Are the Vaccines Effective Against Death?

Looking for answers from the Public Health England / UK Health Security Agency Data

We’ve been watching the narrative surrounding COVID vaccines and their efficacy shift again, from “safe and effective” at reducing spread to “safe and effective” at reducing severe outcomes (hospitalizations and deaths). But if time destroyed the first narrative, how do we know that this new narrative will not also need to be abandoned over time? This is an especially pressing question as the evidence amasses that the COVID shots’ “efficacy” wanes, and since they were authorized without the usual long-term evidence required for vaccines we’re having to watch the data come in real-time.

Unfortunately virtually all the data coming out of the US is useless for comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated outcomes, given the way the CDC changed the “reporting” of breakthrough cases as of May 1, 2021 in ways that seem to predispose the data to show a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Nonetheless, the data coming out of the UK (first from Public Health England [PHE] and then from UKHSA) over this past year that tracks Delta variant cases and results seems more useful since it distinguishes cases and outcomes among vaccinated, partially vaccinated, and unvaccinated populations.

When PHE started reporting the statistics at the beginning of summer as the vaccination rate began reaching critical mass (35% fully vaccinated or 23.6m/67.1m on May 25 matching the time of the data reported in PHE Technical Briefing 13), the Delta variant (called VOC-21APR-02 in the report) was beginning to spread in the UK. Nonetheless, the data seemed to show that the vaccines were proving effective in minimizing Delta infection and spread.

As can be seen in Table 3b. of the report, despite a 35% fully vaccinated population, only about 4% of new cases (177/4,665) were in the fully vaccinated population, whereas 72% were in the unvaccinated population (3,367/4,665). Since the unvaccinated accounted for 42% of the population on May 25 (38.4m/67.1m) this all fit the narrative that the pandemic was now of the “unvaccinated.” (Also note that the partially vaccinated account for about 22% of the population at the time [14.8m/67.1m] and 23% of cases [(157+936)/4,665].)

Furthermore, the more severe outcomes also seemed to tell the story that vaccination offered good protection against hospitalization and death, as can be seen in this graphic summarizing the data in the chart above with percentages of the whole.

Since this report, however, the data has begun to shift. First it began to be observed in the cases recorded, which by the end of the summer (through September 5) were being reported as in Table 4 from the PHE Week 36 Surveillance Report below.

At this point, according to the data reported here, 65% of the total population was fully vaccinated (43.5m/67.1m), 7% partially vaccinated (4.8m/67.1m), and 28% were still unvaccinated (18.8m/67.1m). Yet now the percentage of all new cases that were fully vaccinated were up to 43% (61% among those with at least one dose) as outlined in the data from the PHE report summarized below. (Note that the vaccination coverage cited in the PHE report is slightly lower than on the COVID dashboard, the former listing fully vaccinated at only 58.1% on page 3. I use the higher number to try to “steel man” the analysis.)

Now at this point, the effectiveness of the vaccines appears to be in question. Looking at this table one could still claim that the vaccines seem to be able to reduce cases and hospitalizations (since with 65% of the population vaccinated only 43% of total cases and 50% of total hospitalizations were among the fully vaccinated. However, the distribution of death % by vaccination status now appears to virtually mirror the population % by vaccination status. This would seem to indicate that vaccines were not doing much to offer protection against death due to COVID and would apparently challenge the claim that these shots are “effective” against the most severe outcomes.

To put this in other words, the PHE numbers above seem to indicated that if you have a population where 70% are partly vaccinated and 30% are unvaccinated and you have 1000 COVID infections with a completely ineffective vaccine, you would expect 610 cases among those at least partly vaccinated and 390 unvaccinated cases. Furthermore, with a CFR of 1% (actual CFR varies a bit based on country), you can expect 7 fully vaccinated deaths and 3 unvaccinated deaths (the death percentages simply mirroring the population percentages of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated). This would appear to indicate that the vaccines have no effect on limiting the worst outcome of the disease.

Interestingly, in this PHE report through September 5 they spend considerable space arguing for vaccine effectiveness based on more complex analysis (pages 5-9). Maybe they’re right, but it sure seems like you have to crunch a lot of numbers to get favorable data, whereas on the surface of it, the vaccines just don’t seem to be doing much at all.

The picture gets worse, however, if one follows the narrative outlined above through more recent data published by UKHSA. While we might expect a completely ineffective vaccine to mean that the percentage of deaths (vaccinated vs. unvaccinated) would simply mirror the population, the trend is toward a greater and greater percentage of COVID deaths being made up of the vaccinated population while the percentage of unvaccinated COVID deaths diminishes. Here are the latest numbers summarized as above.

Now with almost 68% fully vaccinated (45.9m/67.1m), 7% partially vaccinated (4.4m/67.1m), and only 25% unvaccinated (16.8m/67.1m), 80% of COVID deaths are fully vaccinated and only 17% are among the unvaccinated. This would appear to indicate that the percentage of deaths now no longer even simply reflects the population percentages (of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated), but this is quickly becoming a “pandemic of the vaccinated.” And this is reflective not just of the most recent data point, but is actually a trend that can be observed moving in what appears to be the “wrong” direction for vaccines being proven “effective” at minimizing the worst outcomes. This can all be summarized in the graph below.

As a greater and greater percentage of UK Delta COVID deaths are among the vaccinated, this is looking more and more like just a “pandemic” or maybe even a “pandemic of the vaccinated” rather than a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Maybe we should put a pause on the mandates, child vaccination, and vaccine passports and collect more long-term data to make sure we aren’t making things worse rather than better.