# PM announces end of restrictions!



## Amity Island (Jan 19, 2022)




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## travellor (Jan 19, 2022)

Yes, very annoying.
But it's their own choice.
It would be a distraction (and probable vote winner) to move them all into Nightingale hospitals, and get the NHS backlog moving now.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jan 19, 2022)

travellor said:


> It would be a distraction (and probable vote winner) to move them all into Nightingale hospitals, and get the NHS backlog moving now.


The problem (as always) is staff. I can believe more space (allowing patients to be spread out more) would help even with similar numbers of staff, but using entirely separate hospitals seems like it would be costly. Might be that tents in hospital carparks will actually turn out to be practical?


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## travellor (Jan 19, 2022)

Bruce Stephens said:


> The problem (as always) is staff. I can believe more space (allowing patients to be spread out more) would help even with similar numbers of staff, but using entirely separate hospitals seems like it would be costly. Might be that tents in hospital carparks will actually turn out to be practical?



To be fair, I'm not overly fussed were they go. 
If they believe in herd immunity, they had free will to choose the path that put them there, and they need to sort out their own consequences.


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## travellor (Jan 19, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> The p.m is not making a good case for mandating that NHS staff have 2 jabs before April 1st or be sacked, when it appears 90% in ICU are not boosted only double jabbed?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Erm, that's 90% of patients.
They aren't going in to work there.
90% of beds blocked in ICU.
Not vaccinated at all runs at 8 times more than vaccinated entries into hospital.

“I’m sorry to say this but the overwhelming majority of people who are currently ending up in intensive care in our hospitals are people who are not boosted,” he said. “I’ve talked to doctors who say the numbers are running up to 90% of people in intensive care.”

He added: “If you’re not vaccinated, you’re eight times more likely to get into hospital altogether. So it’s a great thing to do. It’s very, very important. Get boosted for yourself, and enjoy new year sensibly and cautiously.”


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## Bruce Stephens (Jan 19, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> The p.m is not making a good case for mandating that NHS staff have 2 jabs before April 1st or be sacked, when it appears 90% in ICU are not boosted only double jabbed?


He's not (I think) claiming that 90% of patients in ICU are double jabbed. I presume when he's giving the 90% figure he's trying to encourage people to get a booster dose, not to defend the healthcare vaccination policy.

I forget the overall UK (or England) figures but I imagine this isn't miles off: 80.6% of patients admitted to ICU in north east London in December weren't fully vaccinated:









						80% of patients admitted to Intensive Care Units in north east London in December not fully vaccinated - NHS North East London
					

Between 1 December and 31 December 2021, 124 patients with Covid-19 were admitted to intensive care units (ICU) across north east London (NEL). Of these, 80.6% (100) were not fully vaccinated. [...]Read More...




					northeastlondonccg.nhs.uk


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## travellor (Jan 19, 2022)

Either way, I'd sack off the T-cells, and go for the triple vaccine option.


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## AndBreathe (Jan 19, 2022)

travellor said:


> Yes, very annoying.
> But it's their own choice.
> It would be a distraction (and probable vote winner) to move them all into Nightingale hospitals, and get the NHS backlog moving now.



Not necessarily.

Whilst everyone has been offered a vaccine, not everyone has been able to have it.  Some will not be able to get to where the vaccines are being given, when they are being given.  Some sessions seem to have been well kept secrets, and of course, there are those who will have been unwell.

Some of those people in ICU will have been becoming unwell with conditions meaning being vaccinated would be the leas of their worries.

To echo the wards of my Endo near the beginning of the pandemic, we really mustn't forget there are other things going on the world and people ailing for other reasons, or just needing complex, but routine care to them, care need their care.

I doubt we will ever know the real cost of this pandemic.  The metric of those dying within 28 days of a positive test doesn't tell us that person died from covid.  Thousands will die needlessly from cancer and other conditions either not diagnosed ot not treated during the pandemic.


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## Northerner (Jan 19, 2022)

AndBreathe said:


> I doubt we will ever know the real cost of this pandemic. The metric of those dying within 28 days of a positive test doesn't tell us that person died from covid. Thousands will die needlessly from cancer and other conditions either not diagnosed ot not treated during the pandemic.


I suppose excess deaths might be a figure that could be used as a comparitor to other years.


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## travellor (Jan 19, 2022)

AndBreathe said:


> Not necessarily.
> 
> Whilst everyone has been offered a vaccine, not everyone has been able to have it.  Some will not be able to get to where the vaccines are being given, when they are being given.  Some sessions seem to have been well kept secrets, and of course, there are those who will have been unwell.
> 
> ...



Many patients aren't actually being seen to be diagnosed,
So, they aren't actually getting the chance to be triaged into ICU.
However, it also means the needless overload and attention given to those who make a decision to overload the NHS distracts from all parts of the NHS, and as your Endo says, they are still here, just unfortunately pushed back.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jan 19, 2022)

AndBreathe said:


> I doubt we will ever know the real cost of this pandemic.


I'm sure we won't.


AndBreathe said:


> The metric of those dying within 28 days of a positive test doesn't tell us that person died from covid.


No, which is why it's just one metric. It's pretty easy to produce quickly, but misses deaths that take over 28 days and of course includes deaths where the infection isn't much of a factor. With high prevalence as we have now, it seems inevitable that many people who die will also (by chance) be infected.

There's also figures produced from looking on death certificates; in prior waves I think those matched up pretty well with the within 28 days figures but I imagine they'll be less closely matched now.


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## travellor (Jan 19, 2022)

All I want now is Boris to get rid of the day 2 lateral flow test on returning to the UK, now other countries are returning to accepting Covid passports.


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## travellor (Jan 19, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> Travellor to confirm:
> 
> 90% of those patients in ICU are not boosted (infers they are double jabbed (thus you can't be "boosted" until _after_ 2 previous jabs and can't be "boosted" unless having prior vaccination)). If the double jabbed are ending up in ICU at a rate of 90%, this doesn't make a case for mandating 2 dose vaccination for NHS staff.
> 
> If the "vaccine free" runs at 8 times that of the "vaccinated" in hospital, how does that tie in with the 90% vaccinated in ICU? wouldn't it be the other way around e.g 90% unvaccinated in ICU?


The hospital is full of unvaccinated people, some get better, the rest need ICU, so no.
Only the odd one or two vaccinated need hospital at all, let alone see the inside of ICU.
And the stats say 90% are unboosted, clearly a completely unvaccinated customer is unboosted as well.

As below.


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## travellor (Jan 19, 2022)

"The Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC), which has been monitoring activity throughout the pandemic, provides information on admissions to intensive care.3 Its latest report, published on 31 December, showed that the proportion of patients admitted to critical care in December 2021 with confirmed covid-19 who were unvaccinated was 61%. This proportion had previously fallen from 75% in May 2021 to 47% in October 2021—consistent with the decreasing proportion of the general population who were unvaccinated—before rising again in December 2021.
The proportion of unvaccinated patients in intensive care varied by English region, with the highest rates recorded in London (66%), the south west, and the north west. Being unvaccinated was classed as a person having no record of receiving any vaccination or having had a first dose administered within 14 days of receiving a positive covid test, and only 1.9% of the “unvaccinated” group had received a first dose within that period.
The 61% figure is lower than the 80-90% reported at some hospitals. But the latest ICNARC data span only to 15 December, and the proportion of patients in intensive care who are unvaccinated may have increased as the omicron variant spread in December. Some hospitals will also have been more badly affected than others.
What about admissions outside intensive care?​The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has recently started to report hospital admissions—not just those to intensive care—alongside vaccination status. The latest figures show that in the week to 29 December 2021 a total of 815 people with confirmed omicron infection were admitted from an emergency department to hospitals in England. Of these, 74% had not had three doses of vaccine—including 25% (206) who were unvaccinated, 6% (49) who had received one dose, and 43% (352) who had received two doses. Twenty three percent (189) had received a booster dose, and the remainder were unknown or had had their first dose less than three weeks ago.4
Further analysis by the agency has concluded that unvaccinated adults are as much as eight times more likely to be admitted to hospital than those who have been vaccinated and that booster doses are 88% effective at preventing hospital admission.4
A separate report published by the UKHSA showed that, although unvaccinated individuals made up only a small proportion of the overall population, they accounted for 27% of those with a confirmed case of omicron admitted to hospital in England and for 39% in London.5
The Office for National Statistics’ latest report on deaths from covid-19 covering the period from January to October last year in England found that the age adjusted rate of death was 96% lower in people who had received a second dose of vaccine than in those who were unvaccinated.6"









						Covid-19: Fact check—how many patients in hospital are unvaccinated?
					

Intensive care units in the UK are filling up with patients with covid-19 who have not been fully vaccinated, a number of media reports have claimed over the past week.  It led to the prime minister, Boris Johnson, urging people to get vaccinated to reduce the pressure on hospitals. He said that...




					www.bmj.com


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## AndBreathe (Jan 19, 2022)

travellor said:


> Many patients aren't actually being seen to be diagnosed,
> So, they aren't actually getting the chance to be triaged into ICU.
> However, it also means the needless overload and attention given to those who make a decision to overload the NHS distracts from all parts of the NHS, and as your Endo says, they are still here, just unfortunately pushed back.



If by ".... those who make it their decision to overload the NHS...." I hope you are not referring to those who have chosen not to accept the vaccine.

I doubt very much that anyone decides to get very sick and end up in dire straits, or worse.  Yes, they have taken a gamble, and for some it will go very wrong, but there are also those who have taken the vaccine for whom it has all gone very wrong.

Personally, I chose to respect others in their decisions over the vaccine.  

To be absolutely clear, before you brand me an anti-vaxxer, I have been vaxxed and boostered, and I accept the risk I took in doing that.  Nobody knows how great an idea that will have been in ten years.

One thing I don't have an argument for, in those who choose to refuse is tha they can change their minds to be vaccinated at any time.  Those of use who have taken it can't be unvaxxed it it turns out to be tricky down the line.


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## travellor (Jan 19, 2022)

AndBreathe said:


> If by ".... those who make it their decision to overload the NHS...." I hope you are not referring to those who have chosen not to accept the vaccine.
> 
> I doubt very much that anyone decides to get very sick and end up in dire straits, or worse.  Yes, they have taken a gamble, and for some it will go very wrong, but there are also those who have taken the vaccine for whom it has all gone very wrong.
> 
> ...



Oh dear, I'm afraid that is a vain hope there.
We all make choices we live with.
(And no, if you do refuse, it's very difficult if you finish your stint in ICU by transferring to the morgue)

Personally, I have a lot of vaccines swilling around inside me. 
I would have no idea what would make anything tricky down the line personally.


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## travellor (Jan 19, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> "...refuse" to live a law abiding life?...."


I believe many of us do support a justice system?
Or is anarchy a better option?

And if you prefer anarchy, and a complete lack of laws, would you trust a doctor you had robbed at gunpoint the day before, if they had no punishment no matter what they did to you?

Or maybe a "Purge" type system, where you can shoot fat smokers, just because?
Or they can shoot you, just because you don't smoke or are thin?


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## AndBreathe (Jan 19, 2022)

travellor said:


> Oh dear, I'm afraid that is a vain hope there.
> We all make choices we live with.
> (And no, if you do refuse, it's very difficult if you finish your stint in ICU by transferring to the morgue)
> 
> ...



I too have lots of vaccines "swilling around inside me", but I am also acutely aware that two years ago at this time, I was in SE Asia, reading British news on t'internet, hearing of a virus that seemed to be causing a few problems.  It didn't really even have a name, never mind a vaccine designed to protect against it.

A lot has happened in that two years - some at break-neck speed and some very slowly indeed.

I know a lot of time was saved in developing this vaccine, because all the usual rounds of begging bowls for funding simply just didn't happen.  Money in obscene amounts was thrown at it, worldwide.

Various trials have taken place, but I still feel uncomfortable at the speed of approvals and roll outs to adults.

The first Covid 19 vaccine delivered, outside of a trial, was delivered in December 2020.  To my mind that's 13 months.  That's not very long, in my view to decide how safe it is over the longer term.

I made my decisions.  I accept them and I live with them.  I hope I won't regret it.  I'm just so glad I am not a parent of a child deciding whether or not they have this vaccine.  I'm not sure which side of the line I'd land on right now.


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## travellor (Jan 19, 2022)

AndBreathe said:


> I too have lots of vaccines "swilling around inside me", but I am also acutely aware that two years ago at this time, I was in SE Asia, reading British news on t'internet, hearing of a virus that seemed to be causing a few problems.  It didn't really even have a name, never mind a vaccine designed to protect against it.
> 
> A lot has happened in that two years - some at break-neck speed and some very slowly indeed.
> 
> ...



Many things change.
Progress isn't always bad.
Speed? Well, no one walks in front of cars with red flags anymore, the internet isn't on dial up, vaccines don't have to start in cowsheds.
Give it a few years, Covid vaccine development will look tediously slow.
(Like you I was away, Chinese news highlighted it first, unlike you, I decided it wasn't going to simply be a few problems. This one had the hallmarks of a lot more than that. Lets just say I could survive the Zombie Apocalypse  )


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## travellor (Jan 20, 2022)

If non vaccinated people are already protected, let's move them out of ICU then.
They'll get better themselves.

Surely that's a simple solution, if they have superior defences, as your study shows?


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## travellor (Jan 20, 2022)

I really have no thoughts either way.
As a country, we appear to have decided to move on from covid.
It will spread now, and herd immunity will develop, or not.
People wil get over it, or die.
Personally, if 90% of those in ICU are unvaccinated, I'm good with my chances as vaccinated.
Other operations will restart, covid will become a "nuisance" problem, and won't be an instant "clear space in ICU" issue, as human nature will start to disregard it generally.
Either way it'll resolve the hospital backlog.


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## travellor (Jan 20, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> ........Are you going to say "i've got plenty of radiation swilling around me"? and  "I would have no idea what would make anything tricky down the line personally"......



Since you mention it........


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## travellor (Jan 20, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> Johnson said "90% of those in ICU have not had a booster" not 90% in ICU are unvaccinated.



I'm still good with that.
It'll sort itself out, whether it's 61% completely unvaccinated, or 90% that haven't finished the full course.


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## Drummer (Jan 20, 2022)

It seems to be very much a matter of luck - I caught covid, I am pretty sure, just before Christmas, but there was no way to get a confirmatory test.
I had two jabs, but was ill when called to go for the booster.
I would probably have gone to work if I'd still been working, as it wasn't bad at all really, yet other people in the same circumstances were in dire straits.
It will take some further analysis to work out what the actual death rate was - if that is even possible, as the recorded 'evidence' is not going to be sufficient from what I can see - those dying within so many days of being vaccinated are recorded as not vaccinated, for instance, which seems calculated to muddy the waters.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jan 20, 2022)

AndBreathe said:


> That's not very long, in my view to decide how safe it is over the longer term.


How many vaccines have long term safety issues?

Other medication do, sure, but vaccines are (by their nature) short term things, aren't they?

With the obvious issue that if they train your immune system to attack something it shouldn't then that would be a problem, and maybe that wouldn't be seen in the short term. Though I'd have thought that sort of problem would be seen after a year? There's ADE, but they seem well aware of that possibility and there's no sign of it happening with these.

On the other side, viruses quite often seem to have long term effects. And we know this one does: among survivors are people who've lost limbs (from clotting problems), lost lung function, etc., as well as the less easily provable symptoms like brain fog and fatigue.


AndBreathe said:


> I'm just so glad I am not a parent of a child deciding whether or not they have this vaccine. I'm not sure which side of the line I'd land on right now.


It would be really interesting to get good survey information: of people with relevant expertise, what have they recommended to their friends and family? Have they had their children vaccinated?

Based on my reading on twitter I'm guessing the overwhelming majority recommend vaccination. However, I'm well aware that that may well be because of who I follow on twitter (and of who choose to say things on twitter).


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## AndBreathe (Jan 20, 2022)

Bruce Stephens said:


> How many vaccines have long term safety issues?
> 
> Other medication do, sure, but vaccines are (by their nature) short term things, aren't they?
> 
> ...


Bruce, I have stated my view and given my feelings on things.  I'm not trying to persuade anyone to change their mind, or adopt my standpoint.  They can do their own thinking or not.


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## everydayupsanddowns (Jan 20, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> Johnson said "90% of those in ICU have not had a booster" not 90% in ICU are unvaccinated.



Instinctively, I’m not all that sure I’d trust BJ to have spoken with sufficient precision to be able to draw a definitive conclusion about the (possibly varying?) levels of vaccination within the 90%. This os a guy who sometimes ‘clarifies’ what he said before by saying something entirely different, after all 

My guess would be that within that 90% there would be a mixture of completely unvaccinated, and one or two doses. The govt catchphrase recently has been all about the importance of ‘getting boosted’, and the extra protection that provides.

It would be interesting to know the detail behind the rhetoric though.


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## travellor (Jan 20, 2022)

everydayupsanddowns said:


> Instinctively, I’m not all that sure I’d trust BJ to have spoken with sufficient precision to be able to draw a definitive conclusion about the (possibly varying?) levels of vaccination within the 90%. This os a guy who sometimes ‘clarifies’ what he said before by saying something entirely different, after all
> 
> My guess would be that within that 90% there would be a mixture of completely unvaccinated, and one or two doses. The govt catchphrase recently has been all about the importance of ‘getting boosted’, and the extra protection that provides.
> 
> It would be interesting to know the detail behind the rhetoric though.











						Covid-19: Fact check—how many patients in hospital are unvaccinated?
					

Intensive care units in the UK are filling up with patients with covid-19 who have not been fully vaccinated, a number of media reports have claimed over the past week.  It led to the prime minister, Boris Johnson, urging people to get vaccinated to reduce the pressure on hospitals. He said that...




					www.bmj.com


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## everydayupsanddowns (Jan 20, 2022)

Looks like much hunch played out (ish). The distribution of one dose vs 2 dose seems a bit counter-intuitive, but I guess there are far fewer ‘one dose’ people as a proportion of the whole UK population. The bigger groups seem to be ’boosted’, ‘double dosed’ and to a lesser extent ‘unvaccinated’ I think?

This was a striking summary at the end, it seemed to me

_The Office for National Statistics’ latest report on deaths from covid-19 covering the period from January to October last year in England found that the age adjusted rate of death was 96% lower in people who had received a second dose of vaccine than in those who were unvaccinated._​


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## travellor (Jan 20, 2022)

A bigger population, older people had vaccines before younger, so either more likely to have had all three jabs, or missed the last jab and more likely to have had the vaccine wear off, and the youngest more likely not to have been jabbed, or not as far down the program as the eldest are.
I reckon I'll be on my next booster before some are on their first booster.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jan 21, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> So as an absolute benefit is it a less than 0.5% improvement.


I'll take that. It's free, after all.

Another way of thinking of the risk (which may not be quite right any more) is that an infection has about the same risk you'd have over a whole year normally. So it's very much not uniform across the population.

And death is very much not the only risk. Even just looking at the various heart issues which are accepted as side effects of the mRNA vaccines, getting infected is more of a risk for them. (And while there are conflicting studies about how well the vaccines protect against the sequelae, nobody thinks they don't do anything.)


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## travellor (Jan 21, 2022)

The 99.5% is a myth.
No one has any stats on what a world unvaccinated population would do.
The only take away we have is 4% of the patients in ICU are fully vaccinated, 96% aren't.
So if you are doing the maths, I'm more than happy to be in the 1 in 25 group, than the 24 in 25 group.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jan 21, 2022)

travellor said:


> The 99.5% is a myth.
> No one has any stats on what a world unvaccinated population would do.


For individuals it's useless even if we knew the correct figure. And it wouldn't be that useful even for an individual country. (There's no way the UK's population matches the world population in risk factors, for example.)


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## travellor (Jan 21, 2022)

Lets just deal in real measured figures.
1 in 25 group, or 24 in 25 group?


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## everydayupsanddowns (Jan 21, 2022)

99.5% does sound like ‘almost everyone survives’.

But 0.5% of the UK population is around 335,000 people. And we are already at 153,000 deaths from only(!) 15.6million cases

So the virus is doing pretty well so far - More like 1% fatality than the 0.5% rate.

And of course, you aren’t factoring in long covid into that, only deaths.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jan 21, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> Is it 96% of the 0.5% who would possibly die without a vaccine?


Things would be much easier if they could have determined the 0.5% who might die! It's not like that, of course: the probability is strongly skewed by age, comorbidities, but there's still some (small) risk to younger healthy people, and plenty of older people survive (like Michael Rosen, though he certainly hasn't made a complete recovery).


Amity Island said:


> What is known (from the f.o.i request) is that in 2020 there were 1549 covid deaths in healthy people under age of 65. That's from a population of 55million under 65's.


55 million under 65's, but how many healthy people under 65? And shouldn't we care about the people who aren't healthy (like all people with diabetes, for example)?


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## everydayupsanddowns (Jan 21, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> Thanks for replying. I was relating to the quote referred to. Which was only about deaths, nothing else.
> 
> My question is about 96% of what?



This is the source referenced in the BMJ article, below the ‘methods’ section there are tables of figures that might answer your question?






						Deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status, England - Office for National Statistics
					

Age-standardised and age-specific mortality rates for deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status; deaths occurring between 1 January and 31 October 2021 in England.



					www.ons.gov.uk


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## everydayupsanddowns (Jan 21, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> when as I say at the same time we were told covid was nothing to be overly alarmed about given a 99.5% survival rate



Sorry you couldn’t find the answer to your question. 

Death rate in the UK certainly seems higher than 0.5% though tragically.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jan 21, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> I do know that the quoted 100% 95% effective had been quoted after the trials.


The trials were each slightly different, and each will have given the precise definitions. A general definition is easy enough to find. For example https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/vaccine-efficacy-effectiveness-and-protection


Amity Island said:


> as I say at the same time we were told covid was nothing to be overly alarmed about given a 99.5% survival rate, and you had to catch it first.


That was then.


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## travellor (Jan 21, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> I found the answer!
> 
> Link below explains it. There is relative risk and absolute risk improvement. This is akin to my question about how much improvement do you actually get on the existing survival rate of 99.5% with covid19. One can compare this with other diseases where fatality rate is much greater without vaccination and thus the benefit of vaccination is much greater.
> 
> ...



And clearly, the initial data assumptions were based on no actual know measurements.

With hindsight, knowing that ICU has 24 times more uncompleted vaccine patients than completed, it ties in very well with the original 95% reduction forecast.
It means covid was prolific, and had a high infection rate, as we now know.


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## Leo (Jan 21, 2022)

Trying desperately to distract us from all the partying definitely still going on as I write. The NHS trust I work at (In central London) which specialises in infectious diseases hasn’t been overloaded with covid patients since the first wave.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jan 21, 2022)

Amity Island said:


> It says the reason the companies don't refer to the absolute risk improvement because.......... it doesn't look very impressive!


Also that it's sensitive to the background risk (so if instead of 99.5% it's really 99.4% or 99.6% then the absolute benefit of a vaccine will change).


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## travellor (Jan 21, 2022)

Leo said:


> Trying desperately to distract us from all the partying definitely still going on as I write. The NHS trust I work at (In central London) which specialises in infectious diseases hasn’t been overloaded with covid patients since the first wave.



It was declassified. 
You shouldn't be.
About the one thing that went right.


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