Pfizer' clinical vaccine trials data: randomized, control, blind. About 45,000 people were divided into two equal groups, one group received the usual double dose vaccination (BNT162b2) and a placebo for the other group. Throwing around magic Covid-tests they got 91% efficiency against Covid. Sounds great, right?

"Covid In this update to the preliminary safety and efficacy report of a 2-dose regimen of 30 μg BNT162b2 given 21 days apart, 91.1% vaccine efficacy (VE) against COVID-19"

BUT, 15 people died in total in the vaccine group (mostly heart complications) compared to only 14 in the placebo group. Vaccinations slightly increased overall mortality. This has been concealed because "non-Covid deaths" among the vaxxed were brushed aside.

"During the blinded, controlled period, 15 BNT162b2 and 14 placebo recipients died"

Study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v1.full-text

Shouldn't a vaccine against a very common "lethal pandemic" lower overall mortality?

so out of 20,000 participants in each group 15 from the vaccine side died and 14 from the placebo side died. So on one side you have 0.075% of the test group die and on the other side you have .07%. Stats isn't my field but just looking at those numbers I'd be very surprised if such a small difference is statistically significant. Found a quick calculator for statistical significance between two groups and it seems to indicate that that kind of difference in such a large sample size is insignificant which I imagine is what the researchers concluded. 

This study was not done in the numbers necessary to see a significant number of Covid deaths. You follow 20,000 people, 800 of them get covid during that time, 30 of them got severe cases, 2 of them died from it. Given that we have 100,000 new covid cases a day in the US one would expect about 0.25% of those to die based on these numbers which turns out to be ~250 deaths a day which is what we're seeing (~400) so these numbers match up with expectations they're just small because you can't really capture a 0.25% death rate well in a random group of 20,000 people where only 800 actually got Covid. 

The vaccines seem to work very well.

I'm surprised to see how well we (Germany) are currently doing against the delta variant.
The beginning of July marked the point where cases stopped declining (thanks to delta). A relatively low 550 cases per day (lowest since July 2020!).
One month later, delta now makes up 91.4% of all new infections yet cases have risen to only 2100 cases a day. That looks more like linear growth than exponential growth to me. Wouldn't call it a wave just yet (compared to what the UK got). Also deaths have continued to decline and now remain flat at around 20 deaths a day. Hope it will stay like this for a while.

Weekly update, still a slight rise globally

In total 3.95 million new cases were reported last week (up from 3.74 million) to a total of 197,966,640
Also another 63,782 more deaths were reported last week (down from 68,218) to a total of 3,952,580

The vaccines are starting to get the Delta wave under control, curbing the rise in cases in Europe. USA is still rising.

The continents

Asia reported 1.73 million new cases (up from 1.42 million) and 29,164 more deaths (up from 26,255)
Europe reported 863K new cases (down from 965K) and 7,326 more deaths (up from 6,847)
North America reported 628K new cases (up from 535K) and 6,171 more deaths (up from 5,079)
South America reported 450K new cases (down from 571K) and 14,218 more deaths (down from 23,983)
Africa reported 276K new cases (up from 244K) and 6,832 more deaths (up from 5,944)
Oceania reported 8,858 new cases (up from 7,989) and 71 deaths (110 last week)

Corners of the world

USA reported 405K new cases (up from 353K) and 2,406 more deaths (up from 2,052)
India reported 282K new cases (up from 267K) and 3,804 more deaths (down from 6,915)
Brazil reported 248K new cases (down from 324K) and 7,092 more deaths (down from 7,920)
Iran reported 206K new cases (up from 160K) and 2,071 more deaths (up from 1,482)
South Africa reported 79K new cases (down from 87K) and 2,604 more deaths (2,690 last week)
Japan reported 44.9K new cases (up from 26.7K) and 67 deaths (92 last week)
South Korea reported 11.1K new cases (up from 10.7K) and 23 deaths (15 last week)
Canada reported 4,587 new cases (up from 3,061) and 50 deaths (50 last week)
Australia reported 1,327 new cases (up from 956) and 7 deaths (4 last week)

Europe in detail

Delta v. Vaccines

Numbers are still very high, just hoping we don't get another variant of concern.

Here is the table with the death toll for both groups vaxxed vs. placebo from the appendix. As you can see, there were 0 "covid-deaths" in the vaccinated and 1 "covid-pneumonia-death". There were 2 "covid-deaths" in the placebo group.

On the other hand, there was a strange cluster of 9 deaths in the cardiovascular field overall among the vaccinated but only 2 (or 3) in the placebo group.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v1.full-text

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2021/07/28/2021.07.28.21261159/DC1/embed/media-1.pdf?download=true

Well, masks are here to stay
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/majority-of-covid-19-cases-at-large-public-events-were-among-vaccinated-americans-cdc-study-1.5530634

A new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that three-quarters of individuals who became infected with COVID-19 at public events in a Massachusetts county had been fully vaccinated.

The study, published on Friday, showed that three-quarters of those infected were fully vaccinated, suggesting the Delta variant of the virus is highly contagious.

A separate CDC internal document, first reported by the Washington Post on Friday, described the Delta variant as being as transmissible as chickenpox and cautioned it could cause severe disease.

Cases are starting to trend up again here as well, now at 58% fully vaccinated, 71% first shot.

Shit. The vaccines at least still lessen your symptoms, right?

The prospect of still getting covid after vaccination has broken a lot of people. They made it their life's goal not to get it. Even wholly defanged and turned into just another cold or flu-like illness, which was always the end-state.

We will all "get" this thing multiple times in our lives, like we come across the other four endemic seasonal coronaviruses. It just feels better to blame people. Living in a fantasy world with different biological laws to keep up your morality play.

The number of people who respond to the news of someone "getting" covid post-vaccination like it's a terminal cancer diagnosis will never not be disturbing to me...

Delta version even though its more contagious, actually has higher risk of serious illness, than the previous versions.

The idea that, it will just mutate, and eventually become harmless common cold/flu, isnt what has happend so far.
Its now both more contagious, and people that get it, get more sick.

"We will all "get" this thing multiple times in our lives, like we come across the other four endemic seasonal coronaviruses."

Hope it doesnt play out that way.
Too many people already effected, will feel the effects of lasting damage done by this virus (some of it permanent).
If this continues onwards, for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be very few "healthy" humans left, and lots of people with various forms of damaged health.

Yes it does, hospitalizations are way down on vaccinated people and deaths even more. However the idea of stopping the spread with vaccines is just not going to happen and another wave in fall is pretty much a given now travel is starting up again.