Unruly numbers
"... for the unvaccinated, the previously published numbers had taken an unexplained jump, starting on December 27 with a 4% increase, 11% the next day, then 12%, 14%, 15% and ending in a 20% increase on January 4th!"
Shortly before Christmas, the 14 day Covid-19 infection incidence in Iceland by vaccination status started to change dramatically as the new omicron variant of the coronavirus began to gain the upper hand. By the end of the year, the 14-day incidence of infection among double-vaccinated people had increased sevenfold and was now double that of the unvaccinated, while increasing elevenfold for those with three jabs.
This information, published on the official Covid-19 information site run by the Directorate of Health, began tocirculate at the start of this year and attracted quite some attention. On January 7th, data updates on the website were temporarily halted, explained by planned restructuring of the site. The next day I published an article in Iceland‘s main newspaper, Morgunblaðið, drawing attention to this sudden change in the infection rates. Chief Epidemologist Þórólfur Guðnason responded the same day, quoting a systematic error in the numbers; many who were registered as living in Iceland did not actually live in the country, had been vaccinated abroad but were registered unvaccinated locally. Therefore, he claimed it was not possible to draw the conclusions the data clearly supported, that the double-vaccinated were more likely to become infected than the unvaccinated.
As I pointed out in another article in Morgunblaðið on January 11th, in order for his explanation to be correct, the Chief Epidemologist would have had to previously overestimate the number of unvaccinated people by 90% to get an infection rate equal to the rate for the double-vaccinated. As I explained, such a huge overestimation would hardly go undetected for over half a year.
It was finally on the morning of January 13th that the data appeared again. However, there was a snag: While the 14-day incidence of double- and triple-vaccinated adults and children was virtually unchanged, for the unvaccinated, the previously published numbers had taken an unexplained jump, starting on December 27 with a 4% increase, 11% the next day, then 12%, 14%, 15% and ending in a 20% increase on January 4th!
What might justify such a huge and sudden change in previously published data? Either a large group of unvaccinated people would have had to disappear without a trace during the second half of December, or a large number of infections, all among the unvaccinated, would have had to be lost and then found again. But no such explanations have been made.
This sudden and significant change in official data took place immediately after the data started to show a development that was in direct contradiction to the Chief Epidemologist‘s repeated claims that the vaccines were highly effective for preventing infections. Is this a mistake, or is there a different explanation? This is something the Directorate of Health will have to answer.
** Update **
I contacted the Directorate of Health asking for an explanation of why the numbers mentioned above were changed, whether the previous data had errors that had to be corrected or if a mistake had been made when publishing the new data. I received a reply but unfortunately my question was not addressed in the reply. From this I can only conclude the reason for the change was not a correction of faulty calculations, not a new calculation mistake and not an actual change in the underlying data.