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.

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

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.