Vaccine-mediated enhanced disease (VMED) is when the vaccine makes the outcome of the disease worse than it would have been without the vaccine. It is something that that really bad cat
has been warning us about for some time, and one of the more recent warnings was in this Substack.A useful rule of thumb to discover if you are having a really bad week of excess death is if you are experiencing a 7-day average of over 5 daily excess deaths per million (5 DEDpM) — as I write about here.
A model for population (herd) immunity should factor in the different number of contacts that you have when you are older versus when you are younger. Britton et. al. (PMC7331793) came up with such a model and showed that the herd immunity threshold (HIT) is 62.5% when the basic reproduction number* is 3.0.
*Basic Reproduction Number is the number of new infections expected from a primary infection. While Sy, White, and Nichols (PMC8059825) found that the median basic reproduction number in US counties was just 1.66, a more likely basic reproduction number is from a systematic review (PMC7657547) which put the value at 2.87. The basic reproduction number of Omicron is much higher though.
Factoring in only 95% vaccine efficacy would mean that a nation would become “immune” to COVID once 65.8% had become “fully-vaccinated.” Spain reached that threshold back in August of 2021 — but worrisomely, Spain recently logged the highest-ever week of average daily excess death in two full years: 1.06 per 100,000 (10.6 DEDpM):
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Here is a marked up version of the graph above, showing what excess death you would expect if the COVID shot was both safe and 95% effective:
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If excess deaths are going in the opposite direction than expectations, becoming higher than ever before instead of becoming lower than ever before, then it is time to start second-guessing the treatment and prevention protocols in use.
In Spain’s case, and likely worldwide, that means second-guessing the COVID jabs.
Reference
[model showing how factoring in age lowers the herd immunity threshold (HIT) to 62.5% when the basic reproduction number is 3] — Britton T, Ball F, Trapman P. A mathematical model reveals the influence of population heterogeneity on herd immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Science. 2020 Aug 14;369(6505):846-849. doi: 10.1126/science.abc6810. Epub 2020 Jun 23. PMID: 32576668; PMCID: PMC7331793. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7331793/
[the median basic reproduction number inside of the USA was 1.66, but varied according to population density] — Sy KTL, White LF, Nichols BE. Population density and basic reproductive number of COVID-19 across United States counties. PLoS One. 2021 Apr 21;16(4):e0249271. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249271. PMID: 33882054; PMCID: PMC8059825. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33882054/
[the basic reproduction number worldwide was somewhere around 2.87] — Billah MA, Miah MM, Khan MN. Reproductive number of coronavirus: A systematic review and meta-analysis based on global level evidence. PLoS One. 2020 Nov 11;15(11):e0242128. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242128. PMID: 33175914; PMCID: PMC7657547. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33175914/