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A dingo's avatar

Good analysis. It's worth also looking at the excess mortality stats for the UK. They are showing very high excess deaths for this time of year. Interestingly not just COVID either.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

I find it very off-putting that the officials are not only not investigating excess deaths, they are not even investigating post vaccine deaths, which should be easy to identify in the UK.

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Covid Curious's avatar

The authorities have a complete lack of curiosity. I have two MD friends who also have a complete lack of curiosity. They are both highly educated, generally critical thinking, but for whatever reason have stopped thinking on Covid.

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The BarefootHealer's avatar

I'm not surprised by that at all. There's been almost 2 years of continuing extreme stress state for almost everyone, to the point where most have since "normalised" their lives to live with the continued stress. Lockdown, governmental fear campaigns, masking, tracking, etc. All combine to lower the immune system overall. From a wholistic perspective, we have populations that are receiving an experimental immune modification, when they are already trying to immunologically modulate to a new "normal" environment. Basically, the immune systems were compromised from the stress response, combined with the insult of the vaccines themselves, equals more peeps dying overall, from diseases they perhaps may have overcome if their stress/immune response was normal. In my humble opinion, to under value the effect of the psychoneurobiologic aspect of whole health is to half ass wellness 😉🤣😂😁

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Denis V's avatar

Very interesting and disturbing observation. Just one remark: the population of the UK is smaller than that of the US by a factor of five. This doesn't change your conclusion, however, and the situation in the UK may indeed portray the near-future in the US.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

I also think so, that the US is behind the UK by a couple of months.

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Ed K's avatar

I was a few days ahead of you on this; I run the PHE numbers as soon as they are published.

What I can't understand is why the case efficacy is collapsing like this. Compare that to the Connecticut and Massachusetts numbers you referenced in an earlier post, my comment on that post with the Tennessee data, the data I'm analyzing from the raw numbers put out by my large employer - and all show a current case efficacy of roughly 70%. Yet the PHE data has huge negative efficacy in every age cohort, age 30 and above?

Why?

Is it because of the heavy reliance on the Astra-Zeneca vaccine in the UK? Is it a case of Simpson's Paradox with the US data since we only have a composite efficacy and don't have the data broken down by age group? Something else entirely?

Any ideas?

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Igor Chudov's avatar

Thank you for a thoughtful comment. I do not know for sure why such a dramatic development with extremely negative efficacy. By the way, since deaths lag cases by 3 weeks on average, we will see a dramatic collapse in "death efficacy" in the next PHE report.

Some things that could help explain this: the unvaccinated cohort contains previous covid survivors who are immune. The vaccinated also contain previous covid survivors, but perhaps fewer of them. I have no idea how they are distributed. But having more immunity in the unvaxxed group may explain a part of the story.

I would be extremely skeptical of the US data coming from any official source. US authorities only goals, at this point are 1) lie about the current situation to convince people that vaccines work so that 2) as many people get vaccinated as possible, before they realize they were scammed.

The UK, for some odd institutional reason, has a bureaucratic resource (PHE) that somehow is able to publish honest information.

It is possible that in the US the situation is somewhat better, but the same in principle.

Also, the UK was vaccinated relatively early and en masse.

Of course, it is possible that the virus variants in the UK have gotten ahead of us.

All Covid vaccines work by making our bodies produce toxic spike protein, some via mRNA and some via viral vector (J&J, AstraZeneca). They may wane at different speeds but they all do not produce lasting immunity.

The mRNA vaccines may also be permanently damaging immune systems. This would explain the last part of my article about uk's "terrible colds among vaccinated".

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Stoichastic's avatar

Terrible colds could also be a result of immunity debt. RSV hit Japan in July. Hitting the US too.

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Ed K's avatar

The theory about timing of vaccinations doesn't hold up, since the USA vaccinated sooner than the UK. The UK fully vaccinated rate finally surpassed that of the USA in early June.

The unvaxed being more likely to have convalescent immunity might be possible, but just guessing based upon the percentage of people vaccinated, I would imagine many if the recovered cases are also in the vaccinated category. Of course, that would be helping the efficacy numbers. I can only imagine how bad they would be without natural immunity helping the numbers.

That leaves cooked books. I can see that at the federal level, but not across all 50 states. Tennessee is as right wing as a state can get. I don't think they would be so tiring the numbers in favor of vaccines.

I remain puzzled. I guess I'll just continue watching numbers hoping to find a clue.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

It is also possible that the US and UK had different vaccine mix. Also I replied to your own reply below about El Gato's post.

But whatever it is, IT IS COMING HERE

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Ed K's avatar

Maybe the latest from El Gato Malo has a hint. The AY.4 variant is THE variant in the UK, and a much less prevalent variant in Connecticut (and maybe by extension the entire USA?)

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Igor Chudov's avatar

Yeah, I think that El Gato nailed it. This is our future!

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VE's avatar

US numbers could be skewed by testing. I live in Illinois; quite a few of employers require weekly testing for unvaccinated only. Same with high schools, a large percentage of students over 12 yrs old are vaccinated in Chicago and northern suburbs, and only unvaccinated kids are subject to weekly testing. These tests have a low PPV (positive predictive value, P(sick | positive test) ), the one in schools around me is about 50%.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

This is absolutely correct and I am also in Ilinois.

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VE's avatar

So to give a bit more color... one of the school tests has a false positive rate of 1% and false negative of 3%. Assume 1% of population is sick at any given time. That number is a bit larger than the seasonal flu rate. There is an FDA calculator for PPV, but the number is not hard to compute by hand. You'll arrive at 50% probability that a person is not sick after a positive test. That didn't prevent a local doctor from going to the parent's group on facebook and claiming that the test had very little chance of false positives. Assuming vaccinated are not tested, the numbers for unvaccinated will be inflated.

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Oct 18, 2021
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Igor Chudov's avatar

It does add a vague statement, but it does not mean that I cannot look at the numbers -- they are clear as a day.

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Oct 18, 2021
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Igor Chudov's avatar

And thank you for the encouragement, spread the word. If we change one person's mind today, it is a good day.

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Ed K's avatar

It is not really analysis. They publish data that says for almost every age group, vaccinated people are catching COVID at rates far exceeding that of the unvaccinated.

Asking, "Why is that happening?" is not engaging in analysis.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

And if they tell me "do not look here" I still can look!

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JJ's avatar

Nothing to see here 😂

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Annemarie's avatar

Igor, can you help with providing further details please? I shared your article with my community and someone has come back with the following comment:

"I am merely comenting on the erroneous/fraudulent use of statistics that Igor is employing to bolster his case. Specifically he defines Efficacy as 1 - vaxxed case rate/ unvaxxed case rate. The correct formula would be Efficacy = vaxxed case rate times percentage of people vaxxed / unvaxxed case rate times percentage of people unvaxxed. If you then measure efficacy using the correct formula you will find that, for weeks 32-35, about 1.5 % of vaxxed people tested were diagnosed with Covid while the percentage for unvaxxed people was about 3.6% For week 41 (the second url provided by Igor is invalid, but you can easily access more recent cases) the percentages are 1.7% and 4.2% respectively - slightly higher, maybe because of the greater prevalence of the delta strain, but still more than double for the unvaxxed than the vaxxed.

Is there a standard way to calculate efficacy? We are based in Australia so I wonder if there is a difference between UK and AU? Anyway, any further information would be helpful. Thanks Igor!

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Igor Chudov's avatar

Annemarie, good question. I just cut and pasted both URL's into my browser, and they work.

Let me explain the best I can. I believe that vaccine efficacy is defined the same way everywhere. It is "1- (relative risk ratio)", or "1 - risk among vaccinated group/Risk among unvaccinated group".

https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson3/section6.html

https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/vaccine-efficacy-effectiveness-and-protection

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7906690/

In this case, the "risk" is "disease occurrence" or "case rate".

If you follow your reader's suggestion and multiply "case rate" by "percentage of persons in group", you would be comparing total numbers of cases in groups per week, disregarding that one group is larger than another.

Since PHE provides breakdown for different age groups, we can look at effectiveness in separate age groups, which is what I was doing.

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Denis V's avatar

The case rates are per 100000 people so they don't need to be scaled by the percentage in each group (vaxxed & unvaxxed).

What I still don't figure out is how they compute these rates in their tables. The case rate per 100K in each age group R = (the total number of cases in each age group, N)/(the population in each age group, P) * 100000. I don't know P in each group, but it can be calculated using the numbers they provide in tables: P = (N/R) * 100000, and P must be the same for both vaxxed and unvaxxed cases. However, using N from column 4 (not vaccinated) and column 7 (second dose >=14 days before specimen date) and R from columns 8 and 9 I obtain different P... Any idea how they derive the rates in columns 8 and 9?

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Ed K's avatar

The population is not the number of people in the age group. That would be the same number. You are calculating (correctly) the number of vaccinated people and the number of unvaccinated people in each age group. Those will NOT me the same number. Far more people are vaccinated than not.

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Denis V's avatar

Right, got it! Thanks for the explanation.

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Ed K's avatar

When the latest Vaccine Surveillance Report came out a few days ago, I looked at the efficacy numbers. They all got worse AGAIN.. Every week I think, "Maybe this is the week things bottom out," and every week I am wrong.

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John's avatar

According to a couple things I've read, the US will not follow the UK pattern because we have enough percentage who have forgone vaccination and have much better immunity through covid recovery. You can thank us later. https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/the-keys-to-unlock-the-golden-gate-of-herd-immunity-towards-sars-cov-2

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Igor Chudov's avatar

John, in the US there is plenty of vaccinated and vulnerable people who never had covid, somehow I feel there is enough of them vs "us" and our count is not enough to herd immunity. Officially under 50 million had covid. Even if it is 100 million, it is under 1/3 of the population.

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Ed K's avatar

Of course, after they bully enough people with convalescent immunity onto getting vaccinated, the vaccine effectiveness will suddenly start looking better.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

It is possible that vaccine UNSETS natural immunity and, when antibodies wane, the vaxxed are left with nothing at all and a ruined immune system.

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John's avatar

I fear that's true - two of my children got vaxed after recovering - in their 20's and 30's and on their own - didn't think to ask Dad. Other 2 got vaxed also - trying to convince them all they should not get boosters, and study how to repair the damage.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

Yeah, I wish I had some great suggestion, and I do not. They are trapped inthe endless "booster" and "variant shot" and "variand booster shot" cycle now.

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John's avatar

yes - must be why they're pushing for 98% (besides the $ and power factors). Here's another article on US herd immunity. https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/freedom-and-ivermectin-prevail/article_05d8061e-3035-11ec-bfe8-2b94d8993caf.html

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Igor Chudov's avatar

I cannot think of ANY wholesome reason why they are pushing covid survivors, kids and babies and young people to get vaccinated. The only reasons I can consider are criminal reasons.

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John's avatar

Agreed - the fact that they want us to be vaccinated after surviving covid is the simplest way to prove that their policies are not motivated by our welfare - that we live under a "pharmocracy" - rule by drug cartel lobbyists. International corporations go along because their small business competition is being crushed. God willing, they will not get away with it.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

I very much hope that this will be investigated as a "crime against humanity", which it is. In crimes against humanity, following local laws is not a defense.

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BaronD's avatar

It proves that this has nothing to do with health. It has nothing to do with a virus.

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Moonspinner's avatar

That's exactly what (retired Chief Scientist at Pfizer) Dr Mike Yeadon said several times in interviews.

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Greg's avatar

It would be interesting to compare all cause mortality in the vaxxed vs unvaxxed groups. Then the rapidly diminishing protection from covid death afforded by vaccines can be shown to be more than offset by deaths from other causes, exacerbated by weakened immune response. When / if vaccine protection from death goes to zero or lower, I think we may see a perfect storm this winter in the UK and other Northern European countries, as other viruses like boring old flu get their teeth into a large target group with crushed immunity.

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JC's avatar

First UK jabs were in early December, mainly to doctors and nurses.

The jabbed in the UK have gone from hiding in their basements to mixing with one another as if the 'plague' never happened. Many still wear masks in shops voluntarily or, as in the case of Scotland and Wales, are forced to. They act fearful in a shop but them practice no social distancing or any of the other guff once they step back outside. The jabbed act as if they are invulnerable.

PHE has been rebranded as the Health Security Agency. Nothing Orwellian in that.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

Looks like people will want to be people and have fun. Nothing unusual about that. The unvaccniated probably behave just the same, with much better results than the vaccinated.

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Greg's avatar

looks like the promised "superhuman immunity" is not going to be forthcoming. They'll just have to settle for the non-existent variety? https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/super-immunity-double-jabbed-who-24938837

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Kay McDonald's avatar

it is very dangerous how statistics can be manipulated. It’s important to provide context. different statistic that will likely become more important as we get more cases and have a highly vaccinated population.

Example: when over 50% of the entire population is double dosed, The vaccinated population is greater than the unvaccinated. Often with minorities (unvaccinated) they over represent in statistics.

A simple scenario

100 people 80% vaccinated - 80 vax, 20 not.

the virus is bad and 30 people get infected - 66% (20) of them are vaccinated and just 33% (10) are unvaccinated

Now.. this looks bad, it seems like the vaccine just doesnt work.

But look at the populations - those 10 unvaccinated are 50% of their population but just 25% of the vaccinated.

If the virus was going to infect at the rate it did for the unvaccinated, there would have been 50 cases (or more as vaccinated people have the power to break chains)

At some point, a higher percentage of cases will be among the vaccinated. but the thing with vaccines is how many cases its able to prevent. It is impossible to measure this, we can only report on infection rate changes

NZ statisitcs for rate (we do not have a large dataset yet)

57% of population is vaccinated

43% is not (includes in eligible)

as of 18 october, 2005 cases meant there was

4.62 cases for ever 100,000 of the vaccinated population

88.2 cases for every 100,0000 of the unvaccinated population

0.14 of every 100,000 hospitilisasions for vaccinated pop

8.22 of every 100,000 hospitilisations for unvaccinated

In the UK the DEATH rate per 100,000 (reasonably vaccinated, no restrictions, 50,000 cases per day)

1.9 for vaccinated

8.4 for unvaccinated

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Igor Chudov's avatar

Hello Kay. Thank you for sharing your opinion. Please read my article closely. It compares CASE RATES (number of sick, in a given category, per 100,000 persons). The case rate for vaccinated group 40-49, for example, is 2.25 times GREATER than the case rate for UNvaccinated group 40-49.

So for these vaccinated 40-49 year olds, the vaccine makes them catch virus 2.25 times more often.

This is what the PHE data is saying.

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Covid Curious's avatar

Thanks Igor. From mid-June to Sept i downloaded / extracted / imported the periodic UK Technical Report to perform time series analysis.

My analysis mirrors your own, I initially conducted the analysis to share with family & friends. I am grateful you've made the time to post your findings. I know it takes time to (1) conduct the analysis and (2) to publish it.

In addition to what you've shared, I noticed that there was a substantially higher risk (rate) to infection between shots 1 and 2. Have you considered consolidating the 1 and 2 jabs as a single group vs. unvaccinated? My analysis is over a month old, and at the time, there was virtually no difference in the rate of death in these two groups; however, as your article suggests, the rate of deaths among the vaccinated will likely increase.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

Thank you. I did not write about it but I agree with you that it is especially vulnerable period. And it should not "not count" in the general stats for vaccinated people. because everyone who is vaccinated goes through this period.

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BaronD's avatar

Huh? It sure as hell shouldn't count in the *un*-vaccinated group if/when you/we think that the vaax *causes* that spike in the first 2 weeks after dose 1!

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Robert Clark's avatar

Thanks for that. Since we know efficacy drops by time since vaxxed is it possible to get those numbers by time since vaxxed? That is, if we look at cases/hospitalizations/deaths specifically after 35 weeks since vaxxed, the numbers should be even worse, with the numbers worsening for longer times since vaxxed. Indeed the claimed usefulness of the vax against hospitalization and death might evaporate for these long times since being vaccinated.

Robert Clark

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Oct 17, 2021
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Igor Chudov's avatar

My guess would be as good as yours. First of all, I am thinking that it is the vaccinated that are MORE careful because of who they are as persons. At least based on twitter or reddit posts showing proud masked faces.

It could be a combination of many things, such as declining antibodies, virus mutating, natural immunity in the unvaccinated, etc. Clearly now, being one of those statistical "unvaccinated" seems like not such a bad idea.

Can a vaccinated person get "un-vaccinated"? haha

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Le Chat Noir's avatar

It could be original antigenic sin in the vaccinated.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

I would love to know more about it, can you explain? I just read the definition of OAS, but I do not see how it applies, so can you clarify?? Thanks

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HardeeHo's avatar

See https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mSphere.00056-21 as a starter but there are many more. What can't be discounted is some fraction of vaccinated already had been infected. The vaccines were administered without bothering to screen for previous infections. If so the vaccine 'efficiency' is hidden by the immunity from infection.

The next question really is related to boosters. If OAS has arrived, the boosters may be harmful in some. The effort to mass vaccinate now seems ill advised and those vaccinated are now at some risk. Hopefully, having a breakthrough infection could be a good thing, but if OAS is at work, perhaps not. An awful experiment is now in progress.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

Yep, good points and thanks for the link, I will read it later today.

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A dingo's avatar

It is possible the vaccines destroy innate/natural immunity. So immune people (who had natural immunity) become vulnerable post vaxx. That would also explain growing case rates despite growing vaxx population.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

By the way, regarding your statement "It is possible the vaccines destroy innate/natural immunity." Do you have any interesting links that I can review. I also strongly suspect the same, but would like to know more. Thanks

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Darby Shaw's avatar

Great analysis, Igor. Thank you! I am watching the U.K. data closely, and, like you, lamenting the fact that the CDC either does not track or is hiding our own relevant data in the U.S. I seriously doubt we are doing any better with these vaccines or the virus than the U.K. It is actually more likely that we are doing far worse, as our population overall is more unhealthy.

Geert Vanden Bossche (Belgium virologist) has talked extensively about how these vaccines suppress the body's innate immune system. Here is one interview that he did on the subject, well worth listening to:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=geert+vandenbossche&docid=607989355784469836&mid=BD497C59F7F23334E5BCBD497C59F7F23334E5BC&view=detail&FORM=VIRE

And here is his website:

https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/

He's not as good at some of the other scientists in putting things into laymen's terms. So sometimes I find myself needing to listen to or re-read his explanations several times. But everything he has been warning about since last March is now coming to fruition. It is well past time for health authorities to start listening to him.

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Igor Chudov's avatar

Thanks. I will read it. Very interesting. Whether vaccines suppress immune system is a question that interests me.

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Moonspinner's avatar

“There is the potential for ADE, but the bigger problem is probably Th2 immunopathology,” says Ralph Baric, an epidemiologist and expert in coronaviruses—named for the crown-shaped spike they use to enter human cells—at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In previous studies of SARS, aged mice were found to have particularly high risks of life-threatening Th2 immunopathology in which a faulty T cell response triggers allergic inflammation, and poorly functional antibodies that form immune complexes, activating the complement system and potentially damaging the airways.”.

Baric expresses his concern about what that might mean for use of a COVID-19 vaccine in elderly people. “Of course, the elderly are our most vulnerable population,” he adds.

https://theexpose.uk/2021/10/23/government-reports-suggest-fully-vaccinated-develop-ade-by-the-end-of-the-year/

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Igor Chudov's avatar

Exactly and this is why, likely, "death protection efficacy" will drop below zero.

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el bicho palo's avatar

thanks for that username. That's great

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