Despite the vaccination rate of 90 percent: the number of infections in Iceland has risen to a record high
The number of those who tested positive is at a record high in Iceland. The incidence has been more than 100 for almost two weeks. That is significantly higher than in spring and autumn 2020. The country has the highest vaccination rate in the EU. According to the EU health authority ECDC, 87 percent of adults are fully vaccinated and 91 percent have received at least one dose of vaccine.
Critical scientists see Iceland as an indication that the corona vaccines did little against the Delta variant. The conditionally approved vaccinations seemed to be “only insufficiently effective” against the delta mutant, says Innsbruck psychologist and physician Christian Schubert and explains: “RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 are constantly mutating and mass injections favor so-called escape viruses. Mutations. The injections used are then ineffective.
A third shot also runs the risk of doing more harm than good, because side effects can increase and the re-injection means stress for the organism. The latter could be fatal in the elderly due to previous illnesses. In any case, an injection against cold viruses usually comes too late because new mutants keep coming up - especially if you are vaccinating into a pandemic, says the professor at the Innsbruck University Clinic for Medical Psychology.
Wolfgang Pree comes to similar conclusions. The computer scientist from Salzburg has statistically evaluated data from the US health authority CDC and the Israeli health ministry. Accordingly, the number of severe courses among vaccinated Israelis rose more sharply in July than among unvaccinated. “From around mid-July, the curve of the fully immunized moves away from that of the non-vaccinated,” reports the professor. Pree illustrates the corona situation using the example of last Friday.
On that day, the Israeli Ministry of Health registered 257 people with severe disease. 66.9 percent of them were vaccinated at least once. The proportion is in the range of the Israeli vaccination quota of 62.4 percent, writes Pree and concludes: "Compared to non-vaccinated people, the vaccination does not offer any additional protection against a severe course of infection with the Delta variant." At least the data from Israel suggested that the vaccines could still develop “some protection” in people over the age of 60.
According to Pree, there is no difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated people in terms of infectivity. In the CDC study, which looked at a relatively small group of around 450 corona cases, 74 percent of those infected were fully vaccinated. The vaccination rate was only 69 percent. The difference of 5 percent is not statistically significant because of the low absolute numbers, explains Pree. The numbers were confirmed by Israel, where unvaccinated people were not infected significantly more often than vaccinated people.
Pree therefore calls for a fundamental rethink of how to deal with the coronavirus - for example, to focus on effective treatment methods. “Discrimination against unvaccinated people (euphemistically referred to as“ privileges for vaccinated people ”) must end immediately,” he writes. Any test obligations would have to apply equally to vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Travel restrictions and various other measures, such as those re-imposed on Iceland, hardly helped. The Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis explained that in a lecture in Austria at the end of June, says Pree.
Christian Schubert also speaks out against travel restrictions and contact bans like in Iceland. “A hard lockdown can possibly delay the spread of an infection and is not ineffective in this sense, but the collateral damage is significantly greater. Fear, panic, isolation and job loss make people sick and weaken their immune system, as we know from research, ”says the psychoneuroimmunologist, who as such researches the interaction between the nervous system, the psyche and the immune system.
Initial studies from Great Britain, however, certified that the vaccines were relatively effective against the Delta variant. For example, a study from July spoke of “moderate differences” in the effectiveness of the vaccines against the wild-type and the delta mutant. A study from the journal The Lancet noted, however, that the data basis was incomplete and the results should be interpreted “with caution”.
So far this year only one Icelander has died from or with the corona virus, reports the Our World in Data website. The island state has not recorded a corona death for over 75 days. Of the 360,000 inhabitants, exactly 30 died of or with the corona virus.
Source: Tichys Eiblick
Photo: Yahoo! News
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