Go deep into the mine of statistics to reveal the rich seam of truth – if you are vaccinated armageddon is far from us
THE devil, as they say, is always in the detail.
But you have to go deep into the mine to reveal the rich seam of truth and load your bag with nuggets.
On the surface, statistics released this week by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre appear to show that the vaccinated are as capable of being infected with Covid as those who aren’t jabbed.
Between September 5 and October 16, some 25,571 unvaccinated people caught Covid.
In the same six-week period, 25,433 fully vaccinated individuals succumbed to the virus.
Taken at face value, without context or an understanding of the basic principles of mathematics, you could argue — as some have this week — that you are as likely to catch Covid regardless of your vaccination status.
But that’s simply not true. In fact, it’s perverse. Let’s dig deeper.
There are about 300,000 adults who remain unjabbed — roughly six per cent of the population.
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If you subtract from the 25,571 total the roughly 20 per cent of cases where infection occurred among 0-12 year-olds (about 6,000) that means more than 19,500 cases were attributable to unvaccinated adults.
Which means, in essence that seven per cent of unprotected adults caught Covid since September 5 alone.
Frightening. If you don’t find it so, you should dunk your head repeatedly in a bucket of ice water until you wake up.
Now, let’s examine the reality of infection rates among the fully vaccinated.
Some 25,433 out of a 3.7million population of the fully jabbed caught Covid in the same six-week period to October 16.
Which means that there was an infection rate in that cohort of just 0.69 per cent in the same six-week period.
The HSPC figures demonstrate clearly that you are ten times MORE LIKELY to contract Covid if you are unvaccinated. If you got your shot, whatever the brand, you should rest a little easier. Armageddon is far from upon us.
Leave to one side the perpetual fear-mongering about soaring infection rates and downcast warnings from some in Government and NPHET about the potential for the reimposition of restrictions.
Vaccines work. They are the best thing we have to dampen down the pandemic. Anyone who tells you otherwise is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
And so to the NIAC, who finally authorised booster jabs for our 350,000 healthcare workers on Monday after an interminable delay.
They had to act. Some 35,000 nurses, doctors, consultants and healthcare staff were off work because they’d either caught Covid or were deemed close contacts.
With winter upon us, our hospital system would simply have collapsed within weeks if NIAC had not given the green light to boosters.
But giving a third jab to healthcare workers and the over-60s, which has also thankfully begun, is only a first step.
They must now act with speed to rollout boosters for all adults, starting with those 50-59-year-olds who received the one-shot Johnson and Johnson vaccine as far back as May. Immunity from Covid among those who got the J&J shot drops to as low as just three per cent within five months of inoculation, some studies now show.
The Centre for Disease Control in the US has said the 14m citizens who received the Janssen jab should get a second dose of it or either Pfizer or Moderna as soon as they can.
Here, more than 250,000 adults were given the J&J vaccine. They are most at risk among those under 60 who have been jabbed. They should be next in line to receive a booster jab. And NIAC need to make a decision on that as soon as they can.
NIAC also need to authorise a booster shot for all those medically vulnerable individuals who received their jabs at the same time as healthcare workers back in January, February and March — many, if not most, of whom received the AstraZeneca vaccine. Their immunity has waned significantly too, if international evidence is to be believed.
Once the Janssen recipients, the immunocompromised and the medically vulnerable get their boosters — and they should be administered within the next month, at the latest, the booster rollout should proceed, as it did before, based on age.
Either that, or we go back to lockdown.
Then there are our schoolkids, the 5-12-year-olds, who remain the most vulnerable to infection because the vaccine has yet to be approved for them.
Yesterday, America began jabbing its youngest. Watch Covid infection rates tumble Stateside in the weeks to come. Unprotected primary school kids and vaccine sceptical adults are driving the current surge in infections. Anyone who tells you otherwise is living in a parallel universe.
What the next few weeks and months will look like depends on three things:
- Convincing unvaccinated adults to get a jab.
- Rolling out boosters to all adults.
- Inoculating our 5-12-year-olds.
If we do all three, we will gain the upper hand once more.
MICHEAL MUST GO THE HOL SHEBANG
LOUSERS.
That’s how I’d describe the Government and their mean-as-ditch-water plan to only offer a one-off bank holiday to ‘reward’ the pandemic efforts of healthcare workers.
Shallow, meaningless and without value. What is their problem in making it a permanent fixture?
We only get ten bank holidays for our toil in Ireland every year, which is among the lowest any European government gives to its workers.
Making it 11 is the least those in power could do.
And it shouldn’t be just for healthcare workers, it should be for everyone. We all deserve the extra day’s rest and pay too.
Those who toiled at the coalface throughout the fight with Covid deserve a special payment on top of any bank hol offering.
The Government has promised to outline its plans to reward those who should be rewarded.
But months on, nobody is any the wiser as to what’s on offer.
They have the money to compensate those essential workers — and not just necessarily those in healthcare. Cops, busmen and women, train drivers, teachers (yes, them too), shop workers and anyone else who kept the show on the road deserve a financial bonus from the State.
Don’t be mean, Micheal.
EXERCISE IS A REAL BACK BREAKER
OVER the last six weeks I’ve discovered that age is creeping up on me.
Determined to get fit, I’d started running in the middle of September.
The weather was gorgeous, the mind said yes, but my body wasn’t sufficiently equipped to deal with the demands of my new regime.
Three days in and my back seized. It was as if I’d been shot in the back at point blank range, such was the pain.
Rather than calm down after a few days, the agony of that initial jolt to the back has remained with me. A few trips to the physio didn’t resolve the issue either.
So, the doc, in her wisdom, sent me to A&E last week.
Turns out I’d fractured a bone in my back. Whatever I was at had cracked a bone.
Solpadeine has been my friend since. If I’d a bottle of whiskey and a revolver I would have probably used it too.
Ahead of me lies a potential three months in the ninth circle of hell before the back break finally heals.
Running is all good and well if you’re as fit as a butcher’s dog.
But I wasn’t, and haven’t been for ages, so putting on a pair of runners was the ultimate folly. I’d have been better off in bed.
Lesson well and truly learned. You’d hope . . .
MUSIC KEEPS ME OF SOUND MIND
WITHOUT music there is nothing except the desert of words. The world of sound without melody is a barren place.
Music has been my salvation when I’ve needed it throughout the last 18 months.
The radio station DKFM is my go-to when it all gets too much. I’ve DJ Heretic to thank for maintaining order in the world.
Music can calm the most restless of souls. As does a pint and a laugh with friends, but the soothing qualities of both are different.
When you listen to music on your own it can be the most cathartic of things.
It takes you deep into yourself, if you let it. And there you can discover things you never knew about you.
Being among friends can do that too, but music, unlike people, is non-judgemental.
Music alone can make the hair stand up on the back of your head and send a tingle down your spine. That’s its magic. Human beings are important, but music is the first God.
SEPARATED AT BIRTH
BORIS Johnson took centre stage at the COP26 in Glasgow earlier this week as the responsible nations of the world came together to combat global warming.
Johnson was forthright in his summation of where the earth stands in the face of undeniable climate change.
As he was speaking his double in the world of crime, Jason Watson was being jailed for ten months for the robbery of a sandwich shop in Hull.
Uncanny.
EMERY IS IN LA LIGA OF HIS OWN
UNAI Emery is a top manager.
The Spaniard, who undoubtedly uses at least half a tub of Brylcreem on his bonce before every match, had a patchy spell at Arsenal, yes, but he coaches his sides to play football the right way, on the ground, at pace and always pressing from the front.
His Villarreal team are flying high in La Liga and performing admirably in the Champions League. They should have beaten Man United at Old Trafford too, if truth be told.
If the Red Devils didn’t have Ronaldo they’d be both rock bottom of their group in Europe and languishing mid to bottom half of the Premier League.
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But that’s another story. Emery turned down the offer to manage Newcastle United this week. Good on him.
Who in their right mind would want to take over at a club that is languishing on just four points in the bottom three of the Premier League and owned by a country that executes people with swords of a Friday?