Showing posts with label COVID. Show all posts
Showing posts with label COVID. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Some COVID, hospitalization and vaccine stats from Australia

Zero hospitalizations, zero ICU admissions from unvaccinated (Australia)

Here's the first chart. Note the data for deaths, ICU admissions and hospitalizations has an inverse relationship to vaccine doses. The more doses you've had after the initial one or two, the more likely you are to get hospitalized or admitted to ICU or die. What's alarming about this is that, as we'll see in the next chart, the inverse is true for number of doses administered per 100,000K. Note that Australia is almost completely vaccinated via the mRNA type vaccines.

Vaccine doses administered as percentage of population (Australia)

In the following chart, we see the percentage of total population by dose count. Since the normal dosing for the mRNA vaccines is two within 30 days, Australia shows 85% of its population having achieved "fully vaccinated status" 56% have been boosted once and 21% have been boosted twice.

The boosted are at the greatest risk

So now we can do some simple math from the first chart and what we have clearly shows an INVERSE relationship between vaccinations AND hospitalizations, ICU and deaths, especially for those boosted. If the vaccines were working as intended, we should see rates going down as the population becomes more vaccinated. Instead, we see rates greater than expected as vaccination counts go up. This is clearly the case for those having received four doses (2 original + 2 boosters).

Doses

% Pop

% Hospitalizations*

% ICU*

% Deaths*

4+

21%

57%

56%

60%

3

31%

27%

28%

22%

2

43%

15%

16%

10%

1

2%

1.4%

1%

1%

0

3%

0%

0%

7%

 

100%

100%

101%

100%

*For known vaccine status (source www.health.nsw.au.gov)

Those with 3 shots are roughly 2x likely to end up the hospital, IC or die from COVID vs those with only 2 shots. Likewise, those with 4+ shots are 4x more likely than those with 2 shots. This is likely somewhat self-selecting (older people and those with comorbidities are more likely to get boosted) but the profound difference in rates may have a lot to do with booster immunity waning quickly and leaving the body less able to fight off new strains or even diseases other than COVID. 

Natural immunity

Finally, we have a compound problem in countries with extremely high vaccination rates (like Australia). There are few people left who have pure natural immunity (contracted COVID but never vaccination). In fact, Australia has pushed vaccines even onto those who had contracted COVID. 

What we likely have, as in the United States, is a large population that received two mRNA shots (perhaps early in year one of the pandemic), have subsequently contracted COVID (probably Omicron) and are now reluctant to get boosted.

Given the results in Australia, that reluctance may be well founded even if not confirmed by direct research. Regardless, we do have data showing that natural immunity from having contracted COVID is AT LEAST as good and probably better than vaccination induced immunity. One study (Effects of Vaccination and Previous Infection on Omicron Infections in Children | NEJM) on children aged 5 - 11 appears to show that vaccinated children had greatly REDUCED immunity 12 weeks after the second shot (down to 20%) versus unvaxed children who had contracted COVID still going relatively strong after the same length of time (55% immunity).

The murky area is what happens to immunity from contracting COVID after having been "fully vaccinated" (two mRNA shots). There doesn't appear to be good data. 


Monday, February 7, 2022

Freebie Canadian Trucker Support Bumper Stickers


I put this together for anyone wanting to print their own bumper stickers in support of the Canadian trucker protests. These will print 4-up with cut marks on standard 8 1/2" x 11" bumper sticker / vinyl paper. (Sorry metric fans, there is very little A4 sticker material available.) If you really want an A4 version, let me know via g*e*l*d*n*e*r <at> gmail.com. I've also linked to a PDF version below so you can resize it in Illustrator.


Truck Trudeau





Link to PDF version

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Media blames society for shaming people who've had COVID

I haven't written anything long form for a while but this has driven me to gripe again. Today I noticed a tweet thread from Chris Cillizza, CNN Politics Reporter and Editor-At-Large. (He's the guy who tries to not sound as batshit crazy as Brian Stelter.) Cillizza was bemoaning the fact that those in his bubble wouldn't admit they had COVID. 

Cillizza goes on to observe that "societally we unknowingly turned having Covid into some sort of judgment on your character". (emphasis mine)
The pure self-unawareness here is the completely ignoring the role the media (Chris' team), government and big tech have played in pushing this sort of thinking onto society. This is not a collective we. This was not unknowingly. It was a collective, coordinated and completely conscious effort by media/tech/gov to shame people into getting the unproven and untested vaccines, wearing masks, isolating and social distancing. 

So if you got COVID, naturally you must be doing something wrong. Maybe you went to a football game (even though they have not turned out to be the super spreaders Fauci predicted). Maybe you didn't wear your mask 100% of the time. Went to a birthday party. Let your kids play with those unwashed heathen kids down the street. Shopped at a crowded store. Didn't stay on the 6' dot. Got the wrong vax at the wrong time. Or maybe you had heretical thoughts like why are my kids going to get vaxed when they rarely get really sick from COVID?

Since Cillizza no doubt associates only with like-minded left-leaning political types, it's easy to see how the shame factor can kick in. All you have to do is watch a few hysterical, over the top videos on TikTok to realize how deranged some people's thought processes have become. And not just about COVID but about nearly everything. Rational thinking has been supplanted by "feelings".

Cellizza closes his tweet storm with Omicron changing the dynamic. Sadly it's true. When the supposed smart people start realizing that the virus is gonna virus no matter what, it may change some minds. HOWEVER, it's still not enough to force the necessary introspection needed to admit THEY were wrong all along about pretty much everything from the response to the positioning.

We still don't have testing for antibodies to tell the unvaxed if they should get vaxed. (Yes, I firmly believe that natural immunity is far more durable and long lasting from having had COVID than any mRNA vax can deliver.) We still have a coercive approach to vaccinations. We still have teachers using COVID as a weapon so they don't have to work. We still have pressure on kids to get vaxed when they are at almost zero risk from COVID. We still have people being required to wear a mask when they walk to their table in restaurant only to take them off when they are seated. (Because of course, COVID doesn't transmit at seated level, only when standing.) We still fire healthcare workers because they refuse to take an experimental vaccine (and may have natural immunity),

So Chris' little "ah-ha" moment is really a drop in the bucket that will ultimately change nothing about the politics of COVID. As long as the left continues to see COVID as an opportunity weapon of control, nothing will change.