Thursday 23 September 2021

A comparison of age adjusted all-cause mortality rates in England between vaccinated and unvaccinated

Norman Fenton and Martin Neil

See 26 October UPDATE to this article

The UK Government's own data does not support the claims made for vaccine effectiveness/safety. 

In a previous post we argued that the most reliable long-term measure of Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness/safety is the age adjusted all-cause mortality rate. If, over a reasonably prolonged period, fewer vaccinated people die, from whatever cause, including Covid-19, than unvaccinated people then we could conclude that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks. We also pointed out that, to avoid the confounding effect of age, it is critical that data for each age category is available, rather than the aggregated data because, clearly, aggregated data might exaggerate vaccine mortality rates if more older people, with shorter expected mortality, are included. The UK roll out of the vaccine was executed in descending age order, from older to younger, except very early on in the vaccination programme when the vulnerable young were vaccinated along with the very elderly. As the programme progressed those vaccinated were, on average, older than those who remained unvaccinated and as the roll out proceeded a progressively higher proportion of the residual unvaccinated population are younger.

The  latest Office for National Statistics report on mortality rates by Covid vaccination status provides data on all deaths – Covid related and non-Covid related for the period Jan-July 2021 for the unvaccinated and the different categories of vaccinated ('within 21 days of first dose', '21 days or more after first dose', 'second dose'). The ONS data for Covid-19 mortality, is given in Table 4 of the ONS spreadsheet and the ONS data for all-cause mortality excluding Covid-19, is given in Table 5 of the same spreadsheet. Both tables are reproduced at the bottom of this post.

We believe there are severe weaknesses and possible errors in the ONS data (see foonote**). But importantly, while it does not provide the raw age categorized data, it does provide "age standardized" mortality rates*** (also see explanatory video). This means the ONS have calculated the overall mortality rate in a way which (they believe) adjusts for the confounding effect of age, and this is ‘baked into’ the mortality rates they have published.  However, while they report this age adjusted mortality rate for each of the three separate categories of vaccinated people they do not report it for the combined set of vaccinated people. In our analysis, and in the absence of the actual age stratified data, we compute a population weighted age adjusted all-cause mortality rate by using the ONS’s published population sizes for each of the three categories of vaccinated. This is not ideal because the ONS age adjusted rates are so opaque and are not 'abolute numbers'. However, in the absence of detailed data this should provide a reasonable estimate of what the ONS age adjusted all-cause mortality rate would be for all unvaccinated if they had bothered to report it. We will call this the ‘weighted vaccinated mortality rate’. The data table derived from the ONS data and used to compute this rate is given at the end of this post.

It turns out that, even using this age adjusted mortality rate, the death rate is currently higher among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.  

The age adjusted mortality rates for vaccinated against unvaccinated for weeks 1 to 26 of 2021 are charted below. Overall, the chart shows that, over time, the weighted mortality rate for the vaccinated has steadily increased and by week 16 (23 April 2021), surpassed that for the unvaccinated. 

Week 1 ends 6 Jan 2021, Week 26 ends 2 July 2021

 

The chart suggests a normal seasonal mortality trend for the unvaccinated, with a winter peak on week 6, 12 February 2021, and a steady decline toward summer. In contrast, the pattern for the vaccinated is completely different. From week 24 onwards the mortality rates for the vaccinated and unvaccinated appear to be converging as summer begins. 

As the ONS data breaks down the data over time for the three categories of vaccinated (those within 21 days of first dose, those 21 days after first dose, and those after two doses), we can also plot mortality charts for each of these categories. The mortality rate, for week 26, up to 2 July, for the unvaccinated is around 25 deaths per 100,000. But there are big differences between the mortality rates for the different categories of vaccinated deaths. For example, for those after 21 days of first dose, the comparable mortality is around 89 deaths per 100,000 people (a number which has drastically increased since January), while for those vaccinated with two doses there were approximately 15 deaths per 100,000 in the same July period.

 


The trends for the different vaccination categories are also concerning. In contrast to the unvaccinated, the mortality rates for the vaccinated have initially increased from very low initial values, but then have increased, whilst that for the unvaccinated has decreased. The charts below show these patterns.

 


 


 

Since 19 March the double dose vaccination mortality rate has increased week-on-week more or less consistently. The mortality rate for those more than 21 days after first dose increased drastically in the spring (at week 14) and remained high thereafter. Mortality within 21 days of vaccination initially increased but looks to have stabilised, albeit with some noise. We will leave it to clinical colleagues to explain why there are such different patterns.

Because of the limitations and possible errors in the ONS data**, there are many caveats that need to be applied to our crude analysis (including some which are covered in the previous post). But we can conclude that the ONS's own data does not support the claims made for vaccine effectiveness/safety.  

It is also important to note that the population of vaccinated people is becoming sufficiently large and representative that the criticality of age adjustment becomes much diminished. We will be doing a follow-up analysis that takes account of this.


* For those who responded to this article saying they did not understand why we focus on all-cuase mortality:


 **Potential limitations and errors in the ONS data (with thanks to Clare Craig for identifying some of these)

  • Does not provide the raw age categorized data.
  • The age standardized score used by ONS relies on the 2011 census data to determine the population proportions in each age category. These proportions have changed since 2011 and, as we noted in this article, these differences can significantly change the results.
  • There are inconsistencies in vaccination numbers between the ONS data and the National Immunisation Management Service (NIMS) data.  For example, by week 26 NIMS has 28.1 million people over 18 who have had second does, but ONS has only 23.3 million. 
  • The ONS total population is 16.6 million short of the whole population. Only 12.6 million are under 18 so the remaining 4 million are omitted for some other reason.
  • The rates in the unvaccinated on 8th Jan are lower than the double vaccinated in summer. Also, on 8th January only 12% of over 65 year olds had been vaccinated, so the unvaccinated population should have had a death rate very similar to background levels. 
  • The wildly increasing weekly age adjusted mortality rates (for non-Covid related deaths) for the 38 million unvaccinated population in January are totally inconsistent with weekly changes in previous years. Although this population excludes the under 18s and the 1.2 million (mainly over 65s) who had by then recieved their first dose, we would not expect the mortality rate for this population to be drastically different to the mortality rate for England seen in recent years as reported in a different ONS report
  • Ultimately we need to exclude unnatual deaths such as murders, accidents and suicides since these may introduce bias between the cohorts, especially in the young age categories where the overall death numbers are small.

 Here is Table 4 data the raw data, for Covid-19 deaths, as provided by the ONS:


Here is Table 5 data the raw data, for all-cause deaths except for Covid-19, as provided by the ONS:


Finally, here is the data we used to calculate combined all-cause age adjusted mortality rates and the weighted vaccinated mortality rate.


***

The ONS definition of age-standardised mortality rates (click to enlarge)


88 comments:

  1. In the first few weeks, unvaccinated deaths exceed vaccinated.
    Might this perhaps indicate that the vaccines worked?
    Later deaths converge.
    Possibly indicating that later deaths are from another cause.

    Do help me with interpreting this

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. First few weeks bigger pool of unvaccinated as not many was vaccinated. So deaths would exceed the vaccinated

      Delete
    2. No, because these are rates standardized by the number of persons in the group.

      Delete
    3. There is no reason to think that the two populations, jabbed and unjabbed, have a different risk of dying for a reason earlier vs later beyond vaccination. The populations, especially age adjusted, have no different risk exposure beyond covid-19, so it is safe to assume that the vax wanes in effectiveness after 6 months as this data shows, which is probably the reason people want boosters.
      It is interesting to note that we are exposing ourselves to an unknown risk with the jab, to avoid a known risk, and this unknown risk is only providing measurable protection for a small period before we must expose ourselves to it again. I see no good reason based on this data to jab anyone who does not expect to be exposed to covid in the next half year, and I see no reason to force or mandate it to anyone.

      Delete
    4. Really, who will not be exposed to Covid in the nect half year other than the man in the moon.
      With your first coment, youar coming to the conclusionbefore the evcidence - you state there is no reason....but the facts suggest there could well be....Are you really still unaware of the large numbers of adverse effects reported inand out of government recoding schemes?

      Delete
    5. I think vaccine works well with alpha, but not with delta.

      Delete
    6. @Andrew Middleton, don't have to go as far as the moon... here in NZ, I am extremely unlikely to be exposed to covid, especially in that I live nowhere near Auckland...

      Delete
    7. Remember what they said before.. . Arn messenger technology will autorise vaccines to adapt mutations

      Delete
    8. Anonymous - It does not make the cohort meaningless, it means that dead-after-the-jab needs adjusting up a bit if the ones about to die were not being jabbed.
      However the effect is probably small, as in care homes as I understand it the policy was to jab everyone, and not to let off any who were about to die anyway.

      Delete
    9. People weren’t counted as vaccinated until after 10 days

      Delete
  2. I do not understand the ONS data. The Age-standardized mortality rates are supposed to be calculated on the basis of virtually homogeneous populations. All groups are supposed to have the same age pyramid. So how is it possible that the death rates are so different between weeks and between groups? Look: you calculated that the ASMR was, for the unvaccinated population:

    W1: 36
    W6: 113
    W26: 25

    Mathematically, the calculation is correct, but demographically, it is absurd! I would like to believe that there are more deaths in winter than in summer, but it is not possible that the difference is so huge!

    Do you have any hypotheses to explain this anomaly?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. we will be addressing this in a follow up piece

      Delete
    2. Isn't the ASRM just Deaths in the age group divided by Population of the age group times 100000, as Sum i and Standard population i cancel each other out. Seems just making the formula unnecessarily complicated.

      Delete
  3. Something that really catches my eye: deaths by all causes, 2 dose, if you do a crude death rate, (ignore first 2 rows, low #, too variable), it generally gets lower over time, as expected, because the makeup of that group gets younger over time...(max 46, drops to 25) but their age adjusted rate does the opposite, and by a LOT (starts 1.5 and climbs up to 14.6) Shouldn't age adjusting make the death rate, generally, more insensitive to the difference in age makeup?
    There's a lot of other things that just make no sense, but I think a lot of it may stem from completely botching how the age adjusted rate was applied to the different groups on different weeks?
    It's also possible I'm misunderstanding what 'age adjusted' was supposed to do here, regardless... it's a mess

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's not the kind of ASMR that makes one feel warm and fuzzy.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I write to ONS:

    > From: Sylvain
    > Sent: 23 September 2021 21:35
    > To: Health Data
    > Subject: Details of the population and the deaths stratified by age and by vaccination status
    >
    > Dear Charlotte Bermingham, Jasper Morgan and Vahé Nafilyan,
    >
    > I read with interest your article on the age-standardized mortality rates by vaccination status (13 september 2021).
    >
    > Would you agree to give me the details of the population and the covid and non-covid deaths, stratified by age and by vaccination status, so that we can calculate a mortality rates based on a different standardization?
    >
    > We would be very grateful to you.
    >
    > Best regards,
    >
    > From: Health Data
    >
    > Good morning, Sylvain.
    >
    > Thank you for your email.
    >
    > We don’t provide breakdowns by age group for all cause mortality, or for deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status, but as this data will be updated, it is something we could look to include in future.
    >
    > Please keep an eye out for the next release via the release calendar.
    >
    > Kind regards,
    >
    > Jay

    I suggest that you also write them an email with the same request, within a few days, to encourage them to disclose this data. The request must be formulated differently. if there are multiple requests, they will find that this data is in high demand.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I guess the obvious confounding factor is that people about to die cannot get the jabs. And such people should exist more in the elderly. Due to this factor, all cause mortality in the observation cohort is meaningless. I have seen other data, too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That seems to me a good point, where such death is predictable due to advanced disease/age. Not sure how you could adjust these projections accordingly unless this was the subject of another study or reporting process. I'm also curious whether there is a health status difference between those choose to jag or not to jag: for example, as a healthy 67 year old man my decision was not to jag as I have no underlying disease or conditions.

      Delete
  7. Many gov'ts have distorted the definitions of jabbed or unjabbed & the root data. Ex. CDC policy is to count any deaths 14 days after a jab as unjabbed. Given that ~85% of the jab deaths are occurring within ~7 days of the jab, the data is likely to grossly underreport the death count.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Where are you getting this information?

      Delete
    2. From the CDC where else did you think?

      “… a vaccine breakthrough infection is defined as the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA or antigen in a respiratory specimen collected from a person ≥14 days after they have completed all recommended doses of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-authorized COVID-19 vaccine.”

      https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/breakthrough-cases.html

      Delete
    3. Anonymous - I think the authors were able to avoid this for the top graph, as the transfer of the jabbed column to the unjabbed column is 'an optional extra' that does not have to be implemented.

      "As the ONS data breaks down the data over time for the three categories of vaccinated (those within 21 days of first dose, those 21 days after first dose, and those after two doses"

      Delete
    4. I agree with Anonymous: by labeling those who die from all cause as unjabbed, deaths most likely due to the vaccine are considered deaths in the unvaccinated, thereby skewing the full truth about the vaccines.

      Delete
  8. so few UK seniors >65 that haven't been vaccinated, it may not be reasonable to assume covid-19 could seek themm out and kill them since their social distancing and lifestyle habits vs their peers may be quite different by now and that's what they're seeing... they may all be dying of 'natural' causes...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. another fair point: as a non-vaxxed working 67 year old male nearly all my work that used to be face to face house calls, is now from home by phone, and my external social contacts are severely limited due to my son's delicate health condition and my rural location.If people ask why I haven't vaxxed I say I am one of a small cohort taking part in a medical trial: which is sort-of nearly true ;-)

      Delete
  9. Of course, once everyone is vaccinated, these useful comparisons will no longer be possible to make. I'm sure this hasn't occurred to anyone in the government though, or they'd be advising people who have recovered naturally and young children to get injected. Oh.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Indeed they are trying to eliminate the control group

      Delete
    2. I'm in that control group of the unvaxxed: but of course we can also compare with the last ten years figures.
      I'd also argue that rurality is a key variable: death rates in Glasgow city are ten times higher than in rural Highland, Shetland or Moray.

      Delete
    3. Baiterblog, "death rates in Glasgow city are ten times higher than in rural Highland, Shetland or Moray", really? Do you have a source I could check out? Is the death rate you're talking about from all-cause? Or from COVID-19 (supposedly)?

      Delete
    4. Covid-linked deaths: sure this is in the public arena: it isn't my job to be your research assistant: check it up yourself if you doubt it. Actually it is more like 12x higher, but the figures will change a bit from week to week.

      Delete
    5. Interestingly enough, Shetland and the Highlands did have higher rates of infection later into 2021/22 - so it caught up with them eventually. Isolation and lockdown delay effect, I would imagine. But I think they still had far lower death rates than the big cities.

      Delete
  10. Watch John OLooney funeral director who witnesses and prepares deaths Says government is criminal to vaccinate to cause deaths Covid doesn't exist Delta variation directly caused by vaccination

    ReplyDelete
  11. in the first paragraph:
    "[...] aggregated data might exaggerate vaccine mortality rates if more older people, with shorter expected <<>>, are included"

    do you mean shorter expected life span or am I not getting it?

    ReplyDelete
  12. There's nothing difficult about this. The joke vaccines operate in exactly the same way as they did in 17 years of animal trials. They ruin your immune system and make you much more susceptible to illness, hospitalisation and death. The only thing in their favour is they seem to reduce symptom severity for a few months beforehand. It's not rocket science, it's clear as day. We just aren't, as human beings, good enough at science yet to come up with a coronavirus vaccine that works. That's the bottom line. These numbers have been reproduced all over the world in heavily vaccinated countries; slight improvement for a few months then immune system destroyed and massive uptick in illness, hospitalisations and deaths amongst the vaccinated. I'd say we'll be very lucky to get through the winter without millions of deaths because of this. And it'll all be the fault of the joke vaccine.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This temporary reduction in symptoms reminds me of the Concorde study on AZT, prescribed for HIV, which demonstrated a similar effect. After a few months of better metrics the numbers reverted and the drug was down to be ultimately useless, and very toxic.
      Similar to Covid, reportedly many with symptoms of anything were diagnosed as HIV positive, prescribed AZT and later died.
      It was at the time also the most expensive drug ever, and recommended by Fauci. No wonder Pharma loves and protects him. Given they're the biggest funders of political campaigns in the US, it's easy to see how he's kept his job for so long.

      Delete
    2. The catch on what you're saying is that the vaccinated, even months later, are doing better than the unvaccinated.
      What this article really shows as being possible (and scary) is more people may be dying after the 1st shot, but before 2nd+14days, than would without treatment. I'm still not fully convinced, but that is the aspect that needs to be reviewed, tested, and confirmed, or disproven.

      Delete
    3. @Chris uhm no they're not?!
      First graph: vaccinated are doing better for the first 15 weeks.
      Then some unknown effect occurs, turning the tables. The peak in the vaxxed population at week 18 coincides with the max vaccination rate (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-57915106)
      Then both converge with the vaxxed population still doing worse (but maybe within error range at some point). While I don't see any sign of the vaxxed population doing much worse in the long run, this clearly suggests a gross underestimation of vaccine related deaths (within the first few weeks). We will learn more in the winter when our immune systems are tested.

      Delete
    4. "These numbers have been reproduced all over the world in heavily vaccinated countries; slight improvement for a few months then immune system destroyed and massive uptick in illness, hospitalisations and deaths amongst the vaccinated." Can you please provide any links to any evidence supporting this claim? As of now, more than 95% of hospitalizations and deaths are in the UNvaccinated.

      Delete
    5. @shrugatias The 95% figure Biden quote is BS. It takes the figures from January (when no one was jabbed) to June (pre Delta) so clearly those in hospital would be the unjabbed. Look at the figures now, in the UK for the last 4 weeks, 82% of those who died were jabbed. In the 80+ age group it was 92%!!! It's from the UK government figures like this: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1016465/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_36.pdf, the best charts are on P15 and P16. All the data is there if you look. The question is why are the data manipulated so badly on the news...

      Delete
  13. Combining data from all vaccinated populations is misleading. When looking at the original ONS data, age-standardized non-COVID mortality rate in people who received 2nd dose is slightly lower than that in unvaccinated individuals in addtion to the obvious fact that COVID-related mortality rate is lower in this group than unvaccinated. This leads to all-cause mortality rate being lower than non-vaccinated group. Intrestingly, non-COVID mortality deaths rate 20 days or more after the 1st dose is high, which drove your analysis. The apperant increase in the risk can be explained by people who are too ill to get the 2nd shot.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I was going to write the same thing. It is not fair to judge the efficacy of a treatment using a group that hasn't received the full treatment. In the ONS data the age-adjusted all-cause mortality is significantly lower for the second dose group than for the unvaccinated group across the entire time period.

      Delete
    2. Receiving the full treatment involves a period of time during which one is more vulnerable to death. The goal of all the calculations is to determine if getting everyone vaccinated will yield more or less deaths than if nobody got vaccinated; that analysis can then factor into the policy decisions and medical recommendations. Even if people are safer once they have been fully vaccinated, ignoring the people who die trying to reach that state doesn't help us compare the possible risks and benefits.

      Consider a situation in which a fictional treatment, taking a month, is claimed to yield a reduced rate of death in the fully treated cohort vs. the untreated cohort. Upon analysis this claim is upheld. Unfortunately this "treatment" involves nothing more than causing the death of anyone with less than perfect health. By looking at just the fully treated, we only see exceptionally health people (hence the reduced death rate) and ignore the deaths of the people who typically increase the death rate.

      Delete
    3. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
  14. Hi there,

    You say: 'The mortality rate, for week 26, up to 2 July, for the unvaccinated is around 25 deaths per 100,000.'

    Is this 25 per 100,000 unvaccinated people or 25 per 100,000 of all people, vaccinated or unvaccinated?

    Likewise, in the first chart, when there are more vaccinated people dying after April, is this not simply because more people were vaccinated than unvaccinated? Or, are the deaths relative to each individual category?

    ReplyDelete
  15. 25 deaths per 100,000 unvaccinated.

    ReplyDelete
  16. It has been written that a healthy 85-year-old has the same risk of death as a healthy 45-50-year-old. Most CFR data omit pre-existing co-morbidities when projecting risk status on the basis of age.

    ReplyDelete
  17. pleased I've found your blog. The ONS ASMRs published on 13th Sept for non covid 1st dose vaccinated +21 days, vs, non covid unvaccinated are shocking. The rise in ASMR for this vaccinated group in week 12, which rises and stays high until data ends on wk26 is pretty vile. You can predict whats going to happen for 2nd dose vaccinated group in wk27 and onwards. Its going to follow exactly the same pattern as the 1st dose group at wk12 did. I can see this in ONSs weekly deaths data from wk 27, the excess deaths vs 2019 are large for July, Aug, mid Sept, and underlying covid deaths can only account for half of them, If I even trusted the status of an official covid19 death anymore, which I don't.

    As far as I can see, they deliberately used a 'leaky' single antigen vaccine technology, to ensure Sars-Cov-2 remained in circulation for PCR case 'masking' purposes.

    They used the biologically active S Protien (spike) as the vaccine, because as Bristol Uni showed in its paper on S Protein->CD147->Pericytes interaction, it appears to be the spike, which when broken off and transported around the body in the blood, seems to amplify/cause the micro vascular disease of Covid19.

    This allows them to hide vaccine deaths, behind the mask of winter, Sars-cov-2 PCR tests, and of course, the vaccine damage for PCR positive deaths itself looks like Covid, because the damn vaccine uses the same spikes that amplify the micro vascular injury we expect.

    But they over egged it in July, August & September... 12 weeks after they started 2nd jabbing in early April, they pushed deaths way over 2019s death numbers, and 1/2 of the excess I looked at in early September couldn't be accounted for by an underlying Covid status. With such death numbers brought forward in April 2020, and early 2021.... you would expect death numbers to be lower than 2019, not higher.

    Since the crash of 2008, the ex Governor of the Bank of England has been shouting that nobody is dealing with the issue caused by increasing longevity, namely how we are going to pay for healthcare and pension cost. He had become really vocal about it.

    Well now we know the elites vile plan.... out of fear, the bulk of the population of healthy people are swapping temporary protection from Sars-Cov-2 they don't need, for vaccine damage we can see appearing 12 weeks after each vaccination phase ... and god knows what other long term damage further on which will shorten their lives.

    Although I understand the longevity problem, and I even agree we are just living far too long, I never expected the elites would solve the problem using such a dastardly plan as I can see being rolled out across the globe. Where we will eventually end up over the next few years is frankly chilling...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Darn, you are onto us elites! Time to implement plan B: tampering with horse dewormer formulations!

      Delete
    2. People seem to think we have immortality and are forcing the population by propaganda to have an Unapproved substance injected.
      It is supposed to be “with informed consent” and we are not told what is actually in the fluid.

      0.07% is a very low amount for a pandemic. But it should not have been manufactured in the first place.

      Delete
  18. Really interesting but as far as I can tell from the second table the double dosed are less likely to die of a non Covid reason than the other groups. How does that work? What changes so dramatically after dose 2?

    Also, how do you account for the 2 different vaccine types in use - AZ and Pfizer/Moderna?

    Finally it appears that neither ONS or NIMS really know for sure how many people live where and when, which makes the whole thing completely prone to error anyway.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think the groups are a little tricky to analyze because of how individuals move from one to another over time. An individual who chooses to get the jab moves from the unvaccinated population into the <21 days from first dose population. Persons in that population either stay there and die or move to one of the next two cohorts. Those who follow the vaccination schedule and get their second dose will spend little, if any, time in the 21+ days from first dose population. So who is left in the 21+ days from first dose group? Presumably, some choose not to get the 2nd jab. But that group also likely includes people who are too ill to get the 2nd jab when scheduled.

      Delete
  19. This is fascinating. I had a closer look at the data and wasn't sure it supported the conclusions of the article. Aren't these incremental mortality rates - i.e. for that week? Sure in week 26 the vaccinated and unvaccinated have the same (age adjusted) mortality rate from all causes. But don't you need to aggregate the mortality rates from all 26 weeks to make that assessment? Doesn't the high unvaccinated death rate in weeks 1-14 need to be taken into account also? If you calculate a weighted average mortality rate across the 26 week period (based on population) - you find that the unvaccinated mortality rate over the entire 26 week period is 60 deaths per 100,000 people compared to only 30 deaths per 100,000 for the vaccinated. So I'm not sure this data supports the conclusion that the vaccines are resulting in more deaths than covid is.

    ReplyDelete
  20. If ONLY we had all cause mortality data from proper RCTs...if only

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. > If ONLY we had all cause mortality data from proper RCTs...if only

      In fact, there is.

      DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2113017 Supplementary Appendix

      https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2113017/suppl_file/nejmoa2113017_appendix.pdf

      See table S19, p. 53, "Regardless of relationship to study vaccination" -> "fatal". No statistically significant difference.

      DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2110345 Supplementary Appendix

      https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2110345/suppl_file/nejmoa2110345_appendix.pdf

      See table S4, p. 11, "Reported Cause of Death" -> "Death". No statistically significant difference.

      Delete
  21. I wonder if there is a typo in this paragraph:
    .
    " they do not report it for the combined set of *vaccinated* people. ... this should provide a reasonable estimate of what the ONS age adjusted all-cause mortality rate would be for all *unvaccinated* if they had bothered to report it. We will call this the ‘weighted *vaccinated* mortality rate’"
    .
    That 'unvaccinated' in the middle seems at odds with the rest, which revolves around the death rate for vaccinated people.
    .
    Of course, I might just be unable to follow the logic, in which case the fault would be all mine.
    .
    thanks

    ReplyDelete
  22. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Sorry, this is dreadful analysis.

    You make massive assumptions about the equivalence of the people in these categories, that simply can't be made.

    Early on, the vulnerable, who are far more likely to die, were vaxxed, and are far more likely to have died from natural causes, hence the spike early on. The ONS makes no causal claim, as to how many died "from" 1st does vax, not "with"?

    Given the 1st dose, beyond 21dys, group would have grown large as we raced to vax the vulnerable, of course this will seem to be the main source of death. This cohort is where deaths normally come from as it would include all those close to death and most likely to die.

    On top of this total misread of the data, death after a 2nd dose is conditional in not having died of natural causes in the 8-12wk gap between 1st and 2nd does, so non of the truly vulnerable will make it into this 2nd dose cohort, as they died.

    This ONS data simply doesn't show what you're claiming it does. You need to isolate the data in comparable cohorts to make the claims you're trying to.
    i.e. how many 40-50yrs olds with no health risks have died in each category? Crucially, you'd want a double blind trial measuring deaths in each cohort over the same time frames against a equivalent group that didn't.

    Your mixing together so many other factors as to make your comparisons meaningless.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Your mixing together so many other factors as to make your comparisons meaningless."

      aren't the officials doing the same?

      Delete
    2. Is there any age stratified data for the time period between vaccine doses?
      "21 days or more" will be dependant on the time period each age group stayed in this category for.
      The "within 21 days" category should not be affected though.

      Delete
    3. Simon Nicholls:

      - "how many 40-50yrs olds with no health risks have died in each category?" UK and other governments deliberately don't provide raw data like this - that's the point this article was bitching about.

      - "Crucially, you'd want a double blind trial measuring deaths in each cohort over the same time frames against a equivalent group that didn't." EXACTLY! And all governments have deliberately NOT set up such equivalent cohorts for comparison, but rather rushed to vaccinate EVERYONE, against the basic teachings in second year medical school epidemiology, that you need to set up these cohorts from the start!

      Now do you begin to see what is going on?

      This article is not at all mixed up as you claimed. It highlighted the vastly higher all-cause mortality of the vaccinated, before second dose. I believe I can explain all the key observations in the article. I will elaborate as a new comment further below.

      You notion that the cause of this high mortality rate in the 1st dose, beyond 21dys group, is because they're composed of the more vulnerable people, is unfounded. Note that many of the vulnerables COULD NOT be vaccinated (many are immune compromised), hence the propaganda tells everyone else to get the jab to "protect the vulnerable".


      Plus, the high mortality rate of this category continues all the way to the end of period, week 26, so that's WAY after anyone who was vulnerable and wanted to be "protected" would have gotten their jab. The peak population size of this category was in the middle of the study period, about week 10-18, where it was more than 10 million per week. This is the UK population at large that were getting their jabs, including more & more younger people, not the most vulnerable people, YET the mortality of this category only reached its high plateau after week 18, and staying this high... So you're wrong in your attribution for its cause. See Figure 1 on page 10 of following report for uptake by age group:
      https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1016465/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_36.pdf

      Delete
  24. I would love to see these stats after July, till now; how it played out?

    ReplyDelete
  25. The rate of deaths among vaccinated people are higher mainly because the number of vaccinated people is getting higher and higher while the number of unvaccinated people is gradually decreasing in the same period. So the decisive figures are the respective numbers of vaccinated vs unvaccinated people

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You seem to not quite understand the concept of a "rate".

      Delete
  26. There are a few possibly confounding variables, which you may have included:

    1) The mRNA if not all the injections seem to depress immunity for ~14 days, during which the product is less than useless
    2) Some individuals get a 1st dose and decline a 2nd because of side-effects or for other reasons, e.g. a healthy 85 yr old friend had a 3 day headache from the AZ and decided not to take the 2nd.
    We don't know if people with side-effects are more prone to die, other factors being equal. But quite a few didn't like the effect/s of dose 1 and do they differ from those who take both doses.
    3) The social groups declining the jab more than average seem to be at two ends of the spectrum, e.g. a) a lot of low-income, often BAME individuals who trust government even less than average, b) a few very high-income individuals who know the subject well, e.g. two retired bioscientists I met seem to know nearly as much as Mike Yeadon and take a similar view of the product's merits. Group a) will tend to have a higher death rate because low-income, low-status individuals sadly do have poorer health. Group b) is probably quite small.

    If you haven't already, I hope you can consider the effects of 1, 2 & 3.

    ReplyDelete
  27. If I wanted to survive to a great age, then I would have had to give up almost everything that made my life meaningful and worthwhile, from dangerous liaisons to adventure sports and fast cars.
    I've thrown myself at life: done my level best to die young by taking massive risks, and failed utterly.
    Quite frankly, the dodgy vaccine is for wimps, and I want no part of it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Did you wear safety equipment when you participated in adventure sports or a seat belt when driving fast cars? Some might say doing so is for wimps.

      Delete
    2. Seat belt is a poor comparison. Of course you wear a seat belt, there is no risk wearing it, only potential benefit. In addition you can undo your seat belt whenever you like. The vaccine on the other hand cannot be undone, and it is not without risk. If _ONLY_ the vaccine was like a seat belt, then we could all go home already. It is not, and therefore we have a huge problem.

      Delete
    3. Yes: it is sensible to use a rope, helmet, etc when undertaking climbing and caving aports: the point being these are proven to broadly reduce risk of death: though this is not without controversy either: some might and do argue that these precautions give a false sense of safety.

      Delete
  28. in the netherlands the percentage of the over 90s in the total number of covid19 deaths is 20%.
    the vaccination started with the over 90s first, moving on to the younger etc.
    during the entire vaccination operation the percentage of the over 90s in the the passed 4 week death numbers was above 20%, up to 27% for some time.
    only very recently has it gone down to 20%.
    as they were the first to be vaccinated their percentage should have gone down, but it went up.
    in other words: the over 90s did not benefit from the vaccination.

    ReplyDelete
  29. This is a very interesting analysis. Thank you for these insights.

    I may not be the first to point this out but as someone who's been statistically educated and has worked with mortality rates before I would be worried about the anti-selection bias in this analysis.

    I mean that healthy people are less likely to subject themselves to the unknown risk of an adverse reaction. So they naturally have a lower death rate, all else equal, than the people who opt for a vaccine, even before the vaccines were introduced.

    Is there something the authors could say about this?

    ReplyDelete
  30. Thank you for this interesting post which would need further analysis by any means. I just wondered if it would be possible for you to do some Granger's Causality Test longitudinally for example forecasting formally the increase of mortality in a population with a previous decrease of not vaccinated in the same set and seeing how this evolves over time (if significant).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Granger's Causality Test longitudinally for example forecasting formally the increase of mortality in a population with a previous decrease of not vaccinated in the same set and seeing how this evolves over time (if significant)."
      We already did that, and you don't get the cigar, sadly.

      Delete
  31. Thank you for your post. Very interesting. I am waiting, as you are, for the release of raw age-stratified data; that would be the only way to really understand what happened. I doubt that the "age-standardization" process is maybe prone to the creation of artifacts. I just want to point out that the steep rise in mortality observed in the ">21 days after 1st dose" group between week 12 and week 18 is certainly linked to the vaccination rollout suddenly taking place in the <50 years old population (as you can see here, at page 10: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1016465/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_36.pdf). And, of course, it has nothing to do with "covid-19 cases", because in that time window the virus prevalence in UK was very low.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Those who follow the vaccination schedule and get their second dose will spend little, if any, time in the 21+ days from first dose population. So who is left in the >21 days from first dose group? 1) People who choose not to complete the vaccination schedule; 2) People who intend to complete the vaccination schedule, but are waiting more than three weeks to do so; and 3) People who are too ill to get the 2nd jab when scheduled. I'm guessing #3 has a higher rate of mortality all other things being equal.

      Delete
    2. This is a perfectly reasonable observation. Nevertheless, it does not strictly apply in this case, since the vaccination rollout in the UK took place in a rather peculiar way, i.e., by rapidly administering 1st dose to as many people as possible and delaying the 2nd dose up to 12 week later. This was done in order to fight the ongoing wave of epidemic in january and was based on JCVI advice. According to this institution, the additional delay between the two doses could prove beneficial in boosting the immune response. Since the government adopted this kind of strategy, many people waited way more than 3 weeks between 1st and 2nd dose.

      Delete
    3. Your observation about the way the vaccines were rolled out in the UK does not invalidate my observation. In fact, if you look at the ONS data, Table 5, you will find that it is only after week 14 that the >21 days group starts to exhibit statistically significant higher age-standardized mortality rates than the unvaccinated group. It is around this time that the population of the >21 group peaks and presumably the proportion of people unable to receive 2nd doses due to health reasons begins to rise.

      Delete
  32. The latest figures are even worse: basically the vaccinated are now at far higher risk of infection than the unvaccinated, and this challenges the whole paradigm that the vaxx is a good thing:
    Sooner or later the emperor of the vaccination will be seen to have no clothes. As one of the curious but unconvinced unvaxxed I am not intending to gloat, but this was my gut instinct all along: too much, too soon, too panicky, too little scrutiny: and I suspect it will all end in tears.

    ReplyDelete
  33. In the US the CDC is continually age adjusting using the 2000 census data even though there was a census in 2010 and 2020. Do you have any idea of why they would do that. We have the same problem that they will not release outcome data by age category for vaccinated and unvaccinated.

    ReplyDelete
  34. I'm a bit late to the party.

    But having looked carefully at the subsequent ONS vaccination data release from 1st October which has come out since this blog post, the data seems to back you up.

    For example in the age 60-69 age group there is a big rise in unvaccinated non covid deaths up to April at a time that covid labelled deaths in the same unvaccnated group are coming down as we head out of Winter. The vaccinated group temporarily become a healthier group than the age matched population as a whole because the vaccination selects for the healthier.

    There seems to be similar selection going on in relation to second vaccinations. In the age 60-69 group we see a staggering jump in the death rate in the single jabbed. This seems to be because the second jabs occur at a super fast rate in May/June in the 60-69 group rapidly leaving behind in the single jabbed group those too ill to get a second jab.

    Thanks to Professor Fenton for all the work he's doing here. It's been brilliant.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Here's my explanation for the observed trends in the various vaxxed categories:

    During the first few weeks in Jan, 2021, the only people getting the first jab who were NOT elderly, were healthcare workers. Since they tend to be more health conscious, and economically doing better than much of the general population, when the age-standardization is performed to apply their mortality rate to a standard population composition, the lower all-cause mortality from these healthcare workers were amplified immensely as their population size is blown up. This is one reason why the first few weeks of January had low mortality rate for all vaccinated categories.

    A second reason for that is because the weakest elderlies were already killed during 2020, either by COVID, or, more likely, by government issued guidelines that amounted to medical murder of seniors using midazolam + morphine, ventilators, starvation, and Do Not Resuscitate orders.

    By week 6, 50% of the age group 65-70 y.o. had their first jab. Most of these weren't in nursing homes so didn't go through the earlier slaughter, so now you see the age-standardized mortality rate increase for the newly jabbed category (<21 days group).

    Moving on, as more & more of the general population got their first dose, the effect mentioned above of the healthcare workers' low mortality rate being over represented in all the jabbed categories wears off. Now we're seeing the real mortality rates in the larger population.

    Many of those that got the first jab must have had adverse outcomes severe enough, that they either died, or decided to not get the second jab. This would explain the dramatic rise of mortality in the >21 day one dose category, and its continued high value. Those that had an adverse reaction likely continue to die at a much higher rate than the unvaxxed, even long after their first (and only) jab.

    The ones that didn't have an adverse reaction mostly went on to get the 2nd jab. The reason why they fared better may have been:
    1) they received a placebo pretending to be a real vaccine (some researchers have found that some of the vials contained only saline solution);
    2) they obtained vaccination certificates without actually getting the jabs (they bought it); or,
    3) they are the healthier ones who're also for whatever reason, less prone to react to whatever ingredients were in the vaccines (many spurious ingredients have been discovered that weren't declared).

    So this explains the mortality pattern observed for the 3 categories of the vaccinated, in relation to the unvaxxed. What do people think?

    ReplyDelete
  36. If I am honest, I would say you are whistling in the wind: the assumptions are far too speculative. Don't sweat the small stuff..

    1) they received a placebo pretending to be a real vaccine (some researchers have found that some of the vials contained only saline solution);
    ( I find this imporbable as it would create a criminal offence)
    2) they obtained vaccination certificates without actually getting the jabs (they bought it);
    (possible but rather unlikely)
    or,
    3) they are the healthier ones who're also for whatever reason, less prone to react to whatever ingredients were in the vaccines (many spurious ingredients have been discovered that weren't declared).
    (I'd like to see the evidence, please)

    ReplyDelete
  37. As the effect of the 'vaccine' wanes after 6 months, what is the expected impact on mortality? The way this is playing out reminds me of the failed BT brinjal crops in GMO roll-outs. Initially, the GMO crops gave higher yields but after the 3rd year, yields dropped so fast that by the 5th year, yields were lower than those from traditional seeds.

    Is the same concept applied to drug development here?

    ReplyDelete
  38. I like the 2 chart. Let's call it "figure 2". It seems to show after the first jab but before the 2nd jab. You have a very high die off and death rate is way higher than the no jab. But after the second jab there is a much lower death rate and lower than the no jab. Very Interesting! Wouldn't we expect something very similar if we took a bunch of people and forced them to eat a peanut. First time we forced them to eat a peanut, we get alot of deaths. Then if we wait a few weeks and force them to eat another peanut and we get fewer deaths. Wow! amazing huh. Nope we can probably all guess why we got so many deaths after the first peanut. Those were the ones highly alergic to peanuts!!! Ok, lets go back to the vaccine. What if alot of the people dying after the first jab were highly sensitive to spike protein. I bet the next time we jab them, there will be fewer deaths? And if they later catch covid...well that's like getting a 3rd jab. So less deaths too. Am I missing the boat? Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  39. This blogger so interested and also provide useful information.
    igoal88 แนะนำเพื่อน

    ReplyDelete
  40. The information you posted is very helpful. The site you refer to is good. thanks for sharing
    ร้านติดฟิล์มรถยนต์

    ReplyDelete
  41. Best Work Accident Claims UK services. I got after starting in two months. I'm really happy to work with them.

    ReplyDelete