Harvard study finds high vaccination rate does not correlate with low COVID rate
By Joel S Hirschorn | December 8, 2021
“Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States” is the title of what has become a famous article from Harvard scholars.
Here are key conclusions: “At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days (see figure).
In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.
Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days.
The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated.”

“Masks were to soften you up for Plan B”
By Laura Dodsworth | December 8, 2021
‘Masks were a softening up exercise for Plan B,’ according to a government whistleblower. He told me that while there is little appetite in the Cabinet for a full lockdown, Covid Passes are ‘oven-baked’ and ready to go.
In my opinion, the UK government’s Winter Plan was always about Plan B. It displayed a classic ‘foot-in-the-door’ strategy – the raison d’être of Plan A was to prepare you for Plan B. Now winter is upon us, and the nudges fall in a flurry of torpefying snowflakes. Worst case scenarios, big numbers, salutary stories in the media, threats and cajolements are directed at us daily. Plan B is in motion as calls for working from home are heard from the usual suspects and we hear the Cabinet is divided on Covid Passes.
This seasoned government insider plays a key role on a Covid task force and has decided to speak out now because he is disturbed by the unethical reasons for mandating masks. Firstly, ‘It’s a highly political move to reset the Johnson administration’s orientation after bad polling over sleaze and corruption. If Omicron turns out to be super-bad and the public ask what the government did about it, the answer is we implemented masks. The one-way systems, plexiglass screens and masks are to give you an illusion of the government doing something. It’s just theatre. There is no evidence base or proportionality in favour of masks.’
Boris Johnson is a fan of deadcatting, a technique to deflect attention from one issue to another, akin to throwing a dead cat on a table during a heated debate to change the topic. Masks are a dead cat. In this case rather than throw them on the table, the government have slung them on our faces.
Face masks are increasingly discredited, but certain journalists fell hungrily upon a recent new study which concluded that face masks reduce transmission by 53%. The Guardian, The Times, Metro and New Scientist positively feasted. However, that fragrant soupçon of a percentage was based upon weak evidence, there were confounding factors and caution was required when interpreting the study, as Fullfact explained.
‘The public are annoyingly on board about masks’, said this task force advisor. ‘Journalists have not demanded evidence that they work. But the message from the government and the media is hegemonic – everyone says they do work.’
As I set out in my book A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic masks are a nudge, even described as a ‘signal’ by David Halpern, the director of the UK government’s Behavioural Insights Team. Similarly, Professor Neil Ferguson said that masks remind us ‘we’re not completely out of the woods yet’. They serve as a visible public reminder of the pandemic, turning us back into walking billboards pronouncing danger. My source concurred: ‘Masks are a behavioural psychology policy. We need to stop pretending that it’s about public health. Nudge is a big thing in government.’
Despite ‘a pretty much unlimited budget to run trials’ they didn’t run one for masks ‘because they knew that they don’t work’. In effect, ‘the trial was Scotland versus England. And we found they don’t work.’
For this government insider the implications are now too serious to remain silent because ‘we are lying when we say masks work. They are a signal, a psyop. And we’ve criminalised not wearing them. Masks also transfer the blame onto individuals for the epidemic spreading. We have people counting the unmasked on public transport, policing each other. It is deeply unethical that we have set people against each other in this way. It allows the creation of an “out group” to blame.’ He points out that it is the government we should blame for not increasing healthcare capacity.
The timing of our conversation is interesting. He speaks to me just before the news about Downing Street Christmas parties breaks. People are rightly angry about hypocrisy and the pain of their own cancelled plans last year. The nation suffered last minute restrictions while Downing Street enjoyed revelry. More than one million pounds in fines have been served to nearly 2,000 Covid-19 rule breakers at Westminster magistrates court, including throwing and attending parties, while Boris Johnson evades punishment.
But the real point is not the hypocrisy, or that we suffered while they did not. Rather it is that those who organised and attended the party had a different risk calculus. They did not feel imperilled by parties and gatherings. They knew they were safe, just as they know that masks don’t work. What we are expected to believe is another matter.
As these distasteful double standards are unmasked, Ministers are considering whether to impose Plan B and roll out Covid Passes. When the Winter Plan was published, we were told that the trigger to move from Plan A to Plan B was if the NHS comes under ‘unsustainable pressure’. This was left deliberately vague. If you were watching cases and hospitalisations with an anxious eye, I’m afraid you were missing the more important signs: stories about doctors’ anger at the ‘selfish’ un-jabbed, daily polling via Twitter, TV shows and Yougov about the national appetite for Covid Passes and mandates, and the reintroduction of masks.
There is an army of behavioural scientists, communications specialists and Covid task forces focussed on Covid. The government insider told me there are hundreds of people in this Covid apparatus, even though we are no longer in an emergency. Robert Higgs talks about the ‘ratchet effect’ in his book Crisis and Leviathan whereby the state expands in response to a crisis and then doesn’t recede afterwards to its former level. The aura of emergency will not fade and we risk ever more stringent and unpalatable restrictions unless this apparatus is dismantled. Furthermore, public reputations have been staked on enforcing restrictions, including journalists, scientists and politicians.
The government insider is brutal about the reality of our situation: ‘England is teetering on the edge of a depressing, bureacratic, safety-obsessed society. We’re not at the level of Germany or Austria yet, but we’re on a precipice nonetheless.’ On his primary reason for calling me, he said he is ‘ashamed how much people believe in masks despite the lack of evidence’.
Our leader’s masks are slipping, exposing hypocrisy, psychological manipulation and barefaced lies. Frankly, I am ashamed of them.
Media are gagging challenges to the Government’s Covid narrative

By Mark Sharman | TCW Defending Freedom | December 8, 2021
In his skyscraper office high above New York’s Sixth Avenue, Roger Ailes, then boss of the Right-leaning Fox News, was justifying his channel’s slogan, ‘Fair and Balanced.’
It was a well-rehearsed line. The rest of the US media, he said, were the liberal Left. ‘So we balance it – and that’s fair.’
Later, an underling added that in America you chose the channel that best fuelled your own views. ‘It just depends on how you take your political medicine.’
On the flight home, I thought how fortunate we were in the UK, with a remit of impartiality in broadcasting; a duty to report fairly and evenly. Less than two decades later, I wonder what’s happened to those intrinsic values.
In all my years around newsrooms, decent journalists have seen it as their right and obligation to seek out the truth, to scrutinise and determine the facts. But on Covid-19, mainstream news outlets have seemingly kow-towed to the Government line, following the ‘official’ science.
Worse, opposing views have been ignored, blocked or summarily dismissed as ‘conspiracy theories’ or ‘misinformation.’ This is not honest journalism as I know it, especially at a time when the Government has extra powers of control over the population. I was taught early that the more someone pushed for or against a story, the more it needed investigating. So what changed?
It’s bad enough that Big Tech acts as the world’s censor, suspending or cancelling any accounts that carry unpalatable comments about the virus or the vaccines. But the UK’s communications regulator Ofcom has also muscled in.
The authority instructed broadcasters to be alert to ‘health claims related to the virus which may be harmful; medical advice which may be harmful; accuracy or material misleadingness in programmes in relation to the virus or public policy relating to it’.
When did it become the regulator’s job to determine debate on Government policy? In effect it discourages investigation of alternative views. And who decides what is accurate or misinformation anyway?
Some media outlets have their own ‘fact checkers,’ but I’m not overly encouraged that BBC News has a Specialist Disinformation Reporter (the title hardly suggests impartiality) or that Sky’s Digital and Forensics team compiled an article that begins: ‘Covid-19 conspiracy groups who have attempted to undermine efforts to bring the pandemic under control are increasingly sharing climate change misinformation.’
The terms prosecutor, judge and jury spring to mind – and try as I might, I couldn’t find any hard evidence that so-called ‘theories’ were bunkum. They weren’t proven either, but that’s not the point.
Maybe the root can be found in Event 201, a simulated global coronavirus pandemic exercise organised by the World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security, in October 2019.
Advice to world governments included ‘flood the media with fast, accurate and consistent information’ (some would say propaganda), while media companies, for their part, ‘should commit to ensuring that authoritative messages are prioritised and that false messages are suppressed, including through the use of technology’.
We’ve certainly witnessed less-than-overt Government behaviour.
In her best-selling book A State of Fear, Laura Dodsworth charts how proven psychological techniques influenced the Government in frightening and intimidating the population, ‘nudging’ us to comply over Covid. And how mainstream media acted as cheerleaders in weaponising that fear.
It should make uncomfortable reading for any news executive.
Our Government is supposed to serve us, not use fear tactics to bring us to heel. As an industry, we should challenge the narrative much more rigorously, starting with the numbers. At least the BBC carries the small print, that deaths are from any cause within 28 days of positive test. However, these quickly become Covid deaths on many daily score charts. It’s inaccurate reporting. Or should I call it misinformation? Or again, propaganda?
Now the shame-and-blame game has shifted to the unvaccinated (I prefer vaccine-free), those ‘radical anti-vaxxers … spreading fake news’ according to Austria’s Chancellor as he introduced compulsory vaccination.
When did it become acceptable to persecute people who stand up for that most basic of human rights, that of their own body autonomy?
Why are we not outraged that our neighbours in the Netherlands, ordinary citizens, are shot by their own police? Or that Australians are beaten and shot by rubber bullets, or incarcerated in what has become a police state?
Are we ready to accept such a reaction on the streets of London, Birmingham or Sheffield? What angle would the MSM take, police violence or mob rule? Which way would the scales dip?
A recent protest, not widely reported, saw thousands of people marching through London; students, medics, teachers and ex-servicemen, of all ages and races, people with genuine concerns for their children and their democratic freedoms.
They seek the truth and nothing but the truth about the virus and, particularly, the safety of the vaccines. And they have deep convictions that the truth is not forthcoming from the Government or from broadcasters and newspapers.
And that’s the point. If the media continue to stifle alternative views that flourish on various social sites, and continue to follow the censorial state narrative instead of encouraging healthy open debate, they are fuelling the very ‘conspiracies’ they seek to dismiss.
The Paucity of Evidence for Mandated Covid-19 Vaccine Boosters
BY ANDREW BOSTOM | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE| DECEMBER 6, 2021
Federal legal challenges have temporarily enjoined the Biden Administration’s sweeping large business, health care worker, and federal contractor covid-19 vaccine mandates. Notwithstanding these injunctions staying primary covid-19 vaccine mandates, “amendments” mandating booster covid-19 vaccinations have already been issued, as examples, for New Mexico healthcare workers, and University of Massachusetts-Amherst students.
Dr. Allon Friedman’s recent Brownstone essay, citing randomized, controlled trial data on primary covid-19 vaccination, demonstrated, “The Pfizer and Moderna trials show that in lower risk populations (which account for most of society) COVID-19 vaccines do not reduce mortality.” Friedman concluded, “Therefore, [covid-19] vaccine mandates, which are enormously costly and terribly divisive, are a cure worse than the disease.”
Why did Dr. Friedman rely exclusively—and appositely—upon randomized, controlled trial data to justify his conclusion? Almost sixty years ago (in 1963) Campbell and Stanley published their seminal monograph on research methodology entitled “Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research.” This work, which shaped research designs ever since highlighted the major threats to validity that are avoided, uniquely, by the randomized controlled trial—a true experimental design.
Observational studies and all other non-randomized designs lacking parallel control groups, which they referred to as “quasi-experimental,” are fraught with known biases investigators attempt to control for, after the fact, with limited success. Worse still are intractable, unknown biases which the randomization process, alone, accounts for. Guyatt and colleagues, in their 2008 British Medical Journal paper “GRADE: an emerging consensus on rating quality of evidence and strength of recommendations”, updated and reinforced these ideas, appropriately assigning highest priority to randomized, controlled trial evidence.
On Friday, November 19, 2021, CDC Director Dr. Walensky endorsed the expanded recommendations of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) that booster (third dose) shots be provided to all adults 18 years of age, and older, who received their second Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine second doses, at least 6-months earlier.
What randomized, controlled trial evidence were the basis for this “unanimous decision,” touted by Dr. Walensky?
Although two small, published, randomized, placebo-controlled trials—one in kidney transplant recipients, and another in a general population—revealed enhanced immune responses to boosters, CDC’s recommendation clearly hinged upon a large, unpublished Pfizer randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial.
A month before the CDC expanded booster recommendation was announced, Pfizer’s “randomized trial results by press release” were issued (10/21/21). The ~10,000 person, placebo-controlled randomized covid-19 vaccine booster trial, yielded a 95.6% reduction in symptomatic covid-19 infections (i.e., 109 in the placebo group; 9 in the boosted group), after a median 2.5 months of follow-up. The press release also included this important caveat:
“The observed relative vaccine efficacy of 95.6% (95% CI: 89.3, 98.6) reflects the reduction in disease occurrence in the boosted group versus the non-boosted group in those without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
The November 19, 2021, ACIP presentation of Pfizer’s Dr. John Perez included enough data about prior infection to conclude boosters did not reduce covid-19 infections relative to placebo in this clinically relevant, ever burgeoning subgroup. Simple calculations (based upon the slides from pages 16 and 17) indicate there were only 2 symptomatic covid-19 infections among the 524 trial participants with a history of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, 1/275 who received boosters, and 1/249 given placebo injections (p=0.944 for incidence rate difference of 0.038%).
Moreover, CDC’s Dr. Oliver, in her ACIP review (p. 25) of Pfizer’s booster trial data, acknowledged that within the full cohort of ~10,000 there were no covid-19 hospitalizations or deaths, and no data to assess any impact on SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
These findings comprise a striking paucity of randomized trial evidence on the “efficacy” of boosters—literally none on the most clinically relevant outcomes of serious covid-19 morbidity and mortality. Even the potential effect of boosters on SARS-CoV-2 transmission remains unaddressed.
Rapidly accumulating data strongly suggest prior covid-19 infection, “natural immunity,” is more robust, flexible, and enduring than exclusive covid-19 vaccine-acquired immunity. Pfizer’s covid-19 booster trial data confirm boosters afford no benefit in preventing covid-19 infections among those with natural immunity.
Given these overall randomized trial findings regarding covid-19 vaccine boosters—absence of even a short- term reduction in mild covid-19 infections in those with natural immunity, and no data establishing that boosters prevent covid-19 hospitalizations, deaths, or SARS-CoV-2 transmission—there is no rational, evidence-based justification for covid-19 vaccine “booster mandates.”
Andrew Bostom, M.D. MS, is an academic clinical trialist and epidemiologist, who is currently a Research Physician at the Brown University Center For Primary Care and Prevention of Kent-Memorial Hospital in Rhode Island.
Punishing doctors is actually punishing patients
By Chris Leitch, Leader, Social Credit | December 5, 2021
The [New Zealand] government’s refusal to let GPs, midwives, and other specialist medical staff who are unvaccinated continue to work has no medical foundation and is simply punishment because of their refusal to be vaccinated.
That situation has nothing to do with patient safety.
It is now firmly established that both vaccinated and unvaccinated medical professionals can pass on corona virus to their patients so barring those unvaccinated from working is actually punishment of their patients as well.
A GP could have up to 25 people of mixed vaccination status in his home celebrating a birthday, yet those same 25 people could not attend his medical practice and consult him on their medical issues.
A midwife could have up to 25 people of mixed vaccination status in her home celebrating a christening yet she is unable to attend to the birthing needs of the pregnant mothers and expectant fathers in that same group professionally.
A dentist could have 25 people of mixed vaccination status in his home celebrating a house-warming yet those same 25 people cannot attend his dental surgery for treatment on their teeth.
Not only has the government’s medical mandate taken away the livelihoods of those health professionals but more importantly it is punishing patients by denying them the ability to get the medical care they need from the people they choose to provide it.
If the government was serious about patient safety, as it says it is, then it would allow patients to sign an acknowledgement of risk and consent form – the very same process that patients go through before an operation in hospital – and then let them consult the medical professionals they wish in the premises they wish.
Those medical professionals can then get back to work doing what they are highly trained for and what we desperately need them to do – provide the health care their patients deserve.
Given that both vaccinated and unvaccinated medical professionals can pass on corona virus to their patients, anything less will simply prove that punishment, not patient safety, is the reason for denying patients access to their chosen medical professional.
A sample consent form is below.
Disclaimer:
Social Credit is not against vaccination.
Social Credit is not aligned with Voices For Freedom or any other similar organisation.
Social Credit does stand up for the right of people to choose the medical treatment they deem appropriate and that includes vaccinations.
Social Credit does stand up for the right of people to refuse medical treatment should they so choose.
Click here to view sample consent form
Please support this petition against the coercion of children to get the jab

Rebecca Lawrence started this petition to Jacinda Ardern:
Children as young as 12 are now being excluded from their hobbies, recreational activities and school activities due to the vaccine mandates.
The 12-17 year old age group is not susceptible to serious adverse affects from covid-19. This age group IS susceptible to mental health issues – we have one of the worst statistics in the world. Sports and activities can help maintain good mental health. Being excluded from these activities could increase the likelihood of depression and anxiety within this age group.
The vaccine has not be tested for long term effects, so it’s unclear whether it will cause harm to these kids in the future. Short term effects show adverse reactions to the vaccine are relatively high in the age group compared with the older age groups.
It is fundamentally WRONG to exclude children based on their / their parents health choices
Evidence that torpedoes Javid’s ‘jab them all’ crusade
By Neville Hodgkinson | TCW Defending Freedom | December 7, 2021
An advantage of being a veteran medical and science correspondent is that I can draw on a variety of memories to help inform me about current events, including ever-increasing evidence of the futility – or worse – of the NHS’s drive to jab everyone with the highly experimental Covid vaccines.
One of those memories dates back to 1991, when I attended a conference in Moscow on environmental concerns. It ended up at the Kremlin, with an address by President Gorbachev, and I met a number of his scientific advisers.
They told me, in a nutshell, that the collapse of the Soviet Union had been brought about by a kind of ‘sclerosis’ in the flow of vital information, particularly affecting the environment. The top-down structure of decision-making, and state control of media, had blocked healthy communication.
They gave the example of a huge lake polluted by effluent flowing down a river from a factory, such that the livelihoods of thousands of fishermen were destroyed. Word would be sent upstream but would not be acted on, because of pressure on the factory from above to meet state-sanctioned production targets. The scientists saw the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster as the ‘heart attack’ that finally forced change.
I am reminded of their insights by the impediments to free flow of information surrounding Covid decision-making.
For more than a year now, leading doctors and scientists internationally have expressed concerns about the top-down, state-sanctioned, one-size-must-fit-all vaccination approach to tackling the pandemic.
As described in extraordinary detail in Robert Kennedy Jr’s new book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health
(see here, here and here), a hugely wealthy and influential cartel has been largely successful in blocking expression of those concerns.
It is frustrating to see Health Secretary Sajid Javid declaring the delivery of Covid booster jabs to be the NHS’s new national mission. He wants this ‘mission impossible’ to be intensified, even at the price of further destroying face-to-face appointments with family doctors – once one of the great strengths of the UK health service.
But as Kennedy’s book demonstrates, scientists on whom MPs and ministers ought to be able to depend for reliable information and advice are compromised by funds from the vaccines cartel.
We cannot rely on mainstream media to put this right: a study of nearly 20,000 Gates Foundation grants made up to the end of June this year found more than $250million went towards journalism. In these days when most traditional media are struggling to make ends meet, that money is hugely influential.
Occasionally, a glimmer of light slips through a chink in the curtain, such as this analysis which appeared last week in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, one of a new suite of publications launched under the medical journal’s umbrella. The evidence it presents torpedoes the rationale for the ‘jab everyone’ drive.
Professor Günter Kampf, of Greifswald University medical school, Germany, says high vaccination rates were expected to reduce transmission and thereby lessen the burden of disease. But recent data ‘indicate that the epidemiological relevance of Covid-19 vaccinated individuals is increasing’ – in other words, the vaccine is not doing what was expected of it.
He cites a UK study showing that in households where a Covid case had been identified, the disease was passed on to about as many contacts (25 per cent) when the patient was fully vaccinated as when the patient was unvaccinated (23 per cent). Peak viral load did not differ, either, between the jabbed and the unjabbed.
Studies in both Germany and the UK show that so-called breakthrough infections increase steadily after vaccination.
In late July this year, among vaccinated patients 60 years and older in Germany, 16.9 per cent became ill with Covid; by the end of October, the rate was 58.9 per cent. A similar situation was described in the UK, Kampf says.
There is even evidence of the vaccinated becoming proportionately more at risk of developing Covid than the unvaccinated, in all age groups of 30 years or more. Argument continues over why this should be – the unvaccinated may be both generally healthier and more health-conscious, for example.
In Israel, where a hospital-based outbreak was traced back to a fully vaccinated Covid patient, 14 patients, also fully vaccinated, became severely ill or died after being exposed to the virus; while two unvaccinated patients, who also became cases, developed only mild disease.
Kampf concludes that it is ‘grossly negligent’ to ignore vaccinated people as a source of transmission of the Covid virus when deciding public health measures.
His analysis supports warnings, detailed here and here as well as in Kennedy’s book, that the nature of the vaccine is such that it may impede the development of natural immunity, and make recipients more vulnerable to virus variants than the unvaccinated.
That is just one more reason why – unless the stranglehold on information reaching decision-makers and the public is broken – we may be heading for a catastrophe of Chernobyl-like proportions.
Remember when the FDA’s top vaccine regulator said even a moderately effective Covid shot could produce herd immunity if 70 percent of people got it?
By Alex Berenson | December 7, 2021
In late July 2020, Dr. Peter Marks, who oversees vaccines for the Food and Drug Administration, spoke for an FDA-produced podcast about the Covid vaccines.
At the time, the big mRNA vaccine trials were just beginning, and the two-part interview was fairly straightforward. It opened with Marks explaining what a vaccine is.
Later, though, Marks explained how an effective vaccine might end the epidemic:
What we also know is that once one reaches a certain level of protection, roughly 70 percent, and if 70 percent of the population gets that vaccine, you start to get to a place where the infectious disease that you’re trying to prevent, in this case, let’s read COVID-19 into that, it doesn’t have anywhere to go and you start to be able to help wipe that infectious disease out…
70 percent protection by 70 percent of the population equals (basically) no more Covid. Got it, doc!
The next week, Marks again explained the importance of 70 percent protection – and this time, he used the magic h-word:
That’s the concept of herd immunity that you have enough people in the population that can’t get the disease, that the disease has nowhere to go if it shows up. That’s exactly what we’d like to ultimately see with a really effective vaccine, one that might have, I think, we estimate at least 70 percent efficacy…
This might be a good time to remind you that much of Western Europe hit Marks’s magic number months ago. In countries like Britain, 70 percent (okay, 69.3!) of people – not adults, the entire population – is fully vaccinated. And about 30 percent of Britons have now received a third dose.
So how come a vaccine that was supposedly 95 percent effective at preventing infection (and supposedly even better at stopping severe disease) in clinical trials has completely failed to stop the epidemic?
Or, put another way, if the vaccines work, what’s going on?
Oh well. We’ll figure it out next pandemic. Meantime, get yer free booster today!
SOURCE: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/fda-insight/fda-insight-vaccines-covid-19-part-1
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/fda-insight/fda-insight-vaccines-covid-19-part-2
The Vaccines Don’t Reduce Transmission
eugyppius | December 7, 2021
It’s an old point, but as vaccine mandates are proposed across the world, it bears repeating: It is highly doubtful that the vaccines do anything to reduce transmission at all.
In all likelihood, they merely reduce your chances of testing positive for several months, because they moderate the symptoms of infection and because governments subject the unvaccinated to closer diagnostic scrutiny.
Graphs like this one, from the Swedish matched cohort study, merely compare rates of confirmed symptomatic infection.
They don’t confirm that SARS-2 is actually less prevalent among the vaccinated or suppressed in highly vaccinated populations.
The more you control for different rates of testing, the harder it gets to find vaccine effectiveness against transmission, and the more you start stumbling over evidence of negative efficacy. This is why we find evidence of negative efficacy in the UK data but not (for example) in the German data. In the UK, unlike in Germany, the unvaccinated are not subject to constant testing rules. In Israel, all national airport arrivals are tested regardless of vaccination status. These numbers, widely discussed a few weeks ago, show far lower third-dose efficacy than claimed, and also indicate negative efficacy among the double vaccinated for the month of August. Because unvaccinated arrivals to Israel are quarantined and subject to additional testing, however, even these numbers are imperfect.
When you test everyone all the time regardless of vaccination status, a very different picture emerges.
The Dreaded New Covid Variant
By Tom Woods | Principia Scientific International | December 6, 2021
Here we are nearly two years into this. Some thought: the vaccines will help, because at the very least they’ll calm the fears of the most irrational.
Instead, the vaccines have been used as a weapon to punish, demonize, and even dehumanize dissidents.
And now a new “variant of concern” is here, and plenty of countries that we were solemnly told had “followed the science,” and if only Americans had listened to them we’d be doing, better, etc., are now headed back into lockdown and the adoption of vaccine passports.
(So far, by the way, the numbers for societies with vaccine passports have generally worsened, not improved, but that must be because they haven’t vaccine passported hard enough!)
The South African doctor who first identified the variant reported that there are so far no known deaths from it, and that symptoms have been mild to moderate.
But the hysteria went into overdrive anyway.
Interestingly, though, not everyone from Lockdown Central has bought into that hysteria.
For instance, Brown University’s Ashish Jha, who’s been pretty nasty toward skeptics of government interventions like you and me, had this to say on Twitter:
“Is it possible #OmicronVariant sets us back to square one? No. We have lots of tests that’ll detect Omicron. We have therapies that’ll work. Our vaccines MAY take a hit but will still provide some (may be a lot) protection. We are in a MUCH better place. This isn’t March 2020.”
Even CNN is reporting on academics who caution against panic.
For instance, Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane University, speaking of Omicron’s mutations, says: “The ones that might affect transmissibility, I mean, I’m just not seeing a whole lot that would give it a real strong advantage over Delta. That’s really the big question. You know, when it gets into a population that has Delta, is it going to out-compete or not out-compete?”
Trevor Bedford is a genome scientist and epidemiologist at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. “Given that Omicron lacks so many of the non-spike mutations that have seemed to contribute to Delta’s increased fitness,” he writes, “I wouldn’t be surprised if its intrinsic transmissibility is similar to Gamma.”
One thing we do know:
Applying the same interventions (lockdowns, more masking, etc.) to this new variant that have done nothing to stop previous iterations is a fool’s errand.
And with the protests occurring around the world, and some U.S. employers backing away from mandates, could we be turning a corner?
The prospect of endless boosters also doesn’t bode well for the hysterics. They are losing even some of their original enthusiasts over that, and over mandates for children.
Now is the time to stick the knife in.
Coronavirus Fact-Check #13: “ICUs are filled with the unvaccinated”
OffGuardian | December 6, 2021
It’s become a common meme to refer to ICU’s being “filled” with the unvaccinated, but is there any truth to that?
A few days ago Dr Hillary Jones, whilst being interviewed on Lorraine Kelly, claimed:
90% of people in hospital are unvaccinated”.
Similarly, last week, Kevin Maguire claimed on Jeremy Vine’s show that:
The unvaccinated are filling hospital beds, they’re in ICUs taking up precious resources – there are hospital waiting lists going up because there are so many unvaccinated people in hospitals”
Television presenters and news headlines across the United Kingdom have commonly referred to hospitals being filled with unvaccinated covid19 patients.
As if it could ever be considered evidence of anything, an anonymous “doctor” wrote a piece for The Guardian, which he filled with nameless anecdotal evidence, and emotively headlined:
ICU is full of the unvaccinated – my patience with them is wearing thin
This claim is regularly used as an argument for vaccine mandates, and/or unvaxxed-only lockdowns.
But is it true?
In a word, no.
ICUs are not “full” of unvaccinated covid patients, they’re not even full of covid cases. In fact, they’re not even full at all.
As of last week, NHS England’s own bed statistics reported that England has 4330 available critical care beds, of which 894 (21%) are being used by Covid patients, 2608 (60%) non-Covid patients and 828 (19%) were empty.
So, England’s critical care beds are not even 90% full, let alone 90% full of unvaccinated covid patients.
But let’s be charitable and assume these people misspoke or communicated their point badly. Let’s assume they meant 90% of covid hospitalisations are unvaccinated.
That, at least, is true right? Wrong.
The actual number is 35.4%
According to the UK’s Health Security Agency data (page 31 of this document) 6639 patients were admitted to hospital “with Covid” in the weeks 44-47 of this year. Of those 6639, 2355 were unvaccinated.
So unvaccinated people do not even make up the majority of Covid cases, let alone the majority of ICU admissions in general.
So, even going by the official statistics – which we’ve previously shown are routinely inflated to make the “pandemic” appear frightening – the claim is incorrect.
And that doesn’t even account for the fact that, according to Public Health England, a “Covid hospitalisation” is anyone admitted to hospital for any reason within 28 days of a positive Covid test. This could include people who are admitted to hospital for something else and then happen to test positive while they are there.
We could also discuss the tiny number of hospital beds available in this country, which has more than halved since the 1980s, whilst the population has exploded in that time.
But that’s really an article for another day.


