Vaccine passports are unethical, unlikely to lead to any significant benefits & will cause huge costs. But they have another significant problem:
Under the Govt’s Plan B, the conditions for bringing them in will only happen if (ironically) vaccines are not working well.
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The Govt says vaccine passports are being kept in reserve for a situation in which the NHS comes under *unsustainable pressure*.
So what are the circumstances in which that might happen? …
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In July England opened up at the peak of a pretty big outbreak: positive tests reached 80% of the highest ever point last winter &, for some age groups & areas, much higher than the winter peak...
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Since then we’ve had full nightclubs, sports stadia, festivals, gigs, open schools & now universities. No mandatory masks, social distancing, bubbles or vaccine passports …
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Despite that, positive tests are currently lower than when we opened in July & look like they are now starting to drop again.
More importantly deaths reached a peak of 119 per day in early Sept, just over 10% of Jan peak whilst …
… total Covid hospital patients in England reached a peak average of 6.4k in mid-Sept, less than 20% of the Jan peak (34.3).
This is consistent with vaccinating the vulnerable having a significant impact on hospitalisations & deaths …
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Assuming some seasonality in the virus, we can expect cases to rise again at some point in the winter.
But for the impact on hospitalisations to be *unsustainable*, i.e. even higher than peak last Jan, cases need to rise to several times the summer peak …
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Vaccination take-up is already over 80%+ for adults.
Further, a large % of unvaccinated have previously had Covid and hence have a high level of immunity …
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The only plausible way we could see an increase in cases big enough to mean more hospital patients than last winter is if either:
a. vaccine effectiveness against infection wanes to a very significant extent
or
b. there is a new variant that is resistant to the vaccines …
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In either case, vaccine passports would not only be useless but potentially counterproductive:
They would allow people who no longer have good immunity from the vaccine into events whilst the unvaccinated, most of whom have immunity from previous infection, would be banned …
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So the only situation in which the Govt could make a case for vaccine passports is, ironically, one in which the vaccines no longer work well and the vaccine passport would probably make things worse.
Has the Govt really thought through its Plan B?
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Important new peer-reviewed paper on lockdown cost-benefits by Professor Douglas W Allen of @SFU published in the International Journal of the Economics of Business (I am a co-editor) @Routledge_Econ
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Using the "mid-point estimates", Prof Allen finds a cost-benefit ratio of about 140 (i.e. costs of lockdown were 140 times greater than benefits).
Even with the most extreme & unrealistic assumption about deaths averted by lockdowns, costs still outweigh benefits …
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Note the mid-point estimate assumes lockdowns reduced Covid deaths by 20%.
In fact, Prof Allen concludes we cannot rule out that lockdowns had zero effect on mortality, in which case, the cost-benefit conclusion would be much worse …
Data from Scotland provides enough evidence to delay enforcement of high-cost low-benefit vaccine passport not just for 17 days but indefinitely … news.sky.com/story/covid-19…
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On 6 Sep, daily positive test rate was 117 /100k, 2.7 times the Jan peak.
Despite that, deaths peaked on 16 Sep at 20.4 /day, just 30% that in Jan & now dropping.
i.e. despite an unprecedented peak in cases, Scotland didn’t come close to Jan death numbers.…
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Note, there were record positive test rates (but not deaths) even for over 60s despite close to 100% vaccination rate.
Vaccination of vulnerable reduces deaths but higher vaccination rates are clearly not the magic bullet for preventing big infection outbreaks …
Let's not dismiss concerns that PHE report some vaccinated groups getting infected at higher rates than unvaccinated.
First, even if vaccines significantly reduce chance of infection (high vaccine effectiveness), real world data may not reflect this for several reasons ...
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Vaccinated may behave differently to unvaccinated, e.g. taking more risks &/or ignoring low level symptoms.
Also, there may be population differences, e.g. previously infected with very high levels of immunity could be less likely to get vaccinated ...
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Irrespective of the reasons, if real world infection rates among vaxed are higher (or not much lower) than unvaxed, vaccines may still be helpful in reducing hospitalisations & deaths but there should be serious questions about vaccine passports, sacking carers etc. ...
Update to various Covid-19 indicators for England:
• Deaths up again (data to 9 Sept) but looks like will turn back down from tomorrow.
• Admissions coming down faster now.
• Positive tests also falling quite fast, both school age & others.
• Triage & Zoe steady.
What is particularly encouraging for future hospitalisation and deaths data is that positive tests are at long last falling steadily in the 60+ and 90+ groups ...
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Encouraging also that school age rates are decreasing *despite* (!) no masks.
Mass school testing makes interpreting trends a little tricky, but no obvious signal from the positive tests data of any significant increase in infections after schools opened in England ...
The Govt seem to have authorised vaccinating 12-15 year olds on the basis of modelling suggesting the programme will avoid the loss of about 15 minutes schooling per pupil over a 6 months period.
... 1. No vaccinated children have been previously infected.
But we know a high % of children have been infected & hence already have high immunity. Allowing for this wd mean estimated schooling saved is much lower even than 15 mins /pupil.
As far as I can see and quite remarkably, the modelling uses vaccine effectiveness estimates vs unvaccinated but not previously infected.
Their mid-point VE is 55%, close to 57% in the Oxford study which definitely has not previously infected as the reference group ...
... those previously infected have a high level of immunity. There may be an additional effect from vaccines, but it will much, much smaller for this group ...
.. the higher the % of children previously infected, the lower will be potential school absences prevented. Knowing this % is essential to the modelling but I can't find any reference to their estimate of this ...