Covidistan Annals XXXVI: Bucking the Trend, Statistik Austria Actually Published Some Good Data on Injection Uptake/Refusal (as of 31 March 2022)
Covidistan Annals XXXVI: Bucking the Trend, Statistik Austria Actually Published Some Good Data on Injection Uptake/Refusal (as of 31 March 2022)
For data nerds, I've included links to the open data spreadsheets for further investigation | Happy Easter everyone!
After a hiatus of two weeks (see my last post here), let’s turn our attention to Covidistan for a moment. In this post, I shall not address the inanities of the legacy media’s ‘coverage’ of Chancellor Nehammer’s trip to Vladimir Putin. On this, I relate you to both RT that, for all its faults, has been quite clear about the event:
Closed-doors talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer took place, outside Moscow, on Monday [11 April 2022]…
‘This is not a friendly visit. I’ve just come from Ukraine and saw with my own eyes the immeasurable suffering caused by the Russian war of aggression’, Nehammer stated, adding that he had raised alleged “war crimes” blamed on Russian troops during the meeting. The chancellor also revealed that he told Putin that anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the EU would remain in place and could even be reinforced as long as the conflict goes on.
‘The EU is more united than ever on this issue’, Nehammer stated.
This is so hilariously stupid on so many levels, it’s almost insulting to unpack it. I shall delimit myself to the following brief points before moving on to something else:
Do read the RT piece, and don’t miss Andrei Martyanov’s comment on Mr. Nehammer’s qualities (or lack thereof).
Austrian legacy media was even more inane-to-pollyanish about it, at least for a day of two, before esp. the left-liberal outlet DerStandard returned to its conventional role as attack lapdog for the inner city-dwelling, Green-voting chattering classes. Writing yesterday (15 April 2022), Günter Traxler published a telling op-ed entitled ‘What Next For Nehammer?’
Lede reads: ‘Nehammer’s peace mission [really?] will not be able to distract him for long from the problems he faces as Federal Chancellor’
The few attempts to extract a deeper meaning from Karl Nehammer’s special operation in Moscow have so far been unsuccessful, and they will remain so. One may assume that peace in Ukraine is a serious concern for the Chancellor, but to assume that as head of government of a country classified as hostile [by the Russians], he can extract concessions from Vladimir Putin in the current war situation would be to express grave doubts not only about his political but also about his intellectual talents as successor to Sebastian Kurz. If one had asked the question about the significance of this one-minute meeting beforehand, because that’s all it was in net terms, one wouldn’t have to harrumph modestly afterwards, because at least one had retained control over the pictures. How Putin must suffer not to have a photo with Nehammer! (my emphasis)
Note that Mr. Kurz is a high school graduate, while Mr. Nehammer has at least done military service, was discharged as Lt., and took a part-time post-graduate degree in ‘political communication’ at the almost-a-university in Krems (because the military academy counts as academic training). Note that Mr. Kurz didn’t even finish his undergraduate studies.
One more paragraph from Mr. Traxler before we move on (my emphasis):
With his self-declared peace mission, Nehammer will not be able to distract for long, if at-all, from the problems he faces as chancellor and soon as leader of his rather ailing party…talking ‘very direct, open, and hard’ to Putin does not carry any particular risk. But trying to do the same with [his] state governors is an undertaking that many ÖVP leaders have failed at before.
So, now you know what the fuss is all about: all politics being local, it’s a cheap PR stunt that ‘even’ the domestic legacy media sees through. Make no mistake, Nehammer will be confirmed as ÖVP party chieftain, but this shitshow will continue…let’s move on to the more significant news coming out of Covidistan, shall we?
Statistik Austria Publishes Data on (Re-) Infections
Yesterday, more by chance, I found that Covidistan’s official number-crunchers over at Statistik Austria published Covid-related data that’s actually useful. According to them, we shall get monthly updates on ‘age, work, and education differentials related to Covid-19 vaccination’, thanks to an order from the Health Ministry.
When I first saw this, I thought: wtf is happening? Does this mean we’ll get some actually useful insights into all the data the government and its minions are compiling? Well, I checked out the above-linked website and found the following (translation and emphases mine):
As of 31 March 2022, the data show that about 85% of the resident population in Austria has a valid vaccination and/or recovery certificate…almost 70% [6 out of 7 of these 85%] have a valid vaccination certificate (of whom around 17% are also considered to have recovered) and a further 16% have a recovery certificate only.
The share of those who have a valid vaccination and/or recovery certificate has increased by around 3% since the last evaluation as of the end of February. This is due to the increase in Covid-19 infections of previously unvaccinated persons and the resulting recovery certificates during the ‘Omicron wave’, which largely took place in Austria in March 2022.
[line break added] The share of persons with a valid vaccination passport actually decreased slightly between the end of February and the end of March (-0.6%), as more vaccination certificates expired than were added. This is probably due, among other things, to the fact that people wait longer before receiving the next vaccination after contracting Covid-19. Therefore, due to the high infection figures, a consideration of the vaccination rate only would provide an incomplete picture.
Here you can clearly observe the political insanity, or death wish, of the continued insistence on the injection mandate: all the real-world developments work against it: cratering injection uptake equals more people who once were considered ‘fully vaccinated’ become ‘unvaccinated’ again, irrespective of an infection (which delays the expiry of one’s Covid Passport by a few months). As I’ve maintained for some time, and without indicating that it’s not a serious health issue for some segments of the population, Covid-19 is a political problem, hence there are ‘only’ political actions (the time for ‘solutions’ has probably passed by now).
As of 31 March 2022, 21% of children between 5-9 years of age had already been vaccinated [those poor children], but another 40% of this age group had only a recovery certificate. The proportion of those exclusively recovered was just as high among children between 10 and 14 years of age, but here a further 41% already had an upright vaccination certificate. Among adolescents and adults aged 15 years and older, between 89% and 92% had a valid vaccination and/or recovery certificate across all age groups. However, this proportion was highest among persons aged 75-84 (around 92%; around 89% were vaccinated or vaccinated and recovered and around 3% only recovered).
The entire paragraph is important, as it reveals ‘vaccine’ failure across the board: twice as many kids aged 5-9 are ‘recovered only’ as there are kids in this age bracket with an injection certificate.
In terms of 10-14yo, there’s no measurable difference in infection rates between ‘vaccinated’ and ‘unvaccinated’ adolescents, 40% remained ‘recovered only’, as opposed to 41% with a Covid Passport.
Of course, there is a section on ‘gross differences according to education, employment status, and industry’, which basically injects value-judgements into these data.
The share of individuals with a valid vaccination and/or recovery certificate differ significantly according to the highest level of education completed. For 25-64 year olds with compulsory education [max. 9 years in Austria], this proportion is 86%, for individuals with a university degree [12 years of school plus 3-5 years of college] it is 93%. This means that individuals with higher education tend to have a vaccination certificate more often and persons with a lower degree tend to have a convalescence certificate more often.
[line break added] When the same age group is differentiated according to their employment status, it shows that around 92% of employed persons and around 84% of non-employed persons had an upright vaccination and/or recovery certificate. Employed people are both more frequently vaccinated (almost 77%) and exclusively recovered (almost 16%) than non-employed persons (almost 72% vaccinated, almost 13% exclusively recovered).
Of course, there are ‘clear differences’ between the various sectors of the economy. Here’s a brief breakdown of injection rates: in public administration—96% have a valid vaccination and/or recovery certificate, closely followed by energy supply and financial/insurance services (95% each). Injection rates slightly below 90% are found, among others, among construction workers as well as those engaged in agriculture and forestry (each around 89%).
There are also differences in the risk of contagion, or transmission, in the various sectors of the economy (doh): In IT and Comms, about 33% were affected by a Covid-19 infection in the past six months (just under 24% both vaccinated and recovered, just under 10% exclusively recovered) while, e.g., in healthcare and social work, these rates were ten percent higher (43%; 28% both vaccinated and recovered, 15% exclusively recovered).
Service Announcement: Austrian Covid Data Online
I only found out about this earlier this week, but perhaps those of you, my dear readers, who are more statistically capable than I am, would like to check out the data on the following websites of Statistik Austria:
Select Covid-19-related information on their own dedicated website.
General information on Covid-19 Injection status via Statistik Austria’s OpenData platform (under the header ‘Gesundheit’, or Health)
Covid-19 Injection Status in Education, broken down individually to teachers, university students, (high school) pupils, and—for whatever reasons—employees of the Interior Ministry.
Finally, Informative Tables and Figures
All below tables show the same columns, with differences in the left-most column: table 1 shows the overall share of ‘vaccinated/recovered status’ in the various age brackets given, table 3 provides information for the various sectores of the economy. (I’ve omitted table 2 showing the same shares according to education status because the table was too large).
Columns indicate (in all three tables): (1) vaccinated only; (2) both vaccinated and recovered; (3) all-cause vaccinated; (4) only recovered; (5) vaccinated and/or recovered (total); (6) neither vaccinated nor recovered.
Do pay particular attention to the highlighted columns (2, 4, and 6), on which see below.
Brief Comment on Tab. 1
As mentioned above, the most interesting columns are 2, 4, and 6 (discounting the left-most column).
On Vaccine Effectiveness (VE)
If you put columns 1 and 2 next to each other, you can ‘guesstimate’ current VE as the overall share of injected vs. injected+recovered would indicate this; I won’t do this as these data don’t say anything about the number of injections and their administration dates, hence all that we may infer is that VE is particularly worse for children and young adults under 25, as the share of injected+recovered is well above 50% in all these brackets (excl. 0-4yo), i.e., the injections don’t do anything. Among older segments of the injected population, they appear to be working somewhat better, which should provide any first-term law student with enough grounds to argue against the blanket injection mandate (to me, the ‘break-even cost/benefit point in terms of ‘guesstimated’ VE may be somewhere between 50-64yo, but note, again, that the above caveats about the data apply).
On the Reliability of Official Data (Gov’t Lies)
Do take another look at columns 4 (only recovered) and 6 (neither vaccinated nor recovered) and add the shares to find out about the overall injection uptake in the given age brackets. Note that while injection uptake is quite high (± 90% in the 15 and older brackets), that there’s a considerable share of ‘unvaccinated’ individuals in the ±20% range among all age brackets younger than 44.
Your thoughts?
Stay tuned for ‘more’ on Covid in Austria, in particular reinfections, to be published come Monday. In the meantime, Happy Easter everyone!
All political problems are caused by politicial solutions, I would say, and we (meaning everyone not a politician or an insider in the politics machine) must reconquer language in such a way as to achieve a civilisational and societal catharsis from this:
'The private is political'.
This statement, if allowed to be a true value, means evrything becomes political ans since nothing in the real world can ever match the abstract perfection of the ideal world, everything becomes a political problem for politics to fix.
And as all political solutions creates problems...
In reality, very few things are political.
The problem is the solution, or so I'm told by the Permaculture Teacher. Hmmmm