Here are today’s CDC report and today’s Washington Post analysis that says the new bivalent boosters provide real, but minimal benefit:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7148e1.htm

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/22/covid-bivalent-booster

And here is Dr.John Campbell’s analysis of the essentially worthless CDC report.

However, CDC was careful not to compare the new bivalent boosters to the old boosters.

And it certainly did not reveal how the vaccinated fared compared to the unvaccinated. But CDC provided enough data that I was able to do a calculation comparing the vaxxed and unvaxxed overall, to see how likely each group was to have a positive test. I did not age stratify nor did I attempt to perform CDC’s favorite task, ‘adjusting’ the data by age, gender, jurisdiction, income or anything else.

From September 14 through November 11, CDC has results on 360,626 people who took a test for COVID at a Walgreens as part of a CDC survey. CDC has their ages and the numbers of prior vaccinations, and their dates of vaccinations, for all these people.

Overall, 100,884 were unvaccinated, or 28.0% of the total. 72% had at least 2 doses of vaccine. There is no category for those who stopped after only one shot of mRNA vaccine.

In the vaccinated group, 35.7% of all vaccinated people who were tested were positive for COVID.

But only 28.6% of the unvaxxed had a positive test.

Using this CDC dataset, the vaxxed group (all vaxxed added together regardless of how many shots they received) was 25% more likely to have a positive test than the unvaxxed group.

Negative efficacy?

Addendum Nov. 23: I thought I should look at the group that had received a bivalent booster and see how they did. The boosters rolled out September 6, 2022, the day after Labor Day. The study included tests performed during September 14-November 11—so no one was more than 2 months post-booster vaccination when tested.

Despite the alleged efficacy in adults during the first two months after receiving a COVID vaccine or booster, 26% of the test takers who had received a booster had a positive test. Of the unvaccinated, 28.6% had a positive test. So, during the first few weeks after getting a bivalent booster, when the vaccine is supposed to work well, the boosted were only 9% less likely to have a positive test, compared with the completely unvaccinated.

Do you think CDC will ever give us the data on how well they do after 6, 8, 12 months post-jab? How negative does the efficacy get? Does susceptibility to COVID continue to increase over time, or does it stop?

Meryl’s COVID Newsletter

CDC uses Walgreens drive-through COVID tests…