ICU Admissions by COVID-19 Vaccination Status
Empirical evidence from a major NHS Trust shows the majority of ICU patients are vaccinated.
As a follow up to my analysis of Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust hospital admissions1, here is an analysis of their ICU admissions.
Main Points
Since the unseasonal return of COVID at the start of June 2021, the majority (two-thirds) of patients admitted to ICU were vaccinated.
Peak admissions since the rollout of vaccinations exceed the peaks during the prior autumn/winter COVID season so if there is any pressure on their capacity, it has come since vaccinations.
The variability in admissions (i.e. the cause of the spikes) is significantly more correlated with vaccinated admissions than unvaccinated.
Discussion
Since COVID was rife in autumn and winter 2020/21, ICU admissions to Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have trended lower into spring as one would expect as the dominant seasonal, respiratory virus naturally recedes (Figure 1).
Inevitably, as more and more people were vaccinated since the week ending 05-Jan-21 when the mass vaccination campaign started, the number of unvaccinated admissions has declined. However, the number of admissions overall has risen, suggesting that either:
the vaccinated were being admitted at a higher rate than expected by displacement; or
the unvaccinated were being admitted at a less lower rate than expected.
To test these competing hypotheses, we can examine which cohort has a stronger relationship with the variation of total admissions.
We can also test the narrative headline that most of the admissions to ICU are unvaccinated.
Even by casual observation of Figure 1, it is apparent that the major spikes in admissions coincide with vaccinated admissions rather than unvaccinated. However, we can formally measure this relationship using a simple regression.
During the period of observation, the unvaccinated admissions to ICU have an explanatory power (R²) or correlation of 28% (Figure 2).
Conversely, the vaccinated admissions to ICU have a much higher correlation, with an R² of 45% (Figure 3), confirming the observation that the vaccinated are driving ICU admissions higher.
COVID made a return in June 2021 which was unexpected for a seasonal respiratory pathogen which did not re-emerge in its epidemic year until early September.
Nevertheless, if the vaccine was instrumental in reducing severe illness (i.e. that might result in admission to ICU) and was the dominant risk for admission to ICU, we should see a reduction in ICU admission and a skew towards unvaccinated admission rather than vaccinated.
Conversely:
There are higher admissions during the period 01-Jun-21 to 12-Dec-21 than the autumn and winter periods when we would expect COVID to be have been more impactful;
The majority of admissions are vaccinated (Figure 4), with several weeks where no unvaccinated were admitted at all.
Limitations
The size of the data set was not big so conclusions should take this into account. Unfortunately, despite several other FOI requests, only one NHS Trust has been forthcoming with data.
Dear Joel,
I'm still struggling with whether my instincts are right or not about what I suspect is happening. You can imagine the level of overconfidence or incompetence one must have to so openly and consistently spread untruths like our health "authorities" do, that even a seasoned skeptic like myself needs re-assurance that I'm not hallucinating.
Your work helps tremendously in that respect as it's increasingly difficult to believe that these people were unaware or that we are making some obvious error in judgement.
I signaled in an earlier comment to your post from a few days ago that I had intentions to press UKHSA for specific figures, and while I was practicing some calorie restrictions for the past week to check how quickly I might fail in my resolve before these ghouls become more transparent, I discovered that I could probably nail them to the cross if they admit just one thing - the "asymptomatic transmission" study they are touting from SIREN (2020) when combined with some of the results from this post, early hospitalization (all Gloucestershire) and Prof. Neil/team's recent unhealthy vaccinee effect probably shows that the hospital infections started as soon as they switched from vaccinating seniors to vaccinating hospital workers. Either that, or AstraZeneca was extra industrial grade thrombosis agent leading to so many ICU visits after January when it was introduced. There is also the possibility that Pfizer shots simply killed the seniors before they could make it to the ICU. It's a terrible sad situation that we literally no information to work with and all the information we have is clever disinformation or hard fought to extract (like your work and Prof. Fenton and Dr. Clare Craig).
In any case, I wanted to say that this work is invaluable. As Margaret was saying about replication across media, they use this kind of information to guilt people into believing that their inaction lead to increases in pressure on healthcare when the opposite was true, and was likely always true. Their policies put everyone under pressure and now we have to deal with it. Healthcare workers who are being forced to vaccinate while that might paradoxically hurt their ability to care for their patients without transmitting and getting infected themselves.
Joel, I just asked this at Dr. Malone’s Stack, but he has a tad bit on his plate, and you may be in a better position to answer given your extensive data analysis.
Someone asked a question about hospitalization in the comments at my “Letter to the Washington State Board of Health” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-washington-state-board), and I am wondering if you might be able to weigh in.
She pointed to a statistic that the board of health cited saying “more than ten times as many unvaccinated as vaccinated people are hospitalized for covid.”
I traced this stat to a CDC early release (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm) and find it has been replicated across the MSM. Since this talking point is being cited by the propagandists and those they are scripting, it would be helpful to understand how that statistic is being calculated and how it may be in error.
As I told the commenter, we already know they play fast and loose with the categorizations of unvaxxed vs. vaxxed (e.g., counting people who’ve been injected as “unvaxxed” for the first 14 days after injection; counting people who’ve only had one injection as “unvaxxed”; counting anyone who doesn’t have their vaxx status documented in their records (e.g., people who got injected at a drugstore don’t show up as vaxxed in the Asante system); redefining “vaxxed” to exclude those who haven’t had the booster, etc.), so any breakdown of vaxxed vs. unvaxxed hospitalizations is next to worthless given how manipulated and manipulable the data is (much like the COVID case counts from fraudulent PCR tests, deaths “with” vs. “from” COVID, etc.).
I found a “British Medical Journal” article (https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o5) fact-checking hospitalization stats about the unvaxxed that found the claims are exaggerated, but a takedown of this specific CDC report would be particularly helpful.