A bit of food for thought for those that like to follow the science and data...
Claim: "You need to have the vaccine to protect others in society. Those who don't take the vaccine are selfish and dangerous." Reality: "Vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless,
fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory."
Indeed, it appears that the peak viral load of double vaccinated and unvaccinated are similar enough that it makes no difference at all - you get the virus you can still pass it on. With that in mind, the selfish "granny-killer" meme falls apart entirely.
I'll just steelman my own argument here as well by pointing out that some earlier studies showed vaccines to reduce transmission within the home by 50 odd per cent. However, that was of a very small sample set (less than 60) compared to this later study quoted and linked below which ran for a greater period of time across a much wider response set.
Source: Lancet, Community transmission and viral load kinetics of the SARS-CoV-2 delta (B.1.617.2) variant in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in the UK: a prospective, longitudinal, cohort study, October 29/10/21
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lani ... 73-3099(21)00648-4/fulltext
Note - because of the brackets the link won't work in here but if you want to find the study just copy and paste the URL into your browser. Claim: "You need to have the vaccine to protect the NHS"
Reality: Covid hospitalisations across the UK are currently 52% of what they were in 2020 at the same time of year. (Nov 17th 2020 16,528 Nov 17th 2021 8,531) (1)
In November 2020 in Wales, 17% of all hospitalisations were covid related (including suspected and confirmed). In November A&E daily admissions in Wales was 1000 less than the rolling 5-year average. (Probably due to the pubs being shut!). (2)
The NHS is of course to be protected (and as always I salute and thank all frontline staff) but the half a billion wasted on Nightingale hospitals that had all of 304 patients in England suggests that the situation was never as grave as it was presented. For reference, the cost
per patient of English Nightingale hospitals was £1,743,421. (Welsh data wasn't available). (3)
As I say the NHS is under strain but it has been for years Before the-19 pandemic there was widespread evidence of a growing shortage of beds. In 2019/20, overnight general and acute bed occupancy averaged 90.2 per cent and regularly exceeded 95 per cent in winter. (4)
Finally, if we look at COVID cases taken to emergency care and filter by vaccination status that results in an overnight stay in hospital, 4773 were unvaccinated, while 6233 were double vaccinated. This data is of course skewed by the fact that we have a high % of the population that is vaccinated. However, statistically, 55% of all overnight stays in hospitals related to COVID are double vaccinated compared to 42% who are completely unvaccinated. (total number of hospitalisations in the three week period between 17th October and 8th November including those with single-dose vaccinations was 11,333). (5)
Given that we are at about half the total hospitalisations year on year, and that last year COVID accounted for 17% of hospitalisation in this period, we could assess that the percentage of hospitalisations in 2021 that are covid related would be about 8.5% and the unvaccinated would account for about two-fifths of that number so we are looking at about unvaccinated COVID related hospitalisations being about 3 or 4% of the total hospitalisations in Wales currently.
Sources: (1)
https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+h ... e&ie=UTF-8(2)
https://gov.wales/nhs-activity-and-capa ... -2020-html(3)
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2021/ ... orth-money(4)
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publicatio ... ed-numbers(5)
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... eek-46.pdfClaim: "You're putting your life at risk if you don't take the vaccine" Reality: Maybe, but probably not.
Despite all the hyperbole and constant media bombardment of the last two years, the statistics remain fairly the same. What is interesting is the data on IFR (infection fatality rate) that used to be fairly easy to find is now a lot, harder. It also used to be generally broken down by age as well. An earlier study by Springer indicated that the IFR in England for my age range would be 0.068) (1)
But admittedly it is hard to find a similar study now for whatever reason although I recall seeing 0.03 in a paper not too long ago but couldn't find it at the time of writing this so will disregard that number.
However, using more crude statistics to take a rolling weekly average from last week of the total population of UK across all age groups that had sadly died of COVID (136) and all those who had been infected in the same period (36,884) we can work out a total IFR in the country for the UK which would be 0.36% (2)
Considering this takes into account the deaths of those aged over 80 who are significantly more vulnerable, and also doesn't factor in those who are asymptomatic so not revealed as infected we can assume that this is a maximum IFR currently.
Given that we have already countered the argument that vaccination prevents transmission and the unvaccinated are a greater burden on the NHS than the vaccinated, the choice to remain vaccinated comes back to the individual and a survival rate of 99.64% is one that many might take over taking what is, despite all arguments to the contrary, still an untested new medical procedure in the case of mRNA vaccines.
Sources: (1)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 1/tables/3(2)
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/Claim: "Herd immunity can't be achieved" Reality: Just a quick one here.
At the beginning of the pandemic, it was stated that the magic number for herd immunity would be 67%. That quickly got adjusted upwards in various corners of the world. In particular, Dr. Fauci in the US gave an interview in which he hedged the numbers in the vaguest way possible stating that somewhere between 70 and 90% of a population would need antibodies to achieve herd immunity. (1)
Good news Doc - here in the UK we just hit 92% of the population having antibodies to SARS COV-2 (COVID19) (2).
Herd immunity doesn't really mean that much given the evolving nature of the variants (a bit like the vaccine efficacy I guess) but it certainly would play a massive part in the virus' natural evolution to something much more benign as we learn to live with it and it learns to live with us.
Before COVID the theory of benign viral evolution (evolutionary trade-off) which asserts that viruses will naturally evolve across variants to become more transmissible and less virulent in order for them to have the greatest chance of ongoing replication, was a fairly widespread and accepted belief. (3)
Indeed, the fact that the more transmissible but less virulent Delta (India) variant is now quite widely established as the dominant versus the Alpha (UK) Beta (South Africa) and Gamma (Brazil) variants, which were statistically more virulent but less transmissible, does seem to align with that theory. (4)
Source: (1)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/heal ... virus.html(2)
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... antibodies(3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_trade_off(4)
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-ne ... 56266.htmlhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8342008/Given all of the above, the fact that Austria and Germany have just announced mandatory vaccination programs starting in February is perhaps the greatest single threat to liberty within Europe since the 1930s and anyone who doesn't see just how close we are getting to a very, very frightening dystopian future right now, really should start paying attention.
I've said all along, if people want to get the vaccine then that is their choice as long as we don't end up in a world of mandated medical procedures.
Well, while we are not quite there and with any luck, these decisions may be reversed, we've just arrived at the last pit stop before we do arrive and the decisions made to get here now have very, very little to do with the actual science.
If they did, they would be open to debate, discussion in the public eye as all good science should be - not the tyrannical authoritarian diktats we are seeing that are nothing more than modern medical Lysenkoism.