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Thursday, July 07, 2022

Covid Update: Public Survey

Wherein the vaccines once again appear to be doing more harm than good.

Given that all-cause mortality was higher in the treatment arms for the Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax trials--even after all the shenanigans and fraudulent omissions--it seems prudent to watch the population statistics in order to establish that the wishful thinking we now call Science is justified.

Unfortunately, the CDC isn't letting that data out, and the summary stats that have been released have statistical anomalies so extreme as to render them completely untrustworthy.

So, thusfar, the simple, straightforward data we need to answer the most basic questions about these vaccines on a large scale is nowhere to be found even though it surely exists. This in itself should make one go "hmm", but we can do our best to answer this objectively from wherever that data may leak or be indirectly observable.

Presently, that is in a series of public surveys commissioned by Steve Kirsch but performed independently and without bias (default demographics were used) by Pollfish.

Granted, public surveys are worth what they're worth, but at the very least they give a sense of the public's subjective impression.

Since each of his 500 sample surveys covers many of the same questions, I've aggregated them for better statistical strength. I won't give explicit error bars here, but I'll provide absolute counts. The stats are roughly the same from survey to survey, so I think these merged totals are fairly representative. These surveys are broadly sampled from ages 18 and up. The age-stratified answers which account for some differences in age sampling from the general population are not significantly different anywhere, and where they are they are so in a balanced matter (not really affecting the A/B ratios where that's what we care about) unless otherwise mentioned.

As a point of calibration and to inspire some confidence in the survey, let's start with 1,504 answers to:

[For those who were vaccinated] which
  covid vaccine did you receive?
   44.5% - Pfizer
   33.4% - Moderna
   12.6% - Johnson & Johnson
    6.1% - Mixed types
    3.5% - Not sure

The CDC claims: Pfizer - 57.5%, Moderna - 34.7%, JJ 7.7%. This is the one place where the age stratification did make a difference: The adjusted JJ is a fair bit lower, so over all this isn't too far off, especially if we figure most of the "combo" included Pfizer since the CDC stats here don't account for that. But it's not clear how the CDC tracks this stuff since they don't have a central database of who's been vaccinated (too many different venues of administration) so I think there's a lot of extrapolation going on there. I personally would bank on these user polls being closer to the truth for a question this basic than the CDC's bureaucracy can manage.

In any event, it appears the surveys are giving reasonable returns, so not total junk. Moving on,

The first item of note, answered by 3,001 people is:

Have you received a covid vaccine?
  25.0% - No
   9.3% - Yes, 1 dose
  34.8% - Yes, 2 doses
  24.3% - Yes, 3 doses
   6.6% - Yes, 4+ doses

For this age range, the CDC claims 90% of the population has had at least one does, as compared to our survey result of 75%. Many data analysts have been suspicious that the CDC is overstating vaccination rates, and this would strongly support that. This is a very important number to have right because it is the denominator in many inferred-value calculations, particularly for how we interpret the number of hospitalizations and deaths which are vaccinated vs. not. Simply overstating the overall vaccination rate could, for instance, make useless or even harmful vaccines look good. (It is also an important metric for messaging: 9 out of 10 people creates a lot more social pressure than 3 out of 4.)

Moving on to the meat of the survey, answered by 2,001 people:

Did anyone in your household die
  from having a covid infection?
   96.1% - No
    3.9% - Yes (78 people)
 
Did anyone in your household die
  from the covid vaccine?
   95.6% - No
    4.4% - Yes (88 people)

Both of these Yes numbers seem high, but they age-stratify down a bit (proportionally, so no change in the ratio), and it's likely that a lot of people stretch the definition of household to include "someone they know". The thing to focus on here is the ratio between the two. (Worth note that 82 of the 88 vaccine related deaths were reported by people who self-reported as vaccinated--i.e., not "anti-vaxxers".)

With those caveats in mind, if we take this survey at face value, more people have been killed by the vaccine than by covid. But that doesn't necessarily mean the vaccine is net-bad: It could be because the vaccine works. For instance, if it was 100% protective against death, then without the vaccine there would be 15.6% reporting a death from a covid infection instead of 3.9%--far outweighing the vaccine deaths at 4.4%. (In other words, it could be that the vaccine, while causing 88 deaths directly, prevented 312 covid deaths, leaving only 78 who died because they were unvaccinated.)

So we need to adjust these values a bit in order to compare apples to apples, for which this question, asked of the 78 above, becomes germane:

Did your household member who died
  from a covid infection receive at
  least one covid vaccine?
    66.7% - Yes      (52 people)
    28.2% - No       (22 people)
     5.1% - Not sure ( 4 people)

Clearly the vaccines are not 100% protective against death.

Now, we can merge these into an inferred question about the 166 people who died (this is directly implied by the above but was not asked explicitly):

Was your household member who died
  of covid-related issues vaccinated?
    84.3% - Yes      (52+88 people)
    13.3% - No       (22 people)
     2.4% - Not sure ( 4 people)

If we assume most of the people who died were older, we should probably compare this to the vaccination rates in the oldest cohort. (This is the biggest hole in this analysis--we really need the ages of the deceased, and fine grained vaccine uptake rates. But for now...) The survey says for age 55 and up, 80% are vaccinated (vs 75% for 18 and up). And if we're conservative and assume the "Not sure" are all "No", then about 16% of those who died were not vaccinated, which is less than 20% and so implies the vaccines are, on net, doing more harm than good (even after fudging some in favor of the vaccines).

Another way to run the numbers is to ask: assuming this sample is representative, how many people would have died (vs 166) if nobody were vaccinated, or if everybody were? Using the 80% (4/5ths) figure as the presumed base vaccination rate:

If everyone were vaccinated, then 5/4ths as many would have died from the vaccine, and 5/4ths as many would have died of covid while vaccinated, so:

total deaths = 5/4 x (88 + 52) = 175

If no one were vaccinated, then nobody would have died from the vaccine, but 5x as many would have died of covid while not vaccinated, so (conservatively including "Not sure"):

total deaths = 5 x 26 = 130

This conservatively implies that being vaccinated increases your chances of dying (of covid related causes, including the vaccine itself) by about 35%. This goes up to 64% if we assume instead that all the "Not Sure" were vaccinated. So 50% increased risk is probably a nice, round, ballpark, unbiased estimate.

But of course, error bars, public poll, and all that, so who really knows.

Still waiting for better data...

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2022-07-25 UPDATE: See also Steve Kirsch's latest poll using a different polling company. Note in the details the percent unvaccinated. Note the very good agreement on the distribuition of vax type. Note 4% of the ever-vaccinated report ending up in the hospital from the vaccine.

2023-03-30 UPDATE: See also A 50-STATE COVID-19 SURVEY (A joint project of: Northeastern University, Harvard University, Rutgers University, and Northwestern University) which finds 25% unvaccinated in direct agreement with the above, and also discusses the divergence of CDC estimates, stating "these deviations almost certainly reflect errors in the underlying official records used by the CDC".

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