Vaccines & Death (part 6)

Further investigation into delayed death following vaccination

In part 5 of this series I investigated use of a population-standardised 10-year baseline for use in the derivation of excess weekly non-COVID death and compared this to the 5-year prior means baseline as used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Differences were minimal apart from a striking disparity for the first few weeks of 2022, whereby the ONS method yielded a negative excess for non-COVID death that evaporated when the 10-year method was rolled into place. This revealed just how tricky it is to derive robust estimates for excess death, and my concern was use of this artefactual negative excess in claims of vaccine benefit. I ended by mentioning use of NHS staff absence records and this is where we shall pick up the thread this morning.

More Spaghetti, Vicar?

The problem with all of this work is that the data we rely on for illumination are a great big pile of tangled spaghetti. Yes, folk went out and got jabbed but this is only one of many factors impinging on health. We’ve got short COVID that is mutating and we’ve got long COVID that is poorly understood, with all manner of health issue surfacing down the line. Then we’ve got the strains and stresses of living through a seriously sh*t time, with lockdown, masking, social distancing and umpteen regulations serving to hammer people in various ways. Then we’ve got the long term cost of shutting down diagnostic services and elective procedures, as well as broad spectrum deterioration in the nation’s health; increased alcoholism and refined carbohydrate intake to name but two. Things were always going to get worse before they got better.

Squaring these many factors up against adverse effects of vaccination over the same time frame at the level of the population is a near impossible task, with an ever-expanding list of new factors to consider before we can utter definitive statements on what the vaccines exactly are and are not doing. That there’s a significant amount of ‘funny business’ is going on is as plain as the nose on my face, and I am sure everyone of us by now will have experienced unexpected deaths amongst their friends and family. My job is to try and quantify these collective experiences at the national level using formal statistical techniques that place vaccine harm leading to death beyond any shadow of doubt. This is going to take time, patience, cogitation and a serious amount of tea!

Absence As A Proxy For Health

One idea I have, that is shared by the champ of COVID stats - Joel Smalley, is to use NHS staff absence records as a proxy measure of the bucket load of health issues mentioned above. Staff will go sick for many and varied reasons but by and large this is a useful measure of their individual as well as collective health. I appreciate that NHS staff are a strange breed and are not representative of the population as a whole but right now I cannot get hold of weekly absenteeism figures across various employment sectors. Even if I could we’d still be looking at a biased sample with the UK unemployment rate (a rather dubious figure) running at about 4% for those of decreed employable age.

Then there’s a sizeable sector of the population (around 19%) aged 65 years and older for which health (and the likely impact of lockdown policies) is a whole different ball game. How do we quantify the many background factors affecting these people such that we can separate these from vaccine harm? I have a few ideas up my sleeve but it will take time, data and effort to trundle these out. Meanwhile, at least we can have a quick look at the health profile of the most peculiar set of Earth angels that I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Kettle on, biscuit tin open; away we go…