On Sun, 20 Oct 2024 18:14:48 -0700, Michael Ejercito
<MEjercit@HotMail.com> wrote:

>https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/1g7m74h/vaccinating_care_home_residents_reduced_deaths/
>
>Vaccinating care home residents reduced deaths, but the effect was small
>– new study
>Published: October 18, 2024 8:42am EDT
>Authors
>David Paton
>Chair of Industrial Economics, Nottingham University Business School,
>University of Nottingham
>
>Sourafel Girma
>Professor of Industrial Economics, Faculty of Social Sciences,
>University of Nottingham
>
>Disclosure statement
>David Paton is a member of HART (Health Advisory and Recovery Team).
>
>Sourafel Girma does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive
>funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this
>article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their
>academic appointment.
>
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>Vaccinating older people probably did avert some deaths in 2021, but the
>effects were small. And even those small effects on mortality seem to
>have dissipated during the booster programme. That’s the conclusion of
>our new study, published in the European Economic Review.
>
>COVID-related deaths decreased significantly in most of Europe and the
>US from the middle of 2021. Although this reduction coincided with the
>rollout of COVID vaccines, it has proved surprisingly difficult to
>identify the extent to which vaccination contributed to the drop in deaths.
>
>Randomised controlled trials (the gold standard for testing new
>treatments) suggest COVID vaccination can provide significant protection
>against serious illness and death relative to unvaccinated people who
>have not previously been infected with COVID. But there are reasons the
>effect of vaccination on mortality may be lower when viewed outside of
>trials.
>
>Early in the programme, there were hopes that vaccination would also
>prove highly effective in preventing the spread of COVID but it has
>since become clear that vaccination provides only limited and short-term
>protection against infection and transmission.
>
>Don’t let yourself be misled. Understand issues with help from experts
>It is also well established that a previous infection provides
>protection both against reinfection and against serious illness and
>death in the event of reinfection that is at least as effective as
>vaccination. Having a previous infection significantly reduces the
>likelihood of being vaccinated meaning the vaccinated population will
>include a relatively high proportion of people without protection from
>prior infection. So even if vaccination provides protection at an
>individual level, we may still observe population-level mortality rates
>that are similar for vaccinated and unvaccinated groups.
>
>The effectiveness of vaccination programmes may also be limited by
>people’s behaviour. For example, there is evidence that vaccinated
>people who get infected are more likely to have mild symptoms and this
>may cause them to take fewer precautions than others against spreading
>infection. As a result, vaccination may sometimes be associated with
>more rather than less transmission.
>
>Taken together, even if vaccination reduces the risk on an individual
>basis, it does not necessarily follow that it will reduce deaths at a
>population level. Existing research reflects this ambiguity with some
>research finding very significant effects of vaccination on death while
>other findings conclude there was little or no effect at all.
>
>Our new study attempts to improve our knowledge about the effect of
>COVID vaccination programmes by estimating the effect of vaccination
>take up on deaths in care homes. This is a particularly important group
>to examine. Given that the vast majority of COVID-related deaths occur
>in the elderly, any effect on deaths is highly likely to be seen in care
>homes.
>
>An ampoule of AstraZeneca vaccine with a syringe.
>COVID vaccines reduced serious illness and deaths, but they did little
>to stop infection and transmission. Marc Bruxelle /Alamy Stock Photo
>Machine learning used to analyse the data
>We examined deaths from COVID in care homes across nearly 150 local
>authorities in England from the start of the vaccine rollout in December
>2020 until after the second booster dose in summer 2022. We tested
>whether higher rates of vaccination of staff and elderly residents led
>to fewer deaths both in total and from COVID.
>
>One feature of our research is the use of machine learning (a type of
>artificial intelligence) to isolate the effect of vaccination from other
>factors that may also have affected mortality including levels of prior
>infection as well as demographic, economic and health differences among
>local authorities.
>
>Machine learning is particularly adept at separating out the effects of
>a high number of potential explanatory variables, providing much better
>evidence of when associations represent true causal relationships. In
>contrast to some other research, we also use a measure of vaccination
>that takes account of the fact that effectiveness wanes over time.
>
>We found that higher vaccination rates of residents (but not of staff)
>did indeed lead to fewer deaths, but the effect was relatively small.
>For example, an increase in the resident vaccination take-up rate of 10%
>in a local authority caused, on average, a reduction of 1% in the total
>care home mortality rate. That is equivalent to about 22 fewer deaths
>per week nationwide.
>
>Of course, any reduction in deaths is welcome. But vaccination does not
>appear to be the key factor in reducing care home deaths from COVID. We
>also found that the reduction in deaths was restricted to the initial
>vaccination rollout.
>
> From September 2021, when the booster vaccination programme started in
>England, higher vaccination rates of elderly residents do not seem to
>have led to any reduction in deaths. Based on these results, vaccination
>is unlikely to have been responsible for the sustained fall in
>COVID-related deaths.
>
>Why then did Europe and the US experience large reductions in COVID
>deaths since 2021, even during times when infection rates have soared?
>
>There are two explanations. The first is the growth of variants such as
>omicron that, although highly infectious, are less deadly than variants
>responsible for the early waves.
>
>Second, is the rise in the cumulative number of people who gained
>protection from having had previous infections.
>
>These explanations are consistent with the experience of places such as
>Hong Kong, New Zealand and Taiwan. All saw relatively low COVID
>infections and deaths in 2020, meaning only limited levels of natural
>immunity had been built up. All then experienced high mortality rates
>during 2022, well after most people in those places had been vaccinated.
>
>For example, the seven-day average mortality rate in Hong Kong reached
>40 deaths per million in March 2022, a rate far above the highest peak
>seen in the US during the whole pandemic despite cumulative vaccination
>rates at that time being similar.
>
>Even though vaccination probably reduced care home deaths by a small
>amount in the early rollout period, there is little evidence that the
>booster programme had any significant effect on COVID-related deaths.

In the interim, we are 100% prepared/protected in the "full armor of
GOD" (Ephesians 6:11) which we put on as soon as we use Apostle Paul's
secret (Philippians 4:12). Though masking is less protective, it helps
us avoid the appearance of doing the evil of spreading airborne
pathogens while there are people getting sick because of not being
100% protected. It is written that we're to "abstain from **all**
appearance of doing evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22 w/**emphasis**).

Meanwhile, the only *perfect* (Matt 5:47-8 ) way to eradicate the
COVID-19 virus, thereby saving lives, in the UK & elsewhere is by
rapidly (i.e. use the "Rapid COVID-19 Test" ) finding out at any given
moment, including even while on-line, who among us are unwittingly
contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic) in order to
"convince it forward" (John 15:12) for them to call their doctor and
self-quarantine per their doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic.
Thus, we're hoping for the best while preparing for the worse-case
scenario of the Alpha lineage mutations and others like the Omicron,
Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota, Lambda, Mu & Delta lineage mutations
combining via slip-RNA-replication to form hybrids like "Deltamicron"
that may render current COVID vaccines/monoclonals/medicines/pills no
longer effective.

Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry (
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.cardiology/c/6ZoE95d-VKc/m/14vVZoyOBgAJ
) and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.

So how are you ?