Looking at the assumptions of the 7th July modelling, it is interesting that the immunity conferred by contracting the virus is assumed to be 100% (except for Imperial, who always choose the most psychopathic inputs possible for their models), but the reduction in probability of catching Covid after taking the AZ vaccine is only around 66%. It doesn’t really disturb me in the slightest that young people are catching Covid in large numbers. They’ll probably be fine, the vaccine is available to them if they are worried and they may be better off long term with natural immunity.
Get vaccinated if you want (I did) but it’s time to go about our business.
I guess the problem round about now is that ‘time to go about our business’ may be fairly restricted by businesses not being there, with 25% of their staff sitting at home in ‘isolation’. Anything that can reduce that alarming choke-hold on day-to-day life is to be viewed as positively as possible, I’d say.
It seems that hybrid immunity is the target. Those who don’t get vaccinated will get covid and become immune anyway
VS
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
“Now that Freedom Day is here, we ought to allow people a real freedom: the freedom to choose to be vaccinated.”
I remember back during Stalin Russian days the party guaranteed everyone the Right and freedom to have and hold a job. That no one had the right to NOT have a job was incidental to this great freedom to chose to work.
I suppose the covid ‘papers’, or app on your phone, is being obligatory, more so every day, but that is real Freedom – Isn’t it? Freedom to get a vaccine, and then freedom to prove you had it, in order to enter any building other than your house, or to travel anywhere? Freedom; it feels good to know we have that freedom.
Re a separate UH article about impressionability, copying, especially in the young, being ‘free’ to want a vaccination despite any so-called ‘libertarian’, ‘anti-vaxx’ peer-pressure cannot be bad.
In the face of the current situation, of course recognising genuine concerns about serious side-effects; sharing vaccines internationally; needle-phobia, general fear and hesitancy etc., any mature, honestly-held bold philosophical ‘libertarian’ ‘principles’ recede temporarily, I would say.
Reflective, reasoned contrariness has a purpose but stubborn contrariness on its own is not an indicator of a greater intelligence, sanity or morality.
note: the only vaccine on which real independent data exists is the Chinese vaccine (large scale study in Chile, not run by a company that produced the vaccine or benefits otherwise from the vaccine)
If you are a scientists: that is how you look at this. The vaccines used in the UK are still in experimenting stage (till Dec 22): data will come later: everybody is a Guinea-pig…. I hope the outcomes are positive: we just do not know yet. A bit of cherry picking going on with the data for now.
Are there not reliable data now? Can we doubt lives have been saved?
So, if we had to wait to 2022 would all the ‘anti-vaxxers’ be content with perpetual restrictions or would it be all the over 60s and/or those with serious morbidity just have to hope for the best that they don’t get seriously ill, get hospitalised and possibly die?
What if females are made sterile, or their babies have appalling genetic deformities, as a result of build up of lipids in the ovaries from the mRNA vaccines? Even it’s a 1 in 10,000 or even 1 in 100,000 risk it’s TOTALLY unacceptable to risk the very future welfare of humanity.
What an absurd and innumerate response. What if all these outcomes happen a thousand fold over with long covid, after say 5 years? Do you know? We have to make use of the best data we have.
Not at all an innumerate or absurd response. I don’t claim to know the risk. Pfizer themselves identified the build up the the lipids in the ovaries – which are not secreted from the body but remain indefinitely. Dr Robert Malone, who invented mRNA vaccines was alarmed when he read the data from Pfizer because he didn’t expect that to happen. Do you claim to know more than the inventor of mRNA vaccines? Do you know the long term effects of the build up of the lipids in the ovaries? Are you claiming there is zero risk of such build up of lipids causing catastrophic outcomes?
If you are then it is you who are innumerate and absurd.
It’s astonishing isn’t it, how a bunch of extreme covid sceptics on the one hand tell a story of a ‘scandemic’ and deny such phenomena as long covid, but are then willing to believe fantastical accounts of the dangers of a vaccine, mass experimentation etc. As can be seen from reading the article, the relevant approval bodies in the UK are considering all risks in the round when recommending who to vaccinate.
No wonder the Right, or part of it, if such they are, are losing the culture war if this is the sort of cause they champion.
Well, that’s a piece of mindless stupidity.
A hospital in Houston decided that its duty of care to patients meant that all its 26,000 employees needed to be vaccinated so it mandated that as a condition of employment.
Only 150 of the 26,000 had moral concerns genuine enough to give up their job. That’s where the rubber hits the road.
I would argue that with certification for your right to join society looming, no one truly has the freedom not to be vaccinated. I have a second jab tomorrow, but without the threat of certification hanging over my liberty like a sword of Damocles, I wouldn’t take the wretched thing – just like I never take a flu jab.
I’d say the author has a perverse idea of ‘freedom’
Vaccine passports are the goal, after that the population control is guaranteed, in all senses of the term. With a little imagination one can see that, with the passports in place, one’s “freedom” can be turn on and off like a tap. Access to whatever can be denied or allowed via the app; that is the real danger.
The vaccines ARE experimental and for a virus that is no more deadly than the flu. The risk of injury from the injection is far higher, go look at the statistics. This is not about health it is about control.
She will be double vaccinated and have little chance of serious illness. The vaccines work remember! Would you avoid Granny in case u give her Pneumonia or the flu? Not a great nephew/niece if she dies of lack of family contact/loneliness.
The more young people get Covid-19 in a short time frame, the better for their natural immunity and ultimately herd immunity.
So called “Long Covid” (where did that term come from?) has all the hallmarks of post-viral fatigue/ post viral syndrome, which unfortunately a minority of people have always developed after any viral illness. It’s not at all peculiar to Covid.but it’s been “weaponised” in the campaign to get every single individual, young or old, injected with this novel experimental treatment for a virus that is dangerous for very few people and is becoming less deadly by the day.
JS
Johann Strauss
2 years ago
The author seems to have missed the very troubling recent observations in the UK (and for that matter Israel) that 60% (although the minister then reduced that number to 40%) of newly hospitalized patients with Covid were double vaccinated. Whether that number is 40% or 60% it is still very very high and suggests that the vaccines are none too effective in the real world, and that we have been kidding ourselves all along in the rush for a miracle to rid us of Covid.
On another note it seems to me that both the mRNA and DNA vaccines are problematic. The technology is great in principle, but it seems to me that in contrast to a regular vaccine (whether a protein antigen, an inactivated virus or an attenuated virus) one doesn’t actually know the dosage of antigen or the variation from person to person in terms of how much spike protein is actually produced and for how long. Recall for the DNA-based vaccines, the DNA is relatively stable but has to be transcribed to RNA and then translated to spike protein. For the mRNA vaccine, the mRNA is relatively unstable but still has to be translated into spike protein. The efficiency of those processes could well vary by an order of magnitude between individuals, especially when comparing the young versus the old (and incidentally it is the young where side effects with the vaccines have been most prominent).
And finally, I’m not even sure how these vaccines are supposed to work in terms of preventing infection (as opposed to preventing severe disease). The vaccines generate IgG antibodies and presumably some T cell immunity. But the initial response, in addition to the innate immune system, presumably should come from IgA secreted in the mucus lining the respiratory tract. Yet, to my knowledge the vaccines don’t generate IgA. Perhaps somebody could enlighten me and correct me if I’m totally off base.
And lastly, one other comment: I find it astounding that many are saying that immunity by vaccination is superior to immunity acquired following infection. This seems awfully strange since the vaccine comprises only one component of the virus (i.e. the spike protein), while infection presents all components of the virus. Indeed, I would expect much broader T cell immunity (which targets protein fragments) from natural infection. Perhaps here too I’m misguided.
Dear Johan,
You are indeed ‘misguided’ because you try to come up with a scientific approach to the covid episode and that does not work because all decisions (ALL of them ) made in relating to covid were political and commercial only.
“The author seems to have missed the very troubling recent observations in the UK (and for that matter Israel) that 60% (although the minister then reduced that number to 40%) of newly hospitalized patients with Covid were double vaccinated. Whether that number is 40% or 60% it is still very very high and suggests that the vaccines are none too effective in the real world”
I would want to know more about the hospitalizations, but the information doesn’t seem readily available. I don’t recall the data you can download from the NHS or ONS sites having much granularity. What you need is the breakdown by age; what other conditions do these people have, if any; were they admitted because of COVID, with COVID but for another reason or was it contracted after admission; do they recover or not and, if they do, how long are they in hospital.
40 – 60 % is a high proportion, so we need to look at the actual numbers here also. Vaccines do not 100% prevent infection, far from it, so if people who are otherwise vulnerable become infected, despite vaccination, they are at a greater risk of serious illness compared to other vaccinated and healthy people. Their risks will still be lower than if they were unvaccinated.
Given that the most vulnerable have been vaccinated fully (and indeed most adults), you might, although it seems counterintuitive, expect those in hospital to include a high proportion of double vaccinated people. If the hospitalised group also comprises people most at risk anyway and the overall numbers are low, it is indicative that the vaccines work. This should be the case for both vaccinated and unvaccinated hospitalisations – high risk groups only. If you get a spike in admissions for unvaccinated people in low risk groups, then you start worrying!
You identify exactly what I want to know:- “What you need is the information by age, what other conditions did these people have, if they were admitted to hospital because of Covid but for another reason or they had it after admission, did they recover or not and how long were they in hospital.” It must be possible to get this information through National Statistics but, for some reason, we are never told through our free press..
If everyone was fully vaccinated, then 100% of those hospitalised with Covid will have had the vaccine.
These kinds of numbers demonstrate nothing without further context, but that will not prevent their intentional and accidental misuse.
GG
George Glashan
2 years ago
“A twentysomething has about a one in 50,000 chance of a blood clot if they get the AZ vaccine, but a higher than one in 16,000 chance of being hospitalised with Covid in the next 16 weeks if they don’t. ”
I’ll take my chances on a respirator and anti-inflammatory’s over brain surgery to remove a blood clot thanks Tom
IH
Ian Howard
2 years ago
Vaccinate your kids Tom Chivers but not mine these vaccines are still on trial so not proven to be safe it’s a risk I won’t put on my kids but have happily joined in the vaccine program myself
DM
David McDowell
2 years ago
Too many unknowns, too many variables, and too much sensitivity in assumptions for anything other than decisions made by guesswork here I’m afraid.
The vast majority of those most at risk have been double vaxd so we should move to the new normal.
DB
David Barnett
2 years ago
Authorising Pfizer for young people is nothing short of malpractice. Pfizer’s own data show that the vaccine escapes from the inoculation site and accumulates in ovaries. No female of childbearing age or younger should be made to risk it.
PB
Peter Branagan
2 years ago
It is simply grotesque that the UK medicines agency say that the Pfizer vaccine (in fact, ANY mRNA vaccine) is safe for children. They can’t know because the phase 3 trials have not been completed and won’t be for another 2 yrs. These vaccines are experimental and have only been given emergency licences. No-one knows whether they’re safe or not in the long term.
However, the inventor of mRNA vaccines – Dr Robert Malone – has grave concerns about their long term safety – particularly because of the build up of lipids in the ovaries and in bone marrow.
SB
Sam Brown
2 years ago
Did we give up on it? Or was the scare mongering by Merkel and Macron then followed up by the minor EU states overreacting to the actual risks and ceasing using it the real problem? There are risks inherent in most aspects of life…just most humans are very poor at assessing them in reality. The EU played politics with the AZ vaccine; that was the real issue.
CS
Chris Scott
2 years ago
Follow the money; good intentions will get you nowhere; selling a product at cost is providing ammunition to competitors: the vaccine is useless, it causes blood clots, it’s efficacy is minimal, it’s cheap (you get what you pay for) etc. All aided by MSM. Step in Pfizer; we don’t care where you get the money, but our product is calidad aleman and estatos unidos thanks to banks extending loans to complete the transaction.
That’s a good point.
People don’t value cheap products.
EB
Edward De Beukelaer
2 years ago
The ”science editor” should know that out of 50000 positive tests there may be 10 people who are actually ill with covid (have the illness) before he writes: What we do know, though, is that cases were already growing before Freedom Day
NF
Nick Faulks
2 years ago
I thought it was established at Nuremberg that injecting an experimental vaccine into children who do not suffer from the disease against which it is supposed to protect them is unacceptable behaviour.
You clearly know nothing about the requirements for licensing medicines for humans. Trials must be undertaken in 3 phases to cover both short term and long term effects.
Phase 3 trials look for long term effects and typically are undertaken over 3 to 5 years.
The requirement for phase 3 trials was imposed because of the appalling consequences for pregnant women and their babies caused by a ‘safe’ prescription drug called ‘thalidomide’. Thalidomide was heavily promoted by Big Pharma and enthusiastically prescribed to pregnant women by 10s of thousands of doctors in the 1960s.
DB
David Barnett
2 years ago
Universal vaccination in the midst of an epidemic is a recipe for the evolution of viral immune escape – utter folly.
I really wish policy makers would consult all the relevant disciplines before rolling policy out. The one-dimensional hyper-focus on epidemiology (how the virus spreads) is a recipe for disastrous decision making.
Julian Farrows
2 years ago
I wish people who’ve taken the vaccine would stop sermonizing others and quietly go about their business. I’m fully in my rights not to want to inject an experimental biological compound into my body for a virus the effects of which I believe to be greatly exaggerated. This, and the intense media messaging, is making me wonder if it wasn’t about getting everyone vaccinated all along.
JH
Janion Heywood
2 years ago
Why not try prevention and treatment. Cheaper, and fewer side effect potential than an injection.
surely the UK is grown up enough to have a mature discussion of options at this stage?
DC
Dan Croitoru
2 years ago
Is UnHerd becoming sanctimoniously intellectual but “with a twist”?
IB
Ian Barton
2 years ago
Another dumb clickbait headline …
Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Barton
NT
Nicholas Taylor
2 years ago
The first walk-in no-appointment mobile vaccination point I saw in the Brighton area appeared in late June and a lot of people were queuing for it. Mobile points do 1st vaccination only. There are plenty of fixed walk-in points advertised that do both 1st and 2nd. They provide a choice of vaccines: Moderna, Pfizer and Astra-Zeneca. So presumably some of the AZ vaccines are being used. Today I was handed a self-test kit in the street (Made in China). It’s quite complicated, but at least those who need to know can adjust their activities if they get a positive, without falling under the Trick-or-Treat (or whatever it’s called) juggernaut.
BL
Bruno Lucy
2 years ago
What amazes me it is the same people who march with banners saying « stop lockdown » who also are the most against vaccine.
Gaga
I always believed that the lockdown was global madness and that intervention should only be limited to helping the vulnerable while parallel efforts are made to pull out all stops to find a vaccine. This is only a minor pandemic and the lockdown a worrying precedent where humanity appears to be taking the step that they can no longer live within nature and must instead hide from it seeking isolation, and wearing masks. A dangerous water shed towards the dystopian type futures depicted in books and film. The writer seems to acknowledge the minor nature of the pandemic but rather than attacking as I believe we need such experts to do appears rather to entertain.
I have been anti lockdown from the start but I have never been anti vax though I am dubious about rolling out a vaccine still in phase three trials to any but the old and most vulnerable. I have had both jabs, largely in the hope of helping achieve herd immunity without the government feeling the need to pressure younger cohorts into having it.
Looking at the assumptions of the 7th July modelling, it is interesting that the immunity conferred by contracting the virus is assumed to be 100% (except for Imperial, who always choose the most psychopathic inputs possible for their models), but the reduction in probability of catching Covid after taking the AZ vaccine is only around 66%. It doesn’t really disturb me in the slightest that young people are catching Covid in large numbers. They’ll probably be fine, the vaccine is available to them if they are worried and they may be better off long term with natural immunity.
Get vaccinated if you want (I did) but it’s time to go about our business.
I guess the problem round about now is that ‘time to go about our business’ may be fairly restricted by businesses not being there, with 25% of their staff sitting at home in ‘isolation’. Anything that can reduce that alarming choke-hold on day-to-day life is to be viewed as positively as possible, I’d say.
It seems that hybrid immunity is the target. Those who don’t get vaccinated will get covid and become immune anyway
“Now that Freedom Day is here, we ought to allow people a real freedom: the freedom to choose to be vaccinated.”
I remember back during Stalin Russian days the party guaranteed everyone the Right and freedom to have and hold a job. That no one had the right to NOT have a job was incidental to this great freedom to chose to work.
I suppose the covid ‘papers’, or app on your phone, is being obligatory, more so every day, but that is real Freedom – Isn’t it? Freedom to get a vaccine, and then freedom to prove you had it, in order to enter any building other than your house, or to travel anywhere? Freedom; it feels good to know we have that freedom.
Re a separate UH article about impressionability, copying, especially in the young, being ‘free’ to want a vaccination despite any so-called ‘libertarian’, ‘anti-vaxx’ peer-pressure cannot be bad.
In the face of the current situation, of course recognising genuine concerns about serious side-effects; sharing vaccines internationally; needle-phobia, general fear and hesitancy etc., any mature, honestly-held bold philosophical ‘libertarian’ ‘principles’ recede temporarily, I would say.
Reflective, reasoned contrariness has a purpose but stubborn contrariness on its own is not an indicator of a greater intelligence, sanity or morality.
I think it is my moral duty to refuse the vaccine
Why? For what reason/s? For many, despite reservations, ‘duty’ would compel them to receive it.
Duty compels me not to
Nonsensical.
note: the only vaccine on which real independent data exists is the Chinese vaccine (large scale study in Chile, not run by a company that produced the vaccine or benefits otherwise from the vaccine)
If you are a scientists: that is how you look at this. The vaccines used in the UK are still in experimenting stage (till Dec 22): data will come later: everybody is a Guinea-pig…. I hope the outcomes are positive: we just do not know yet. A bit of cherry picking going on with the data for now.
Are there not reliable data now? Can we doubt lives have been saved?
So, if we had to wait to 2022 would all the ‘anti-vaxxers’ be content with perpetual restrictions or would it be all the over 60s and/or those with serious morbidity just have to hope for the best that they don’t get seriously ill, get hospitalised and possibly die?
What if females are made sterile, or their babies have appalling genetic deformities, as a result of build up of lipids in the ovaries from the mRNA vaccines? Even it’s a 1 in 10,000 or even 1 in 100,000 risk it’s TOTALLY unacceptable to risk the very future welfare of humanity.
What an absurd and innumerate response. What if all these outcomes happen a thousand fold over with long covid, after say 5 years? Do you know? We have to make use of the best data we have.
Not at all an innumerate or absurd response. I don’t claim to know the risk. Pfizer themselves identified the build up the the lipids in the ovaries – which are not secreted from the body but remain indefinitely. Dr Robert Malone, who invented mRNA vaccines was alarmed when he read the data from Pfizer because he didn’t expect that to happen. Do you claim to know more than the inventor of mRNA vaccines? Do you know the long term effects of the build up of the lipids in the ovaries? Are you claiming there is zero risk of such build up of lipids causing catastrophic outcomes?
If you are then it is you who are innumerate and absurd.
It’s astonishing isn’t it, how a bunch of extreme covid sceptics on the one hand tell a story of a ‘scandemic’ and deny such phenomena as long covid, but are then willing to believe fantastical accounts of the dangers of a vaccine, mass experimentation etc. As can be seen from reading the article, the relevant approval bodies in the UK are considering all risks in the round when recommending who to vaccinate.
No wonder the Right, or part of it, if such they are, are losing the culture war if this is the sort of cause they champion.
Just what I was thinking…
Idiotic response. Maybe it should the moral duty of the health practitioners to not treat you when you get seriously ill?
If you ever want to know why Covid hysteria has serious ramifications for our sense of decency and humanity; re-read your last comment.
Could you expand on your opinion?
Well, that’s a piece of mindless stupidity.
A hospital in Houston decided that its duty of care to patients meant that all its 26,000 employees needed to be vaccinated so it mandated that as a condition of employment.
Only 150 of the 26,000 had moral concerns genuine enough to give up their job. That’s where the rubber hits the road.
“There can’t be any socially irresponsible people who aren’t pathologically selfish, immature, criminal or insane.”
That’s pretty ludicrous. Where did you get an idea like that?
Yes, I am pushing the boat out…Have edited my comment.
Well put. The Doublethink Newspeak is nauseating.
I would argue that with certification for your right to join society looming, no one truly has the freedom not to be vaccinated. I have a second jab tomorrow, but without the threat of certification hanging over my liberty like a sword of Damocles, I wouldn’t take the wretched thing – just like I never take a flu jab.
I’d say the author has a perverse idea of ‘freedom’
Or thinks that mass experiments on kids is fine
Vaccine passports are the goal, after that the population control is guaranteed, in all senses of the term. With a little imagination one can see that, with the passports in place, one’s “freedom” can be turn on and off like a tap. Access to whatever can be denied or allowed via the app; that is the real danger.
The vaccines ARE experimental and for a virus that is no more deadly than the flu. The risk of injury from the injection is far higher, go look at the statistics. This is not about health it is about control.
No way would I take the vaccine if I were young.
What about visiting Grannie ?
She will be double vaccinated and have little chance of serious illness. The vaccines work remember! Would you avoid Granny in case u give her Pneumonia or the flu? Not a great nephew/niece if she dies of lack of family contact/loneliness.
The more young people get Covid-19 in a short time frame, the better for their natural immunity and ultimately herd immunity.
Why not? What about ‘long covid’ which seems to affect the young as much as the old?
So called “Long Covid” (where did that term come from?) has all the hallmarks of post-viral fatigue/ post viral syndrome, which unfortunately a minority of people have always developed after any viral illness. It’s not at all peculiar to Covid.but it’s been “weaponised” in the campaign to get every single individual, young or old, injected with this novel experimental treatment for a virus that is dangerous for very few people and is becoming less deadly by the day.
The author seems to have missed the very troubling recent observations in the UK (and for that matter Israel) that 60% (although the minister then reduced that number to 40%) of newly hospitalized patients with Covid were double vaccinated. Whether that number is 40% or 60% it is still very very high and suggests that the vaccines are none too effective in the real world, and that we have been kidding ourselves all along in the rush for a miracle to rid us of Covid.
On another note it seems to me that both the mRNA and DNA vaccines are problematic. The technology is great in principle, but it seems to me that in contrast to a regular vaccine (whether a protein antigen, an inactivated virus or an attenuated virus) one doesn’t actually know the dosage of antigen or the variation from person to person in terms of how much spike protein is actually produced and for how long. Recall for the DNA-based vaccines, the DNA is relatively stable but has to be transcribed to RNA and then translated to spike protein. For the mRNA vaccine, the mRNA is relatively unstable but still has to be translated into spike protein. The efficiency of those processes could well vary by an order of magnitude between individuals, especially when comparing the young versus the old (and incidentally it is the young where side effects with the vaccines have been most prominent).
And finally, I’m not even sure how these vaccines are supposed to work in terms of preventing infection (as opposed to preventing severe disease). The vaccines generate IgG antibodies and presumably some T cell immunity. But the initial response, in addition to the innate immune system, presumably should come from IgA secreted in the mucus lining the respiratory tract. Yet, to my knowledge the vaccines don’t generate IgA. Perhaps somebody could enlighten me and correct me if I’m totally off base.
And lastly, one other comment: I find it astounding that many are saying that immunity by vaccination is superior to immunity acquired following infection. This seems awfully strange since the vaccine comprises only one component of the virus (i.e. the spike protein), while infection presents all components of the virus. Indeed, I would expect much broader T cell immunity (which targets protein fragments) from natural infection. Perhaps here too I’m misguided.
Dear Johan,
You are indeed ‘misguided’ because you try to come up with a scientific approach to the covid episode and that does not work because all decisions (ALL of them ) made in relating to covid were political and commercial only.
Obviously vaccination is infinitely superior to natural immunity in the financial sense. No money in the natural working of the immune system.
“The author seems to have missed the very troubling recent observations in the UK (and for that matter Israel) that 60% (although the minister then reduced that number to 40%) of newly hospitalized patients with Covid were double vaccinated. Whether that number is 40% or 60% it is still very very high and suggests that the vaccines are none too effective in the real world”
I would want to know more about the hospitalizations, but the information doesn’t seem readily available. I don’t recall the data you can download from the NHS or ONS sites having much granularity. What you need is the breakdown by age; what other conditions do these people have, if any; were they admitted because of COVID, with COVID but for another reason or was it contracted after admission; do they recover or not and, if they do, how long are they in hospital.
40 – 60 % is a high proportion, so we need to look at the actual numbers here also. Vaccines do not 100% prevent infection, far from it, so if people who are otherwise vulnerable become infected, despite vaccination, they are at a greater risk of serious illness compared to other vaccinated and healthy people. Their risks will still be lower than if they were unvaccinated.
Given that the most vulnerable have been vaccinated fully (and indeed most adults), you might, although it seems counterintuitive, expect those in hospital to include a high proportion of double vaccinated people. If the hospitalised group also comprises people most at risk anyway and the overall numbers are low, it is indicative that the vaccines work. This should be the case for both vaccinated and unvaccinated hospitalisations – high risk groups only. If you get a spike in admissions for unvaccinated people in low risk groups, then you start worrying!
You identify exactly what I want to know:- “What you need is the information by age, what other conditions did these people have, if they were admitted to hospital because of Covid but for another reason or they had it after admission, did they recover or not and how long were they in hospital.” It must be possible to get this information through National Statistics but, for some reason, we are never told through our free press..
If everyone was fully vaccinated, then 100% of those hospitalised with Covid will have had the vaccine.
These kinds of numbers demonstrate nothing without further context, but that will not prevent their intentional and accidental misuse.
“A twentysomething has about a one in 50,000 chance of a blood clot if they get the AZ vaccine, but a higher than one in 16,000 chance of being hospitalised with Covid in the next 16 weeks if they don’t. ”
I’ll take my chances on a respirator and anti-inflammatory’s over brain surgery to remove a blood clot thanks Tom
Vaccinate your kids Tom Chivers but not mine these vaccines are still on trial so not proven to be safe it’s a risk I won’t put on my kids but have happily joined in the vaccine program myself
Too many unknowns, too many variables, and too much sensitivity in assumptions for anything other than decisions made by guesswork here I’m afraid.
The vast majority of those most at risk have been double vaxd so we should move to the new normal.
Authorising Pfizer for young people is nothing short of malpractice. Pfizer’s own data show that the vaccine escapes from the inoculation site and accumulates in ovaries. No female of childbearing age or younger should be made to risk it.
It is simply grotesque that the UK medicines agency say that the Pfizer vaccine (in fact, ANY mRNA vaccine) is safe for children. They can’t know because the phase 3 trials have not been completed and won’t be for another 2 yrs. These vaccines are experimental and have only been given emergency licences. No-one knows whether they’re safe or not in the long term.
However, the inventor of mRNA vaccines – Dr Robert Malone – has grave concerns about their long term safety – particularly because of the build up of lipids in the ovaries and in bone marrow.
Did we give up on it? Or was the scare mongering by Merkel and Macron then followed up by the minor EU states overreacting to the actual risks and ceasing using it the real problem? There are risks inherent in most aspects of life…just most humans are very poor at assessing them in reality. The EU played politics with the AZ vaccine; that was the real issue.
Follow the money; good intentions will get you nowhere; selling a product at cost is providing ammunition to competitors: the vaccine is useless, it causes blood clots, it’s efficacy is minimal, it’s cheap (you get what you pay for) etc. All aided by MSM. Step in Pfizer; we don’t care where you get the money, but our product is calidad aleman and estatos unidos thanks to banks extending loans to complete the transaction.
That’s a good point.
People don’t value cheap products.
The ”science editor” should know that out of 50000 positive tests there may be 10 people who are actually ill with covid (have the illness) before he writes: What we do know, though, is that cases were already growing before Freedom Day
I thought it was established at Nuremberg that injecting an experimental vaccine into children who do not suffer from the disease against which it is supposed to protect them is unacceptable behaviour.
It’s not an experimental vaccine, as it has been greatly tested.
You clearly know nothing about the requirements for licensing medicines for humans. Trials must be undertaken in 3 phases to cover both short term and long term effects.
Phase 3 trials look for long term effects and typically are undertaken over 3 to 5 years.
The requirement for phase 3 trials was imposed because of the appalling consequences for pregnant women and their babies caused by a ‘safe’ prescription drug called ‘thalidomide’. Thalidomide was heavily promoted by Big Pharma and enthusiastically prescribed to pregnant women by 10s of thousands of doctors in the 1960s.
Universal vaccination in the midst of an epidemic is a recipe for the evolution of viral immune escape – utter folly.
I really wish policy makers would consult all the relevant disciplines before rolling policy out. The one-dimensional hyper-focus on epidemiology (how the virus spreads) is a recipe for disastrous decision making.
I wish people who’ve taken the vaccine would stop sermonizing others and quietly go about their business. I’m fully in my rights not to want to inject an experimental biological compound into my body for a virus the effects of which I believe to be greatly exaggerated. This, and the intense media messaging, is making me wonder if it wasn’t about getting everyone vaccinated all along.
Why not try prevention and treatment. Cheaper, and fewer side effect potential than an injection.
surely the UK is grown up enough to have a mature discussion of options at this stage?
Is UnHerd becoming sanctimoniously intellectual but “with a twist”?
Another dumb clickbait headline …
The first walk-in no-appointment mobile vaccination point I saw in the Brighton area appeared in late June and a lot of people were queuing for it. Mobile points do 1st vaccination only. There are plenty of fixed walk-in points advertised that do both 1st and 2nd. They provide a choice of vaccines: Moderna, Pfizer and Astra-Zeneca. So presumably some of the AZ vaccines are being used. Today I was handed a self-test kit in the street (Made in China). It’s quite complicated, but at least those who need to know can adjust their activities if they get a positive, without falling under the Trick-or-Treat (or whatever it’s called) juggernaut.
What amazes me it is the same people who march with banners saying « stop lockdown » who also are the most against vaccine.
Gaga
There is overlap, but they are not the same, as often alleged. Many vaccinated people marched.
I always believed that the lockdown was global madness and that intervention should only be limited to helping the vulnerable while parallel efforts are made to pull out all stops to find a vaccine. This is only a minor pandemic and the lockdown a worrying precedent where humanity appears to be taking the step that they can no longer live within nature and must instead hide from it seeking isolation, and wearing masks. A dangerous water shed towards the dystopian type futures depicted in books and film. The writer seems to acknowledge the minor nature of the pandemic but rather than attacking as I believe we need such experts to do appears rather to entertain.
Why would that amaze you? I would have thought it logical.
Oh, I see: you think lockdowns stop viruses…and you think these jabs stop viruses.
I have been anti lockdown from the start but I have never been anti vax though I am dubious about rolling out a vaccine still in phase three trials to any but the old and most vulnerable. I have had both jabs, largely in the hope of helping achieve herd immunity without the government feeling the need to pressure younger cohorts into having it.
https://www.questioneverything.io/live/