Why most people who now die with Covid in England have been vaccinated

[Northerner]

AMailOnline headline on 13 June read: “Study shows 29% of the 42 people who have died after catching the new strain had BOTH vaccinations.” In Public Health England’s technical briefing on 25 June, that figure had risen to 43% (50 of 117), with the majority (60%) having received at least one dose.

It could sound worrying that the majority of people dying in England with the now-dominant Delta (B.1.617.2) variant have been vaccinated. Does this mean the vaccines are ineffective? Far from it, it’s what we would expect from an effective but imperfect vaccine, a risk profile that varies hugely by age and the way the vaccines have been rolled out.

Consider the hypothetical world where absolutely everyone had received a less than perfect vaccine. Although the death rate would be low, everyone who died would have been fully vaccinated.

Why most people who now die with Covid in England have had a vaccination | David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters

Don’t think of this as a bad sign, it’s exactly what’s expected from an effective but imperfect jab

www.theguardian.com

 

[mikeyB]

Only the Mail Online could worry about 29% of 42 people, and as the full Observer article explains, it's nothing more than expected with these vaccines. It's the same age group as died most in the time before vaccines, so as proportion of that age group who have been vaccinated, it's a very small number, and entirely consistent with a less than perfect vaccine. When the vaccinated younger people pick up the virus the very worst that will happen is a mild illness.

Such clear thinking won't trouble the anti-vaxxers, though.

 

[pm133]

I think even those with an unscientific mind (like myself as @mikeyB often tells me) can see the flaw in the guardian's conclusion. It needs to be taken a stage further to see anything meaningful or useful.

So, there are approx 25,000,000 people in Engand over the age of 50 of which around 90% have been vaccinated (22,500,000). According to pg 15 of the PHE report, 9571 have been hospitalised from 1 Feb to 21 June 2021 for the delta variant covid19.

of those 9571 hospitalised: 7411 were vaccinated and 2160 were not vaccinated

Virtually everyone over 50 years of age will have been doubly vaccinated so it's hardly surprising to see that most of the hospitalisations and deaths in that age group are those who have had 2 doses.

What should interest you in that first attachment is the comparison in numbers with those under 50 who largely have NOT had 2 doses. That disparity really needs an explanation if the "vaccines work" argument doesn't float your boat.

As for deaths, you wouldn't expect to find many deaths from people aged under 50 with no underlying health conditions and that is exactly what your second attachment shows.

Vaccines are clearly the way out of this and it's great to see governments across the UK finally accepting that the tide has now turned and, barring a disaster, we're reaching the endgame with covid. It's taken them FAR too long to acknowledge this but it looks like we now have a Health Secretary prepared to make that call on 19th July.

 

[pm133]

I really hope so. It's just dragging on and on. On the news at lunchtime, they are talking of daily testing of all school kids when the new term starts in September. I was under the impression all restrictions are being lifted and we will get back to normal and start just accepting that we live with covid19 and move on.

I think the only potential fly in the ointment is how they are defining "restriction".
In Scotland there's a fair bit of confusion now about whether that includes masks. Now any sane person recognises that legally forcing someone to wear a mask is a restriction by any definition of the word but our politicians and scientists just seem to make up new definitions as they go along. My particular favourite was when they used the phrase "zero covid" and then got annoyed because the public had the audacity to think that meant no covid at all. Honestly, these people need booting from public office once this is all over because it's crystal clear that not one of them is suitable to be in post.

So there may be some mileage in some restrictions remaining in place. Some of them may require mass civil disobedience to remove but we'll see how it goes. We do like to follow rules in this country.

 

[pm133]

pm133, do you think that a lot of the issues with NHS are self created? What I mean is, we lockdown, scare people away from hospital, cancel appointments and so one, then.....many of these missed appointments and treatments get moved on to another time, this creates more pressure later on, which then creates cause for another lockdown to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. It's a vicious cycle. More lockdowns/restrctions = more lockdowns and restrictions = more lockdowns and restrictions and along the way many die as a result of missed hospital care and attendance.

The WHO advise against lockdowns, but this advice has been ignored in the UK.

The WHO also strongly advised against wearing masks as well saying, quite rightly, there was no science to back their effectiveness.
Our own chief medical bods were saying exactly the same thing.
Then overnight they did a complete u-turn based on no new science whatsoever. We still don't have strong evidence that either is effective despite all claims to the contrary.

I am inclined to believe that lockdown worked but I'm also open to persuasion because we've had restrictions for over a year, around 90% or more compliance and still we see the same waves that everyone else is seeing. And to rub salt in the wound, our waves are bigger. Given the disastrous impact of restrictions on business and physical/mental health we owe it to ourselves to have this investigated as soon as possible.

The problem with the NHS is that it is simply too big and it's trying to do too much for too many people. I genuinely don't know how you solve it but there's no way we should be needing to spend this much on health per person. It seems political opposition only wants to throw even more money at this enormous black hole. Nobody at Westminster on either side of the benches has the faintest idea what to to do fix it. Historically, it's been run at such a high capacity that it lacks the ability to deal with a catastrophe and we've been caught out this time.

My fear is that the NHS now has even less capacity to deal with the next big problem because, as you say, we have more than a year of backlogs to deal with. The barrier for a new problem to overwhelm the NHS gets smaller each passing day.

As a country, we certainly take the NHS for granted and no amount of utterly toe-curling pot banging on our doorsteps will change that fact.

Listing problems is one thing but I'm quite open about the fact that knowing how to fix this is way outside of my capabilities.

 

[pm133]

This is what the leaders were saying last year, they hardly makes a strong case for bringing in lockdowns. I'd of prefered to of seen the elderly and vulnerable shielded until the vaccine rollout without devastating lockdowns, track and trace, school children missing school, business closures etc

I'm not too far away from that position.
I'd have re-opened in May when the first wave ended when it was clear the NHS was a long way from being over-run by this.
Then I'd only have locked down again if the NHS was at real threat of being over-run again.

So I do support the idea of lockdowns in principle although we should have been led by statistics on hospitalisations and deaths only. Instead we've been bombarded with useless nonsense about infection numbers.

The problem has been that in this new, brave world, public opinion is that nobody is allowed to die of covid. Cancer? No problem. Covid though? Not a single death is acceptable. That unbelievably childish philosophy has driven bad decision after bad decision.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

I genuinely don't know how you solve it but there's no way we should be needing to spend this much on health per person.

We don't spend excessively compared to other wealthy countries.

 

[pm133]

I think there is a large consensus on that view, mine included, especially given lockdowns create more lockdowns.

I'm not completely sold on it but I do have some sympathy for that viewpoint.

The interesting thing about your video link above is that both Boris and Whitty are and remain correct that the vast majority of people who catch covid, even in the vulnerable groups, got a mild dose of it.

So what changed?

I think it's that they allowed a shrieking, hysterical and shockingly poorly educated public to drive their decisions. That's my view on it.

 

[pm133]

We don't spend excessively compared to other wealthy countries.

To be fair, all other wealthy countries have problems with their health service too.
I don't know enough about their issues though but certainly looking at ourselves, the health spend per capita in the UK is shockingly high.
As a public, we don't look after ourselves enough because we take everything we have for granted.
I wonder if this pandemic will be the catalyst for a change in that regard.
Otherwise, one day we might turn round and find our NHS is no longer there.