Raffin

Weekly Report

Not surprisingly, as it was a holiday week, new cases fell by as much as 37%.
Compared to a 24% fall the previous week.
With the holidays over next week's data should be more reliable.

I have moved to using the DOH's cumulative totals. This week I can only give a comparable figure for the last week's national number. For the national calculation, with one daily adjusted number still to come for Dec 31, the difference between the methods was just 37 cases.

For regions:

NCR down 40%...all my 6 largest cities with large falls
CL down 38%
4A down 29%

Elsewhere in Luzon

CAR: cumulative cases were obviously greatly adjusted down... by 229!
Ilocos, Cagayan and Bicol all with big falls.

In the Visayas the WV region was down by 40%, CV by 46%.

In Mindanao new case numbers last week were very low:
The largest figure there was for the Davao region with 96 new cases.
Davao City's new cases were adjusted down to show a reduction of 15.


Latest Dr John video. Only now has Serious Adverse Events data from these vaccines in their Phase 3 trials (randomized, placebo controlled) been properly investigated. For both vaccines combined occurred for 1 in 800 people. Dr John says that other new vaccines were withdrawn well before that level of SAEs.

With the higher ability of recent Omicron variants to spread there has been some return of interest in face masks.
Dr Susan Oliver gives a very useful and clear explanation on masking, using the available research, in her latest video.


Note: Dr Oliver says the 56% figure for cloth mask has low confidence.

Raffin

DOH Weekly Report

Cases down by 39% (-25%).
Deaths 164 (172)....45 in Dec, 4 in Nov.
The rest going back to August 2020.
My review of recent DOH Weekly Reports on deaths in December show they are, at present, well over 100.

Hospital Admissions

New 3 (3)
Admitted 433 (516)
ICU beds 16.2% (19.1%)
Non ICU 16.9% (17.6%)



Dr Susan Oliver again not at all impressed with Dr John's recent video.
She says the paper was not peer reviewed and has major flaws, which she pointed out in a video as far back as June entitled "Antivaxxers fooled by P - Hacking".


Dr Oliver gives a very good explanation of what P-Hacking is but to be brief it is selectively picking data which gives a desired level of statistical significance. The data here are Serious Adverse Events of "special interest". She also points out a big mistake in the way comparative conclusions of the study were presented.

Raffin

Philippine cases actually trending downwards this week from nearly 500 on Sunday to only 174 yesterday. But Monday was another holiday. So cases will start to increase soon.. Latest testing has recovered somewhat to 8k.

The country not appearing today in the latest SE and E Asian Worldometers top 10 new cases table:


Japan with the fastest increasing cases and deaths.
SK also with cases and deaths increasing steadily.
Taiwan cases still increasing, but deaths trending down.
Hong Kong with steadily increasing cases and deaths. Its death rate per M from covid so far in the pandemic very high at 1,550 per M. Philippines 581, but probably double.
Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia all with stable, low cases and deaths.

The China numbers can be ignored..But one of the better things that Dr John Campbell is doing now is tell us what some of his anonymous Chinese contacts are saying..


He also says that the reason the Chinese authorities shifted from the Zero Covid policy was that positive people were bribing to get a negative result so they could continue working. Though that seems to me only to have been one reason, not the main one.

Raffin

Dr John looks at a recent non peer reviewed study from the US of 50,000 employees.
If replicated with similar results by more eminent researchers the many critics of bivalent covid vaccines will be saying "Wet told you so"!

Bivalent vaccines were developed to include protection against Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 variants. In the US they were the main variants a few months ago. But the latest CDC estimate of US Omicron variants is that XBB1.5 is now well on its way to dominance there at about 40%. But it's a sub-lineage of BA.2.

More on XBB.1.5 from the Inquirer:
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/171247...re-efficiently

Raffin

Japanese researchers saying that in 4 cases of unexplained death after covid vaccination they suggest their immune systems have been dysregulated as genes were up and down regulated.

The best definition of cytokine I have found is "small proteins allowing cells to talk to each other".. Cruicial for the immune system..A storm can occur when too many pathogens enter the body but here we have..


Whether this is significant or not I have no idea. But if you look at search results on this you will see results from the last two years saying that there was no evidence that this could happen.

Raffin

Dr John presents the result of a FOI request by a person who wishes to remain anonymous. Marked increases in cases of heart inflammation in the catchment area of a Swindon hospital. There are those who link heart inflammation with covid vaccination and will jump at this but credit to Dr John for being cautious. UK vaccinations started in December 2020 but didn't really get going until January 2021.So, as he says, that cannot explain the rise in 2020. Further rises in 2021 and 2022 may be linked but then the alpha and delta strains took hold so covid could be the cause (see Healthline result below).
He then goes on to making UK extrapolations, which seems to me to be inadvisable as the Swindon data is all that we have at present.

Here is something from Healthline with a good summary of present knowledge:

https://www.healthline.com/health-ne...-but-very-rare


Campell's Cleveland, Ohio video on You tube yesterday was taken down. The video can be viewed on Rumble.
https://rumble.com/v23x33u-more-vacc...nfections.html

Raffin

Weekly Report

A comparison of cumulative total new cases nationally shows they fell by 40% from the week before.
With two exceptions new cases in the regions fell by 28 to 60 percent last week over the previous week.

Note: If there are widespread large adjustments to past numbers my results could become misleading.These seem to have occurred only in Davao and possibly Cagayan regions recently so I can be confident of the majority of results here.

NCR cases fell by 51%. In its 6 largest cities they fell by between 38 and 65%

CL cases were down by 29%...Bulacan's by 40%.
4A by 46%...Cavite by 49%, Laguna 52%, Rizal 39%.

CAR fell by 70% Baguio City down 16%
Cagayan was up 7%
Bicol fell by 60%

In the Visayas WV new cases fell by 28%, CV's by 46%.
Cebu City cases down 71%.
Mindanao new cases all fell, except for the Davao region where they increased by 58%. This result is strange being not comparable with data from other Mindanao regions, which are low and show further reductions. This could well be due to downward adjustments in past data. Davao City new cases were adjusted downwards by 15 the week before.

The data seemingly supporting the Presidents reported reluctance to accede to requests from the DOH and others to extend the State of Calamity. Which was previously only extended to Dec 31. As cases are low here those wanting him to extend primarily use the Covid increases in China as a reason. As they see that for political reasons, of course, BBM hasn't asked for special restrictions on arrivals from China. Different political reasons have been suggested played a part in the decisions of some other countries to increase their China arrival requirements. Some here even going further and asking for the previous mask mandate to be brought back.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/171325...ons-on-arrival

Although case numbers are falling significantly it still needs a week or two's more data to confirm this. Given the recent holidays and other recent events.



The FOI Swindon heart inflammation data was completely wrong due to someone at the hospital wrongly using a spreadsheet and obviously not doing an ocular check on the result to see if it was credible. Dr John now alludes to a peer reviewed article which suggests these results, showing no significant changes 2019-22, should be questioned for possibly being much too low.

Raffin

A couple of interesting charts from the latest Dr John video. Which leads on his well worn topic of Excess Deaths.But there is as yet no interest at government level here on that.


Latest US CDC Omicron variant chart. The UK data takes longer to be published. BA.5 exiting the picture. BQ.1.1 and the recombinant XBB 1.5 look to take over. Both more transmissible. More people incoming and moving around the country now so likely we will also see more infections from these here in a while.

Getting a 1st or 2nd booster?


ONS data showing how poorly in terms of avoiding infection the boosters perform after 3 months. Avoiding serious illness and death is another matter though....

The latest research I could find was on US Veterans who had had two primary vaccinations and a booster. With good results for serious illness and deaths:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36156706/

Raffin

DOH Weekly Report

Cases for the w/e January 9: 3,127 (3458). A fall of 9% (-39%)
I find this puzzling as for my calendar w/e January 7 I had only 2084 cases...a 40% reduction over my previous week. I have moved to using DOH cumulative data to calculate the week's cases to save time and effort every morning. For 2 previous weeks the two methods gave only slightly different results.
Just looked at recent DOH reports on Worldometers. For the DOH week in question the total is 2,127 cases. But there is no report for January 3, the first day of their week. Why? Was it the suspiciously convenient 1,000 to make the total 3,127. If so where did that 1,000 come from?
Obviously I have to return to monitoring their daily reports.

Deaths 79 (164)
7 from January, 11 from December. The rest back to August 2020.

Hospital data

New admissions 7 (3)
Admitted 507 (433)
ICU 18.1% (16.2%)
Non ICU 21.6% (17.6%)

A significant increase in hospital covid utilization over the week.

Dr Susan Oliver again gives DrJohn a telling off over the Swindon data. Admonishes him for not questioning the data straight away and for not taking down the original video (which has by today had more than double the views of the correction video}. As at the end of Dr John's second Swindon video he questions whether the data should be a lot higher and that needs the urgent attention of the authorities Dr Oliver looks at research on this:


A large study in the 4 Nordic countries giving heart inflammation post covid vaccination at 1.6 cases per 100,000. Compared to 3 per 100,000 after a positive test, but this is lower if previously vaccinated.

Philippine fertility

You may recall it was predicted by some that due to the lockdown in 2019 the birth rate would increase. That did not happen. Implications for education, health,the labour force etc. But family planning has been promoted here over the last few years. The other major relevant intervention has been mass covid vaccination.Taking into account the 40 week lag involved some commentators are suggesting vaccination is at least partly responsible. At present there is a concerning further fall for last year, but not all data is in.


Birth rates falling over the Pandemic years. Data for 2022 incomplete.

For more on this see the latest SS newsletter: 9th January.."Philippine updates..".

https://supersally.substack.com/

Raffin

Latest OCTA positivity report.
For Luzon only.


Nationwide down to 5.5% on Sunday.

Patchy results. Should be viewed in the context of much lower testing over the last few months:


Pediatric deaths

An SS newsletter on Jan 9 concerned that a peak in DOH data of pediatric deaths in the third quarter of 2022 occurred at the same time as vaccines for this age group rolled out.

Another newsletter today looks at a bill setting up a Philippines CDC is now going through the house.It gives increased powers to the DOH.

https://supersally.substack.com/

Raffin

Excess deaths are showing up in the UK, latest chart shown below, and in many other countries.


Excess deaths shown as green area above the 5 year average trend line.

The BBC recently looked at possible causes in this article, focusing on the Health Service:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-64209221

For many who are vehemently anti covid vaccination the "elephant in the room" is covid vaccination.
See the latest SS newsletter "Pandemic of the vaccinated". She looks at Australian data.
https://supersally.substack.com/



Hospital admissions in the state of NSW for covid last 2 weeks of December.
First column non ICU bed, second ICU bed, third deaths.

That there were no admissions who were unvaccinated seems extremely significant to her. Six deaths though.
She extrapolates this to the whole country...which is of course unwise. NSW has about 30% of Australia's population.
For Australia : 84% primary vaccinated, about 50% boostered at least once.

UK Vaccination and death from covid data from the ONS 1 Jan 2021 to 31 May 2022.
Seems to show vaccination is not the big explanation of excess deaths, at least in the UK.


Clearly showing the efficacy of vaccination to prevent death from any cause.Though there is a much smaller 10% advantage to be primarily vaccinated more than 6 months ago over being unvaccinated. When a third dose is over 3 weeks old there is a 50% increase in the chance of death over less than 3 weeks old.

Regarding The Philippines, where there have been substantial excess deaths during the Pandemic, there have been some notable spikes in some regions. These could have been caused by poorly stored or bad batches of vaccine. But no autopsies were carried out before cremation. Otherwise we have the charts showing the rise in deaths coincident with vaccination roll outs. Many of those charts can be seen in earlier posts on this thread. However there are many more analyses that can and need to be made to confirm a causal relationship.


The start of a list of a number of ways to confirm a causal relationship.
From Dr John's latest video "Excess Deaths..All ages".

Raffin

The latest Omicron sub lineage, actually a recombinant from two infecting a person at the same time, is at nearly 30% in the US and well out performing others there in it's ability to spread. In at least 30 countries worldwide now.


From the White House covid coordinator. Not so much of it elsewhere yet eg UK about 5% now.

Protection against hospitalization from bivalent vaccines

Good for only a few weeks and was about 64% for BA.5 and fell to 50% for BQ.1 (derived from BA.5).
XBB1.5 is from an older BA.2 sub lineage.
Bivalent vaccines were produced to protect against the original Wuhan strain and BA.4 and 5.
Experts are disagreeing about whether this will lead to further falls in protection against hospitalization.
What is clear is that more people will be infected and this in itself will lead to more hospitalization of the vulnerable.

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2...ost-jab-uptake

As you can read here bivalent vaccines are still being promoted by the government without regard to what is happening abroad.

Raffin

Latest SE and E Asian cases and deaths reports from Worldometers. Ordered by numbers of new cases.


Japan cases



Japan deaths.

Japan top in the world for new cases. It also reports nearly 10M active cases. The next largest country is the USA with 2.2M. The UK self reported figures from the ZOE app about the same. And reading around the authorities in Japan are worried that they recently relaxed mandatory reporting and that there could be many more! Nevertheless it seems to me that the Japanese are, unlike people in other countries, mainly maintaining to report their infections.
Japan deaths x16 in the last 3 months than in the same period in 2021. We know they have one of the older populations of the main industrialised countries::


Japan 2022 Population Pyramid.

Compare with China's:



But Japan's pyramid not as different from China's as I thought.

However there must be other factors to explain the high deaths there lately. Primary vaccination is at about 80%. Third booster was at 60% in mid 2022. According to Statista. Cannot see any English language commentary which looks at this more deeply.

Other countries in the table:

SK Cases falling, deaths gently rising.
Taiwan: Cases may have peaked, but deaths have turned upwards
Singapore: Cases falling, deaths low.
Indonesia: Both cases and deaths low.


HK cases have turned downwards.


But HK deaths continue upwards

Of course China reports have, not before time, been removed by Worldometers.

Philippines data:

Although reports are low here at present the DOH data is noteworthy lately for some puzzling features:

1.Last week 1,000 cases were added to the weekly total and there was no report for Jan 3.
2.This week reports are, from Jan 10: 228, 519,198,730,368 cases Alternately high and low.
3. The day's totals are nearly always revised the very next day, sometimes by a lot. Cases for Jan 12 by 109 down
4. Individuals tested number remarkably constant each day .The last 5 days all between 11.0 and 11.9k.
Whereas last year they generally varied much more daily.

Will change my weekly report to follow the end of the next DOH week of Tues -Mon. Then I can also check their data and be In line with their hospital report.


Dr John chatting with an Australian immunologist. He's also critical of mRNA vaccines. Claims they can lead to too much of an immunological response.

Raffin

A video about a recently published peer reviewed study on heart problems and the covid vaccination of high school students in Taiwan during 2021. A long delay he makes something of. He says a vaccine for rotavirus was withdrawn when there were bowel problems in 1 in 5,000 to 1 in 10,000 of the recipients. But a large scale Nordic study presented by Dr Susan Oliver and referred to here on Jan 10 showed very low levels of heart inflammation following covid vaccination. Though this study also looked at other heart problems. Let's see if any other expert commentary comes out on this.

Raffin

DOH Weekly Report Jan 9-15

Cases 2,934 (3,127) a fall of 6% (-9%).
Deaths 116 (79)
15 in Jan, 37 Dec. The rest back to Dec 2020.
So now we are at well over 150 deaths for December.

New admissions 1 (7)
Admissions 567 (507)

ICU 17.2% (18.1%)
Non ICU 20.0% (21.6%)

The primary public hospital situation seems generally improved.

Was going to check the case data against my own figures and give some regional weekly totals but I missed one day's data last week.

But from 6 days data the main regional average daily case counts were:

NCR 133
CL 32
4A 66
WV 28

A look at DOH data issues from the 6 day's data I have:

Next day case number adjustments: average up 40 a day.

Cumulative case count up 1,862 over the last week.
Whereas there were 2,463 new cases announced. A net increase of 601 cases
So from past weeks newly discovered cases were greater than wrongly recorded cases by 601. A significant number when weekly totals are 2-3,000.
If these cases were recent they could change the assessment of the growth of infection now. But if from some months ago they don't. But we don't know which it is. Though eventually they will be shown in the DOH charts.

Daily testing at 11 -12k a day, though has fallen to about 8k just lately.
We know the DOH is now not testing all, if any, mild and asymptomatic cases. It may even be that there is a lower DOH quota for what they will pay for?
The latest OCTA positivity estimates are lower at 3.7% for the NCR and similar for many other regions.
A previous OCTA report had 4.1% nationally.

So overall only a little below the WHO guideline of 5%, where more testing starts to be recommended. However this guideline predates Omicron, where a higher percentage of cases are mild or asymptomatic.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/171702...now-deemed-low