Deaths involving Covid-19 by vaccination status, England

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/deathsinvolvingcovid19byvaccinationstatusengland/deathsoccurringbetween2januaryand2july2021

by gmays • 5 years ago

98 138 5 years ago

ons.gov.uk

rkk32• 5 years ago

Deaths 21 days or more after second dose: .89% Percent of all Covid Deaths

That seems like great news?

pfortuny2• 5 years ago

Certainly. I am a bit disappointed by the “involving” qualificator, as it does not inspire much confidence on its meaning…

But overall, very positive results, certainly.

rsynnott4• 5 years ago

Defined in the glossary. It seems to mean where the person had an active covid infection at time of death, and excludes people who recovered from covid but died anyway.

allturtles2• 5 years ago

I don't think this is a particularly interesting stat without a baseline of what % of people fell into that category. Since this is computed over the time period January 2 to July 2 and mass vaccination didn't really take off until the spring, you wouldn't have a large number of people in that category until near the end of the study period.

lmilcin5• 5 years ago

I think you need to read it again. Especially table 1.

In the data they have they found that:

1. For all unvaccinated people, they had 38,964 covid-related deaths and 65,170 of other, non-covid-related deaths of unvaccinated people.

2. For all vaccinated people 21 days or more after second dose they found 458 covid-related and 57,263 non-covid-related deaths.

It doesn't matter when these were recorded (unless we want to account for Delta, but there is not enough data for this here).

So unless we are seeing huge increase in non-covid-related deaths of vaccinated people, this data suggests that vaccination makes it many, many times less likely that you are going to die of covid as compared to you dying to other things.

Which I think is wonderful news to see in actual numbers from a large sample of data gathered over longer period of time.

If that's is not a clear indication to you then I don't know what is.

rsynnott4• 5 years ago

About half the (total, not adult) population was vaccinated by end of May: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57313399

newbamboo2• 5 years ago

As stated in the report, “ the characteristics of the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations are changing over time, which limits the usefulness of comparing counts between the groups.”

Claudus2• 5 years ago

Yes, what is the the overall mortality rate for vaccinated vs. unvaccinated. Ballpark estimates looking at the vaccination rate over time, it seems like vaccinated people had almost double the mortality rate of unvaccinated.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations

Vaccinated are less likely to die of Covid-19, but more likely to die? Not very reassuring.

0-_-0• 5 years ago

From Table 1:

In unvaccinated people 37.4% of all deaths was from COVID (38,964/104,134)

In fully vaccinated people 0.8% of all deaths was from COVID (458/57,721)

This is all amazing news! However we still don't know how much worse the vaccines are against the Delta variant, since most deaths during the period were not from the new variant. It can't be too bad though.

bedhead2• 5 years ago

Facts like these don't matter to the COVID-obsessed. Turns out that screaming 24/7 for 18 months at people they're going to die messes with their cognitive abilities. Go figure! And here I thought doing this would keep us calm and rational.

We basically have a best-case scenario today and an awful lot of people don't care and still think it's doomsday. Vaccines are fantastic at reducing COVID to a cold, kids are at no risk, the overwhelming majority of adults are at no risk, vaccines are available, natural immunity is great, and ironically, vaccines DONT stop transmission. So, we're all gonna get it, anyone who wants to be protected can be, and unvaccinated people don't matter because COVID is already endemic and we're all gonna get it so we have a clear path towards herd immunity. This is great!

And here we are, instead making illogical and probably illegal rules that accomplish literally nothing, make everything worse, perpetuate irrational fear, etc. We scapegoat "the unvaccinated" and start this medical class warfare and just ramp up unnecessary hatred of each other. And worst of all, it doesn't protect anyone and probably will make COVID worse.

Are we having fun yet?!

spookthesunset• 5 years ago

Linked is a fascinating dataset showing exactly what you are talking about. The average american thinks if they get covid, their odds of dying from it around 10%. In younger age brackets this is almost 1000x wrong.

People are very, very badly misinformed about their risks for covid. This makes it almost impossible to have rational, grounded discussion of public policy. If everybody is walking around thinking covid is a death sentence, of course they will beg of all the crap we are doing right now.

https://covid19pulse.usc.edu/

barbazoo2• 5 years ago

kids are at no risk, the overwhelming majority of adults are at no risk

What I've been looking for for a long time now is data on infection, hospitalization rates and mortality by vaccination status and age. They all get mixed and it's never really clear to me what the risk for, say, a vaccinated 40 year old or an unvaccinated 1 year old really is.

bryan02• 5 years ago

I guess you could say that, but this isn't really "news". There have been a variety of studies[0][1] over the past 6 months from various countries showing the remarkable effectiveness of covid vaccines. Just some people apparently don't want to believe it.

2 random examples:

[0]https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-941fc...

[1]https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-says-99-covid-dea...

peakaboo2• 5 years ago

Because there are articles showing the vaccines are not effective and even dangerous as well. We can't hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time.

trollied• 5 years ago

I'm looking forward to a 3rd vaccine dose if it's offered! The UK govt are looking to offer a Pfizer bosster, regardless of 1st & 2nd dose vaccine types. Mixing looks very effective.

newbamboo2• 5 years ago

Yes. For those at risk, a booster seems like an excellent idea. Hopefully there aren’t any downsides to widespread rollout. Downsides being ade or the increase in vaccine evasive variants. For the latter of those I am more concerned about waning efficacy than a booster, but who knows. It’s all one big messy experiment.

lmilcin5• 5 years ago

I am looking forward to get everybody else vaccinated before I am getting 3rd dose.

Any dose is best spent vaccinating an unvaccinated person, even if looking from a purely selfish point of view of already vaccinated population.

There is also still a lot of people that can't get the vaccine in less developed countries.

jjcon• 5 years ago

Unfortunately it doesnt work that way - the infrustructure required for the mass production doses (pfizer, moderna) is pretty huge and third doses will be avilable in most regions long before 'everybody else' has the proper infrustructure in place. For this, it isnt purely zero sum.

paperoli• 5 years ago

I’ll die before getting the injection

twoslide4• 5 years ago

There is a bit of a statistical artifact here: the number of person-days of people with both doses in the UK is very small during this period. Most adults had no doses or one dose for most of this period.

Vaccination is still great and I encourage everyone who can to get vaccinated, but the 640 people is drawing upon a much smaller population and time period.

rkk32• 5 years ago

You are mis interpreting the data, there were 640 Covid deaths among those who received both doses, not 640 participants. There were also 68,733 Non Covid deaths among that cohort. Not to mention everyone who didn't die.

twoslide4• 5 years ago

I'm definitely not saying there are 640 participants, just that the size is unknown. Non-Covid deaths is a poor proxy of the population size, as that population is older because of how the vaccination programme worked. I don't think I'm making an interpretation, just pointing out the unknown

Matthias247• 5 years ago

When I look at the first table I see a number of 220k non Covid death overall compared to 60k after the 2nd dose. Assuming those non Covid cases are constant over time I would assume the sample size is still bigger than 1/4. while not perfect that doesn’t look like „not enough samples“ to me.

twoslide4• 5 years ago

I didn’t say “not enough samples,” only that the population size of fully vaccinated people is not known, and that it changed in the observation period. Therefore, computing mortality rates is not possible, no denominator

bunje• 5 years ago

I don't understand, there were over 50k non-covid deaths in the twice vaccinated and around 500 covid deaths. That sounds significant, or is it due to the age distribution of twice vaccinated?

twoslide4• 5 years ago

I think the age of the vaccinated population is a confounding factor, I am sure vaccination has a big impact on mortality, just hard to say how much.

human4• 5 years ago

I have been looking for one number. Maybe someone can help me. What is the mortality rate for unvaxxed healthy adults between the age of 18 and 50? I can’t help but be dubious that this group needs vaccination.

jdminhbg• 5 years ago

That one number can't exist, because there is no one definition of "healthy."

lambdaba2• 5 years ago

There is, especially related to Covid: metabolic health (see https://www.unc.edu/posts/2018/11/28/only-12-percent-of-amer...), which of course correlates to immune system health. There is only one definition of physical health, and that is the proper functioning of one's bodily processes, with the functioning of the immune system as the centerpiece.

almost_usual• 5 years ago

Mortality only matters to you. Hospitalization matters to everyone.

howlong2• 5 years ago

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736...

This study suggests about 0.5% of unvaccinated population requires hospitalization.

Obviously just one study, but across about six million people, seems a decent back of the envelope guess.

twofornone• 5 years ago

Same here. None of the data feels quite transparent. There seems to be a major taboo around supposing that beyond the R0 value which tends to overwhelm local hospitals during outbreaks, covid is actually not a serious concern for the vast, vast majority of <50, not obese/overweight people.

And I recently discovered that the reporting of overwhelmed hospitals is somewhat misleading as well, as in the US hospitals typically operate at 80-90% capacity for financial reasons, especially ICU wings which are expensive to upkeep on standby. So when the news reports that hospitals $CITY are overwhelmed, that's can be as little as ≈10% increase in patients.

If anything good comes of covid, hopefully we can see some effort to improve surge capacity in the US, but I'm not holding my breath.

lambdaba2• 5 years ago

There is a big problem with groups based solely by age; in truth, if you are metabolically unhealthy, either by diagnosis or have a suspicion you might be (if you're living a typical western lifestyle, chances are you are - 88% of american adults are metabolically unhealthy, look it up), and unwilling to make the necessary lifestyle changes, there is a possibility that vaccination might benefit you, but even there there is a spectrum, with factors increasing such as taking medication, being chronically stressed/depressed, not sleeping well, etc.

All in all, what I wanted to say is that the message to the masses is intentionally or not simplified, and it hides the nuances that everyone should apply to themselves. In my case, I have made drastic changes to better my health after a diagnosis of severe autoimmune illness more than a decade ago, and today am in much better health than I was then, so I have no benefit to expect from taking the vaccine.

tomp• 5 years ago

IFR (infection fatality rate) is estimated to be 0.07% for younger than 50.

Two sources:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00698-1...

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

meragrin_• 5 years ago

Sure, THAT group may not need it to survive a covid infection, but it is not just about surviving a covid infection. It is about reducing covid in general so we can get closer to normal sooner.

sk20202• 5 years ago

This is normal now. There is no pharmaceutical product which provides sterile immunity. There is no population where transmission has been eliminated. Vaccine As A Service is the new business model. Or if you like gallows humor:

Two weeks? What do you need to flatten the curve for? Here’s your mask, now wear two until we have 70% vaccination, and I’ll let you out of the concentration camp when we reach 90% vaccination. Now you just owe me two weeks for delta.

some_furry• 5 years ago

Everyone needs vaccination. Full stop. I wrote more about this topic here: https://soatok.blog/2021/05/10/why-i-chose-to-be-vaccinated-...

Some real-world data: https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/143741231155210240...

A Twitter thread from a scientist and vaccine researcher: https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/143814553785796199...

distrill5• 5 years ago

I will also advocate for everyone to get vaccinated, but this isn't helpful at all.

_-david-_• 5 years ago

Young males perhaps shouldn't be vaccinated since they are more likely to have a side effect than covid.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...

obelos• 5 years ago

How can we be 18 months into a global pandemic and so many people still not understand that diseases are contagious and “healthy” people who manage to avoid dying from the disease still spread it and also take away healthcare resources from other people who need treatment for any number of injuries and maladies?

spoonjim2• 5 years ago

I didn't get vaccinated for others, I got vaccinated for myself. Even an 18 year old is much safer with the vaccine than with the virus.

cortesoft3• 5 years ago

Personally surviving is only one of the reasons you should get vaccinated. It also helps reduce the prevalence of covid in the community in general, which will prevent other people from dying, not just the person who is vaccinated.

This is the same thing with wearing masks... you can't just look at the effect on the person wearing the mask, but also on other people around them.

distrill5• 5 years ago

I am confused at how people are still asking questions like this, seemingly in good faith. The point of masks and vaccines and even staying home as needed, is not specifically to prevent healthy 18-50 year olds from dying. It's to limit the spread to everyone else, bunging up hospital capacity, killing off old folk needlessly, and causing local governments to freak out and impose restrictions because their hospitals are at capacity.

Maybe it's not good faith, I don't know at this point.

wallacoloo• 5 years ago

If you’re on this site, you probably work in an industry where it feels like very large things can get done in 18 months. I remember in February 2020, before anything reached the US, watching China build a new hospital in all of 10 days. I have some vague understandings of “all-hands-on-deck” govt projects of the past. FDR’s WPA jobs program, etc.

So it’s dishearteningly easy to look at this situation from that point of view: “my government, and everyone currently exercising power, has had 18 months to do the dirty work of expanding health capacity, retrofitting buildings to make them safer in the presence of a virus (e.g. open-air supermarkets), and whatever else is necessary to help us all live how we’d like to during this time,” and instead they’ve not really tackled any of those things. We got the vaccine, which is a huge triumph, but beyond that it’s just “hey we need you as an individual to stay at home another couple years while we slack off and keep ignoring any opportunity for letting you live the life you did before.”

I know not all real world systems are as flexible as software systems, especially true of the Frankenstein healthcare system we have here. But it really is not hard for me to say “if this were my problem, I would solve it like an engineer, by building (more capacity, tools to make it easier to grow manpower in the areas they’re needed).” And then be upset at the people who are asking me to make my own life shit for another couple years so that they can avoid making life-long improvements to the systems that need it. Because if our roles were reversed here — if I were the one at risk of this disease — I would never ask of them what they’re asking of me. It’s just not how I think about the world or how I think about solving problems.

I think some people voicing GP’s comment really are doing it in good faith. People have different lived experiences that lead to radically different ways of thinking about the world and how to act within it. These disagreements will always exist. The pragmatist accepts that and says that of the range of possible solutions to your problem, the most successful is the one that can be grounded in this world where people disagree with each other and pursue their own interests.

spoonjim2• 5 years ago

With essentially zero short-term side effects of vaccination, compared to a significant (if not large) short-term mortality and medium-term morbidity from Covid, it is absolutely lunatic to not get the vaccine unless you have specific immune/allergic/blood conditions.

sk20202• 5 years ago

Myocarditis is not a side effect?

bryan02• 5 years ago

This study might help because it breaks down hospitalized patients by comorbidities: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-care/...

of the ~7000 people that died of covid in the study ~1000 had no comorbidities. unfortunately this doesnt break down by vax status, but based on other studies ~90% of hospitalizations are unvaxed. So you can probably get an order of magnitude approximation for your metric.

Unfortunately though this isn't the only metric that should be considered because people with no comorbidities can transmit the virus to people with comorbidities, so you really want to take that into account.

simonsarris• 5 years ago

In healthy individuals? Very small. In the USA, a not very healthy country, only 3,728 of 529,402 deaths occurred under the age of 29. (38.7% of the population, 0.6% of the deaths.) I was expecting it to be much higher just based on obesity and diabetes and other comorbidity rates alone.

The inflection point happens in the 40's or 50's:

People under 40 are 52% of the population and 2% of COVID deaths (11,212)

Which of course means people over 40 are 48% of the population and 98% of COVID deaths (529,402)

These numbers reflect only cases where the CDC knows their age. The stats are here, which has a nice graph showing just how outsized the deaths as people get older: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics (scroll to "Deaths by Age Group")

Covid is (literally) exponentially worse as you get older. But it's not really an issue for young, healthy people. Alas, not very many people can truly call themselves healthy, which is a concern in its own right.

nradov5• 5 years ago

I doubt you will find that one number anywhere. The CDC estimated a mortality rate of 0.06% for the 18-49 age group, but that doesn't account for health status.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

Of those deaths, many had pre-existing conditions such as cancer, heart failure, obesity, and diabetes which drastically increased their risks. You'll have to do your own calculations on how that impacts your expected mortality rate.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

I encourage healthy adults to get vaccinated because the personal benefits outweigh the risks, and it can help reduce load on the healthcare system.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm

cinntaile3• 5 years ago

I wonder how many of those unvaccinated people were people that for some reason could 't be vaccinated? Like immunocompromised patients that already have a higher risk of dying? This seems like an important factor?

rsynnott4• 5 years ago

UK recommendation was that immunocompromised people be vaccinated; they were prioritised, in fact, so ~all of the immunocompromised people would've been vaccinated for most of the time period.

cinntaile3• 5 years ago

Ok thanks for the clarification, I was under the impression that immunocompromised people couldn't take the vaccine.

occamrazor2• 5 years ago

Very important for thise people, but nut much for population statistics. And immunocompromised people can generally be vaccinated, the question which is still open is how effective the vaccine is for them.

cinntaile3• 5 years ago

I'll have to read up about how it works for immunocompromised people it seems.

eagsalazar22• 5 years ago

This data needs to be framed against the % of the population that was vaccinated at the time they contracted the virus, right? Otherwise, for all we know, the vaccine could actually increase mortality if the % vaccinated was smaller than the % of deaths that group represents. I'm assuming that isn't the case but hard to make meaningful conclusions about efficacy without that context. The apparent efficacy of vaccination is at the very least somewhat inflated because between Jan and July is when everyone got vaccinated, I'm assuming in England, like here in the US, basically no one was vaccinated in Jan, Feb.

Also, bucketing people who were vaccinated with previously infected makes sense as an additional lens to look at things through, but it seems odd that they then omitted reporting those group separately. I'm very curious how one did compared to the other.

lmilcin5• 5 years ago

This data needs to be framed against the % of the population that was vaccinated at the time they contracted the virus, right?

No, it does not.

It compares chance of you dying to covid compared to all other possible causes.

This dimensionless number does not depend on relative population sizes.

So if in one population you get 458 deaths from Covid compared to 57,263 from all other causes and in the other population you get 38,964 from covid compared to 65,170 from all other causes, we can immediately tell that one population fared much better at least when it comes to your chance to die of covid compared to chance of dying to all other causes.

Just by the fact of being in one population than in the other you get (38964/(38964+65170)) / (458/(458+57263)) ~= 47 times less chance of dying to covid assuming rates of deaths to all other causes were the same between both populations.

So what are these population? To be in the better-faring population you had to be fully vaccinated for at least 21 days and the worse population was completely unvaccinated.

Now, I am pretty sure there are other factors that factor in that number 47.

It is likely that vaccinated people treat Covid more seriously and are more likely to practice social distancing, washing hands and be generally mindful of various things you do to minimize chance of getting infected. They might also possibly wait shorter amount of time before calling for help if they see signs. While this is pure conjecture on my part I think it is reasonable to assume this happens to some extent and reduces rates of infection within vaccinated population.

TechBro8615• 5 years ago

Note this does assume that you are not immortal and will eventually die. If you’re holding out hope for Mr Bezos to discover an anti-aging elixir, you might interpret these stats more pessimistically.

eagsalazar22• 5 years ago

>> So if in one population you get 458 deaths from Covid compared to 57,263 from all other causes and in the other population you get 38,964 from covid compared to 65,170 from all other causes, we can immediately tell that one population fared much better at least when it comes to your chance to die of covid compared to chance of dying to all other causes.

I think your math is off. What if the first population only has 458 people in it? 100% mortality for that population would obviously suggest you want to be part of the other population even if their total deaths were higher. The issue I'm calling out is that we don't know the size of each population. I certainly don't think vaccines increase mortality, I actually believe it has a large positive impact. The point is this data doesn't help us understand how impactful it really is and, given all the debate over this, if they'd framed the data with better context, this could actually be a very useful study in ending that debate.

jollybean• 5 years ago

The problem with this generalization is that the vaxxed/unvaxxed populations are ultimately very different.

Vaxxed group is older, unvaxxed are younger.

i.e. groups are not randomly distributed.

They are going to have different risk factors and die of different things.

This showed up in British Columbia's health data that showed infections and hospitalizations way, way down for the vaxxed relative to unvaxxed, but the ratio between the two for actual deaths was not as extreme, because vaccinated population skewed older, more vulnerable, more likely to die even when fully vaxxed.

Should note that age-standardized mortality rates are included in the study.

benmmurphy• 5 years ago

I think the problem with this report is the headline figure is due to an apples and oranges comparison. The big number of deaths is mostly due to a point in time where LOTS of people were dying from Covid19 in the UK.

We end up comparing the population at one point in time where there were lots of deaths and a low vaccination rate to another point in time where there were few deaths and a much higher vaccination rate. No doubt part of the reason why there are fewer deaths now is due to the vaccine. However, I suspect part of the reason is also not vaccine related. You can see this if you look at the raw data. There was a very high rate of deaths for the unvaccinated in the first few months of the year. But now there is a very low rate of deaths for the unvaccinated. However, this comparison is fraught with danger because there is a selection effect with a lot of vulnerable people opting into the vaccine leaving the unvaccinated population much less susceptible to the virus.

Also, it is important to note that data has been apparently truncated at a point where it paints a more positive picture for vaccines.

Personally, I think the vaccine has had very large impact for some vulnerable groups. For some other groups I suspect it has had a negligible impact. But I also think there has been a strong push to juice the figures to make the vaccines look better than they are.

kklisura• 5 years ago

61.1% of breakthrough deaths occurred in males, which is higher than for other deaths involving COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 deaths
Breakthrough deaths
Male 154 (61.1%)
Female 98 (38.9%)

Do we still know why are men disproportionately affected by covid?

mullingitover• 5 years ago

Estrogen and ACE2 expression might be factors[1]:

Intriguingly, infection with SARS-CoV induces ACE2 down-regulation through binding of the viral Spike protein to ACE2, thus reducing ACE2 expression in the lung and igniting acute respiratory failure. Since COVID-19 and SARS patients share similar acute respiratory distress syndrome and a similar gender bias in disease susceptibility and case fatality rates, it is reasonable to believe that they share similar pathogenic mechanisms.
Estrogen, the primary female sex hormone, has been observed to play a protective role in SARS not only by activating immune response but also suppressing directly SARS-CoV replication. To note, estrogen inhibits the activity or expression of different components of the renin–angiotensin system. In particular, estrogen is able to upregulate the expression of ACE2.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41420-020-0276-1

b3nji4• 5 years ago

This data is out of date. The cut off is July 2nd, it doesn't take into account delta, or the fact not a high amount of people were vaccinated at that point.

The most up to date data comes from Public Health England.

Public Health England published a report last week which gave us this data for the period of August 9th to September 5th.

It shows that of 2,381 deaths in this period, 1,659 or 69.7%, more than two thirds, were in the double vaccinated. Six hundred deaths or 25.2% were in the unvaccinated. This is very different to the ONS statistics as quoted in the press that 99% of deaths were in those not double vaccinated.

In the over-50s, the PHE report showed that 1,621 of 2,222 deaths or 73% were in the double vaccinated compared to 499 or 22.5% in the unvaccinated. Once you take into account the proportions of the over-50s vaccinated and unvaccinated this works out at a vaccine effectiveness against death of 68.1% – respectable, but a far cry from the kind of claims being made by the ONS.

It’s not clear yet how well vaccine effectiveness is holding up against serious disease. Data from Israel indicates that it may drop to 55% in the over-65s over six months. The age profile of Covid patients in the U.K. has also been rising again, which may indicate declining efficacy.

It’s depressing to see the ONS seemingly allowing itself to be used as a vehicle for the Government’s vaccine propaganda campaign.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccine-...

RIMR• 5 years ago

There is literally nothing dishonest in this report, and yet you seem very eager to call it propaganda.

The Delta variant does change things a lot over the past two months, but that's a different story that will warrant additional study and likely a v.2 of the vaccine.

b3nji4• 5 years ago

I haven't said there is anything dishonest about the ONS report, simply that the data is out of date.

Propaganda is simply information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicise a particular political cause or point of view.

rcpt• 5 years ago

This sounds like Simpson's paradox again: https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-...

Anecdotally, my wife has been working covid ICU this month and to her it's not surprising. The people with breakthrough cases apparently have so many comorbidities that it's not surprising at all they'd get vaccinated with high priority but also have an immune system that doesn't do a great job learning new skills from the shots.

The people for whom the shot is least effective are the ones that get it the most.

b3nji4• 5 years ago

Makes sense, I have also heard first hand reports of this. Its very sad.

daxfohl• 5 years ago

Yeah it's kind of ridiculous both sides skewing statistics. (Granted, it's ridiculous that there are "sides" to this thing at all).

But I get super annoyed when I see things like CNN reporting 99% of deaths since January were unvaccinated. I mean, duh, hardly anybody was vaccinated then and those first months were the highest death rates. I'd like to give them a pass because, hey, maybe it'll convince more people to vaccinate. But it also creates cannon fodder for anyone who is viewing it critically. Both sides are so stupidly irresponsible.

DoingIsLearning• 5 years ago

Also it is very likely that the people with most comorbidities where vaccinated earlier, so have had the longest period of post-vaccination.

So we are likely looking at a sub-group that both has multiple comorbidities _and_ has had the longest period of post-vacination. Even assuming that the decay of effectivenesss is small over time it may be a contributor.

CryptoPunk• 5 years ago

>The people for whom the shot is least effective are the ones that get it the most.

It's not that the vaccine is less effective for them. It's that they're starting with much poorer immunity, so even with the significant immunity boost provided by the vaccine, they still have significant susceptibility to the virus.

Without the vaccine, their numbers would look much worse than the unvaccinated.

rich_sasha• 5 years ago

Glancing though the report you linked, it says 55-70% reduction in symptomatic disease after 1 dose and more after 2. Higher effectiveness against severe disease, hospitalisation and death. For delta, they quote a 10-15% drop of effectiveness after two/one doses respectively. That seems in line with the “official” line and different to your numbers? Or am I reading you wrong?

Another nugget in there is that something like 95-97 of the population has Covid antibodies, from either disease or vaccination. I’m surprised actually that is is going as strong as it is still. I know antibodies are no silver bullet, but that means that a huge proportion of the country has either been sick already or had a vaccine recently. That seems as good as it can be for a “herd immunity” case, and yet infections are high. Hmm...

lamontcg3• 5 years ago

Another nugget in there is that something like 95-97 of the population has Covid antibodies

That is almost certainly wrong. Vaccine uptake in under-12 is 0% and vaccine uptake in young adults is low. There's no way to make those kinds of seroprevalence numbers work.

jozvolskyef2• 5 years ago

The numbers are in table 5.

ricardobeat• 5 years ago

You appear to have missed the conclusions of the report:

“Analysis on the direct and indirect impact of the vaccination programme on infections and mortality, suggests the vaccination programme has prevented between 24.4 and 24.9 million infections and between 108,600 and 116,200 deaths”.

kmclean• 5 years ago

I think your analysis doesn't account for the fact that the majority of double vaccinated people are also at far higher risk of covid to begin with. There was an interesting article about this (Simpson's Paradox, as it's known in the world of data analysis) recently: https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-... -- the overall trend is reversed when the data are grouped properly.

The preponderance of evidence shows that the covid vaccines are overwhelmingly effective and safe for the vast majority of people. Your alarmism and calling Government vaccination campaigns propaganda is contributing to the spread of an incurable but now preventable disease that is killing thousands of people daily and you should feel bad about that. You are a menace to society.

b3nji4• 5 years ago

Propaganda is simply information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

How else would you explain the fact they used old data? Incompetence?

Its clear the vaccines don't prevent much, you still catch, spread, and die from covid after being fully jabbed. This is what the report shows, and unfortunately been seen by myself through friends, and family.

Could calling people a menace to society do damage to a society simply because they are showing other points to your own?

nradov5• 5 years ago

Seatbelts are highly effective at preventing car crash deaths, but if everyone wears seatbelts then 100% of people who die in car crashes will be seatbelt users.

It was always expected that vaccination would be less effective in elderly patients. Some research is underway now to see if that can be improved by administering rapalogs.

bananapear• 5 years ago

A graph of this - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E_PYKjSWYAEIyWG?format=png&name=...

qwertywert_• 5 years ago

I think there are a couple points you missed: From that Table 5. in the PHE report, younger ages 20-59 are having less deaths still than unvaccinated. It is a clear pattern from this table the younger you are - the better off when double vaccinated.

68.1% efficacy against death is huge, and for that period is likely to be mostly delta variant, we can't just forget about Alpha variant which vaccine does amazing with, which the previous data shows.. not sure how this points to them being "government propaganda" campaign. Although I agree it's a bit disappointing they are not painting the full picture.

But people reading that "73% of new deaths were unvaccinated" would cause panic among people that don't understand you need to take into account ~90% of population aged >60 have been double vaccinated for a while now .

wing-_-nuts3• 5 years ago

This study looks at deaths. The death rate for someone with two doses of the vaccine is ~ 1%.

I do wonder though, what's my risk of having serious symptoms in a breakthrough case? I know it's lower, but is it 10%? 5%? I have no idea.

NDizzle2• 5 years ago

Death rate from covid, or death rate from heart problems and blood clots in their lungs?

As someone (aged 42 years) with grandfathers on both sides that died from heart issues in their late 40s, early 50s, the side effects of the vaccines are more worrisome to me than the virus itself. I'm preparing myself to be excluded from society and yet I've already had covid and recovered from it, because that's not an acceptable form of prevention.

Oh well, back to my hillbilly roots I guess.

wing-_-nuts3• 5 years ago

You do realize the 'bloodclots' issue was with the astrozenica (sp?) vaccine, that was never approved here, and it was with only a handful of cases in women? Your risk of a second, more severe case of covid is *massively* higher than the risk of serious side effects from the vaccine.

fdanconia21• 5 years ago

I'd like to see the number of COVID-19 deaths by BMI in addition to vaccination status.

AnnoyedComment• 5 years ago

Many places allegedly don't count it as vaccinated unless they have had both shots and a certain amount of time has passed.

So if someone gets the vaccine and dies before the next shot, they are considered an unvaccinated death.

There are no opinions presented here, only facts. How you view these is up to you.

anunnymouse• 5 years ago

'Many' 'Allegedly'

These may be facts, but are they actually useful?

rob_c• 5 years ago

Frankly speaking on behalf of someone in the UK.

Regardless of opinions on the topic. We (the UK public) have practically reached the 90% vaccination status.

Can we all just get back to life now. There's nothing else to do other than making this flu shot available to those at risk who want it.

Life is ultimately fatal. It's not about the destination it's the journey that matters.

WiSaGaN• 5 years ago

Apart from the fact that the data are not up-to-date with the newly emerged variants. The high correlation with unvaccinated and death may also be caused by third factors. The main one is that getting vaccinated is not a random event. It says something about the people in addition to the willingness to get vaccnated, especially in current divided atomosphere. The unvaccinated may do much more dangerous things like make contacts with more people, and not applying other measures that could lower the risk of contract COVID such as wearing a mask.

MaurizioPz• 5 years ago

Similar data for Italy (previous 30 days) https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/7021427/

And source https://www.epicentro.iss.it/en/coronavirus/sars-cov-2-integ...

Deaths involving Covid-19 by vaccination status, England

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