COVID-19 Vaccinations and Omicron Transmission
Hint: A pandemic of the unvaccinated is really hard to support these days
I may put together another article on this later but I wanted to get out the main points as quick as possible because Omicron is moving very fast, and case peaks have already been hit around much of the world. Curious how fast this happened all around the world in the course of just 1 month!
Mathew at Rounding the Earth is also curious about this fact.
Important Scientific Study
Anyway, let’s start with a preprint study.
SARS-CoV-2 Omicron VOC Transmission in Danish Households, Lyngse et al.: This is a very interesting study but you need to take a close look to figure out what they are really telling us.
In the abstract the authors state:
We found an increased transmission for unvaccinated individuals, and a reduced transmission for booster-vaccinated individuals, compared to fully vaccinated individuals.
However, when you actually read the full paper, you find the following statement in the first paragraph of the results section:
Unvaccinated potential secondary cases experienced similar attack rates in households with the Omicron VOC and the Delta VOC (29% and 28%, respectively), while fully vaccinated individuals experienced secondary attack rates of 32% in household with the Omicron VOC and 19% in households with the Delta VOC. For booster-vaccinated individuals, Omicron was associated with a SAR of 25%, while the corresponding estimate for Delta was only 11%.
The study found that the secondary attack rate (a marker of transmission) for Omicron was 29% in the unvaccinated, 32% in the fully vaccinated, and 25% in boosted populations. Omicron is slightly more transmission in the fully vaccinated and slightly less in the boosted, but ultimately the difference between all groups is small, indicating there is little difference in transmission for Omicron between unvaccinated and vaccinated.
The authors also discuss the odds ration (OR) for Omicron and Delta between unvaccinated, vaccinated and boosted populations, including transmission risk. However, in every statement in this paper regarding transmission risk, other than the first statement I quoted above, the authors refer to Omicron and Delta data combined! The following chart outlines what I am describing (see highlighted sentence):
I am not sure why the authors felt the need to combine Omicron and Delta data for most of what they report on regarding transmission. Regardless, this paper does provide some interesting findings. This is one of the more juicy statements in this paper.
Surprisingly, we observed no significant difference between the SAR of Omicron versus Delta among unvaccinated individuals (Table 3). This indicates that the increased transmissibility of the Omicron VOC primarily can be ascribed to immune evasion rather than an inherent increase in the basic transmissibility.
Read that quote a few more times. This is a very impactful statement. Simply put, there is no increased transmission in the unvaccinated between Delta and Omicron, but there is significant increase in transmission of Omicron compared to Delta in all vaccinated groups. This statement straight up says that the significant rise in transmission of Omicron around the world is due to the increased spread from the vaccinated population.
Canada Data
Now let’s have a look and some country data supporting that this is a pandemic of the vaccinated. I will start with my home country of Canada.
Ontario, Canada
Case rate/100,000 is higher in the vaccinated.
Alberta, Canada
Case rate/100,000 is higher in the vaccinated.
British Columbia, Canada
Case rate/100,000 is higher in the vaccinated in most regions, and in BC overall, until very recently. I imagine this might be an artifact of Omicron reaching it’s peak at the end of December, 2021, much faster than in the unvaccinated.
Although, what’s curious about the BC data is the outlier of the Vancouver Coastal region. You can see a huge spike in vaccinated cases starting in mid-December, but it falls off quicker than other regions except Vancouver Island. But, why does the case rate in the unvaccinated in Vancouver Coastal continue it’s sharp rise above the case rate in the 2 dose vaccinated when this did not occur anywhere else in the province? (If anyone has a great explanation for this please let me know in the comments). I had a look at testing rates, and in the Vancouver Coastal Region, it looks like testing rates in the vaccinated demographic dropped off earlier and faster than other regions. I am not sure if this is sufficient to explain the outlier or not?
Canada Wide Data
Nearly 80% of Canadians are fully vaccinated (2 doses), yet our case numbers have skyrocketed above previous highs during the pandemic.
United Kingdom Data (UK)
For those who do not know, the UK was publishing case rates by vaccination status in chart form up until a couple of months ago. These graphs were showing poor effectiveness of the vaccines on case rates and this is suspected to be the reason they stopped reporting in this manner. However, eugyppius has continued to calculate the case rate on his own and the most recent numbers are interesting.
Strangely, the UK now decided to only report case rates by unvaccinated and boosted status, totally ignoring numbers from the fully vaccinated (2 doses) population. And some people still say there is no overt data manipulation going on. It’s transparency at it finest here.
eugyppius calculates the case rate numbers for the unvaccinated and boosted populations and then uses the previous UK report to derive rates in the fully vaccinated population. Here are the results.
Even in the boosted, the case rate is still higher than in the unvaccinated in most demographics.
Now, here is the data they were trying to hide in the most recent report. This was calculated using previous report data.
How’s that for evidence proving it’s a pandemic of the vaccinated!
Scotland Data
The Bad Cat, by far my favorite Substack to date, used the data from the most recent report from Scotland to create similar charts to the above UK ones.
As you can see, the case rate and risk ratio is higher in all categories of vaccinated. In fact, these charts show about double the case rate and risk ratio for fully vaccinated (2 dose) compared to unvaccinated.
Even the hospitalization numbers starting from January 1st are beginning to paint a bleak picture for the last hope of the vaccinators…they protect against hospitalization and death.
World Data
So, if the vaccines are reducing transmission, we would not expect to see higher case rates in the vaccinated as we do in the above data. Additionally, if the vaccines were reducing transmission we would expect to see a trend of lower case rates in countries that are the most vaccinated. But, as we see using Our World In Data, this is not that case. Looking at 21 of the world’s most vaccinated countries, every single one of them has higher case rates than any other time during the history of this pandemic.
Final Thoughts
With regards to transmission of COVID-19 this does NOT appear to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated, as I have argued previously.
Now, in the presence of Omicron, it is growing more obvious as time goes on that it is now a case pandemic of the vaccinated. Actually, being vaccinated appears to increase the risk of transmission given what I have outlined above.
A Small Request
I live in British Columbia, Canada and our health officer has just extended our vaccine passport program until June 30. Yes, she has done this even in light of what I have outlined above. The only reason they are extending the passport, they say, is to protect the healthcare system from being overwhelmed, citing that the likelihood of being hospitalized if you are vaccinated is less.
But here’s the rub, we know the vaccines don’t reduce transmission so we are only talking about protecting the hospitals, OK. Obesity/overweight complications (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, etc.) is the number one risk factor for overwhelming the hospital system but they are not a threat to the public. Have we ever put mandates on this demographic to reach a healthy weight or not be allowed to participate in society? HELL NO, that would be discrimination for a personal health choice.
The unvaccinated are not a greater threat to the public so the COVID-19 vaccines are simply a personal health choice. Mandates are not warranted.
If you would like to support Canadians and British Columbians, please flood the email inboxes of our provincial health officers, ministers of health, and premiers. Let them know the world is watching closely.
BC Contacts:
Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry: Bonnie.Henry@gov.bc.ca,
Health Minister Adrian Dix: HLTH.Minister@gov.bc.ca,
Premier John Horgan: premier@gov.bc.ca