Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 109

[ecosophia]

We are now in the third year of these open posts. As the phrase "died suddenly" repeats in the mass media like a mantra, statistics for work days lost to illness and all-cause mortality mount up in heavily vaccinated nations, and more and more ugly facts about the official response to Covid spill out into public, we are entering what may well turn out to be the most difficult period of the Covid disaster -- the phase in which denial rises in lockstep with the death rate, and a great many people try not to admit what has been done to them by the people and institutions they trusted. It could get ugly, folks.

So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before: 

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 
 
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

With that said, the floor is open for discussion.

Comments

Re: Routine Gloom and Doom

[dendroica]

The numbers for the under-40s are concerning and seem close to other reports (i.e. 40% excess death among the vaxxed, but that's a 40% increase in a very low baseline).

The numbers for the elderly are unrealistic. Considering that the majority of deaths are in people over age 70, if those age groups were dying at 4x the normal rate then we would expect to be seeing a 300-400% increase in total mortality which is not the case. Or alternatively we could guess that unvaxxed elderly folks are dying at less than half the normal rate which would also be very odd. The most parsimonious explanation from my perspective is simply that your percentage guesses are off. The death rates would be equal in the over-90 group if we assume that the group is 97.5% vaxxed, which may well be true...

Re: Routine Gloom and Doom

[scotlyn]

OTOH, if the "ever vaxxed" are dying at faster rates than the "unvaxxed", then proportions in the population should start skewing towards a higher proportion of "unvaxxed" still being around. (And, at least in the tiny sample of "people I know first or secondhand") this actually seems to be the case... ie, the proportion of unvaxxed (say) remaining in the over-90 group may by now be higher than the proportion initially refusing the vax in that demographic.

Re: Routine Gloom and Doom

[boccaccio]

That's an interesting and relevant multiplyer effect imo. It will be very hard to calculate the impact of it, though. For precision, your point should be accounted for as both the mortality and the percentage vax/unvax should refer to the same month for good comparison. My guess is that for the elder groups this effect will have more impact than for the younger ones for reasons that I mentioned above in my reply to Mark (in the older age groups small changes in the percentage will have more effect on the resulting ratio).

Re: Routine Gloom and Doom

[boccaccio]

"The numbers for the elderly are unrealistic" - I agree with your argument. There is the mathematical oddity that the closer the range goes to an extreme (unvax/vax --> 0/100 etc), the more a minor shift in the percentage will impact the resulting ratio. Thus in the elder population, where the vax rate is closer to 100%, a minor error in the estimation can lead to quite a big error in the ratio.

I think the most important conclusion that can be drawn here is that the unvaxxed do better mortality wise, but it can't be said to what extend. There are several factors that can significantly impact the resulting ratio's, yet the corresponding data are not released. Two stand out:

- of the total population is 80% ever vaxxed, but the age group 0-18 is not represented here. So the average of the age groups in the table must be higher than 80%. This actually improves the results for team vaxxed, but I can't say how much.

- there might be quite a few 'duds'. The people that got one, are counted in the vaxxed group while they should be counted in the unvaxxed group. This will tend to dilute the difference between the groups IF there is a difference (and of course there is a difference between the groups). So the resulting ratio will underestimate the difference. I think this is a very important issue as some substackers calculated that as much as 1/3 could be a dud while another 1/3 was a somewhat a dud and only 1/3 the real thing. If this estimation is correct, that would have a major impact on the calculations above, this time to the detriment of the group vaxxed.

PS I also agree that the excess mortality in the younger groups is of concern. Ed Dowd has made the same point from very different US data and I noted this too several times in the past on this forum based on European data. The excess mortality in the working age group is the highest of all with many detrimental effects for society at large. I think we would be shocked if we could see instead of excess mortality, data on the "average expected remaining years of life per capita".