Have confidence, fellow Refuseniks
We will discover this autumn if the Government plans to resume coercing the population into taking yet more experimental vaccines.
If they do, it may help those of us who are refusing to do this—I will call us Refuseniks (1)—to know that we are not the small minority that the media would have us believe.
So how many of us Refuseniks are there?
Firstly, are only 8% of the public unvaccinated?
Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2), the BBC told us on 4 March 2022 (3) that 92% of over-12s in England had taken at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. This would mean that the percentage of never-vaccinated over-12s is only 8%.
The BBC repeated this 8% statistic on 20 July 2022 on their programme “Unvaccinated”, presented by Hannah Fry. (4)
The BBC’s intention seems to be to persuade us that the overwhelming majority of people are happy to be vaccinated. Furthermore, one can readily imagine the Government believing that it could marginalise a mere 8% of the population.
But is this 8% figure actually true? It seems not. In fact, there is good evidence that the real figure is considerably higher.
Secondly, it seems that 23% of adults have never been vaccinated
On 7 July 2022 the Government’s UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) published the exact numbers of people in England who have been vaccinated, in a report entitled “Weekly national Influenza and COVID-19 surveillance report, Week 27 report (up to week 26 data)”. This report showed that the percentage of never-vaccinated over-12s was in fact 24.54%. (5)
This is calculated as follows, from this table on page 65 of their report:
Column 2 (People in NIMS (6) cohort) shows the whole population. The total for Column 2 is 63,391,306. Less 5,084,722 (the under-12s) gives 58,306,584.
Column 3 (Vaccinated with at least 1 dose) shows those who have had the first vaccine. The total for Column 3 is 44,480,115. Less 484,810 (the under-12s) gives 43,995,305.
43,995,305 / 58,306,584 is 75.46%. This is the percentage of at-least-once-vaccinated over-12s. Thus the percentage of never-vaccinated over-12s is 24.54%. Let us call it 24%.
That is three times higher than the BBC figure!
And if we look at the never-vaccinated over-18s it comes to 23.06%, which rounds down to 23%. This will become relevant in a moment.
Thirdly, there is a second source which gives 25%
The UKHSA result is corroborated by a very large, and therefore highly statistically significant, survey conducted by a company called ICM Unlimited. (7/8)
ICM interviewed 2,570 adults in the UK from 27 April to 2 May 2022 about their uptake of, and attitudes towards, the Covid-19 vaccines. They wanted to ensure that their data was representative of both sexes, all age groups, all social classes and all UK regions, and so they made a number of small adjustments to their data. This is normal procedure, and note that only slight adjustments were needed. So their base data was still very representative of the public as a whole. This is important because what follows is based on ICM’s own, unadjusted data.
One would imagine that we would use ICM’s adjusted data, but this is impossible because after making reasonable adjustments for sex, region etc, ICM did an extra adjustment to bring their data into line with the original 8% figure for the never-vaccinated, reported by ONS and the BBC. This means that ICM’s percentage for the never-vaccinated is not really based on their own survey.
Using their unadjusted data, therefore, ICM’s figure for the percentage of never-vaccinated adults is 25%.
Remember that the percentage for never-vaccinated adults given by the UKHSA was 23%. So let us be conservative and take the lower of the two, and say that the likely percentage of never-vaccinated adults in England is 23%.
Fourthly, Refuseniks include three more categories
There’s more. We have to add three more categories of Refuseniks:
- Those who are partially vaccinated, but who chose not to take any further vaccines.
- Those who have had all the vaccines, but who are unwilling to have any more should they be offered.
- Those who are exempt.
None of these people are likely to take any future vaccine.
And the percentages for each of these three categories are in the same ICM survey that we have just looked at. As follows:
Question 1 in ICM’s dataset was “Have you had a vaccine against Covid-19?”
The answers (in percentages) were:
1. Fully vaccinated and willing to have more: 58%
2. Never vaccinated: 25%
3. Partially vaccinated, did not continue: 7%
4. Fully vaccinated but unwilling to have more: 9%
5. Exempt: 1%
Total: 100%
So we have here the 25% never-vaccinated figure that we have just looked at. Then we also have the three extra categories: the partially-vaccinated (7%), the fully-vaccinated, but unwilling to have more (9%) and the exempt (1%).
These three extra categories total 17%. Taken with the earlier, conservative figure for never-vaccinated adults of 23%, we get a total of 40%.
Results
Thus we now have a good idea of the number of Refuseniks. Not 8%. Not anything like 8%.
No, a conservative estimate is about 40%.
Furthermore, this was the figure in late April/early May, and the shocking reports of vaccine deaths and injuries that have appeared in recent months have led more people to lose confidence in the vaccines since then. And this process can be expected to continue into the autumn if such reports keep coming to light. Therefore the number of Refuseniks is probably already above 40%, and it may well rise further.
All of this suggests that the BBC would be unwise to keep trying to tell us that the vast majority of people trust the vaccines, and it also suggests that the Government would be taking a considerable gamble in its war against its own people if it were to resume its efforts to coerce everyone into taking more of these drugs, using vaccine passports or by any other means.
Of course, we have seen that many people will do just about anything the Government tells them.
But evidently there are almost as many of us who will not.
Acknowledgements
I am greatly indebted to Professor Norman Fenton, Professor of Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London, whose video (9) provided some of the information in this article.
References
- I know this term is historically inaccurate, but it still sounds right.
- Office for National Statistics (ONS): UK Government Dashboard 3 March 2022
- Covid vaccine: How many people are vaccinated in the UK? (BBC News) www.bbc.com/news/health-55274833
- Unvaccinated, broadcast on BBC2, 20 July 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj5UvdHl-KQ
- UK Health Security Agency report, 7 July 2022, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1088929/Weekly_Flu_and_COVID-19_report_w27.pdf
- NIMS: National Immunisation Management Service
- ICM Unlimited, Exploring attitudes towards Covid-19 vaccinations (for STV), https://www.icmunlimited.com/our-work/exploring-attitudes-towards-covid-19-vaccinations-for-stv/
- Bizarrely, ICM Unlimited are the company used by the BBC themselves for their “Unvaccinated” programme.
- Professor Norman Fenton – Did the BBC unwittingly reveal the true proportion of unvaccinated as at least 20%? (Norman Fenton/YT)https://youtu.be/ccWOMtmH65USee also: https://www.normanfenton.com/post/a-critique-of-the-bbc2-documentary-unvaccinated for Professor Fenton’s critique of the BBC Professor Norman Fenton, Did the BBC unwittingly reveal the true proportion of unvaccinated as at least 20%?programme “Unvaccinated”.