Post

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Sep 21, 2023 • 54 tweets • 16 min read • Read on X

In May 2020, a Ukrainian parliamentarian asked a question that is once again being revisited: a few months before Biden's demand for Shokin's resignation, Poroshenko, Europe and State Dept had all positively assessed progress of Prosecutor General Office. What caused change?

needless to say, the two prominent Ukrainians who asked that question were subsequently sanctioned by the US security state. Under the so-called "Trump administration" and remain censored to this day. But question was and is valid.

the Ukrainians had an interesting explanation that I'll get to later on. First, I'll review some known dates, while adding some details. Biden defenders say that demand for Shokin resignation arose in the "interagency". If so, records ought to be abundant in the bureaucracy

we KNOW that there was an interagency meeting on Sept 30, 2015 at which the interagency agreed that "Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee" and the minutes (to vast list) made no mention of Shokin firing justthenews.com/sites/default/…

Republicans (with usual inefficiency) have more or less totally neglected production of relevant interagency documents in Oct-Nov 2015 that would shed light on this issue, but there is an important, undiscussed available document from Nov 5, 2015 - narrowing period a lot

On Oct 23, 2015, Christina Segal-Knowles followed up her Oct 1, 2015 minutes with a final list of conditions precedent for the third loan guarantee (the one that Joe Biden later held hostage.)

later, on Jan 15, 2016 (on eve of meeting with Ukrainian prosecutors), Segal-Knowles (at NSC with Ciaramella and Zentos) sent document entitled "2015-11-05 CPs for Ukraine LG3_clean.docx" [CPs=Conditions Precedent]. See Pyatt Transcript Exhibits, p 143.

for the purposes of our chronology, the 2015-11-05 Conditions Precedent were distributed one day before Amos Hochstein's meeting with Hunter Biden and were up-to-date interagency policy prior to that meeting.

The 2015-11-05 Conditions Precedent were shown in Pyatt Transcript Exhibits, p 147-148 (the very end). In regard to Prosecutor General, they required establishment of Inspector General office in Prosecutor General Office. Nothing about firing Shokin.

On Oct 29, 2015, Burisma's Vadym Pozharskyi had traveled to Washington to meet with Hunter Biden, Devon Archer and Blue Star (Tramontano, Painter) about "deliverables" in respect to US. On Nov 2, 2015, Pozharskyi sent email memorializing meeting.

Burisma had far-reaching expectations from its extravagant payments to Hunter Biden, Devon Archer and (soon) Blue Star. While the arrangement is well known, far too little attention is paid to Pozharskyi's stated expectations. Which he'd reviewed with Hunter in person on Oct 29.

They expected Hunter to ensure that "high-ranking US officials in Ukraine (US Ambassador) and in US publicly or in private communication/comment expressing their "positive opinion" and support of Nikolay/Burisma to the highest level of decision makers here in Ukraine"

Burisma also expected "a visit of a number of widely recognized and influential current and/or former US policy-makers to Ukraine in November" with a view to "close down any cases/pursuits against" Zlochevsky.

as discussed in a previous thread, Hunter called Amos Hochstein's office on Nov 2 and arranged a meeting on Nov 6. Hochstein testified that it was the ONLY time that Hunter sought a meeting with him and that they discussed Burisma.

in his testimony to Senate Committee in 2020, Hochstein stated, inter alia, that (1) he wanted prosecution of Zlochevsky and Burisma; (2) that he had warned Joe Biden in late October about "Russian disinformation" pointing to Hunter's association with Burisma

(3) that Hunter told him that Joe had talked to him (Hunter) about his discussion with Hochstein and that Hunter wanted to talk directly with Hochstein to get his views on Burisma.
Hochstein's evidence was incorrect on many public details of Burisma events and may be self-serving

On Nov 13, Joe Biden announced a trip to Ukraine. Pozharskyi emailed Hunter immediately. One of his key deliverables was a "visit of a number of widely recognized and influential current and/or former US policy-makers to Ukraine in Nov". Had Hunter delivered? Beyond expectation?

this thread began with Burisma's Pozharskyi trip to Washington on Oct 29, 2015 to set out required deliverables to Hunter, Archer and Blue Star. The explanation from Ukr parliamentarian (Derkach) and prosecutor (Kulyk) links back to earlier thread on Chornovol's hate for Kasko

Readers may recall Nabuleaks exhibits showing transfers from Burisma account in Latvia to Morgan Stanley account of Rosemont Seneca Bohai. Originally presented in October 2019 by Derkach and were (uncredited) source of first hard info on size of Hunter payments.

There's an interesting feature to the dates in these ledgers. Though we know that payments to Hunter continued until much later, the latest listed payment to Rosemont Seneca was Nov 18, 2015. So why doesn't the ledger show ongoing later payments?

The answer is pretty clear: the Latvian bank documents were delivered to the Prosecutor General's Office in November 2015. It's a reasonable surmise that arrangements for delivery of the documents had been negotiated in or about October 2015 and delivered a few weeks later.

Kulyk was the prosecutor who succeeded in recovering $1.5 billion of funds from Yanukovich "syndicate" in 2017 - the only substantial recovery of funds. In contrast, FBI, DOJ recovered $0, despite constant bleating and complaining.

Kulyk spent next two years (to March 28, 2019) on further investigation of money laundering associated with Sergei Kurchenko, the young oligarch who appears to have acted as "wallet" for the Yanukovych syndicate (who were prior to Poroshenko syndicate, prior to Zelensky syndicate

on March 28, 2019, the second anniversary of confiscation of $1.5 billion, Prosecutor General Lutsenko announced that Kulyk had finished enormous money laundering investigation, with suspicions issued to nearly 100 people. See tsn.ua/ukrayina/sprav…

more later.

@PetriKrohn @USTreasury @MoonofA I've archived copies of some of the videos using wget - a technique that I didn't know until a few years ago. For Bitchute, I had to look up the exact mp4 link in the view-source.

@Comment4_U Rather than US micro-management of its Ukrainian colony leading to reduced corruption, it appears to have dramatically exacerbated the already bad corruption. I think that this issue ought to be discussed much more as Burisma isn't only issue that deserves sunshine.

@RockKenwell Derkach was source for information that Hunter Biden was being paid $83,333 per month by Burisma, the amount first being public in October 2019. That information was not "Russian disinformation", no matter how often the mantra was repeated by US intel agencies.

Lutsenko March 28, 2019 announcement of Kulyk's report (Deputy Head, International Legal Cooperation) was both a milestone and turning point that was ignored in west. I'll discuss in separate thread but note highlights here briefly. Kulyk's team assembled more than 3000 volumes

Lutsenko reported a wide range of offenses associated with the Kurchenko money laundering network. One would have thought that US embassy, ostensibly so committed to "anti-corruption", would have been praising Lutsenko and Kulyk to roof tops. But they weren't.

Lutsenko also reported that 98 people had been issued suspicions.

bonus points to any readers who connected Kurchenko back to the original seizure of Zlochevsky $25 million in London in 2014, about which George Kent, Pyatt and US Embassy hyperventilated and purported to blame on Shokin (while ignoring Kulyk's success in seizing $1.5 billion).

$20 million of the deposits into the Brociti (Zlochevsky) account in London had come from a Kurchenko company. Z's lawyer (Kicha) informed court that a Kurchenko company had, in 2013, purchased an oil terminal from Zlochevsky, owned by Z since 2002.

the UK anti-corruption prosecutor countered by observing that Kurchenko had been sanctioned on Mar 6, 2014 (only a few days after US-backed regime change)

Zlochevsky's lawyer argued that each of the transactions "resulted in real assets being exchanged for real cash":

ultimately, UK judge determined that UK prosecutors hadn't supported their ex parte seizure and released the funds. Contrary to US embassy disinformation, Shokin was NOT Prosecutor General at the time. In fact, it was Kasko (their favorite) who was then in charge of International

a full exegesis of US embassy disinformation and misunderstanding of the London case re seizure of Zlochevsky funds needs to be written up (I have lengthy notes on the topic).

anyway, back to March 28, 2019 and the Lutsenko-Kulyk announcement. It precipitated a weird series of events -weird even by Ukrainian-Biden corruption standards and totally unreported in west. Even as both Lutsenko and Kulyk were then attracting attention via John Solomon

in U.S., online journal ForumDaily[.]com reported that members of Poroshenko's inner circle were issued suspicions, specifically former Presidential Administration (PA) head Lozhkin, former National Bank head Gontareva, current PA deputy head Filatov forumdaily.com/genprokuratura…

ForumDaily also reported that Zlochevsky had been caught up in the Kurchenko investigation and suspicions, linking to a previous ForumDaily article on Mar 26, 2019 forumdaily.com/podkupit-bajde…

the March 28, 2019 ForumDaily article (the sourcing of which is unclear) was immediately cited by Ukrainian media to disseminate allegations against Poroshenko's inner circle: ; ; vesti.ua/strana/330571-…
unian.net/politics/10496…
tsn.ua/ukrayina/sprav…

Within minutes, the Prosecutor General Office walked back the suspicions against Poroshenko's inner circle and began a process of icing and eventually firing Kulyk. Unian ; Facebook ; TCH unian.net/politics/10496…
facebook.com/lysenko.andrii…
tsn.ua/ukrayina/rechn…

later that day, Kulyk's files were removed from his office. Ultimately, Kulyk's investigation, with its 3000 volumes of evidence, appears to have been transferred to NABU (controlled by US Embassy) where it seems to have fizzled out without anything being done. Kulyk later fired

subsequently, Kulyk - praised by Chornovol as the prosecutor who recovered $1.5 billion of embezzled money, the ONLY such recovery to date - joined Derkach in his press conferences on Ukrainian corruption under Biden regency, to which Kulyk brought receipts.

Kulyk was subsequently sanctioned on Jan 10, 2021 by Treasury under so-called "Trump" administration, for disseminating supposed "Russian disinformation". But, when one looks at backstory, Kulyk had paid his dues as Ukrainian prosecutor with actual accomplishments

while Kulyk was carrying out his monumental investigation into Kurchenko money-laundering syndicate, he was simultaneously being investigated by NABU on charges of illegal enrichment in 2011-2015, including a complaint that he took a 10-day vacation in Bulgaria by car

ultimately, it's a herculean and probably impossible task to sort out which Ukrainian is more corrupt. What does seem certain is that there's little to no reason to trust George Kent or Amos Hochstein on such matters. Or for US embassy to be micro-managing.

back to the original question of what changed regarding Shokin in Oct-Nov 2015 as asked by Derkach and Kulyk having established that Kulyk had exhaustively investigated Kurchenko money laundering in which Zlochevsky was reported in 2019 to be a participant.

right now, none of us KNOWS what triggered the change. We KNOW that Vadym Pozharskyi, Zlochevsky's #2, visited Hunter Biden, Archer and Blue Star in Washington on Oct 29, 2015, following up with a memo on "deliverables" on Nov 2, 2015

We KNOW that Hunter Biden requested a meeting with Amos Hochstein on Nov 2, that they met on Nov 6 and that this was only such meeting ever requested by Hunter of Hochstein and that Hunter initiated discussion of Burisma.

here's Kulyk and Derkach's explanation for the sudden concern by Burisma and Biden. They stated in May 2020 that the Kurchenko money laundering investigation had discovered $3.4 million payment of "laundered money" to Rosemont Seneca Bohai

while there has been much publicity to the issue of quid pro quo, if the funds (quid pro quo or not) resulted from money laundering (as Kulyk believed), the situation is much worse.

we also know from Tetiana Chornovol that Shokin, Chornovol and Tyshchenko had had an explosive meeting with US embassy favorite Kasko (then head of International) about his failure to obtain money laundering documents from Latvia, such that Shokin set up parallel channel

the dates on the ledgers from Latvia indicate that
Shokin's direct channel to Latvia (circumventing the obfuscating Kasko) began yielding results in Oct-Nov 2015, exactly as US embassy/Biden began seeking Shokin's head.

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Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Dec 2

Victoria Nuland was appointed to Board of Directors of National Endowment of Democracy, the primary US funding agency for overseas NGOs involved in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria.
One can scarcely help wondering what Nuland's input has been in connection with recent NGO activity in Georgia and Syria.

for people unfamiliar with Victoria Nuland, she has been mentioned dozens of times in previous threads here.
x.com/search?q=nulan…

reupping a link to Nuland's notorious conversation with US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt in early February 2014, while Maidan insurrection reaching crescendo in Ukraine (precisely as Putin and Russia preoccupied with Sochi Olympics). On February 22, 2014, Yats (Yatsenyuk) Nuland's choice was installed as Prime Minister; Oleh Tiahnybok, leader of the neo-Nazi party, was given a key role in post-coup government, while Klitschko remained mayor of Kyiv, a position that he retained. Precisely as Nuland and Pyatt agreed. Nuland said that Biden would be running point on the operation, which he did, becoming the de facto US regent in Ukraine from 2014-Jan 2017. Worth listening to again. 📷youtube.com/watch?v=WV9J6s…… Earlier CA link here x.com/ClimateAudit/s…

Read 4 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Oct 24

Some readers have probably noticed that Microsoft has recently become one of the leading retailers of lurid allegations about "Russian influence operations targeting U.S. elections".

What is being overlooked is the lead author of the Microsoft articles is none other than Clint Watts, the founder (fpri.org/news/2017/08/f…) of the infamous Hamilton 68 dashboard, which was exposed by @mtaibbi in #TwitterFiles 15 (x.com/mtaibbi/status…) as the "next great media fraud".

Taibbi comprehensively exposed the total sham of the Hamilton 68 dashboard. Nonetheless, Clint Watts, the main proponent of the sham Hamilton 68 dashboard, has risen to a more lucrative and more prominent platform at Microsoft, where he continues to propagate the same warmonging claims as he has for more than a decade.

less well known is that Watts also had a curious role in the original Russiagate hoax. Christopher Steele had met Kathleen Kavalec, a senior State Department official on October 11, 2016, where he spun an even more lurid fantasy than the "dossier" itself, adding in Sussmann's false Alfa Bank hoax and naming Millian as a supposed source (notwithstanding his supposed reluctance to identify sources because of "danger".) Kavalec later met with Bruce Ohr, who became Steele's conduit to FBI after November 1, 2016.
Kavalec read Watts' lurid November 6, 2016 article entitled "Trolling for Trump" and, after meeting with Ohr et al on Nov 21, 2016, called Watts in for a meeting on December 7, 2016. warontherocks.com/2016/11/trolli…
Kavalec was so impressed with Watts that she sent a copy of "Trolling for Trump" to Victoria Nuland and other high-level State Department officials including Daniel Fried, John Heffern, Athena Katsoulos, Naz Durakoglu, Jonathan Cohen, Bridget Brink, Eric Green, Christopher Robinson, Conrad Tribble. Earlier in 2016, Brink and Nuland had been involved in the Biden/State Department putsch to remove Shokin as Ukrainian Prosecutor General.

Clint Watts' "Trolling for Trump" article warontherocks.com/2016/11/trolli…, which had so enthralled senior State Department official Kavalec and her associates, said that their interest in "trolls" had arisen as follows: "When experts published content criticizing the Russian-supported Bashar al Assad regime, organized hordes of trolls would appear to attack the authors on Twitter and Facebook."

So who were the "experts" whose feelings had been hurt by online criticism? It turned out to be January 2014 article foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria… co-authored by Watts himself entitled "The Good and Bad of Ahrar al-Sham: An al Qaeda–Linked Group Worth Befriending."

At the time of Watts' article, ISIS was still very new. It was written in the same month as Obama had called ISIS the "jayvee". At the time, U.S. (through separate CIA and DoD operations) and Gulf States allies were funneling cash and weapons to jihadis of every persuasion as the Obama administration attempted to implement its regime change coup in Syria.

But despite Beltway support for arming Al Qaeda and its allies (including Ahrar al-Sham as advocated by Clint Watts), the larger public has never entirely understood the higher purpose supposedly served by arming Al Qaeda and its allies to carry out regime change in Syria. Mostly, they find it hard to believe that U.S. would carry out such an iniquitous policy. So Watts ought to have expected some blowback to his advocacy of arming AlQaeda allies, but instead, Watts blamed "Russia" for online criticism, ultimately falsely accusing simple opponents of US allying with AlQaeda allies as Russian agents or dupes.

Read 5 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Oct 2

actually, the lesson from Helene is the opposite from that being promoted.

In 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority was given the mandate for flood control in the valley of the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Over the next 40 years, they built 49 dams, which, for the most part, accomplished their goal. Whereas floods in the Tennessee were once catastrophic, younger people are mostly unaware of them.

The French Broad River (Asheville) is an upstream tributary where flood control dams weren't constructed due to local opposition.

Rather than the devastation of Hurricane Helene on Asheville illustrating the effect of climate change, the success of the flood control dams in other sectors of the Tennessee Valley illustrates the success of the TVA flood control program where it is implemented.

Hurricane Helene did not show the effect of climate change, but what happens to settlements in Tennessee Valley tributaries under "natural" flooding (i.e. where flood control dams have been rejected.)

I should add that, in its first 40 years, the TVA built 49 flood control dams, of which 29 were power-generating. In the subsequent 50 years, TVA built 0 flood control dams,
However, in the 1980s, they established the Carbon Dioxide Information Centre (CDIAC) under their nuclear division, which sponsored much influential climate research, including the CRU temperature data (Phil Jones) and Michael Mann's fellowship from which Mann et al 1998 derived.
In 1990, the parents of Crowdstrike's Dmitri Alperovich moved from Russia to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where his father was a TVA nuclear engineer. Dmitri moved to Tennessee a few years later.
One can't help but wonder whether TVA's original mandate for flood control got lost in the executive offices, attracted by more glamorous issues, such as climate change research.
If so, one could reasonably say that a factor in the seeming abandonment of TVA efforts to complete its original flood control mandate (e.g. to French Broad River which inundated Asheville) was partly attributable to diversion of TVA interest to climate change research, as opposed to its mandate of flood control.

another thought. As soon as the point is made, it is obvious that flood control dams have reduced flooding. Not just in Appalachia. I've looked at long data for water levels in Great Lakes and the amount of fluctuation (flooding) after dams installed is much reduced.
And yet my recollection of public reporting of climate is that weather extremes, including flooding, is getting worse. But in areas with flood control dams, it obviously //isn't// getting worse than before. It's better. Note to self: check IPCC reports for their specific findings on flooding.

Read 5 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Aug 7

as readers are aware, @walkafyre has a long-term project of decoding the Mueller investigation through the laborious project of identifying the interviewees underneath the redactions. Some of the identifications are so ingenious that it's fun. Yesterday was an interesting example, which I'll narrate since it's interesting. (There are many other equally interesting examples.) It is the identification of the interviewee of Bates number B2997, interviewed on Aug 15, 2018 (302 filed on Dec 17, 2018). The 302 was published in volume 11 (page 92) - online at walkafyre's website here:

The 302 has 6 pages. The last 4 pages are totally redacted of information. All identifying information has been redacted from the first two pages except for the presence of Mueller attorney Aaron Zelinsky. Take a look.

And yet from this meagre information, walkafyre has made a firm identification of the interviewee.

It doesn't seem possible, does it. But I've reviewed the backup and it works. I'll explain.themyefiles.knack.com/mueller-files#…

first step. The 302s are in non-proportional font (Courier) and characters can be counted. Last name has 8 characters and praenomen has 9-10 characters.

second step. B2995 previously identified as Ali, Hesham and B3005 previously identified as Bartholomew, Vanessa. 302s are //locally// in alpha order, thus pinning surname to alpha range Ali to Bar.

third step. the interviewee (LN8) interacts with a LN9 frequently.

fourth. the interview was in summer 2018 with Zelinsky in attendance. This indicates that interview was connected to Roger Stone.

fifth, LN9 has given money to "the ___". Probably "the PAC". Public data on Roger Stone's PAC shows that the largest contributor (by far) was John Powers Middleton (9-character last name.)

So the interviewee is a LN8 in alpha range Ali-Bar with some sort of regular connection to Middleton. Walkafyre had this figured out a long time ago, but was stuck.fec.gov/data/receipts/…

a few days ago, @walkafyre took a look at documents related to a sordid lawsuit between Middleton and Roy Lee, an estranged associate. Case number shown below. One of the motions demanded deposition of "Alex Anderson", a Middleton employee. Alexander Anderson had previously made a deposition in support of Middleton.
As a coup de grace, one of the production requests in the pleadings was for "all communications related to Middleton's relationship with Roger Stone".
The redacted interviewee the August 15, 2018 grand jury notice was convincingly Middleton's employee Alexander Anderson.

Read 15 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jun 8

in 2019 and 2020, there was a huge amount of interest in the Strzok-Page texts, but almost no attention was paid to the fact that the texts had been heavily "curated" before reaching the public and that some key topics were missing.

One of the key topics that was missing from the Strzok-Page texts (as curated) was any mention of the interview of Steele's Primary Sub-Source in late January 2017. Given that the FBI had insisted on inclusion of Steele dossier allegations in the Intelligence Community Assessment dated January 6, 2017, this was a central FBI issue at the time and the lack of any reference in the Strzok-Page texts as originally presented is noteworthy.

Readers may recall that the very first tranche of Strzok-Page texts, released in Feb 2018, contained a long gap from mid-December 2017 to mid-May 2018 - from the ICA to appointment of Mueller. This is the very period in which the Crossfire investigation metastasized into the lawfare that undermined the incoming administration. The fact that this period was separately missing from both Strzok and Lisa Page has never been adequately explained. As an aside, it seems odd that the FBI can retrieve emails and texts from targets, but not from their own employees.

Subsequently, a tranche of texts from the missing period was released, but these were also heavily curated and contained no texts that relate to the Primary Subsource.

However, from an an exhibit in the Flynn case , we //KNOW// that, in the late evening of January 13, 2017, Strzok and Page texted about the Primary Subsource, less than two weeks prior to the interview (which began on January 24, 2017). The message wasn't interpretable in real time, but we (Hans Mahncke) were subsequently able to connect it to the Danchenko interview via the reference to the "Womble" law firm, with which Danchenko's lawyer, Mark Schamel, was then associated. We also learned that Schamel was friends with and namedropped Lisa Monaco.

But other than this single excerpt from the Flynn exhibits, I haven't located anything in any of the other Strzok texts than can be plausibly connected to the critical interviews of the Primary Subsource.

I think that there are some Strzok emails from Jan 19 and Jan 22, 2017 that may refer to the pending Primary Subsource interview, that I'll discuss next.

One useful thing that the Weaponization Committee could do would be to publish a complete and unexpurgated set of Strzok-Page texts. Given the interest created by the highly expurgated version, one wonders what an expurgated and unbowdlerized version might yield.courtlistener.com/docket/6234142…

In the volume of Strzok emails released on October 31, 2019, there was an almost entirely redacted thread dated January 19 and January 22, 2017, a couple of days before the Primary Subsource interview on January 24, 2017, which look to me like they have a good chance of relating to the PSS interview.

The thread began with an email from FBI Office of General Council (OGC) - Sally Anne Moyer or Kevin Clinesmith - to Strzok and a CD subordinate, with a very short subject line.

We know that the PSS interview was lawyered up and carried out under a sweetheart queen-for-a-day deal that was usually only available to highly placed Democrats (Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills etc.) So involvement of OGC in negotiation of the PSS interview is expected.

at 6:47 pm on Thursday, Jan 19, 2017, Strzok's CD subordinate wrote back that "here's what we have to decide ASAP". The issue is totally redacted, naturally. (This is one day before inauguration.)

Read 12 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

May 12

https://twitter.com/ClimateAudit/status/1485801171336019968

in April 2022, Mark Steyn, on his GB News show
,
commented on recently released UK COVID data, claiming "the third booster shots so zealously promoted by the British state, and its groupthink media has failed, and in fact exposed you to significantly greater risk of infection, hospitalization and death."
Steyn showed images of five tables from official statistical publications to support his claims.
In April 2023, Ofcom, which, in addition to its ordinary regulatory role, had taken a special interest in vaccine advocacy, ruled that Steyn's "presentation of UK Health Security Agency data
and their use to draw conclusions materially misled the audience. In breach of Rule 2.2 of the Broadcasting Code" - a very damaging finding that Steyn has appealed.

I haven't followed this case. However, as it happens, I had taken an interest in UK COVID data about 3 months earlier, as it was one of the few jurisdictions that published case and hospitalization rates by vaccination status.

Also, to refresh readers on the contemporary context, early 2022 was the period in which COVID lockdowns and overall alarm began to decline.

At the time, I observed that the UK data showed that the case rate for triple vax was //higher// than among unvax. Three months later, Steyn (as discussed below) made a similar claim, for which he was censured.

Although the UK authorities conspicuously refrained from including this result in their summary or conclusions, they were obviously aware of the conundrum, since their publication included a curious disclaimer by UK authorities that actual case data "should not be used" to estimate vaccine effectiveness. I pointed this odd disclaimer out in this earlier thread, also noting that health authorities in Ontario and elsewhere had previously used such data to promote vaccine uptake and that the reasoning behind this disclaimer needed to be closely examined and parsed.

All of these issues turned up later in the Ofcom decision re Steyn.

Ofcom ruled that Steyn's presentation was "materially misleading" because
(1) he failed to take account of "fundamental biases" in age structure of vax and unvax groups i.e. unvax group was skewed younger, vax group skewed older; and
(2) he failed to include the disclaimer that "This raw data should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness as the data does not take into account inherent biases present such as differences in risk, behaviour and testing in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations”.steynonline.com/mark-steyn-sho…
ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/…

https://twitter.com/ClimateAudit/status/1485801171336019968

in this thread, I'll re-examine Steyn's analysis. I've transcribed all the numbers in the tables and done further calculations to check his claims.

First, case rates. Steyn first showed an important table showing the population by 5-year age group and vax status, observing that the total population of triply vax (boosted) was approximately equal to the population of unboosted, observing that this facilitated comparison. Steyn: "Let's take a look at this, as you can see from a pool of 63 million down at the bottom there, 63 million, there are 32 million who are triple vaccinated. That leaves just under 31 million, who are either double single or unvaccinated. So we have two groups of similar size, 31, 32 million. So it's relatively easy to weigh the merits of the third shot upon Group A versus group B."

He then showed a table of cases by age group and vax status, pointing out that the total number of boosted cases was approximately double the number of unboosted cases: "So the triple vaccinated in March were responsible for just over a million COVID cases and everybody else 475,000 COVID cases. So the triple vaccinated are contracting COVID at approximately twice the rate of the double, single and unvaccinated. Got that? If you get the booster shot, you've got twice as high a chance of getting the COVID. In the United Kingdom, there's twice as many people with the third booster shot who got the COVID, as the people who never had the booster shot."

Ofcom purported to rebut Steyn's analysis as shown in excerpt below. They observed that proportion of unvax in younger age groups was much higher than in older age groups and that the "simple comparison between the two groups made by Mark Steyn failed to take into account these inherent biases".

However, Ofcom failed to show that there would be a different outcome in the more complex analysis in which age groups were allowed for.

As it turns out, in regard to case rates, Steyn's conclusions, if anything, under-stated the phenomenon, as shown next.

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