Regular readers probably remember this article where I questioned the South Africa Discovery data showing the vaccine is 33% effective against omicron and 70% effective against hospitalizations.
All of those headlines made me nervous because they'd just started jabbing teens, a little discussed fact. These figures are not reassuring at all. Unless we do autopsies of people that died, we'll never know what the excess deaths were from and I have no faith in the Covid-19 categorizations because they are easily manipulated to suit a specific narrative.
Yep. I've seen a few reports of 70%ish of COVID hospitalizations and deaths were with, not from, COVID lately because they want to switch the narrative now that the vaccine is failing. The problem is....that 70% number was probably always true... So why are we seeing excess deaths in young people everywhere?
1, and unrelated, where do you live you have to test negative to pay rent? That's a crazy one I haven't heard, and wow. 2. Is there ever a way to line up behaviors with cov+ cases? 3. Omicron seems like many other, existing coronavirus, less and less like a C19 variant. Could this have been some minor (flu) version of those that existed, but it happens to have similar enough spike profile to confuse all our testing? It would explain a higher than before number of supposed reinfection cases many who claimed to have had cocid before say they got again. To me, it is weird, and I'm just a reader, not doing any analysis on my own. But at 55yo and covid recovered (got pneumonia), never jabbed, I really want answers that no one seems to keep data for. Omicron (as others have said), doesn't seem to have "evolved" from any other strain of C19, and a lab leak is still a possibility, but it is really odd.
Well, I mainly mean testing to be able to work. Leaving my current job would be a huge pay cut and most places in Canada require testing at a minimum. I would not leave unless they mandate the vaxx as I have mouths to feed.
For (2), in my opinion the short answer is no. Not that we can easily observe anyways. We can be sure that the vaccinated and unvaccinated have different behavior profiles, but where those differences are and how they translate into cases would probably vary by age, region, etc. We are essentially shooting in the dark.
(3) yes, this is a real possibility, and one of the reasons we should be skeptical when they say omicron is nature's vaccine. I believe even the CDC admitted (without explicitly admitting) testing has been picking up the seasonal flu and colds this entire time. That said, reinfection still appears to be rare (a recent survey out of Canada said 0.6% of cases were reinfections... On the low end, about 5% of people have tested positive for the virus... So that's pretty good. The thing about reinfections we need better data on is... Were the people getting reinfected infected the first time around or asymptomatic?
I promise they are keeping data on all of this, but they are not giving it to anyone that can do anything useful with it. Easier to keep it in-house so to speak because the data might not give the answers they want.
Ah, yeah, I'm waiting on the US fed workers and contractors mandate, or I'll lose my job (no weekly testing option anymore, currently on hold). I've lost jobs before, this one for something so arbitrary and frankly evil has caused me friends, family and sanity. The BEST thing so far is the response to the government in the US OSHA mandate ETS that puts out a ton of the data we substack readers see, into the public domain. The government has not gotten CDC or NIH data because there isn't anything to help their case. If SCOTUS kills this mandate, it upholds this data. Praying that happens.
And the data might point to how to end the pandemic, but it will be disclosed only after 100% of people are jabbed.
They are so stupid, they think the virus is working on their timeline and biophysics is waiting for vaccine uptake? They will really pay a huge price for backstabbing the public. Just have a look at the supplementary materials and it's clear what the vaccine did in SA.
Gauteng province population from 2021 SA mid-year review: .263 * 60.1
15.8063 mill
4,940,213 in the province with first dose as of January 4
31.25% of Gauteng vaccinated
68.75% of Gauteng not vaccinated
RV = 11181/4940213 = 0.002263262737862
RU = 7889/(15806300-4940213) = 0.000726020323599
(RU-RV)/RU = -2.11735452065706
=-212%
Same way for hospitalizations. The assumption of having the same vaccination rate on Jan 4 as both previous periods, ie., from September 1 to October 31 and November 15 to December 7, is incorrect and makes it look much better for the vaccinated in both periods. I am also assuming that the Discovery insurance network services the vaccinated and unvaccinated proportionally to the population of Gauteng province. We cannot adjust for ages, etc because that information is not disaggregated in the data we have... but age adjustments would not make an enormous change in either case.
"The hospitalizations are in younger people"
"They are mild"
"The admissions are co-incidental"
All of those headlines made me nervous because they'd just started jabbing teens, a little discussed fact. These figures are not reassuring at all. Unless we do autopsies of people that died, we'll never know what the excess deaths were from and I have no faith in the Covid-19 categorizations because they are easily manipulated to suit a specific narrative.
Yep. I've seen a few reports of 70%ish of COVID hospitalizations and deaths were with, not from, COVID lately because they want to switch the narrative now that the vaccine is failing. The problem is....that 70% number was probably always true... So why are we seeing excess deaths in young people everywhere?
1, and unrelated, where do you live you have to test negative to pay rent? That's a crazy one I haven't heard, and wow. 2. Is there ever a way to line up behaviors with cov+ cases? 3. Omicron seems like many other, existing coronavirus, less and less like a C19 variant. Could this have been some minor (flu) version of those that existed, but it happens to have similar enough spike profile to confuse all our testing? It would explain a higher than before number of supposed reinfection cases many who claimed to have had cocid before say they got again. To me, it is weird, and I'm just a reader, not doing any analysis on my own. But at 55yo and covid recovered (got pneumonia), never jabbed, I really want answers that no one seems to keep data for. Omicron (as others have said), doesn't seem to have "evolved" from any other strain of C19, and a lab leak is still a possibility, but it is really odd.
Well, I mainly mean testing to be able to work. Leaving my current job would be a huge pay cut and most places in Canada require testing at a minimum. I would not leave unless they mandate the vaxx as I have mouths to feed.
For (2), in my opinion the short answer is no. Not that we can easily observe anyways. We can be sure that the vaccinated and unvaccinated have different behavior profiles, but where those differences are and how they translate into cases would probably vary by age, region, etc. We are essentially shooting in the dark.
(3) yes, this is a real possibility, and one of the reasons we should be skeptical when they say omicron is nature's vaccine. I believe even the CDC admitted (without explicitly admitting) testing has been picking up the seasonal flu and colds this entire time. That said, reinfection still appears to be rare (a recent survey out of Canada said 0.6% of cases were reinfections... On the low end, about 5% of people have tested positive for the virus... So that's pretty good. The thing about reinfections we need better data on is... Were the people getting reinfected infected the first time around or asymptomatic?
I promise they are keeping data on all of this, but they are not giving it to anyone that can do anything useful with it. Easier to keep it in-house so to speak because the data might not give the answers they want.
Ah, yeah, I'm waiting on the US fed workers and contractors mandate, or I'll lose my job (no weekly testing option anymore, currently on hold). I've lost jobs before, this one for something so arbitrary and frankly evil has caused me friends, family and sanity. The BEST thing so far is the response to the government in the US OSHA mandate ETS that puts out a ton of the data we substack readers see, into the public domain. The government has not gotten CDC or NIH data because there isn't anything to help their case. If SCOTUS kills this mandate, it upholds this data. Praying that happens.
I enjoy your work, thanks!
And the data might point to how to end the pandemic, but it will be disclosed only after 100% of people are jabbed.
They are so stupid, they think the virus is working on their timeline and biophysics is waiting for vaccine uptake? They will really pay a huge price for backstabbing the public. Just have a look at the supplementary materials and it's clear what the vaccine did in SA.
It's the shell game, hiding the goodies. They know the true numbers
How are you calculating VE here?
Gauteng province population from 2021 SA mid-year review: .263 * 60.1
15.8063 mill
4,940,213 in the province with first dose as of January 4
31.25% of Gauteng vaccinated
68.75% of Gauteng not vaccinated
RV = 11181/4940213 = 0.002263262737862
RU = 7889/(15806300-4940213) = 0.000726020323599
(RU-RV)/RU = -2.11735452065706
=-212%
Same way for hospitalizations. The assumption of having the same vaccination rate on Jan 4 as both previous periods, ie., from September 1 to October 31 and November 15 to December 7, is incorrect and makes it look much better for the vaccinated in both periods. I am also assuming that the Discovery insurance network services the vaccinated and unvaccinated proportionally to the population of Gauteng province. We cannot adjust for ages, etc because that information is not disaggregated in the data we have... but age adjustments would not make an enormous change in either case.
Hope that helps