NZ vaccinated their entire adult population by the end of February (83% overall). Yet, somehow they have the highest covid case rate on Earth "despite" an indoor mask mandate.
NZ also happens to have the highest covid death rate on Earth, currently.
I guess turning a formerly free democracy into a totalitarian prison island didn't work out as planned?
NZ also happens to have high and persistent excess mortality this year (and this data is lagged so the current covid spike isn't evident - yet).
I thought locking down until mass vaccination was supposed to prevent excess mortality?
Also, NZ is facing a labor shortage as workers flee overseas and the economy is crashing. I'm sure none of that has anything to do with the past two years of hysterical panic, right?
Tourism is a significant part of NZ's economy and has largely disappeared (down more than 90%). NZ is now begging tourists to return - but who wants to visit a country which hasn't yet moved on from hysteria?
In the end, the only way past covid is through. Eventually, NZ will come to accept this fact but probably not until they've paid a terrible and needless toll.
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ONS data from England indicates that boosted individuals younger than 50 years old were 30% to 40% more likely to die during May (from all causes) than were unvaccinated persons:
On the other hand, middle-aged persons in England who were boosted are seeing 20% to 30% lower mortality than unvaccinated people of the same age:
For the very old, the situation reverses with the boosted elderly dying at a higher rate in May than the unvaccinated elderly:
>90% of all covid deaths in England since February were vaccinated.
In every month except Dec '21, the vaccinated accounted for a disproportionate share of covid deaths in England (largely due to age stratification).
"Pandemic of the Unvaccinated", indeed...
Non-covid deaths can be used as a proxy for age adjustment: so long as the share of covid deaths is lower than the share of non-covid deaths, the vaccines are showing some efficacy vs. death.
Unfortunately, this gap has almost entirely disappeared:
Comparing covid death share to non-covid death share provides a rough estimate of VE vs. death in England.
What this shows is that VE vs. death started out low but significant and that VE waned steadily before essentially disappearing by March:
New England Journal of Medicine study shows that mRNA vaccine effectiveness turns negative by six months while prior infection retains strong effectiveness against infection for at least a year.
This study showed that a booster dose restores vaccine-induced protection - for a few weeks, at least. We know from other studies that dose 3 protection wanes about 2X as fast as dose 2 protection.
What this means is that getting vaccinated effectively delays your inevitable infection by a few months and since most of the unvaccinated have already been infected, the vast majority of current cases are occurring in those who vaccine-induced "protection" has turned negative.
We were told that all of Southeast Asia "controlled" covid via masks, tack&trace, quarantine, border controls... but somehow Omicron evaded all these factors.
Which is more believable? Omicron can magically evade all controls or that apparent control was always an illusion?
No honest person still believes that masks can impact the spread of covid, but some still cling to the efficacy of "early track & trace"... but serosurveys in Southeast Asia indicate that they never did a good job of tracking true infections: