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Does This Data From Public Health Scotland Show that Vaccine Effectiveness Against Death is Just 46%?

By Will Jones | The Daily Sceptic | August 2, 2021 

How well do the vaccines protect from death? The two most recent weekly reports from Public Health Scotland give us death data by vaccination status, and by subtracting one from the other we can work out how many Covid patients died in the week July 9th-15th. The results are shown below.

We see that 38 people died with Covid that week, 37 of whom were over 50. Twenty-eight (74%) were fully vaccinated (18 of whom were over 80 and 24 were over 70). Thirty-three (87%) had had at least one dose. Just five (13%) were unvaccinated.

To fully interpret these we need to know how many people were vaccinated in each age group. The problem with obtaining this information is that the official Scottish statistics appear to use the same method as the NHS for estimating vaccine coverage, which gives figures which exceed the likely more accurate estimates of Public Health England by around 5%.

This means the official Scottish figures show extremely high coverage in the over-60s, implausibly hitting 100% in three of the age bands. If we compare this to the latest PHE figures we can see that the corresponding figures in England, taken from the NIMS database, are more like 90-95% than 100%. In fact, the PHE figures are generally around 10 percentage points lower than the PHS figures for the under-70s. That’s a lot.

Even if the Scottish really are more keen on vaccination than the English (not unlikely, if only because of the smaller minority ethnic population), we know from the English figures that the NHS estimates appear, as mentioned, to overestimate vaccine coverage by around 5%. I’m going to use a very rough estimate then that around 93% of the over-50s in Scotland have had at least one dose (compared to around 90% in England) and around 91% are fully vaccinated (compared to around 88% in England).

Looking at just the deaths in the over 50s now (so dropping the one in the under 50s), this means that 89% of the deaths in the week 9th-15th July were in the 93% who were vaccinated with at least one dose; 76% of the deaths were in the 91% who were fully vaccinated; and 11% of the deaths were in the 7% who were unvaccinated. This does imply that the vaccines are having some protective effect, but not as much as we might have expected from other sources such as PHE which claim the vaccines are 75-99% effective against death.

Note that these figures suggest that those who had received only one dose were particularly vulnerable to death, as they made up only around 2% of the over-50s population but accounted for 14% of the deaths. Since almost all the over-50s had been offered two doses by this point, this means those who had only one may have had particular reason to avoid the second, such as a bad reaction to the first, or simply being otherwise more vulnerable.

We can use these figures to do a crude estimate of the vaccine effectiveness against death. The four deaths in the seven percent who were unvaccinated imply that if the vaccines have no effect there would have been 57 deaths in total (4/0.07), or 52 deaths in the 91% who were fully vaccinated. There were 28 deaths in the fully vaccinated, meaning the vaccines reduced the expected deaths among the over-50s by 46%. This is 46% overall protection, not protection in addition to protection from infection and hospitalisation, and is considerably below the 75-99% PHE estimate.

This is a very crude estimate, however, as 20 of the deaths were in the over-80s. Once we have more data from the recent surge we may be able to get a better estimate.

August 1, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

That big lie from last week – that 97% of hospitalized and 99.5% of deaths occur in the unvaccinated…

… Proven a lie by CDC’s own slide deck

By Meryl Nass, MD | August 1, 2021

This is from the slide deck leaked a few days ago from CDC:

August 1, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | 1 Comment

Apple removes dating app for the unvaxxed Unjected as its creators cry ‘CENSORSHIP!’

RT | August 1, 2021

Apple has removed the dating app Unjected, marketed as a “safe space” for unvaccinated Americans, from its store, saying it “inappropriately refers to the Covid-19 pandemic.” The app’s developers say this amounts to censorship.

Unjected describes itself as a “platform for like-minded humans that support medical autonomy.” The dating app has been pitched as a ‘safe space’ of sorts for unvaccinated Americans looking to date without the pressure of being or not being inoculated against Covid-19. Critics, however, have viewed the app as a growing social-media platform for anti-vaxxers and a hotspot of Covid misinformation.

After the app was removed from Apple on Saturday, the company blasted the move as “censorship.”

“Apparently, we’re considered ‘too much’ for sharing our medical autonomy and freedom of choice,” the company said in a Saturday statement posted to Instagram.

The app remains on the Google Play store, but they acknowledge that the move by Apple may mean a website may be Unjected’s best option moving forward so that they are not reliant on app stores.

Other dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble have introduced features to encourage vaccinations, making Unjected stand out even more after launching in May.

But the boiling point for the platforms was reached after Unjected added a social feature that allowed more general postings. It was flagged by Google after Unjected’s moderators were accused of not doing enough to police misinformation on Covid-19 and the vaccines available.

In response to Google’s concerns, the social feed was removed, though co-founder Shelby Thompson wants to soon reintroduce it and the flagged posts.

“We’ve had to walk a censorship tightrope,” she said, according to Bloomberg News, which first reported Apple removed Unjected on Saturday after being contacted by a reporter about the app.

The app also includes lists of businesses that disagree with vaccine mandates.

Apple has already had issues with Unjected, initially denying approval for the app during its initial review process. Changes had to be made for it to get approval to be in compliance with the company’s strict policy on Covid-19 “misinformation,” but a spokesperson for Apple said updates to the app, as well as statements made to its thousands of users, have brought it back out of compliance.

“The developer has made statements externally to its users as well as updates to the app that once again bring it out of compliance,” the spokesperson said.

Apple argued that, because some phrases and words were initially flagged by the company in the app’s social feature, Unjected users began using different placeholder words and phrases to essentially promote the same conspiracy theories about Covid-19 vaccines.

The new decision makes clear, the company said, that “if you attempt to cheat our system, your apps will be removed from the store.”

Thompson maintains, however, that Apple is merely looking for an excuse to censor Unjected, and even says the removal “violates our constitutional rights.”

August 1, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

US nuclear tests killed far more civilians than we knew

By Tim Fernholz | Quartz | December 21, 2017

When the US entered the nuclear age, it did so recklessly. New research suggests that the hidden cost of developing nuclear weapons were far larger than previous estimates, with radioactive fallout responsible for 340,000 to 690,000 American deaths from 1951 to 1973.

The study, performed by University of Arizona economist Keith Meyers, uses a novel method (pdf) to trace the deadly effects of this radiation, which was often consumed by Americans drinking milk far from the site of atomic tests.

From 1951 to 1963, the US tested nuclear weapons above ground in Nevada. Weapons researchers, not understanding the risks—or simply ignoring them—exposed thousands of workers to radioactive fallout. The emissions from nuclear reactions are deadly to humans in high doses, and can cause cancer even in low doses. At one point, researchers had volunteers stand underneath an airburst nuclear weapon to prove how safe it was:

The emissions, however, did not just stay at the test site, and drifted in the atmosphere. Cancer rates spiked in nearby communities, and the US government could no longer pretend that fallout was anything but a silent killer.

The cost in dollars and lives

Congress eventually paid more than $2 billion to residents of nearby areas that were particularly exposed to radiation, as well as uranium miners. But attempts to measure the full extent of the test fallout were very uncertain, since they relied on extrapolating effects from the hardest-hit communities to the national level. One national estimate found the testing caused 49,000 cancer deaths.

Those measurements, however, did not capture the full range of effects over time and geography. Meyers created a broader picture by way of a macabre insight: When cows consumed radioactive fallout spread by atmospheric winds, their milk became a key channel to transmit radiation sickness to humans. Most milk production during this time was local, with cows eating at pasture and their milk being delivered to nearby communities, giving Meyers a way to trace radioactivity across the country.

The National Cancer Institute has records of the amount of Iodine 131—a dangerous isotope released in the Nevada tests—in milk, as well as broader data about radiation exposure. By comparing this data with county-level mortality records, Meyers came across a significant finding: “Exposure to fallout through milk leads to immediate and sustained increases in the crude death rate.” What’s more, these results were sustained over time. US nuclear testing likely killed seven to 14 times more people than we had thought, mostly in the midwest and northeast.

A weapon against its own people

When the US used nuclear weapons during World War II, bombing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, conservative estimates suggest 250,000 people died in immediate aftermath. Even those horrified by the bombing didn’t realize that the US would deploy similar weapons against its own people, accidentally, and on a comparable scale.

And the cessation of nuclear testing helped save US lives—”the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty might have saved between 11.7 and 24.0 million American lives,” Meyers estimates. There was also some blind luck involved in reducing the number of poisoned people: The Nevada Test Site, compared to other potential testing facilities the US government considered at the time, produced the lowest atmospheric dispersal.

The lingering effects of these tests remain, as silent and as troublesome as the isotopes themselves. Millions of Americans who were exposed to fallout likely suffer illnesses related to these tests even today, as they retire and rely on the US government to fund their health care.

“This paper reveals that there are more casualties of the Cold War than previously thought, but the extent to which society still bears the costs of the Cold War remains an open question,” Meyers concludes.

August 1, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | 6 Comments

Haniyeh re-elected as chief of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas

MEMO | August 1, 2021

Ismail Haniyeh has been elected to a second term as head of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, two Palestinian officials told Reuters on Sunday.

“Brother Ismail Haniyeh was re-elected as the head of the movement’s political office for a second time,” one official told Reuters. His term will last four years.

Haniyeh, the group’s leader since 2017, has controlled its political activities throughout several armed confrontations with Israel – including an 11-day conflict in May that leftover 250 in Gaza and 13 in Israel dead.

He was the right-hand man to Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza, before the wheelchair-bound cleric was assassinated in 2004.

Haniyeh, 58, led Hamas’ entry into politics in 2006 when they were surprisingly won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, defeating a divided Fatah party led by President Mahmoud Abbas.

Haniyeh became prime minister shortly after the January 2006 victory, but Hamas – which is deemed a terrorist organisation by the United States, Israel, and the European Union – was shunned by the international community.

Following a brief civil war, Hamas seized Gaza from the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, in 2007. Israel has led a blockade of Gaza since then, citing threats from Hamas.

August 1, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

2020 Was Another Quiet Tornado Season

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | August 1, 2021

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/2020/ptorngraph-big.png

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/2020/ptorngraph-big.png

According to NOAA’s preliminary data, the number of tornadoes in the US last year was below average.

The full, finalised data has now been released, and it shows another very quiet year for the stronger tornadoes, EF-3s and greater:

image

Source: NOAA

There were twelve EF-3s, six EF-4s and no EF-5s at all. The number of these violent tornadoes shows a clear and continuing decline since the 1970s.

Particularly significant is the lack of EF-5s, the most powerful tornadoes, packing winds of over 200 mph. The most recent EF-5 was the Moore tornado in May 2013. As there have been none this year so far either, it means that we have now gone more than eight years without an EF-5. This is the longest such period on record, tied with 1999 to 2007.

With the introduction of Doppler radar in the 1990s, increased population, mobile phones and better monitoring systems generally, many tornadoes are now spotted and counted which would have been missed in the past. For that reason, NOAA advise that trends in stronger tornadoes give a better reflection of tornado activity, as these tornadoes would have likely been reported even during the decades before Doppler radar use became widespread and practices resulted in increasing tornado reports.

August 1, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

DR MIKE YEADON, DOCTORS FOR COVID ETHICS, DAY 2, SESSION 2

ArmerLainie@123 | July 31, 2021

Dr Mike Yeadon speaks with Dr Michael Palmer

August 1, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | 2 Comments