a 45-year-old. Given the same risk of infection, we would still expect to see a higher proportion of double-vaccinated 80-year-olds die from covid than unvaccinated 40-year-olds. There are caveats to that simple calculation. The risk of infection is not the same for all age groups. Currently, infection rates are higher in the young and lower in older age groups.

However, given the UK’s vaccination strategy (vaccinate older, more vulnerable people first) and uptake profile (higher uptake in older groups), you would expect high proportions of the people who die from covid to have been vaccinated. And that is exactly what we see in the data.

A similar sort of story holds true when it comes to hospital admissions. Imagine a hypothetical population of 1000 people who would have been admitted to hospital with covid before the vaccines were available. At the time of writing, vaccine coverage among adults in the UK (at least one dose) is around 90%, so 900 of our 1000 potential hospital patients are vaccinated. The remaining 100 unvaccinated people would still end up in hospital. If the vaccine is 96% effective against hospital admission with delta (this figure is for two doses, but let’s assume it holds for anyone vaccinated for simplicity) then 4% of our 900—or 36—vaccinated individuals will join the unvaccinated in hospital. 36 of the 136 (26%) people who end up in hospital will have been vaccinated. Again, this doesn’t mean the vaccines don’t work. If they had no effect, then we would expect all 1000 individuals to be hospitalised — 90% of them vaccinated. Vaccination has, in fact, meant that the overall number of hospitalisations has fallen dramatically from 1000 to 136. Of course, even with highly effective vaccines, such a high uptake rate means a significant proportion of hospitalised patients will have been vaccinated. That proportion will only get higher, the higher the uptake rate becomes.

Seatbelts help to prevent serious injury and death on the roads, but they are not perfect. 27% of car occupants who died on Britain’s roads in 2017 were not wearing seatbelts, despite the fact that around 95% of all car occupants in Britain wear seatbelts. This means that the 5% of people who don’t wear seatbelts account for over a quarter of the deaths. A disproportionately high number. If seatbelts didn’t do anything then we would expect to see only 5% of the deaths to come from the 5% non-seatbelt wearers. In fact, it is much higher, illustrating how dangerous it is not to wear a seatbelt. The parallels with the protective effect of vaccination are powerful.

The fact that more vaccinated people are dying than unvaccinated people, or that a higher proportion of people in hospital with covid have been vaccinated than we might expect, does nothing to undermine vaccine safety or effectiveness. In fact, it’s exactly what we’d expect from the excellent vaccines that have already saved hundreds of thousands of lives around the world.

Kit Yates, Senior Lecturer, University of Bath, UK.

Twitter: @Kit_Yates_Maths

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 78

PilgrimOfTruth

Original post by Jamie

The below is a good explanation of the statistics.

If you say so

Myself, I don't need any explanation over and above the very simple figures I highlighted from the PHE data

Those figures show that proportionately more fully vaccinated people are being hospitalised and are dying from Delta variant than unvaccinated.

Everything else is for me just smoke and mirrors. The numbers don't lie.