The Flaw in the New ZOE Study Showing Vaccine Protection Better Than Natural Immunity
The ZOE Covid Study App (which recently changed its estimates again, which doesn’t exactly instil confidence) released a study earlier in the month (or rather a press release with no link to an actual study) which claimed natural immunity following infection “only gave 65% protection against catching it again”. This compared to 71% protection from the AstraZeneca vaccine (rising to 90% for those who had tested positive for Covid before) and 87% protection from the Pfizer vaccine (rising to 95% for the previously test-positive). The researchers say the results came from during the U.K. Delta wave.
This is a surprisingly low estimate for the protection given by natural immunity. Other estimates have tended to be more like 80% against testing positive and 90% against symptomatic infection. A recent study from Israel (not yet peer-reviewed) found natural immunity was 13 times better than Pfizer vaccination at preventing PCR positives during the Delta surge and 27 times better at preventing symptomatic infection.
The ZOE result is similar, however, to a recent (very flawed) study based on the ONS infection survey, which claimed to find just 55% protection from natural infection. A similarly flawed study from Oxford University, also based on the ONS survey, found natural infection just 66% effective.
The main problem with the ZOE study is that it only looks at infections from May and June 2021. This was mostly a time of very low prevalence, though with the beginnings of the Delta surge occurring in the latter half.
It was also a period in which infections occurred largely in the unvaccinated (for reasons that remain somewhat unclear), pre-dating the surge in infections in the vaccinated that occurred from the second half of July.
Significantly, it was a period in which, according to analysis of Government data by HART, almost all positive tests were from asymptomatic individuals.
As Clare Craig points out, this means many are likely to be false positives.
The question is, why do a study on such an anomalous period, and leave out the more than three months of data following it when reported infections in the vaccinated surged?
It seems safe to say that this is yet another study with serious flaws which gives a misleadingly high impression of the protection from vaccines, and a misleadingly low impression of the protection from natural immunity.
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Thank you for discussing this one. A very low prevalence period is indeed a convenient time for a propaganda study, with the lab at Addenbrookes finding a 44% false positive rate and the Swansea lab finding 65% false positives in summer 2020, both based on multiple retests of the same sample.
This is all just junk science!
A disease which is almost clinically impossible to diagnose & relies on a lab research tool (PCR) as the only means to confirm a “case”!
The very notion the cases (data) used in the research were positive (valid) is already unreliable, therefore any conclusions are fake news.
I’m surprised at you & anyone calling themselves a scientist that even considers this nonsense as science.
Would this be the month before they started talking about jabbing children and wanted people to think the vaccine would ‘protect’ them better than their own immunity? What a coincidence!!
I have never been on-board with Mr Spector, and every time I see an article about him I’m more convinced he took the ‘thirty pieces of silver’.
Spector published an article suggesting the prevalence was rising in the vaxed and falling in the unvaxed and was, promptly got at. He was forced to retract and I haven’t trusted a word he has to said since. This latest press release is nonsense.
Yes, something changed about Tim Spector around the time the vaccination programme began. I joined Zoe after watching one of Tim’s updates in November when he was for vaccination of vulnerable groups only and saying there was a good deal of population immunity. Then around February he changed and when he called for children to be vaccinated I lost all trust in him. I guess the phrase is “follow the money”. If he continued outside the main narrative he wouldn’t get funding.
I always found the Zoe study over-hyped in terms of producing reliable core data.
I also joined Zoe in the beginning but once he started parroting the government line I stopped contributing and have now deleted their app
It was about then I took myself off the App, as there seemed to be a nasty smell of ‘coincidental’ results wafting around. I wonder how many other ZOE App users smelt & did the same?
A tool of Spectre, no doubt.
solitary downvote – you again Tim?
Somebody on high has had ‘a word’ with Tim Spector.
His position has completely changed from frank open mindedness about Covid data to vaccine zealotry.
His position changed late in 2020 not long after he enthusiastically announced that a chunk of money would be coming from government to support his app. A bad smell gradually turned into a stench and having dutifully logged my data on a daily basis, with a heavy heart I deleted the app
Same old massaging of “data” to prop up a false narrative and to justify something or the other.
“Believe nothing, trust no-one” is the watchword
Tim spector….. as irrelevant as fergusson…..
Pantsdown isn’t irrelevant. Merely noxious.
That solitary downvote – is that you Tim?
I woke up crying this morning, I was so afraid that someone might say something nasty about the politicians who are only trying to help us by forcing us to take ‘vaccines’, limiting our travel because we might spread the virus, and relieving us of our money by making us pay for PCR tests with the aim of
enriching their matesprotecting others.They are family people, and they have feelings too.
I know they laugh in our faces without their face masks on, but they are only doing their best to cheer us up in these dark times.
You heartless troll, don’t you realise how little these angelic public servants get paid? (sarc)
Don’t worry though I’m sure as the darkness descends, inflation goes out of control, shortages spiral, unemployment rises, strikes & blackouts become everyday occurrences. Our embattled MPs will be kept safe from the electorate with special police protection with new powers to spy on & suppress those nasty anti-vaxxers & refuseniks freedoms & privacy.
The MSM will see to it our way of life, our democracy will be harmed, keeping everyone safe from themselves.
Oops, I of course meant unharmed*
Thomson Reutersmass media only has our best interests in mind, it’s why they’ve been terrorizing everyone for the last 18months, to keep us safe!I tested water, cocoa cola, blackberry jam and a chicken korma curry, using an LFT test. The possibilities were either positive, negative, or void.
All tested negative. Repeat, negative. Not void!
That sounds like the test is working correctly. Void means that the control band didn’t show colour, and the control band is just a check that the sample flowed through to the end of the nitrocellulose strip, so it would need very poor technique or a damaged strip to get a void.
More precisely, the control band tests for an unrelated antigen that’s embedded in the start of the strip, so it’s also providing some confidence that the colour changes in the strip are working correctly.
Originally I had the Zoe app and religiously sent my daily well report in as I thought they were at worst neutral in this propaganda war. Then the guy that runs it started coming out with purely guesswork statements about asymptomatic (haven’t got it) being the most dangerous ’carriers’. DELETE.
The debasement of science continues. Our descendants, if we have any, will refer to this period as the Age of the Press Release.
Whilst Hitchens refers to it as the Age of the Curfew!
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/
You can’t have one without the other!
I had to do a browser search to see what this zoe app was all about. I can understand why some people may have contributed during the first half of last year.Beyond that when it became apparent that there was no emergency, why?
Facts only matter to the cult’s high priests in sofar as they can and will create their own set of them to create and strengthen their beliefs.
If some come up that clash with their beliefs, they’ll just create new, opposing and belief matching ones.
They create their own reality.
CJ Hopkins wrote about this months ago. And Orwell decades.
All such data is heavily skewed towards finding and showing more unvaccinated ‘cases’ due to the more stringent testing requirements for them.
I also wouldn’t rule out deliberate false poisitives for the naughty unvaxxed anymore, there are some clips floating around indicating this (1st test taken as known unvaxxed: positive, 2nd with undisclosed status: negative).
I have a hunch the same is true for contact tracing: large no of unvaxxed on a flight: they’ll all get an SMS and harassment calls, without a single positive test, or on the basis of testing just one of them positive deliberately on day 2.
Yes. This is what and those are the people we are now dealing with.
Grotesque. Natural immunity always superior. This letter already published and peer reviewed from India.
New study from India shows the same thing as in Israel. Natural infection superior in protection against all vaccines in this study.
ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 effectiveness during an unprecedented surge in SARS COV-2 infections “The third key finding is that previous infections with SARS-CoV-2 were significantly protective against all studied outcomes”
“This was higher protection than that offered by single or double dose vaccine.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8364816
Thank you SB. That’s me finished with Zoe as of now. I’ve noticed he has big gaps in data over the country where not enough contributions. If more people stop contributing Zoe will have too few contributors to be accurate or of any use.
I still have friends doing it. They’d register their own farts on an app if The Guardian told them it would be virtuous to do so.
How ever did we manage without vaccines and apps these past millennia? How did our ancestors survive infectious diseases when they couldn’t track them in realtime on an app? It’s a wonder we made it this far! Thank you Tim Spector and all of your technoepidemiological peers for giving us a chance with this and future pathogens. Without you guys, we’d be wondering around, getting ‘sick’, being in bed for a bit, getting better, wondering around again etc. So primitive! Now, we can be told we are sick in real time even if we’re not able to tell and are so much safer and saner for it. Love you guys! 👾
sp. Wandering.
Wondering…wandering – both fit quite well in your post 🙂
Thanks that makes me feel slightly better! Had been feeling very ashamed of myself. Especially being a teacher 🤦♂️
How do i feel today? Must check my phone. Oh it says I’m ill and must put myself under house arrest, uh ok then!
I uninstalled the app when Tim Spector started doing videos on things not to do with the data from the app.
From Mike Yeadon at Telegram: A comprehensive gathering of the best literature addressing acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2. I know the author, a very smart person! Do check some of the papers, neatly summarised in tabular form. Most importantly, please read the short summary at the end. Best wishes Mike https://trialsitenews.com/is-there-evidence-that-natural-exposure-immunity-to-covid-virus-is-similar-or-superior-to-vaccine-induced-immunity-and-should-we-force-mandate-these-vaccines-on-our-healthy-military-and-police/ What can be concluded from the above evidence? That vaccinating our troops and police (and children), and in fact COVID recovered persons (and forcing/mandating vaccines), has no scientific or medical basis and can be extremely harmful and can even be deadly. The collective literature evidence we presented above unequivocally establishes (and is empirically undeniable) that protective immunity following natural infection with SARS-CoV-2 is durable and long lasting. This push therefore to separate society into two groups (vaccinated versus unvaccinated) is destructive and without any scientific basis. This push to mandate the vaccine and put those who chose not to vaccinate into unemployment is inexcusable. We must allow persons to make this personal decision to vaccinate or not based on their own values and preferences and needs. The science clearly shows that naturally acquired immunity is similar to or even superior to vaccine induced immunity by these non-sterilizing COVID-19 vaccines, and… Read more »
Is there a Mike Yeadon channel on Telegram?
Yes
https://t.me/robinmg
In a more sane world the discussion would at least be ”should we separate society into two groups immune versus not immune”, no?
my answer would still be an unequivocal ‘no’ but at least the discussion would be a rational one.
Can’t we just bury this nonsense debate? Nobody needs to be protected from positive PCR test results and neither vaccination nor prior infection can protected against subsequent (re-)infection as the immune system of a body has no effect on anything outside of it.
I assume everyone has seen this:
https://rumble.com/vnouq3-twitter-user-video-showing-the-shifting-narrative-in-vaccine-efficacy.html
Twitter User Video Showing the Shifting Narrative in Vaccine Efficacy(2min video)
Oh so the zoe app study has changed its assumptions yet again.
I stopped looking at it after the last time a major methodology change took place as it was clearly unreliable
Yes sir, he’s definitely a company man with his pet ZOE, churning out sh** from his lavatory, sorry, laboratory.
They get to everyone eventually. Don’t they Tim?
Why do I almost feel sorry for timorous Tim
& a fist full of dollars didn’t help
Quite probably his university putting pressure on, they being motivated by broader funding.
Suppose you went to a horse race and you had a choice of horses to bet on, but the two you most liked were called Pfizer and Covid, so you checked the percentages to see which one would be the one to bet your money on, to win and you saw that Pfizer was 0.84% and Covid had a 99.16% of winning, if you were me, you would bet on Covid every time, because Pfizer was a non starter at best – and that is what you are betting your life on when you have a Pfizer vaccination, or one of the other vaccines on offer now, see below: Former Pfizer VP: 0.84% ‘Clear evidence of fraud’ in Pfizer study claiming 95% efficacy posted by Mordechai Sones September 30, 2021 10:58 am America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) Chief Science Officer Dr. Michael Yeadon yesterday said there is “clear evidence of fraud” in the Pfizer study that purports to claim 95% efficacy in their COVID-19 “vaccine”. Yeadon was commenting on an article appearing in The Lancet and critiquing a documentary that scrutinized a Pfizer efficacy study, calling the distinction raised therein between relative risk reduction and absolute risk reduction “accurate”. The Lancet… Read more »
If you want really to define reinfection you need to exclude false pos PCR and do viral cultures as done below in Korea.Relying on UK PCR test as the only evidence of reinfection is bad science and this together with the flawed zoe app system renders Tim Spector’s opinion useless. Viral Shedding among Re-Positive Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 Positive Individuals in Republic of Korea This study investigated the infectivity of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-2) in individuals who re-tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA after recovering from their primary illness. We investigated 295 individuals with re-positive SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test results and 836 of their close contacts. We attempted virus isolation in individuals with re-positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR test results using cell culture and confirmed the presence of neutralizing antibodies using serological tests. Viral culture was negative in all 108 individuals with re-positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR test results in whom viral culture was performed. Three new cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection were identified among household contacts using PCR. Two of the three new cases had had contact with the index patient during their primary illness, and all three had antibody evidence of past infection. Thus, there was no laboratory evidence… Read more »
Like some others I used to take part in the Zoe study. However, I discontinued it’s some months ago when it was quite obvious that unfortunately Tim Spector had been got at. This seem to happen when the government gave them a second financial grant. The data is completely skewed and unreliable. Moreover, being a self report database it is open to contributor bias.
Me too. Agreed.