Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Age is a factor. The UK only vaccinates people 12 and older. The 11 and younger population is all unvaccinated, and despite a rise in cases plus hospitalizations, fortunately, COVID doesn't kill too many kids under 11. This means, in the unvaccinated population, there is a large chunk of people who are not vaccinated, and highly unlikely to die from COVID.

Another issue is which vaccine was used. A good chunk of the UK received the AZ vaccine, which isn't as effective as others, and didn't do as well against Delta.

If you look at UK deaths by vaccination status and by age, it tells a better story. From the article:

As will be pointed out in part 2 of this 3-part blog series, these UK data have major problems for the 10-59yr old age group, since this age group is too large, with the older end of this age interval having people with much higher vaccination rates and much higher risks of death than those at the younger end. This confounding leads to a Simpson's paradox artifact in which the vaccinated COVID-19 death rates will be inflated relative to the unvaccinated COVID-19 death rate. They really should have split out the 10-59yr into finer age groups with more homogeneous vaccination rates and death risks -- too bad they didn't.

Conclusions:

In this blog post, I have plotted and interpreted COVID-19 death rates over time split out by vaccination status for the various age groups. The carefully chosen plotting techniques enable parsing out some of the confounding effects of time, age, vaccination rate, infection rate, and variant and get a fair assessment of how the UK vaccination program is affecting COVID-19 deaths. In all age groups, we clearly see the vaccinated groups having lower risk of COVID-19 death, and this is especially evidence during the winter Alpha surge and summer Delta surges. The vaccinated individuals appear to be MUCH less likely to die in a COVID-19 surge, with fully vaccinated individuals in week 35 having 5x, 10x, 10x, and 2x lower all cause death rates in the than respective age cohorts than unvaccinated individuals. This is consistent with the vaccines protecting strongly against death even after some waning of circulating antibodies as has been noted at 5-6m post-vaccination.

This is particularly impressive given that we know 1/2 of the UK population has received AstraZeneca vaccines, that supposedly are less efficacious than the mRNA vaccines. It is possible they are similarly effective in preventing death even if they are slightly less effective in protecting vs. infection.​

 

The current vaccine is for a variant that is long gone. We are not discussing vaccinating the public for Covid with that drug. Yet you want people to justninfec themselves with a drug and force their body into action for a spike protein that does them no good?

 

And we even have the NYT's saying what a few fear mongers on her won't admit.

 

This has been true with Omicron. Studies have shown NI and vaccine equally effective at preventing serious illness.

There is still a good reason for those previously infected to get the vaccine if they have not already done so. The vaccine will act as a booster and give a person "super immunity." Even lesser chance at infection and spreading the virus to others.

 

LOL. Thanks for the laughs.

 

Not sure where you got your Data. Assuming it is correct here are the problems I see

You are measuring covid cases as a percent of total population groups. I don't know if you can assume the risk of each group being exposed to covid is evenly distributed. Maybe, maybe not.

The older were more likely to get vaccinated first. Even vaccinated older people are more likely to suffer consequences from covid than younger people. By now most of the unvaccinated are kids. Comparing unvaccinated kids to vaccinated older adults is a pointless comparison. Hell you've said the same thing a gazillion times. You are comparing apples and oranges.

I'm not sure what they are doing with single dose recipients. UKs approach was different they had a much greater delay between 1st and 2nd shot. If they are included in one group or the other there would be a distortion.

As time goes on, people get infected, and build natural immunity. So the differential between vaxxed and unvaxxed decreases as natural immunity builds. Eventually once everybody has been infected there may not be much difference.

 

I've been saying for months the question, which is better, NI vs variant isn't as important as figuring out why different studies have different results. What are the variables, including variant, that causes NI to do better in some instances, and vaccine in others. With Omicron, both seem equally effective according to all data to date.

 

Revisionist history is your specialty I see.

 

Reading comprehension certainly isn't your specialty. I follow the data. And unlike others, I don't disparage or ignore data that doesn't agree with my opinion.

 

The data was provided by @mutz87

Deaths by vaccination status, England - Office for National Statistics

England for some reason stopped providing this information. I have no idea why. You can download the spreadsheet and Table 4 provides all the numbers I did. I compared vaccinated to vaccinated and unvaccinated to unvaccinated. I used google vaccination rate for UK and took the number it had at the end of each month (meaning the vaccination rate was actually less as a whole) and rounded to the thousands.

The vaccine is not working for the new variant. I really do not understand why some are refusing to even question it let alone acknowledge it. It is like they do not think a vaccinated person will get monoclonal antibodies. When we know they do at high numbers. The thing has mutated. We figured out how to inject people with a technology deemed safe for EUA in less than a year for the alpha variant. And they are not able to use that same technology to and quickly replicate the new variants or something closer?

Look. Take the boosters if you want. Omicron is even showing natural immunity to be weak. Fortunately it is less severe.

But we need new generation drugs. Hanging your hat on the original vaccine is just political at this point.

 

Since the Delta is still widely evident, your advice is dangerously incorrect, like it always has been.

 

Yeah. Since delta hit the UK the vaccinated per 100K deaths are higher in the vaccinated group and growing. That alone should be concerning…

 

You replied but don't even acknowledge what I said. Just ignored.

Essentially what you analysis proved is unvaccinated kids are less likely to die than older vaccinated adults. Tell me how that is useful?

 

Booster up my friend.

The data is clear. The drugs are not slowing the spread and the death rate among the vaccinated is higher than among the unvaccinated.

Where your comments provide some light is that the unvaccinated are likely a healthier population. But we don’t know that for sure.

 

Most of the unvaccinated are kids. Most of the vaccinated that die are older. Is there any doubt in your mind about that?

So you are saying since older vaccinated adults die at a higher rate than unvaccinated kids, the vaccine doesn't work...right?

 

Nope. That does not change the reality this vaccine designed for the alpha spike protein has run its course.

We don’t use the same flu vaccine every year for a reason. While different diseases. It is time to work toward a drug that has a better chance at working for the future variants.

 

In the link, why didn't you look at age standardized deaths vaccinated vs unvaccinated, especially tab 8? In all those cases the vaccinated had much lower death rates than unvaccinated. The same was true in every month, even October.

They did the work for you, and gave you the correct data to look at, but instead you recreated it in a statistically illogical way. I'll give you a break that maybe you didn't have college level math (or frankly high school level math), and work as a fashion designer or something like that.

 

again, fwiw, and someone out there will say bs, current death rate , from worldometer, is 1.263%

 

OK?

 

Because I am concerned with how the vaccine is working. And it clearly is not working as well among the vaccinated group as time goes on. In fact the numbers get worse. A big reason why we need to stop focusing on these drugs. We need new generation drugs…