HeartDoc Andrew wrote:
> 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.
>>
>> Partners
>> University of Nottingham
>>
>> University of Nottingham provides funding as a founding partner of The
>> Conversation UK.
>>
>> View all partners
>>
>> CC BY ND
>> We believe in the free flow of information
>> Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative
>> Commons license.
>> Email
>> X (Twitter)
>> Facebook15
>> LinkedIn
>> Print
>> 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 ?
>
I am wonderfully hungry!

Michael