Anti-vaxxers have been going wild over this paper from several HART members. But it misses a blindingly obvious explanation for the odd looking ONS data, ignores the data definitions, then manipulates the data to falsely claim the vaccines cause a (non-existent) spike in deaths!
The data oddity that caught their eyes is a bump in deaths per 100,000 in unvaccinated people in each age group, soon after that group starts being vaccinated.
But as the overall mortality rates show, there is NO spike in deaths during the vaccine rollout.
So what's going on?
The paper's authors wrongly believe the vaccines are killing us, so they present the data like this.
I replicated this graph from the raw ONS data, and it is correct. BUT it has an obvious explanation that doesn't involve claiming the ONS is deliberately miscategorising deaths!
Let's plot that graph another way. Instead of looking at the % of people in the 60-69 age group who were vaccinated each week, let's look at the % of them who are still in the unvaccinated group at the end of each week.
Here it is for 1st doses. Can you see what's going on yet?
It's even clearer for 2nd doses.
When death rates in each age group peak, the population that's taking place in is small.
Death rates in unvaccinated 60-69 year olds peaked when only 8.3% of people in that age group were unvaccinated.
For single dosed people it's 2.5% or less!
This is a relatively small and unrepresentative group, which will be biased towards people who were too ill to get vaccinated at the time.
Which probably explains why their death rates appear higher. Just 180 "extra" deaths a week produces that huge bump in death rates.
Of course, HART instead assume the data is faulty, and (having failed to read the data definitions, as usual) conclude that the vaccination status of people who die is systematically miscategorised.
In fact, the definitions show the categories do exactly what it says on the tin:
HART then go a step further though. This has Joel Smalley’s grubby fingerprints all over it, as it creates a completely artificial baseline that assumes people die at a constant rate all year (!), and arbitrarily assigns every "excess" death in the unvaccinated to the vaccinated!
This produces an alarming looking graph that claims there's a HUGE spike in non-covid death rates immediately after vaccination.
Which is, of course, complete and utter nonsense. Absolutely nothing in the ONS data they're using supports this false claim.
In fact, using the method described in the paper, I can't replicate this graph. If I conveniently ignore any negative "excess" deaths it generates, I get a close match up to about week 12, but after that they do something else to the data that isn't described in the paper. 🤔
Regardless, if you look at the REAL overall non-covid death rate for all people in this age group (the black line in my graph below), you can see there are NO spikes, even though the individual subpopulations (due to selection bias) go up and down dramatically.
No excess deaths.
Once again, Joel Smalley has conjured up non-existent excess deaths by creating a fake baseline and then manipulating the data to give the answer he wants.
This is far from the first time he's done this. Why do @MartinNeil9 & @profnfenton work with him?
Having missed an obvious explanation for a data oddity and fabricated data to fit their anti-vax narrative, the authors then accuse the ONS of systematically miscategorising deaths based on vaccination status, possibly "as a matter of policy"!
It's real tin foil hat level stuff.
It's a puzzle that @qmul continue to ignore @MartinNeil9 and @profnfenton's increasingly blatant anti-vax output and links to cranks and conspiracy nuts.
At this point they're either deliberately misleading people or just plain incompetent.
Neither is a good look for academics.
PS: they also claim the ONS's population data is wrong.
But as the paper says, "populations move between age groups as people have birthdays".
They forgot that this includes people who turned 10, who are then added to the data.
This process ends 10 years after the 2011 census:
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After the horrific attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg, all the people you'd expect immediately blamed Islam and called for Muslims to be deported en masse for one man's crime. Just one problem... Apparently the suspect isn't a Muslim. 🧵
The apparent suspect in the attack on the Magdeburg market is a Saudi refugee who denounced Islam, accuses Germany of a "secret project to Islamize Europe", and regularly shared posts by far right accounts using similar language to the people who assumed he was an Islamist.
Even after the suspect's identity and beliefs were reported, racists and bigots on X were still blaming Islamists for the attack, or even claiming it was an attempt to "gaslight us" and "we all know why the terrorist carried out the attack".
Proving once again that he'll do anything that gives him an opportunity to promote himself, Aseem Malhotra is appearing at an online "Long COVID masterclass" .. run by a homeopath and featuring several notorious anti-vaxxers, quacks and conspiracy theorists. 🧵
The online event which Aseem Malhotra is taking part in and helping to promote is hosted by an American homeopath and "expert in silver and copper therapeutics", who claims he can cure diseases with herbal medicine and "belief in the Holy Spirit"!
Or in layman's terms, a quack.
Speaking alongside Aseem Malhotra:
1) Judy Mikovits, who's spent the last decade blaming everything from ME and autism to cancer on a retrovirus which she falsely claims is found in vaccines. More recently she starred in the Plandemic series, promoting covid conspiracy theories.
Good start to Nigel Farage's life as an MP, as he claims that he gave incorrect information to the Register of Interests. 🤦♂️ His first entry in the register says he's paid "£97,928.40 a month" by GB News. But now he claims that sum was for "several months of work". 🤷♂️
Nigel Farage is also the only employee of the "company" that GB News pays him through. So the whole setup is just a tax dodge, and any "significant expenses" it generates are likely to be Farage's own personal spending.
The other highlight of Farage's first Register entry is the £32,836 of travel costs a donor paid for him to fly to America to "support a friend who was almost killed". He is, of course, talking about Donald Trump.
It's not clear how this "represented Clacton on the world stage".
Racist thug Tommy Robinson and racist mug Laurence Fox held an ironically named "unite the kingdom" rally in London this weekend. Unsurprisingly lots of conspiracy theorists turned up to support them. 🧵
Alan Miller interviewed Laurence Fox. In the clip Miller defended Tommy Robinson, and claimed that him almost causing a trial to collapse by breaching reporting restrictions was a "free speech" issue. 🤦♂️
Miller leads a group of anti-vax and climate change conspiracy theorists.
In another Miller interview, Norman Fenton described former football hooligan Tommy Robinson as a "great heroic patriot", and said he's been "following him for years".
Fenton is a member of anti-vax misinfo group HART, and has accused the ONS of lying to cover up vaccine deaths.
Conspiracist X went into overdrive after the attempt on Trump's life yesterday. Within minutes they'd already misidentified the shooter and blamed everyone from the CIA and Mossad to the "Deep State" for the shooting, which sadly claimed the life of a bystander at the rally. 🧵
Conspiracy theorists quickly identified the shooter as "antifa extremist" Mark Violets, saying he posted a video before the attack and had been arrested. None of which was true.
The photo is of an Italian football blogger, and the real shooter was dead.
Last week Andrew Bridgen claimed Ukraine might be working on a dirty bomb to use in a "false flag" attack in Europe. Unsurprisingly his comments have now been amplified by the Russian military and state media, and echoed back by Russian assets and useful idiots here in the UK. 🧵
Andrew Bridgen had an "incredibly productive" meeting with the Russian ambassador in London earlier this year.
Since then he's claimed Rishi Sunak called the election to avoid being a wartime PM, and that Ukraine's planning a "false flag" nuclear attack in Europe "like 9/11". 😳
Meanwhile Russian assets and useful idiots here in the UK have been amplifying these claims of false flag attacks and dirty bombs.
John and Irina Mappin at least are known to have visited the Russian embassy recently, and all frequently share Russian propaganda on social media.