Models Are NOT Evidence
11 July 2021
On the 7th July 2021 the BBC decided to attempt to deal with the issue of vaccinated people allegedly dying of COVID because according to them some people online “including those pushing the anti-vaccination agenda”, whatever that is, and one “conspiracy site” in particular that goes entirely unreferenced, have been using “real figures in a misleading way”. Can you imagine such a thing? These sites are guilty of deliberately misleading according to the BBC and they:
arrive at a completely false conclusion – that the vaccine may not be working or even doing more harm than good.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57610998
It is impossible to know if these sites are misusing stats and arriving at “completely false” conclusions, because there are no references or citations to the sites or details of the claims. One can only presume the BBC is shielding the reader from these sites and their purported false conclusions for their own good, and the reader should just take the BBC’s word for it because, well they are the BBC after all.
While we’re on the subject of using real figures in misleading ways, the BBC article goes on to say:
The latest Public Health England (PHE) figures show there were 92,029 confirmed Delta cases between 1 February and 22 June, most of which were identified in June.
Of these, 58% were in completely unvaccinated people and only 8% were fully vaccinated. For context, by the start of June more than half of adults in the UK were fully vaccinated. If the vaccine weren’t helping, they would be expected to see more than half the cases.
So we can see the vaccine is reducing cases.
So aside from the appalling grammar, there is some interesting use of figures and phrasing here. The number of “cases” in almost 5 months is 92,029. The way the two percentages are presented is deliberately chosen to create the idea of a huge gap, that being 58% and 8%. The obvious 42% that have had at least one dose would not create that perceived large gap, so it is not mentioned. Then we’re informed “for context” that “more than half of adults in the UK were fully vaccinated” by the start of June, and so the vaccine must be working otherwise more than half the “cases” would be fully “vaccinated” people.
That is not “for context” though, it is to deliberately mislead. There are no figures presented for how many tests of unvaccinated people are being done compared to vaccinated people, plus it is not only adults that are being tested. 58% of “cases” in unvaccinated people, which will include schoolchildren, without stating how many tests are being done in each group is intentionally misleading. It is highly likely (although difficult to prove exact figures because these kinds of numbers are hard to come by) that there are way more tests being done in the unvaccinated group which means there is a much higher chance for the 90%+ false positives (admitted to by Dominic Raab on two separate occasions) to be over-represented in the “cases” figure, and that is taking the “test” at face value, i.e. as a test which it absolutely isn’t.
If you choose to believe the PCR test is such a thing (it isn’t), and even if you choose to believe there are no false-positives (there are, because it’s not a test), and took all the “cases” to be 100% real infections, the BBC has still used those figures in a misleading way by actually removing context, not adding it. Roughly 53,376 “cases” (58%) from the unvaccinated group compared to roughly 38,653 from the (at least) partially vaccinated group is not evidence that the “vaccine is reducing cases” for all kinds of reasons, the main one being that there will not be the same number of unvaccinated being tested as vaccinated.
The article continues with this dishonest approach you won’t be surprised to hear. They go to some effort to debunk the Daily Mail, some low hanging fruit if there ever was any, by stating that the Daily Mail’s claim that the amount of “fully vaccinated” people dying was a “blow” and was the cause for the delay of so-called Freedom Day on June 21st. According to the BBC the situation is “less alarming”, possibly the only element of truth in the whole article but not intentionally so. They go on to explain that just 43% of deaths from the Delta upgrade were fully vaccinated people. 43% of a total of 117, in five months. For some actual context, back in 2013 AgeUK reported that on average around 9,000 people aged over 65 die from falling per year. That’s about 3,750 in the same time period as the Delta allegedly caused 117 deaths, 50 of those being “fully vaccinated” and 67 being unvaccinated. For a bit more context here’s an illustration of those figures to compare:
Not only is the figure of 117 incredibly low (although obviously a sad loss in each case) given the timeframe of almost five months, but the difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated is also small, just 17 difference. The ONS (Office for National Statistics) reports that in 2019 some 604,707 people died in the UK. That’s an average of 1,656 per day and in the time period the BBC article is referring to with 117 deaths from the Delta variant, in 2019 (according to the ONS) in the months February to June there were 216,852 deaths. Here is another illustration to put those figures into context:
There is a figure in the first column, but 117 compared to 216,852 is so small you can’t even see it. The 216,852 figure from 2019 was considered a normal year, nothing major going on to make the numbers for February to June higher than normal. We’re talking about approximately 0.05% of all deaths, five hundredths of a percent when compared to a normal year and the same time period.
The BBC literally want to have their cake and eat it, and their article regarding this 43% figure continues:
The 43% figure relates to deaths only – so it misses all the vaccinated people who were exposed to Covid but did not catch it, or caught the virus but did not become very ill.
All the vaccinated people that were “exposed to Covid” but did not catch it? How would you possibly know if they did or didn’t catch it if we’re also supposed to believe that you can have it asymptomatically and that this “vaccine” doesn’t provide you with immunity, it just lessens the symptoms if you do get it, according to the Government and media. The Government website states quite clearly:
The COVID-19 vaccine that you have had has been shown to reduce the chance of you suffering from COVID-19 disease.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccination-what-to-expect-after-vaccination/what-to-expect-after-your-covid-19-vaccination#will-the-vaccine-protect-you
Note the wording, “reduce the chance of you suffering”. Not stop or even reduce the chance of you contracting it. All it is claimed to do, is reduce symptoms which is completely unprovable as there is no possible way you could make an evidenced, scientific case that your symptoms would have been worse had you not had the “vaccine”.
Reality never was a problem for the BBC though and so they make the claim anyway. In an attempt to back up these claims like:
But the actual number of people dying would be much lower – a 20th as many as if no-one was vaccinated, according to PHE estimates.
The vaccines are already estimated to have saved 27,000 lives in England.
…they link to a University of Cambridge “featured news” article from 28th June 2021 entitled “Latest modelling suggests that COVID-19 vaccines have prevented 7.2m infections and 27,000 deaths”, which goes on to suggest that a computer model fed fictional figures is somehow evidence. That article quotes Dr Mary Ramsay, the Head of Immunisation for Public Health England as saying:
These findings remind us once again why getting both doses of your vaccine is the most important thing you can do to stop the spread of this terrible disease. As well as preventing the deaths of tens of thousands from COVID-19, for the first time we can now appreciate the huge impact that the vaccines have had on stopping people getting infected, and therefore passing the virus on to others.
https://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/blog/latest-modelling-suggests-that-covid-19-vaccines-have-prevented-7-2m-infections-and-27000-deaths/
Numbers and graphs produced from a computer model using garbage figures about cases from fake tests and manipulated vaccine efficacy numbers from the makers of them are not “findings”. This is complete junk science run by people who’s jobs and ideologies are at stake or forming a huge part of their motivations.
The Government has a document regarding this model and the fantasy figures it generates here on their website that claims things like:
Rigorous clinical trials have been undertaken to understand the immune response, safety profile and efficacy of these vaccines as part of the regulatory process
Page 3 – https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/997495/Impact_of_COVID-19_vaccine_on_infection_and_mortality.pdf
Well the “rigorous clinical trials” did not include any long-term studies as it’s clearly not possible to condense 10 years into anything less that 10 years, certainly not a few months, and other things that would normally be part of those “rigorous” trials were also skipped. For example “No interaction studies have been performed”, “Animal reproductive toxicity studies have not been completed” and “It is unknown whether COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 has an impact on fertility” as detailed in this Government document.
Returning to the “Direct and indirect impact of the vaccination programme on COVID-19 infections and mortality” document, it goes on to say:
Vaccination rates in the model are based on the actual number of doses administered, and the vaccine is assumed to reduce susceptibility to COVID-19 as well as mortality once infected. Estimates for vaccine efficacy are based on the best available published results.
Yes, the “vaccine is assumed” to do those things, and the estimates are based on what they call “the best available published results”. So what are those published results? Well it’s a link to another Government document, this time the “COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report Week 24” and in the section called “Vaccine Effectiveness” it cites a number of published papers. One is this paper, the SIREN study funded by UK Government and most of the authors are “supported” by organisations in partnership with PHE (Public Health England). Another is this paper which was also funded by the UK Government and most of the authors are also funded by the likes of the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council UK and other Government connected organisations. Those papers all rely on PCR “test” results to prove their efficacy figures. The UK Government citing papers it funds or pays the authors cannot be considered independent evidence of anything.
The Government document “Direct and indirect impact of the vaccination programme on COVID-19 infections and mortality” then states:
To infer the impact of vaccination, the model was fitted to both ONS prevalence and daily COVID-19 mortality data in England, resulting in posterior samples for a range of epidemiological parameters. The posterior samples were then used to simulate the number of infections and deaths that would have occurred without vaccination. Finally, the total impact was calculated by comparing the infection and mortality estimates with vaccination versus the simulated outcomes without vaccination.
Here we have the icing on the cake as it were. The model is then fed samples of ONS and COVID-19 mortality data we know to be false to then “simulate” the “number of infections and deaths that would have occurred without vaccination”, and they are compared with the fantasy data claimed to represent vaccine efficacy. Two completely fictional datasets both based on data we know to be junk to then arrive at an “estimate” of reduced infections and deaths for the likes of the BBC to use as if this was actual proof of something.
People who are devotees of the State, who worship the white-coated Scientists like they are incorruptible angelic shepherds of humanity bestowed upon us from God himself will just claim that if you’re not a virologist or an epidemiologist you have no business or right to question any of this obvious nonsense. Real science is not a Government quoting itself to prove its own claims. Real science is not obscuring the truth with carefully phrased wordplay or omitting major details and pertinent figures.
Real science is evidence, replicable open evidence and what we are besieged with daily by the likes of the BBC as the mouthpiece of the State is definitely not that.