The Calm Before the Child Calls out the Naked Emperor, Pt. 2: Vaccine Failure Edition

Since the vaccine roll-out (28. Dec. 2020), rates of hospitalisation, ICU admission, and deaths among 'all-cause' vaccinated are at least (!) ten (!) times higher than for the 'unvaccinated'

In this second instalment of the present circumstances, I shall try my hands at providing you with the data and the reasoning behind my assessment. Reader and (very) frequent commenter Barry O’Kenyan, based in Australia, posted the following below yesterday’s piece, which quoted Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr. Gerrard as follows:

‘If you’re a healthy young adult, particularly if you’ve been vaccinated and you have something that looks like a common cold or flu, assume it’s COVID, stay at home’, he said.

‘Most people are getting better within about one or two days.’ (…) He also advised people should consult a doctor if their symptoms failed to improve after the third day.

So, here we are: if you come down with something, anything, ‘assume it’s Covid [and] stay at home’. It’s the same shitshow in Norway (see here for the original and here for the English version): none of the ‘information’ provided tells you anything about preventatives like Vitamin D3 or early outpatient treatment (on the latter, do check out Peter McCullough’s 3-hour interview with Joe Rogan over at Spotify).

In yesterday’s post, I pointed you to the changes in media commentary and reporting, as well as highlighted the Helsedirektoratet’s new hospitalisation and ICU admission tracking tool. In his or her reaction, reader From Norway highlighted a ‘yes and no’ stance, specifically emphasising that

it is obvious for everyone with eyes in the face that the vaccines are not a solution to this problem. The [Norwegian gov’t] closed in December because the delta wave was already using 50% of ICU capacity in a population 90% of adults vaccinated.

Both items are true, yet, this isn’t what legacy media is reporting. I won’t get back into the entire decay-of-the-media trope here, it shall suffice to note, while ever so casually pointing to the Helsedirektoratet’s new hospitalisation and ICU admission tracking tool, that reader From Norway is more correct about the reason behind the demi-lockdown than Aftenposten.

So, enough with this, let’s do something else that I’ve been itching to do for quite some time. The comparatively large number of ever-shifting ‘narratives’ on all matters Covid-19 is now so battered and beaten, it’s hardly recognisable. Yet, one—may it’s the final—talking point still remains:

Whatever one can (or must) say about the currently available Covid-19 vaccines—which are really prophylactic gene therapy products, according to the manufacturers—the one last thing trotted out in their defence is this. Citing no evidence whatsoever, here’s the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (IPH) on this particular topic (in their recently updated Risk Assessment, dated 12 Jan. 2022, p. 10; comments, emphases, and modifications are mine):

Vaccination protects to a considerable extent against hospitalisation, but to a lesser extent among the elderly…this may be due to the fact that older people achieve generally lower protection from vaccination [nope, it’s called immunosenescence], that this age group has been vaccinated first [rather more spot-on], that this age group had a short[er] interval between first and second dose, or a combination of these factors. Therefore, now, more than six months [after the second jab], they [the elderly] may therefore have less protection against serious illness as well. Another possible explanation is that the few who are 75 years or older and not fully vaccinated have not been vaccinated because their health condition was significantly impaired (e.g., nursing home patients with dementia [why, would the medical intervention require informed consent, which a dementia patient cannot give?]). Patients with these conditions are usually not be hospitalised with severe Covid-19 [why would that be?].

Raising a number of questions without providing much, if anything, in terms of answers, the IPH re-affirms it’s at a loss of knowledge what to say. Yet, even before this gem of a non-explanation, there is also this fearmongering paragraph (on p. 9; modifications etc. as above):

In weeks 50-51, some 58% of [hospitalisations] for [or with, as we now know] Covid-19 affected the unvaccinated, although this group makes up less than a tenth of the adult population. Unvaccinated people who are admitted are mainly middle-aged (median age 56 years), and only 30% have an underlying disease that gives them a moderate or high risk of a serious course of SARS-CoV-2 infection. People with three jabs accounted for about 12% [I found this one shocking] of those who had to be admitted for Covid-19. Their median age was 69 years, and 72% of them had a high or moderate risk of serious progression.

This paragraph had a footnote (3), which provides the following information:

For a detailed description of those who are hospitalised according to vaccination status, see table 1 here https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.05.21265958v1.

This link will take you to Whittaker et al., a pre-print (i.e., not peer-reviewed) that has been used time and again by the IPH to make outlandish claims about vaccine efficacy. I’ve written about this, most recently here, hence it suffices to mention that the IPH links to an older version; the updated version extends the timeframe from 1 Feb. through 30 Nov. 2021 (the original, linked-to version ended its ‘analysis’ on 30 Sept.) and has some 700 less people in its analysis.

Curiously enough, the first version contained only 70 ‘fully vaccinated’ individuals (3%) vs. 716 (or 22%) in the updated version, which is indicative of the fact that almost the entire increase in the sample size were fully vaccinated patients. Still, the conclusion is the same, as a comparative view of the ‘results’ sections shows (sources: original link; updated link):

The above screenshot is from the old version (the IPH links to this one), the below is from the current version:

Isn’t it odd that, despite the significant alteration of the sample composition (there’s now more than ten times more ‘fully vaccinated’ in the sample), the results are literally identical?

Furthermore, the IPH’s updated report still cites the benefits of ‘vaccination’ as follows (source here; emphasis mine, as are the light edits for clarity):

Vaccination provides the vaccinees with resilience [robusthet; note that this doesn’t read ‘immunity’] when encountering Sars-Cov-2 so that they do not become seriously ill, but vaccination protects less well and only in the short term against infection and transmission. An overcome infection in vaccinated people provides better protection with respect to future exposure with the virus.

So, there you have it: the IPH itself says it’s not as unambiguous as media makes this to be the case.

Now, let’s go on and find out whether or not ‘vaccination provides the vaccinees with resilience when encountering Sars-CoV-2’.

Advance Notice: for the past half-year, I read every one of the IPH’s weekly reports (find them here). I don’t do any fancy methodology or statistical modelling, all that is required is comparing numbers from one point in time to another one to investigate change over time. Speaking about the timeframe, my data collection covers the period from week 39 (27 Sept.-3 Oct. 2021) through week 1 (3-9 Jan. 2022). If you would like to have my data collection—it’s a couple of Excel spreadsheets—do drop me a line over at diefackel2punkt0[at]protonmail.com.

So, here goes.

1) Hospitalisation and ICU Admission by Age

Trends in hospitalisation for and with Covid-19:

Trends in ICU admission for/with Covid-19:

There is hardly any change over time for most age brackets, and this is most notably with respect to kids (0-17yo) and young adults (18-29yo). Do note that there are but two age brackets that saw their share increase in the past four+ months: seniors (75-84 and 85+ yo).

Now, keep in mind that these data don’t show much but shifts in trends over time; further note that these data won’t tell you anything about vaccination status of either category. What they do show, however, is that being in the ‘middle-to-old-age’ brackets (45-54, 55-64, and 65-74) carries a significantly elevated risk of hospitalisation and ICU admission, irrespective of one’s vaccination status, to which we now turn.

2) Hospitalisation and ICU Admission by Vaccination Status

First, a word on definitions, which are used based on the IPH’s own accounts (which I discussed in detail here).

‘Partially vaccinated’: 1 jab, from 3 weeks after the 1st jab; 2 jabs, until 1 week after the second jab.

‘Fully vaccinated’: those who received 2 doses, from 1 week after the 2nd jab.

‘Fully vaccinated and boosted’: those who received a 3rd jab, from 1 week after the 3rd jab.

Here are the trend lines:

Note that for practical purposes, I omitted the ‘partially vaccinated’ category.

Yet, these lines show change of time, which is comparatively more informative than the IPH’s products, but they, too, fail to tell an essential part of the story: how much change has there been over time, exactly?

Well, I’m glad this is coming up, here are the ‘raw’ data:

In week 39 (2021), the cumulative total for ‘unvaccinated’ hospitalisations was 2,732; the cumulative total for ‘fully vaccinated’ was 263.

Fast forward to week 1 (2022), the respective numbers are 3,555 vs. 1,038.

In terms of increase, this corresponds to an increase of 30% among the ‘unvaccinated’ vs. an increase of 395% for the ‘fully vaccinated’.

Furthermore, the IPH only tracks ‘fully vaccinated and boosted’ as a separate category since week 52 (2021), hence we only have two weeks of data. How these numbers compare? Well, there were 141 triple-jabbed hospitalisations in week 52 and 166 by week 1, which corresponds to an increase of 15-16% from one week to another.

If we would subsume the ‘fully vaccinated and boosted’ category under the ‘all-cause vaccinated’ hospitalisations, and track them over the same period of time (week 39 through week 1), the rate of increase is even more astounding: +458%.

Last item here: ‘unvaccinated’ amount to 75% of the total number of hospitalisations, with ‘fully vaccinated’ adding another 22% and the ‘fully vaccinated and boosted’ accounting for the remaining 3%.

Yet, what does this mean?

The IPH’s own data comes with two significant limitations:

First, the conflation, on part of the IPH, of pre- and post-vaccination campaign data (vaccines were rolled out in Norway from 28 Dec. 2020 onwards); and, second, the deliberate, if highly selective, inclusion or omission of that data.

This is particularly apparent in the consistent mentioning of the ‘cumulative totals’ for the entire Covid-19 ‘pandemic’, i.e., data from 2 March 2020 onwards, which works to make ‘the unvaccinated’ appear more numerous than they are while, at the same time, doing so also plays down the severity of vaccine-related adverse events.

So, let’s try to correct this picture by going to the last pre-vaccine roll-out report from week 52 (21-27 Dec. 2020), which yields the following baseline numbers (on p. 4):

Cumulative totals—all unvaccinated—for hospitalisations was 2,075, ICU admissions stood at 397, and deaths at 434.

So, to properly contextualise the above numbers, let’s simply subtract them and re-assess them.

Hospitalisations for/with Covid-19

From week 53 (2020) to week 39 (2021), there was an increase of unvaccinated hospitalisations of 657 cases. From week 39 (2021) through week 1 (2022), the number of unvaccinated hospitalisations rose by 823, which provides us with the ‘true’ cumulative number since the vaccine roll-out: 1,480.

If we do the same calculations for the ‘all-cause vaccinated’, we get 1,038.

So, the total number is 2,518, which allows us to calculate the cumulative shares of hospitalisations for both meta categories: 59% for the unvaccinated vs. 41% for the ‘all-cause’ vaccinated.

And now we may be able to properly contextualise the rate of increase since week 39: the rate of increase among ‘unvaccinated’ is 30% vs. (at least) 358% among the ‘all-cause’ vaccinated. If this doesn’t look like vaccine failure to you, too, please let me know in the comments.

ICU Admissions for/with Covid-19

As regards ICU admissions: from week 53 (2020) to week 39 (2021), there were an increase of unvaccinated ICU admissions of 89 cases. From week 39 (2021) through week 1 (2022), the number of unvaccinated ICU admissions rose by 307, which provides us with the ‘true’ cumulative number since the vaccine roll-out: 396.

There were 32 ICU admissions among ‘all-cause vaccinated’ until week 39 (2021), and there are 167 by week 1 (2022).

The total number since the vaccine roll-out began is thus 563, and the shares are 30% for the ‘all-cause vaccinated’ vs. 70% for the unvaccinated.

Yet, if we just look at the rate of increase from week 39 (2021) through 9 Jan. 2022, ICU admissions for the ‘unvaccinated’ are up by roughly 29% (which is in almost complete sync with the increase in hospitalisations) vs. an increase of 422% among ‘all-cause’ vaccinated (which is again quite in line with their increased rate among hospitalisations).

Vaccine-associated Deaths

Before the vaccine roll-out, the number of Covid-associated deaths in Norway stood at 434.

From 28 Dec. 2020 to week 39 (2021), there were 61 ‘fully vaccinated’ and 15 ‘partially vaccinated’ Covid-associated deaths for a combined ‘all-cause vaccinated’ total of 76.

From week 39 (2021) through week 1 (2022), these numbers rose to 404 ‘fully vaccinated’, 29 ‘partially vaccinated’, and by now also incl. 44 ‘fully vaccinated and boosted’ Covid-19 associated deaths, which provides a combined total of 477.

(During the same period, there were 404 Covid-associated deaths among the unvaccinated.)

In other words: Covid-associated deaths among ‘all-cause vaccinated’ rose by 401 documented cases, which corresponds to an increase of 528% since week 39 (2021).

If this isn’t vaccine failure, I don’t know what is.

Long story short: shall we discuss the one remaining sales pitch for the vaccines in terms of ‘individual-level protection’ against hospitalisation, severe disease (ICU admission), and death now?