Transcription
Welcome to today's talk, Friday, the 25th of November. Now, for the first time in the United States, we've got data that says there's been more covert deaths in people that are vaccinated versus people that are unvaccinated. And we want to look at that in a little bit of detail in a minute and put some context in that. And also, we want to look at the bivalent vaccine boosters that are being given in the states.
We're going to be looking at information from V-safe, which shows that 54.8 percent of vaccine recipients of the bivalent boosters had a systemic side effect; most of which weren't serious in the time frame they were looking at. Now, that's about the only way I can summarize this; it is a bit complicated. And, of course, YouTube rules and my own personal standards insist that we will be looking at data from official sources and other reputable sources of data, so we're not going against any, uh, any guidelines from the United States government.
Now, um, here we have this—this is—this is—this was a report; it was commissioned by The Washington Post Kaiser Family Foundation vice president Cynthia Cox, who does a lot of this kind of work. Now, um, this is quite interesting: 58% of coronavirus deaths in August were in people who were vaccinated or boosted. And that is people who'd had a primary, uh, course of vaccines—at least a primary course of vaccines. So what it looks like is happening here is we're getting waning of the protective effects of the vaccines; it's now waning. And, of course, this combined with the systemic side effects that we're going to look at from the booster doses needs to be taken into account as we consider the—the consider the risk-benefit analysis, because we started these vaccination programs a while ago, and the risk-benefit analysis has changed. Um, we're not saying the vaccines aren't effective; we're not saying that there are anything about the vaccines; we're just saying the risk-benefit analysis has changed. Let's go on.
So, therefore, 42% of deaths in August were in people who were unvaccinated. So the majority—for the first time—the more deaths, covert deaths, in the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated population in the United States. Now, it's fair to contextualize this because if we look at CDC data, we do find that 80.06 percent of the United States population is vaccinated. So there's more people in the vaccinated group than in the unvaccinated group, but it's also true, as we saw, that there were more covert deaths in the vaccinated group for the first time. Now, historically, this is quite interesting: September 2021, vaccinated people—23 percent of the coronavirus fatalities in people that were vaccinated. January and February 2022 had gone up to 42 percent, and as we saw, it's now gone up to 58 percent. So we see that the risk-benefit analysis is changing; the data is there before our eyes.
So a direct quote from the Kaiser Foundation in the Washington Post: "We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated." So, uh, Mr. Biden's—um, not saying Mr. Biden was wrong at the time, but um, times have changed. We know protective effects wane, and this needs to be taken into account when we look at risk-benefit analysis, in my view. So this was a—the Kaiser Foundation had conducted the analysis.
Now, a Center for Disease Control and prevention morbidity and mortality weekly report, and this is—this paper here from—from the CDC. So we're bang, bang in the middle of official U.S. government data—safety monitoring, a bivalent COVID-19 vaccines. Now, um, August the 31st, 2022. Um, the FDA authorized the bivalent booster for Pfizer and Moderna—mRNA encoding the spike protein from the original SARS coronavirus II and from Omicron BA.4 and BA.5. So it was this bivalent combination vaccine. Advisory committee on immunization, uh, practice recommended all persons over 12 receive an age-appropriate dose of one of these vaccines; that was their recommendation at the time and indeed still is. Now, V-safe is a voluntary smartphone-based U.S. safety surveillance system established by the CDC to monitor adverse events after COVID vaccination. And here we have it; it's a V-safe here. Now, I don't actually know too much about that, so if people that are using it in the states have been giving me some feedback on that, that would actually be really, uh, really quite useful to get some information on that. As of the 3rd of October, I believe there were 10 million users of that period of time, so it looks like it's being fairly well used. Are we getting better data now from the states? It certainly is starting to look that way; we're getting better quality data now. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System is the other way, of course, and, um, information is also taken from that. Total data from the 31st of August to the 23rd of October: 14-odd million, uh, had received a Pfizer-BioNTech; 8.2 million, uh, the Moderna—just over—I think the Moderna is just over 18s. So pretty large numbers that we're getting here.
Now, V-safe is a bit more confusing; it looks like in this period of time there were 211,959 registrants age over the age of 12. Slightly complicated as well because people under the age of 16 have to have supervision to use this program, so quite how that's working out I don't really know in the states, but registrants—now it looks like these are people that had just started using the app in that period of time. But as is often the case with CDC, it's not that clear really; the way the writer is not that—not that transparent very often. August 31st to 23rd of October is the period of time, so, um, just that finite window of time, 2022. Reports in the week after vaccination be put. So this is just a one-week period. Now, clearly, you don't have to be that clever to realize that this isn't going to pick up any potential long-term side effects. We're not saying there are long-term side effects, but any potential long-term side effects would, by definition, not be picked up in the first week, so it is limited. But anyway, injection site reactions: 60.8%; that's not too surprising, and it's not really concerning; you get a sore arm, of course. Um, systemic reactions though—this is more concerning to me: 54.8 percent. Fewer than one percent—and I think we'll see later it's about 0.8 percent—received medical care. So V-safe is reporting that some people did need, uh, medical opinions and medical care after the vaccination. I don't think that's controversial; it's a simple statement of fact. Uh, Vaccine Adverse Events Reported System, so, uh, 5,542 reported adverse events of bivalent, uh, vaccine—pretty small number really, actually. Um, are all the cases being reported to bear? As, of course, not—of course not. Uh, but 4.5% of those were serious. Now, remember this is of cases actually reported, but still a reasonable proportion of the cases actually reported were classified as being serious adverse events. Now, this is straight from the CDC: "Healthcare providers and patients can be reassured that adverse events reported after bivalent boosters are consistent with those reported after monovalent vaccines." Do you see what they've done here? They're comparing the bivalent boosters with the monovalent; they're comparing two groups. This is a relative risk, not an absolute risk. Not saying the CDC are being disingenuous—not at all—but we—they are reporting a relative risk, not an absolute risk. The absolute risk, um, they didn't put that in—not given. So it's a relative risk; the absolute risk is going to be smaller than the relative risk. How much smaller? Don't know; they didn't say. Information not given—disappointing from the CDC that they're just talking about relative risk. "The health impacts after COVID vaccines, uh, vaccination are less frequent and less severe than those associated with COVID illness." Again, they're comparing people that have had illness with people that are vaccinated—a relative risk, not an absolute risk for the whole population. Not saying the CDC are being deliberately disingenuous here, but it would have been better to have information on absolute risk as well as relative risk. Unfortunately, the—the absolute risk is not given, but we know it will be smaller than the relative risk. Now, the reference they use for this is interesting because they're making this broad statement here—"health"—health impacts, which—so health impacts is a broad statement; it applies to everything. But the reference they give—reference to there is quite specific. Now, that's the reference there, and, uh, it just refers to myocarditis, pericarditis, and combinations of those or multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children within a seven-day or 21-day risk window after the index date. So again, this is only a 14-day window that they're taking this information from, and even then they're giving it as a relative risk. I mean, we're not saying the CDC are trying to give the wrong impression here, but it just doesn't seem very well written to me. Um, I—I—I know many relatively junior academics who could write it much more clearly than this, I think, but we're not arguing with the numbers that the CDC are giving; we're more, uh, commenting on their—on their presentation. Okay, comparison between and after, uh, vaccines after infection—again, they're comparing between the infections and, uh, after the vaccines—two groups. The relative risk between those—absolute risk not given again. So we see that the CDC are really giving relative risks, comparing one group with another group, not giving the absolute risk for the population as a whole. CDC, please, you need to give both; we need to know what the absolute risk is as well as the relative risk, please.
Now, a bit—do a bit more detail here: a review of this V-safe data from the mobile app again during August the 31st to 23rd of October—same time period. Now, this is what they say: 211, 212,000 nearly registrants; these are presumably people that registered newly in that period of time. Um, they're covered a fairly good age group, um, a few to 12 to 17s, as we see there—more in the, uh, more in the older age groups, but a good—a good spread of ages. No complaints there at all. Uh, quite a few of these—50, 45 were the fourth dose, and the fifth dose was 50.2 percent. But of course, we know that if these risks—if the heart disease complications, especially—that the CDC does admit can occur after vaccines, they're more likely after the second dose. So again, it's not giving a really good overall picture; it's really quite specific to these, um, bivalent boosters that they're talking about, uh, in the week after receiving, um, a bivalent booster dose. Local injection site reactions—now this is interesting—49.7% amongst the over 65s—higher in the younger age group. And the age group they use for comparison here is the 18 to 49. So younger people—men and women—getting more local, uh, reactions. Systemic reactions—it's the same: 18 to 49 getting 67.9% local reactions as opposed to 43.5% in the over 65s. And when they look at the specific problems, they see this same trend that it's younger people that are getting more. So 30% in older people, 53% in younger people. Headache—again, 19.7% in older people, 42.8% in younger people. And again, we see it the same with the muscle pain and the fever. Now, reported inability to complete normal daily activities was 10.6% amongst those over 65 and 19.8 percent in those aged 18 to 49 after vaccination. So over 19% in that younger age group couldn't carry out their normal activities after the, uh, the booster vaccine. I would have thought these are fairly—fairly high numbers. Uh, receipt of medical care was reported by 0.8 percent. Now, 0.8 percent who took medical advice after vaccination—I would have thought that is rather high, but the CDC just report it; they don't say anything about it; they just say that's what it was. I would have thought it's rather high—0.8 percent. You can decide whether you think that's high, low, or indifferent. Again, we're talking about risk-benefit analysis. So—so there we go.
Um, I know that's fairly data-intense, um, but it looks like, um, the risks after—the risk of side effects after vaccination are becoming clearer with, uh, V-safe, although I don't yet fully understand how it's working, but it's good that these are being honestly reported. And just combine that with the risk-benefit analysis—um, that more covert deaths are now occurring in vaccinated versus unvaccinated—despite the fact we have to be clear about it—only 20% of the—the population are unvaccinated. So the vaccinated is a much larger group. Thankfully, though, uh, COVID cases are getting milder; they still do cause some deaths, as we'll see—seeing some hospitalizations—but the trend is that they're getting milder. And I think these things should be taken into account where the risk-benefit analysis. So that's about as far as we can go on this talk, I think. Lots of data there; all the references are given. I've been as honestly—I've been as honest to the data as I can, and, um, check the links and, uh, I'm pretty sure all of my numbers are accurate. You'll have to decide, uh, how you interpret the information I have given you. Interesting—don't want to say any more. Well, could say more, but probably best not say more. Thank you for watching.