Some conversations today have gotten me looking deeper into the "why" to complement the "what" that I see in the data. I will admit there will be big gaps in my understanding and interpretation of the literature but this from @GVDBossche resonates strongly when looking to explain
why COVID cases and deaths ubiquitously rise when mass vaccinations commence (but only when there is some virus already circulating). What @GVDBossche hypothesises as an expert scientist is exactly what we observe in the empirical data, i.e. bigger and more frequent unseasonal
waves as a result of mass vaccination in the middle of virus season. I maintain that the combination of empirical data and good science will eventually be accepted without dispute, though probably not for another couple of years. Many more lives will be lost unnecessarily.
Indeed, the worst is yet to come for the world-leading vaccinating countries.
My gut has told me to naturally steer clear of society this year (I think I might even have tweeted that for the first time I am concerned about COVID). But, not COVID-19, vax-COVID. Seriously, the vaxxed have nothing to fear from me, I won't be going anywhere near them.
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1/. According to official data, more unvaccinated people died of/with COVID in England in the first 5 months of 2021 than vaccinated. However, as is clearly seen in this chart, this is simply because more people were unvaccinated while COVID was circulating.
The rate at which the vaccinated (with at least one dose) replace the unvaccinated is exactly consistent with the vaccination rate.
2/. Almost all excess death during the period can be attributed to COVID. There are, however, 3 relatively small periods of apparent non-COVID excess. These could be due to data inconsistency (see N.B. at end), other respiratory pathogens or some other factor.
A seven-year mortality analysis of England and the story of how the UK govt turned an ordinary "flu" into the worst medical and political catastrophe in history.
Every year there is excess seasonal mortality. It is attributed to the dominant flu strain. In 2014-15, "A(H3N2)" accounted for 43k deaths. In 2017-18, with "B", it accounted for 57k.
After a particularly soft 2018-19, in Feb-20, a novel virus - SARS-CoV-2 - emerged in the virome. The disease, COVID-19, unaffected by interventions which came too late in addition to being completely ineffective, accounted for 37k deaths, less than "A(H3N2)" 6 years before.