> The statistically invalid time-windowing games the public health agencies all played in which people who had taken vaccines were classed as unvaccinated
As I have just replied to the other commenter, the ONS data he appears to object to categorises various "vaccinated" categories starting immediately after vaccination. The regulator's reply to Fenton makes this clear: https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/correspondence/ed-hum...
I assume this reply is what you refer to when you say that the ONS admit the data cannot be used that way. However, since that reply, the ASMR calculation now uses data linked to the 2021 census which covers around 91% of the population. Paul Mainwood graphed the ASMRs here: https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1627979309812965381
I see no evidence here that being vaccinated makes you more likely to die, which is what the original thread was about.
Humpherson simply says that "ONS ... do receive data in [people within two weeks of vaccination], and that the individual would fall into the ‘vaccinated’ category" which is a meaningless tautology, as the entire argument is about the definition of vaccinated used by the public health agencies.
Invalid definitions are a very real and pervasive problem, not only being standard in the public health literature but also standard practice for public health agencies. Fenton has compiled a partial (!) list of papers and studies which do this:
Note that UK HSA and studies using ONS data are shown to use invalid definitions.
> the ASMR calculation now uses data linked to the 2021 census which covers around 91% of the population
They say it does, but the UK government doesn't really the true population size. They've admitted this in the past. The 2021 census is unlikely to have solved it given that the civil service doesn't really want to know (if they could actually get full coverage, then they could identify every illegal immigrant). This showed up badly during COVID where more people came forward to be vaccinated than theoretically existed at all in certain age groups. They also told people that only a small percentage of the population was unvaccinated, but when the BBC commissioned a poll as part of a programme they were making (on misinformation!) around 25% of respondents said they were unvaccinated, a huge gap.
So the data quality here is of garbage grade in almost every respect, which is a scandal. People who just tune out and decide nothing governments say on the topic can be trusted are well within reasonable bounds.
> which is a meaningless tautology, as the entire argument is about the definition of vaccinated used by the public health agencies.
The ONS mortality stats linked to by kadkadels at the start of the thread contain data related to people who received at least one COVID vaccine (counted from the day they received it, subdivided by time since reception and number of boosters), as well as an unvaccinated category who never did. This is clear to anyone who read the link that kadkadels posted.
Both you and armchairdweller falsely claimed that the unvaccinated category included people who received the vaccine less than N days ago, presumably because you believe that some deaths caused by the vaccine shortly after people receive it are hidden by these stats. But in fact, the vaccinated category starts from the day of vaccination, the unvaccinated tended to die more back when COVID was new, and the ASMR for unvaccinated and vaccinated converged by about the end of 2022, presumably because we've nearly all had COVID at least once so being vaxed now isn't doing a whole lot of good. Both the "vax did more harm than good" crowd and the "we should still be wearing masks" crowd are wrong.
Though the prime mover, Narice Bernard, seems to have moved on to newer conspiracies involving "climate lockdowns" and "15 minute cities", people who conclude that nothing HART say on COVID topics can trusted are well within reasonable bounds.
To clarify the claims: The main problem with time windowing is in the effectiveness calculations. That claim isn't specific to England or the ONS, it shows up in many studies and countries.
The main problem with UK-specific death statistics is that they (the ONS) don't know the true size of the denominator.
Regardless of the above, due to widespread intellectual corruption in academia and public health, virtually no data on the topic of COVID or COVID vaccines can be taken at face value.
> Fenton is in HART, and HART are off their collective rockers
Your link says those messages came from a public chat room that literally anyone could sign up for. So Fenton has published things on a website that hosts a chat room where other people said things you disagree with. If that's your best counter to Fenton, and not some issue with his methodologies, then it's safe to assume you concede his points are correct.
The ONS data linked the comment you're replying to is clear that it counts "vaccinated" from the day of vaccination. What ONS data are you referring to which "used to have the obvious flaw that people dropping dead 3 days after their first dose were defined as unvaccinated"?
> By now there is a hell lot of data pointing at issues with the novel pharmaceutical product.
Given previous experience with people who years into this still want to be served everything on a silver plate, entering any discussion with you will be futile. You responded solely for the dompamin your brain gives you when you trample onto people that an "authority" presented you as outsiders to your tribe. No factual argument will convince you.
Even with all the easily verifiable information in this thread alone you did not make the effort to check for yourself, and are so convinced of your position that you aren't even embarrassed about demonstrating your ignorance.
It is incredibly easy to find by now. In mid 2021 you had to search, think about and analyze the excess mortality stats yourself to see the obvious signal, now it's being discussed widely. But you will never start this journey on your own out of fear your will be expelled from your perceived tribe.
This technique is called "SHOUT HERE, ARGUMENT WEAK".
> easily verifiable information in this thread
As others have pointed out, none of the information you've posted in this thread supports the conclusion you think it does. You questioned whether the ONS mortality data linked to by kadkadels had a problem you say ONS data used to have. It did not, as it was easy to see by clicking through the link. You haven't been able to produce any ONS data which ever had this problem, which is strange.
You then linked to some Dutch data which, when translated, concludes that "Based on these results, there is no population-level evidence that COVID-19 vaccination increases the risk of death due to an adverse reaction."
You did not check either of these links yourself, so it's a bit rich to criticise others for failing to do so.
> But even if science proposes God as the hypothesis at step 3, the next problem comes at step 4: how are you going to test it? "Um, God, could you do that again? And, um, sign it this time?" You can't run the experiment. I don't see how you could run the experiment even in principle.
There have also been things like experiments on the efficacy of healing prayers whose negative results lend credence to the idea that a god who answers prayers does not exist. https://www.noctua.org.uk/blog/2010/07/08/healing-prayer-exp... discusses that (the links to the Premier Radio forums are dead, alas).
> even if we can't see it with science, we might see it with history. We might find historical record of God doing something.
"It is strange, a judicious reader is apt to say, upon the perusal of these wonderful historians, that such prodigious events never happen in our days. But it is nothing strange, I hope, that men should lie in all ages."
What happens is that the nutters follow and reply to popular threads (see epidemiology Twitter during the pandemic, for example). If there are more of them, Twitter loses value.
Twitter has started to let you control who can reply, but that removes some serendipity, so if everyone worth following does that, Twitter loses value.
That's not how Section 230 works: it's explicitly designed so that some editing does not open you to full liability for user provided content (but it's common to think it does the opposite). https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does-no... explains.
> But, it's not the same thing at all, because if you were to separate yourself from the violinist, they would die from their disease / from not being given very extraordinary aid, but if you were to separate yourself from the fetus, it would die from not being given very ordinary means of sustenance.
Why does whether it's a common (pregancy) or uncommon (violinist hooked up to sleeper) occurrence alter the moral status of disconnecting the person who is reliant on their connection to another for their continued existence?
The difference is not in how common the occurrence is but whether the aid is extraordinary or ordinary.
If instead of being sewn up with a violinist, the person in the thought experiment woke up with an embryo implanted in their uterus, then separating themselves from the embryo would be removing ordinary aid and the embryo would die from being deprived of basic nutrition.
This latter case is what happens in e.g. date rape, which is, I think, the whole purpose of the "violinist" thought experiment to begin with.
The Redditors on /r/cambridge routinely tell American applicants that the whole "extra-curriculars" thing is only relevant if whatever you did demonstrates enthusiasm for or ability in your subject, both of which you will need to survive. Ability for the obvious reason, enthusiasm because you will get the shock of it no longer being effortless and meeting peers who are better at it than you.
For me, the "HR interview" was "what would you say to convince me of your enthusiasm for physics?" (as in, I was explicitly asked that very question) not "tell me about how your adventures pogo-sticking up the Khyber on your gap yah made you a well-rounded person" (and the "technical interview" asked you do actually do some physics).
As someone who couldn't have afforded a gap yah and would probably have been too frail to go on one, I'm pretty happy about that.
The thing that I'm told they will do is look at your school and weight things like GCSE results and A level results accordingly (as in, if you are at a bad school, they'll make allowances for that). https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/jan/10/how-cambri... is interesting from that point of view.
As I have just replied to the other commenter, the ONS data he appears to object to categorises various "vaccinated" categories starting immediately after vaccination. The regulator's reply to Fenton makes this clear: https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/correspondence/ed-hum...
I assume this reply is what you refer to when you say that the ONS admit the data cannot be used that way. However, since that reply, the ASMR calculation now uses data linked to the 2021 census which covers around 91% of the population. Paul Mainwood graphed the ASMRs here: https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1627979309812965381
I see no evidence here that being vaccinated makes you more likely to die, which is what the original thread was about.