Vaccinated deaths

[9873210]

Yes I always find that a curious thing, that the number of souls alive today is roughly equal to the sum of all the souls who have died so far. It seems significant, but I dunno why.

This means that we are nowhere near close to having more alive than dead. In fact, there are 15 dead people for every person living. We surpassed seven billion dead way back between 8000BC and AD1.

[Bouleversee]

I shall be pleasantly surprised if the death rate of the double jabbed elderly and immuno-compromised doesn't increase considerably since the clinically highly vulnerable were told some weeks ago that they no longer needed to shield and now everyone can circulate freely, without masks even in confined spaces, and the everyone will include lots of children and young people who have not been vaccinated at all and some who have been doubly vaccinated but will still be infected with Covid 19 because they are behaving as though there is no longer any danger and will go home and infect their families. Some will decide greater freedom is worth the risk and others will decide it isn't and will shield even more carefully than before.

[tjh290633]

I shall be pleasantly surprised if the death rate of the double jabbed elderly and immuno-compromised doesn't increase considerably since the clinically highly vulnerable were told some weeks ago that they no longer needed to shield and now everyone can circulate freely, without masks even in confined spaces, and the everyone will include lots of children and young people who have not been vaccinated at all and some who have been doubly vaccinated but will still be infected with Covid 19 because they are behaving as though there is no longer any danger and will go home and infect their families. Some will decide greater freedom is worth the risk and others will decide it isn't and will shield even more carefully than before.

Of the people that I know, some of the "vulnerable" couldn't care less about the use of masks, but use them where the establishment asks you to. Others are still too scared to venture outside their front doors.

I still have to be convinced that masks are anything more than a psychological measure.

TJH

[Midsmartin]

Regarding the effectiveness of masks, have a read of this scientific review if you are interested:
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118

In summary, there is reasonably good evidence that masks reduce transmission quite a lot. Sometimes it's inconclusive as you can't easily do a randomly controlled trial, and it's hard to be sure how people behave or wear masks when you aren't watching.

[onthemove]

Regarding the effectiveness of masks, have a read of this scientific review if you are interested:
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118

In summary, there is reasonably good evidence that masks reduce transmission quite a lot. Sometimes it's inconclusive as you can't easily do a randomly controlled trial, and it's hard to be sure how people behave or wear masks when you aren't watching.

Interesting paper.

I do though wonder...

"The study looked at the reduction of secondary transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Beijing households by face mask use (10). It found that face masks were 79% effective in preventing transmission, if they were used by all household members prior to symptoms occurring."

For all those people wanting masks to be mandatory, or telling others to wear them, how many of those people continue to wear their masks when at home to protect their own family members?

Call me cynical, but of all the people telling us that we should be wearing masks because of the science, I suspect the vast majority of those people are themselves choosing not to follow the science when it suits them.

[Bouleversee]

I wonder what the double jabbed new Health Secretary was doing wrong.

[Mike4]

I wonder what the double jabbed new Health Secretary was doing wrong.

He was being the 1 in 20 for whom the vaccine does not work.

[servodude]

Yes I always find that a curious thing, that the number of souls alive today is roughly equal to the sum of all the souls who have died so far. It seems significant, but I dunno why.

This means that we are nowhere near close to having more alive than dead. In fact, there are 15 dead people for every person living. We surpassed seven billion dead way back between 8000BC and AD1.

Thanks for that interesting and informative link
- I wonder where this incorrect but plausible factoid originated

I will endeavour to never repeat it

- sd

[servodude]

I wonder what the double jabbed new Health Secretary was doing wrong.

He was being the 1 in 20 for whom the vaccine does not work.

...or at least it didn't work sufficiently to prevent him from catching it

But if it prevented him from dying, or being in hospital, or just being more sick, it has "worked" pretty well from his perspective... Shirley?

It's not all boolean (not much ever is - unless you're a straw man toting sealion)
- sd

[DrFfybes]

Dragging this back to the original pooint, when those figures were announced, what proportion of the population had been double/single jabbed, and what was the age distribution of the deaths? How many had or died from underlying causes?

All the vacinnated deaths could have been in the over 80s, whilst the others were all under 40 (not impossible given the vaccine rollout strategy) If we were at 80% double jabbed then the unjabbed deaths should be multiplied by 4 to rebalance as a portion of the population.

Without that sort of info, the figures are meaningless, and PHE should really know better if they are releasing raw data like that with no context as it would inevitably feed into the anti vax campaign.

Back to the seatbelt analogy... I asked a neighbour who got a bit too close to step back. They thought they didn't need to worry now they were double jabbed. I poointed out that the vaccine offers similar protection to wearing a seatbelt in the 30 mph crashe, but when seatbelts became compulsory I bet they didn't go around driving into walls to test them.

Paul

[murraypaul]

Without that sort of info, the figures are meaningless, and PHE should really know better if they are releasing raw data like that with no context as it would inevitably feed into the anti vax campaign.

PHE released a comprehensive report, they can't control how it gets (mis)interpreted.
It isn't their job to worry about the politics.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... ing_18.pdf

Page 16 has what you were asking about.

2 double vaccinated deaths were under 50, 116 over 50.

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

My wife Mel (47 yr old), has had a single AZN jab about 9-10 weeks ago. She is a fairly covid conscious type person, i.e. mask wearing, hand sanitising etc.

She caught covid just over a week ago, probably off our youngest child LE (16 yr, no jabs). LE probably caught the virus about 2 weeks back on a trip to London which her and Mum went on. They were both *reasonably* vigilant re. mask wearing. But presumably not vigilant enough.

I suspect the infections are down to the Delta variant. LE is now fully recovered, but Mel whilst "not as bad as at first", is still coughing and is achy.

I've had 2 AZNs, and I've not been infected, as yet.

Matt

[Julian]

Without that sort of info, the figures are meaningless, and PHE should really know better if they are releasing raw data like that with no context as it would inevitably feed into the anti vax campaign.

PHE released a comprehensive report, they can't control how it gets (mis)interpreted.
It isn't their job to worry about the politics.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... ing_18.pdf

Page 16 has what you were asking about.

2 double vaccinated deaths were under 50, 116 over 50.

Thanks. Very interesting but yet again I find myself to be an information glutton, always left wanting more. It's a shame, at least for me, that they did a simple over/under-50 bracketing of the age groups since the risk profiles of a 51 year old vs a 65 year old vs an 85 year old are very materially different based on before-the-vaccines data from earlier in the pandemic and I assume still true today.

I also note with interest that the 1-dose-only data is split into two columns, "<21 days post dose 1" and ">=21 days post dose 1" whereas the double-dose is only a single "Received 2 doses" column. If the 2-dose grouping isn't including any "settling in" time for the second dose then I wonder whether that slightly overstates the numbers for double-dosed since my understanding is that it is not just the 1st dose but also the 2nd dose that needs time to reach full efficacy. I've heard times of 10 - 14 days for Pfizer but some discussion that it might be a bit longer for AZ, maybe 21 days or more. Personally I allowed 5 weeks before I considered my AZ 2nd dose to have given me the best immunity that it was going to be able to build for me.

2nd dose reporting does bug me. As you say "they can't control how it gets (mis)interpreted" so it's not a criticism of the very timely and well-formatted data reported daily on the coronavirus dashboard but whenever I hear a news report quoting the latest vaccination numbers, e.g. 68.8% of UK adults have now received two doses of a vaccine, I always remember that it doesn't mean that 68.8% of the population have achieved their maximum vaccination protection yet because 2nd doses still require time to achieve maximum possible efficacy in an individual and I am left wondering how many other viewers are factoring in that caveat when hearing the numbers.

- Julian

[9873210]

2nd dose reporting does bug me. As you say "they can't control how it gets (mis)interpreted" so it's not a criticism of the very timely and well-formatted data reported daily on the coronavirus dashboard but whenever I hear a news report quoting the latest vaccination numbers, e.g. 68.8% of UK adults have now received two doses of a vaccine, I always remember that it doesn't mean that 68.8% of the population have achieved their maximum vaccination protection yet because 2nd doses still require time to achieve maximum possible efficacy in an individual and I am left wondering how many other viewers are factoring in that caveat when hearing the numbers.

- Julian

I wonder how many other viewers factor in that there are people who are not adults.

[Julian]

2nd dose reporting does bug me. As you say "they can't control how it gets (mis)interpreted" so it's not a criticism of the very timely and well-formatted data reported daily on the coronavirus dashboard but whenever I hear a news report quoting the latest vaccination numbers, e.g. 68.8% of UK adults have now received two doses of a vaccine, I always remember that it doesn't mean that 68.8% of the population have achieved their maximum vaccination protection yet because 2nd doses still require time to achieve maximum possible efficacy in an individual and I am left wondering how many other viewers are factoring in that caveat when hearing the numbers.

- Julian

I wonder how many other viewers factor in that there are people who are not adults.

Oops. Typo on my part, apparent I hope from the fact I correctly qualified the data point when I first referenced it, but in the wider context of interpreting data presented as speedy soundbites on TV news coverage that is definitely also a consideration and one not helped by the fact that various other countries e.g. the USA tend to talk more about percentage of total population vaccinated as opposed to our primary total-adults government metric which can distort comparisons and flatter the UK figures if the appropriate adjustments aren't made when comparing different countries' vaccination rates.

- Julian