You still haven't backed up your ludicrous idea that an anti-vaxer can cause more harm than a terrorist.
Hmm. Well, we can probably calculate this.
How many people has terrorism killed in the UK? Well, since the end of the Troubles, in any given year it's typically less than 50 (rough source: imgur.com/o5LBSIc). For devil's advocate reasons, let's assume 50 per year.
How many people has COVID likely killed? Officially, the death count is around 225k since the start three years ago, but let's assume that the real death figure is half that to be generous, because there will be cases where someone was near death and Covid was a likely but not certain cause of death. I'll also ignore long Covid and general sickness too, for which cases we know the vaccine is generally beneficial. So I'll just assume around 50,000 deaths per year for this figure to get a lower bound.
We know the vaccine reduces deaths by 90%, even if its effectiveness at reducing the spread of the virus is less than was expected. This is evident in the data - the death rate and infection rates have fallen by around this figure since the rollout of the vaccine despite all restrictions now disappearing. We also know that, overall, death rates across all cohorts have returned to normal. So, if the vaccine is killing people (and, yes, vaccine sickness and deaths do happen, I'm not denying that) then it's seemingly a fairly minimal phenomenon.
You're wrong. The excess deaths have not returned to normal. If you look at the link you've posted, they're shockingly high, yet the mainstream media are silent.
- The number of deaths was above the five-year average in private homes (29.0% above, 771 excess deaths), hospitals (20.2% above, 924 excess deaths), care homes (25.3% above, 525 excess deaths) and other settings (11.7% above, 92 excess deaths).
- The number of deaths registered in the UK in the week ending 21 April 2023 (Week 16) was 14,024, which was 22.1% above the five-year average (2,540 excess deaths); of these deaths, 615 involved COVID-19.
So all an anti-vaxxer needs to do is convince around 0.018% of the UK population to not get vaccinated (assuming an IFR of ~0.5% in the unvaccinated cohort and ~0.05% in the vaccinated cohort) and they've statistically killed more people than even the worst case assumptions about terrorism would for one year. Whilst any individual anti-vaxxer is not likely to be a concern, if they were a popular figure and had more than around 12,000 followers and were able to convince those people to not be vaccinated (when they otherwise would) then they are more dangerous than all the terrorists that strike in any given year. They're even worse, really, because those who have been convinced that the vaccine is dangerous will likely remain unvaccinated for life, and will spread further disinformation.
You've got to balance that against the number of years of life lost due to adverse events. The virus disproportionately killed old and sick people, whilst the vaccines had a higher rate of adverse events in the young and healthy, in which the virus posed negligible threat. The deaths due to the virus were overestimated, yet the vaccine injuries underestimated.
The overzealous vaccine policy has also killed people, who clearly didn't need it. Those who had already been infected, in whom the IFR is tiny and the vaccines haven't shown to be beneficial, then the boosters which lacked a clinical double-blind randomised, placebo controlled trials.
It's not a matter of being anti-vax. Suppose the concerns medical professionals had about these new technologies (mRNA and adenovirus vector) were listened to and a safer vaccine, based on traditional inactivated viral proteins was approved and rolled-out instead? The problem with these new technologies is they rely on the human body to produce the antigen, so the dose cannote be determined. It's also why the rate of adverse events have been higher in the young, since more healthy bodies will produce more spike protein.
We know the vaccine reduces deaths by 90%, even if its effectiveness at reducing the spread of the virus is less than was expected. This is evident in the data - the death rate and infection rates have fallen by around this figure since the rollout of the vaccine despite all restrictions now disappearing. We also know that, overall, death rates across all cohorts have returned to normal. So, if the vaccine is killing people (and, yes, vaccine sickness and deaths do happen, I'm not denying that) then it's seemingly a fairly minimal phenomenon.
no, they have not.
from your own source for the last week [...]
OK. Fair point. COVID deaths have spiked up as another wave comes through, and COVID hasn't totally disappeared - but it still doesn't change the thrust of the argument. Look at the COVID-19 attributed death rate in the UK gov data. The fall is approximately 90% despite restrictions being removed. We had a peak of 9,000 deaths per week with some of the strictest restrictions the UK has ever seen, like not *legally* being able to visit family for Christmas and so on. The following year only advice was given on meeting up in the private home, and socialisation levels had returned to normal amounts, yet the death rate rarely broke 1,000 per week. That's the power of vaccination. (Note: Venues were still required to check vaccination status before allowing entry - that restriction ended in Mar 2022 for most of the UK.)
We're going to be living with COVID for a very long time, possibly for the rest of our lives, but we've managed to find a very effective way to manage it. I know some, I would call them extreme individuals, continue to advocate for restrictions but we're now at the level where we accept this as a cost of living without the restrictions. I would have said they should have ended earlier than they did, but I can see that's only apparent in hindsight as we didn't know how effective the vaccine would be at mass scale or if variants would defeat it (they so far have not managed to do so.)
No it doesn't prove it's anything to do with vaccination. It might also be due to the fact 95% of people have been exposed to the virus now. Other countries who didn't vaccinate their populations have similar figures.
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
