Moving/archiving my response to a commenter on Key data were withheld from the publication of the UK’s “REACT-2” antibody study.
Commenter David O’Hallaron said he was surprised that Imperial College researcher Matthew Whitaker responded to Jonathan Engler’s request for data and asked for a reminder as to what the survey was designed and used to establish. O’Hallaron: “I assume it was used to reinforce the narrative that the vaccine was ‘effective’?”
My response (changed slightly from what I originally said):
A description of all studies under REACT can be found here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/research-and-impact/groups/react-study/
These were taxpayer-funded data-harvesting exercises, if nothing else:
“A significant feature of the REACT study is data linkage. People in the REACT studies have given their permission for us to link their survey data to health data held by NHS England and other NHS bodies. For these 2.7 million adults the REACT study now holds information about their short- and medium-term health, including when they use NHS healthcare, what they are diagnosed with and their prognosis.”
You can see from Imperial’s press release at the time what the institution emphasized on the antibody survey side — yes, it was used to sell the importance of vaccines: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/215753/coronavirus-antibodies-14-englands-population-imperial/
I note an error in the following part of the press release, where it says, “Tests were sent out to a random sample of the population and 155,172 people had valid results.”
The 600K selected from the NHS database was randomized, but it was only ~200K who responded that received a test; the 155K were those who actually participated in the study.
Will Jones of The Daily Sceptic and Dr. Clare Craig (HART Group, author of “Expired”) have incorrectly pointed to the “infection curve” constructed from the symptom-onset dates of AB-positive respondents as evidence of early or “low-grade” spread of SARS-CoV-2.
Article by Jones: https://dailysceptic.org/2021/06/24/the-imperial-graph-that-shows-infections-declined-before-lockdown-and-increased-under-it/
Example posts/references for Dr. Craig: e.g., 8 October 2021, 17 April 2022, 1 January 2024, Expired: COVID, the Untold Story (p. 89), report (p. 78)
In light of what we have reported in our articles, it is incumbent upon both of them to formally address their prior (and in the case of Dr Craig, at least, repeated and recent) formal and informal uses of the study results as evidence supporting their hypotheses.
Results of various seroprevalence studies were used throughout 2020-2022 especially to show how “close” or how “far” a population was from “reaching” herd immunity. Herd immunity is, as far as I can tell, an unsubstantiated concept with respect to respiratory illness. Herd immunity is dependent on novelty.
Other reactions to the study at the time of its release are below. The better (and actual) critiques are from the academics.
- https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-preprint-from-the-react-2-study-of-antibody-prevalence-in-england/
- https://www.gov.uk/government/news/latest-findings-from-antibody-surveillance-study-published
- https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n561
- https://www.medscape.co.uk/viewarticle/sars-cov-2-antibodies-detected-around-1-7-people-england-2021a1001qnl
Why none appear to have wondered about the AB-neg results being withheld, I’m not sure, but it was quite the “miss” and should have been obvious from one close read. (Maybe others did and I was not able to find those instances.)
Regarding Dr. Whitaker’s eventual response, I am NOT surprised, because it is his duty. I am disappointed that it took the pressure it did to get a response.
A request for publicly-funded data should be met near-immediately with, “Yes, of course. See attached.”
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