What the ONS Mortality Covid-19 Surveillance Data can tell us about Vaccine Safety and Efficacy
The latest ONS vaccine mortality surveillance report for England (for the period 1 Jan 2021 to 31 May 2022) fails to take account various confounding factors in the ‘headline’ results and can thus be easily misinterpreted.
Those seeking evidence that the vaccines are unsafe might point to the overall all-cause mortality rate in the vaccinated (1,367 deaths per 100k person years) being much higher than in the unvaccinated (671 deaths per 100k person years). But this fails to take account of age confounding. Those seeking evidence that the vaccines are safe might point to the overall age-standardized mortality rate over the whole period being much higher in the unvaccinated (2,338 deaths per 100k person years) than the vaccinated (957 deaths per 100k person years). But this fails to take account of major anomalies in the mis-categorization of deaths by vaccination status (especially in the first part of 2021), evidence for which can clearly be seen in the implausible differences in non-covid mortality rates between different vaccination status categories.
There is also now strong evidence that the ONS underestimates the proportion of unvaccinated, which leads to inflated mortality rates for the unvaccinated relative to the vaccinated. This underestimation is a major issue: the ONS claimed in May 2022 that 8% of adults are unvaccinated whereas the UKHSA estimated approximately 20% and an extensive and representative ICM survey estimated 26%. Because the ONS data are based on a subset of England residents that excludes all those not registered with a GP and not registered in the 2011 census, it is missing some 8 million adults who are not at all representative of those in the ONS sample. Hence, whilst it is conceivable that both the ONS 8% figure is correct for its sample, and the proportion of all adults in England unvaccinated is at least 20% as per the other sources, this means that at least 69% of adults missing from the ONS sample are unvaccinated. Hence, either the ONS is underestimating the proportion of unvaccinated in its sample or the sample is so unrepresentative of the whole population that any inferences made using the ONS data are worthless. Either way, the ONS estimate of the proportion unvaccinated must not be used for any comparisons of vaccine efficacy or safety of the whole England population. We also provide further evidence that the ONS are grossly underestimating mortality in their dataset, with their 18-39, 40-49 age groups showing approximately half the mortality rates published by the ONS in 2016, for both unvaccinated and vaccinated. Finally, we show that there are many missing deaths from their dataset with the 8 million people suffering 30% of deaths despite comprising only 19% of the population, hence further compromising the accuracy and relevance of their data.
IMPORTANT POINTS:
ONS underestimate proportion of unvaxxed, misclassify vaxxed deaths as unvaxxed, & miss many deaths (‘dead presumed missing’).
Their data completely are completely incompatible with historical mortality rates – vaxx programme so good that last year only vaxxed got immortality benefit – now the whole ONS sample gets it!
On the issue of underestimating proportion of adults unvaxxed (ONS say it was only 8% at end of May compared to other estimates of up to 26%): The ONS data are based on a biased subset of England residents, missing 8 million adults unrepresentative of those in the ONS sample.
If there really are only 8% adults unvaxxed in the ONS dataset it would likely mean at least 69% of those missing from their dataset are unvaxxed.
So, the ONS sample is so unrepresentative of the whole population that any inferences made using their data are worthless. The ONS estimate of the proportion unvaxxed also must not be used for any comparisons of vaxx efficacy or safety of the whole England population.
On the issue (especially for 2021), of classifying vaxxed deaths as unvaxxed. This is confirmed not just by the infeasible spikes in non-covid deaths occurring in the unvaxxed when vaxx rollouts peaked, but also by comparisons with historical (pre-covid) mortality rates.
The non-covid mortality rate should be similar to historical rates for both vaxxed and unvaxxed. But for unvaxxed over the whole period of the report, the rate is 51% higher while for vaxxed it is 8% lower.
For all-cause mortality over the whole period the unvaxxed rate is completely infeasible 240% higher than historical rate. Yet for the most recent months Feb-May 2022 all-cause mortality for both unvaxxed and vaxxed is between 10-20% lower than the historical rate.
The recent months’ all-cause mortality figures confirm the ONS dataset missing a large number of deaths, of which a disproportionate number are likely vaxxed.
Even with all these anomalies & biases to support vaxx the most recent monthly data (in contrast to the especially flawed data in 2021) provides no evidence that the vaxx reduces all-cause mortality.
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