Over the past 15 months we've had a barrage of statistics presented to us shouting about how great the vaccines are at preventing hospitalisation from (or with) Covid. However, these statistics have been light on detail on how they were calculated and we've not seen much sight at all of the raw data that the statistics were based upon.

Until now.

In April, a paper was published by the UKHSA (currently in pre-print, which means that it hasn't yet undergone the usual peer-review process) on its statistical analysis of a selection of hospitalisation data by vaccination status. The intent of this paper was to support its statements that the vaccines prevent hospitalisation. However, the paper also includes the raw data upon which the UKHSA statistics were derived, and these data tell a very different story to that presented by the UKHSA.

The data show:

• Far higher accident and emergency admission rates for reasons other than Covid in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated.
• Much higher rates of hospitalisation due to non-Covid acute respiratory illness in the vaccinated.
• Even higher A&E [Accident & Emergency] admissions and hospitalisations in the double-vaccinated (not boosted).
• Even where the data suggest that the vaccines offer some protection (the risk of admission to intensive care resulting from Covid infection) the results look like they might be an artefact created by the assumptions used by the UKHSA.

Mistaken science is distracting us.

Cattle have been denigrated as a major cause of greenhouse gases (GHG) and, therefore, a cause of climate change. When I first heard this as a former farmer, I thought: That's preposterous! Do cows have more impact than fossil fuels? No way.

Big claims

So, I looked it up. Sure enough, a 2009 report from the WorldWatch Institute claims livestock accounts for 51% of GHG — more than industry, coal-burning electricity generation, and transportation combined. Whatever those guys smoke at WorldWatch, I'd like some for Friday night! That report is no longer available on the WorldWatch site. (Links go to a dead page. A reader sent me this one.) It's not hard to figure out why.

The original story emphasizing the GHG contribution of livestock came from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). FAO published a study authored by Henning Steinfeld in 2006, which claimed that livestock produced 18% of global GHG and concluded that livestock was producing more GHG than the entire transportation sector. Although it is a mystery how WorldWatch inflated that to 51% three years later, the claim in the FAO study was eye-catching. Apparently, many eyes caught it, and then they read WorldWatch, too.

Researchers from the Medway School of Pharmacy (a partnership between the universities of Kent and Greenwich) have helped isolate the Lloviu virus (LLOV) — a close relative of Ebola virus — for the first time, highlighting the need for future research to ensure pandemic preparedness.

LLOV is part of the filovirus family — which includes the Ebola virus. While Ebola (and other filoviruses including the similarly pathogenic Marburg virus) have only occurred naturally in Africa, Lloviu has been discovered in Europe. The filovirus LLOV, was identified via its genetic material (RNA) in 2002 in Schreiber's bats in Spain and was subsequently detected in bats in Hungary.

As a zoonotic virus — one which passes between animals and humans — LLOV is of interest to public health around the world due to our close relationship with animals in agriculture, as companions and in the natural environment. This is even more the case in recent years with the continued destruction and encroachment of natural habitats of many wild creatures. The World Health Organization states that "Zoonoses comprise a large percentage of all newly identified infectious diseases, as well as many existing ones."

The U.S. health regulator said on Thursday it was limiting the use of Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ.N) COVID-19 vaccine for adults due to the risk of a rare blood clotting syndrome, the latest setback to the shot that has been eclipsed by rivals.

The J&J shot, which received U.S. clearance in February 2021 for adults, can be administered in cases where authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccines are not accessible or if an individual is less keen on using the other two shots, the Food and Drug Administration said.

J&J is one of the three vaccines in use in the United States. The other two are from Moderna (MRNA.O) and Pfizer (PFE.N).

The number of serious adverse effects from Covid vaccination is 40 times higher than currently recorded by the German Government, a scientist leading a study into the vaccines has said. German news outlet MDR has the story (translated via Google).

The study "Safety Profile of COVID-19 Vaccines" ("ImpfSurv" for short), which focuses on the effects and side effects of the various vaccines, has been running for a year. Around 40,000 vaccinated people are interviewed at regular intervals throughout Germany. Participation in the study is voluntary and independent of how the vaccines work in the subjects.

One result: eight out of 1,000 vaccinated people struggle with serious side effects. "The number is not surprising," explains Prof. Dr. Harald Matthes, head of the study: "It corresponds to what is known from other countries such as Sweden, Israel or Canada. Incidentally, even the manufacturers of the vaccines had already determined similar values ​​in their studies." With conventional vaccines, such as against polio or measles, the number of serious side effects is significantly lower.

Serious side effects are symptoms that last for weeks or months and require medical attention. These include muscle and joint pain, heart muscle inflammation, excessive reactions of the immune system and neurological disorders, i.e., impairments of the nervous system. "Most side effects, including severe ones, subside after three to six months, 80% heal. But unfortunately there are also some that last much longer," reports Professor Matthes. ...

"In view of around half a million cases with serious side effects after Covid vaccinations in Germany, we doctors have to take action," emphasises Prof. Matthes, who, in addition to his work at the Berlin Charité, is on the board of several medical societies and has been systematically examining the effects of drugs for years. "We have to come to therapy offers, discuss them openly at congresses and in public without being considered anti-vaccination."

Worth reading in full.

Just how many people were injured by the shots? We don't know, and our government has no desire to find out. But a torrent of new data demonstrates that it's exponentially more than any adverse event reporting system is showing, and the number of severe reactions could be millions in each large country.

According to Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR), a public broadcaster in Leipzig:

"The number of severe complications after vaccination against Sars-CoV-2 is 40 times higher than previously recorded by the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI). A study with around 40,000 participants by the Berlin Charité concludes. 'One result: eight out of 1,000 vaccinated people struggle with serious side effects.'"

This is a very strict criteria and only includes symptoms that last for weeks or months and require medical attention. Yet the researchers believe that adverse events were underreported by a factor of 40 and that nearly 1% of people experienced this degree of injury from the shots. Roughly 179 million doses are administered in Germany.

These numbers come several months after a whistleblower for BKK, one of Germany's largest health insurers, provided data based on medical billing codes to show that the official German adverse event count from the Paul Ehrlich Institute underreported adverse events by a factor of 7 and the number of severe adverse events by a factor of 13.86.

One of the most stunning parts of this pandemic has been the denial of basic science, and one of the most shocking developments from that has been the attack on medical doctors who try to set the record straight.

As reported by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — professor of health policy at Stanford, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and coauthor of the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for focused protection of the most vulnerable¹ — a California bill is now threatening to strip doctors of their medical licenses if they express medical views that the state does not agree with.²

Responding to reports of patients relapsing after completing a five-day course of Paxlovid, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla suggested patients just take more, prompting a rebuke from a U.S. Food and Drug Administration official.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers said they will investigate how often and why coronavirus levels rebound in some patients who complete a five-day course of Pfizer's COVID-19 antiviral pill, Paxlovid.

"It is a priority," Clifford Lane, deputy director for clinical research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Bloomberg. It's "a pretty urgent thing for us to get a handle on."

Around 18% of US parents with children under five years old intend to have them vaccinated "right away" once regulators authorize the use of Covid-19 shots for the age group, a new survey released on Wednesday shows. Children under five remain the only age group still not eligible for vaccination in the US.

The survey was conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a San Francisco-headquartered non-profit, in April.

Of those surveyed, 27% said they would "definitely not" have their child vaccinated, while another 11% said they would do so only if legally required. Around 38% said they plan to wait and see how the vaccines actually work on children under five before making a decision. More than half of parents said they still do not have enough information on the safety and efficacy of the vaccines for the age group.

The latest batch of Pfizer's Covid vaccine files just dropped. 80,000 pages of patient files and "trial data" and so and so on.

You can read them all here.

The question is, do they really tell us anything we don't already know?

The big revelation doing the rounds at the minute is that the vaccines were never trialled with, and were specifically not recommended for, pregnant women.

But is this new information?

When governments started "recommending" the Covid vaccine to pregnant women in the Summer of 2021, everybody who had been paying attention knew that position was not backed up by any data at all.

OffG got temporarily banned from twitter for pointing this out.

More broadly speaking: Of course the vaccines were never tested on pregnant women, they were never properly tested on anybody.

It takes 10 years to safely produce and trial a vaccine, not 18 months. And what "trials" they claim to have done in that year and a half were a complete sham.

In a way, the "not recommended for pregnant women" disclosure is actually good for Pfizer.