We have already established that the NHS doesn’t vaccinate 65 million people Realist or even millions each year so that comparison is irrelevant. At the start they had a catch up, but these days it’s going to be in the hundreds of thousands for the UK. In the vaccinated cohort GPs have reported a big drop in shingles cases since the programme began. You may think that’s nothing to sneeze at but it’s helping to avoid a great deal of suffering by those affected and saving GP time in consults. It’s also saving people going into hospital and unnecessary deaths. The vaccine has minimal side effects and helps those who are at risk. If you think £98 is a lot then you should work out how much it costs to keep someone in intensive care for weeks or how many people are affected when someone dies early because they weren’t vaccinated.
Really? Only a moment ago you stated that there were no figures available except for Scotland. So have you found some other figures or are you plucking numbers out of thin air?
The FACTS state that the UK population is 65 million.
The FACTS state that there were 12 million of those aged 65yrs and older mid-2017
The FACTS show that take up of the vaccine is approx. 50% of the people. It used to be higher around 60%.
The FACTS show that the population of Scotland is 5.4m which equates to about 8% of the total UK population.
We know therefore that we are talking about 10m to 12m people in the UK. That’s a large audience and if 50% are talking up the vaccine then that’s a lot of people isn’t it?!
The data for Scotland varies in it’s approach, which is a huge concern from the outset.
For 2013/2014 they provided data for 70yrs olds and 79yr olds. The total number vaccinated at those 2 ages was 46,702
However that number is missing the people who were vaccinated at age 78 (and possibly 76, 77, 80, 81). So the 46,702 number is very light.
For 2014/2015 they provided data for 70yrs olds, 78yr olds and 79yr olds. The total number vaccinated at those 3 ages was 65,334
For 2017/2018 they provided data for 70yrs olds and 76yr olds. The total number vaccinated at those 2 ages was 38,285. This number is obviously light as it is missing numbers for 77,78,79yr olds as a minimum.
It is not unreasonable to conclude from that sporadic set of results that each year there are likely 65,000 to 100,000 people having the vaccinations in SCOTLAND each year.
The FACTS told us earlier that Scotland’s population is about 8% of the total UK population. If we therefore extrapolate these numbers for vaccinated people in Scotland up for the whole of the UK, it becomes clear that the NHS must be vaccinating around 900,000 people in the UK each year.
That’s just the NHS. It doesn’t include at all the people who are taking up the Shingles vaccine at Private Clinics of which there are many. The vaccine is only offered free on the NHS to 70yr olds but the vaccine is recommended generally for people aged 60yrs and up and it is licensed for people aged 50yrs and up.
Therefore the actual numbers of people being vaccinated is far higher than the NHS’s 900,000.
This has been going on for 4 years. So in the UK I’m happy to figure on some 4 million plus vaccinations being given. I’d bet it was higher because I feel sure people are getting the vaccinations at all ages, esp and including 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80.
And all of thus is JUST the UK. The vaccine is global.
Reuters have this to say:
“Zostavax’s worldwide sales were $668 million last year and analysts are betting GSK can better that, with consensus for 2024 of $1.8 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data.”
All in all a VERY lucrative profit generating business for these Big Pharma giants !
And all to prevent a condition that only 0.076% of the population will contract each year !!!
“Nice work if you can get it . . . . and you can get it if you try”
Argh … I just collapsed over my keyboard trying to read and digest all that.
Methinks I ought to scroll back to the beginning and see what all this is about.
lol Morty
Condensed version
People who haven’t had chickenpox can’t develop Shingles and so don’t need a Shingles Vaccination
50,000 people develop Shingles each year in the UK
There are 65 million people in the UK
So only 0.076% get Shingles, a very tiny amount
If you only consider those over 65yrs of age (12m) then only 0.4% of those get Shingles each year.
Of the 50,000 that get Shingles, 50 die, that’s just 0.1%
For this, they have invented a Shingles Vaccine that lasts only 5 years and costs anywhere from £150 to £200 a shot.
NHS offer it freely to 70-80yr olds but obviously the NHS has to buy the shots from the Big Pharma manufacturers.
My conclusion, yet another multi-billion dollar vaccination gravy train predicated on the usual “Campaign Of Fear”
As said ,go 7 have the inection,better be safe than sorry.Wish I could have it ,after seeing how a friend suffered when she had shingles.a Unfortunately I was just a few months too old to have if done
Scotland and Wales have actual figures.
I was saying the vaccinated numbers would be less than the 319k given for 70 year olds because it’s just applying an uptake ratio to a population estimate. Whereas you would like to extrapolate to 65 year olds because you haven’t bothered to find any actual population data for the actual cohort.
You don’t have any facts yourself, just an obstinate opinion that all vaccines are evil. You’re probably against polio and meningitis vaccines too. It’s that sort of medieval thinking that would keep us dying young or suffering with horrific diseases.
I’d be surprised if you weren’t against antibiotics even though they have saved so many lives. Antibiotics are doubtless some money making scam by drug lords.
Yep and I cited them in my last response post.
The actual number of people vaccinated is given in the Scotland data, no guesswork required, however it is patently clear that those numbers are extremely light as they only provide data for 2 or 3 specific ages whereas it is obvious that people have the vaccination at every age from 70yrs to 80yrs and very likely earlier than 70yrs.
If Scotland are vaccinating 65,000 people upward every year, and if Scotland’s population is 8% of the overall UK population then it is entirely reasonable to extrapolate those numbers upwards to arrive at the number of people vaccinated in the UK.
But regardless one is given to wonder why the NHS and health authorities are not wanting to keep the most basic records about numbers of people vaccinated or, if they are keeping that data, why they don’t want to publish it either consistently, or in full or in part. Quite bizarre really.
Regardless, the FACT is that the Shingles vaccine, like so many others, IS a multi-million or even multi-billion dollar industry.
The data from Scotland is likely to be pretty accurate. I’ve no idea where you get 65k vaccinations there. You’re just making figures up as usual it seems.
Scotland have reported that their uptake rates are going down, as is the case in Wales and England.
One is given to wonder why you can’t find any evidence of the data that you are quoting. None of your calculations work out to the millions you have stated in your other post. You’re just quoting figures from out of date press reports that don’t seem to be too accurate to start with.
Sigh this really is getting tedious now! The figures I posted ARE the Scotland figures in their reports. I’ll provide the links for you as you seem to need a hand hold through this.
These are the Scotland Health Annual Reports. Scroll down to the section on Shingles Vaccinations in each case.
2013/2014 - People vaccinated = 46,702
http://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/documents/ewr/pdf2015/1501.pdf
2014/2015 - People vaccinated = 65,334
http://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/documents/ewr/pdf2016/1601.pdf
2018 - People vaccinated = 38,285
https://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/immvax/shinglesvaccination.aspx
There are reports for 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 but the hotlinks to them are broken on the webpage.
In ALL those reports above the numbers are only partial numbers as I explained in my previous post. They ONLY report numbers of people vaccinated at the specific ages 70, 76, 78 and 79 and only one of those reports includes 3 of those age groups, the other reports only include 2 age groups. Clearly people are getting vaccinations at all ages, likely from age 65yrs and up, but for certain we can assume people are getting vaccinated at ages 70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78 and 79
So, given the 2014/2015 report there says there were over 65,000 vaccinations performed, we can be pretty sure the real number is much larger.
And we CAN extrapolate those numbers up for the rest of the UK given Scotland is just 8% of the UK.
There’s no smoke and mirrors here. It’s factual data. Data for Scotland which YOU brought up in the first place !!
It’s 60,650 in 15/16 for which I don’t have a broken hotlink. There are no missing figures in Scotland.
The vaccine was offered on an opportunistic basis to those who were eligible to take it up in 2013 because of their age but decided not to at that time. So they can still have it up to a certain age. So the figures still include these catch ups. But over time it will just be people aged 70 and 78/79. Not all ages in between. In 15/16 out of the 60k the catch ups at 76 and 77 were approx 16k of that.
So people are not being vaccinated at each age between 70 and 80 because the original group won’t be part of the numbers.
You can’t extrapolate what happens in Scotland to other areas at all. Scotland had a higher average uptake than England. Scotland has a tiny population compared to England.
Fact is that you have no facts for England but you are making them up because you don’t know.
I’ve never seen anyone exaggerate and misrepresent data as you have here. You haven’t a clue about this programme or about the condition. But you won’t admit it because you’re totally against any vaccine so you cannot admit that this one is beneficial to the cohort in question. We are very lucky that the NHS funds this.
I had ocular shingles a few years back,I will certainly be in the que,when I reach the age,to have the injection.
Sorry but this is wholly wrong.
Read the Scotland Health Guidance for vaccine candidates here:
I quote:
“In line with previous years, those who were eligible for the programme from the start (and who did not previously take up the offer of vaccination) can still be vaccinated. This includes those aged 71-74 (inclusive) and 77 to 79 (inclusive) – see Annex B for further detail on dates of birth”
It VERY CLEARLY states that the vaccine is offered to ALL ages from 70 through to 80. The ONLY ages that are ineligible are 65, 75 and 80.
Thus people ARE being vaccinated at ages 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78 and 79
The published Scotland data does NOT include the figures for each of these ages. The figures concentrate on the ages 70, 76, 78 and 79 only. They are therefore SHORT.
Not only that but the figures are purely the NHS figures. There are lots of private clinics administering Shingles vaccines, quite possibly at any age from 65yrs up so again the figures you have are SHORT AGAIN.
The hotlinks are working again so here’s the complete set of results for Scotland.
People vaccinated each year
2013/2014 - 46,702
2014/2015 - 65,334
2015/2016 - 60,650
2016/2017 - 69,945
2017/2018 - 38,285
Remember THESE NUMBERS ARE SHORT. They only include data for specific ages 70, 76, 78 and 79. They are missing data for ages 71, 72, 73, 74 and 77.
It is NOT wrong to extrapolate these numbers for the rest of the UK, you simply oppose that because it doesn’t support your agenda. Poor show.
Scotland has a population of 5.4m. The UK in total has 65m
Scotland represents 8% of the UK population.
If Scotland did approx 70,000 vaccinations (number is short) in 2016/2017 then the whole of the UK will have done around 875,000. It’s not going to be far off that number.
And this is yearly and the vaccine is NOT limited to the UK, it is global.
It’s simply irrefutable that globally this is a multi million, if not multi billion dollar industry.
And again I raise the point which thus far you have not refuted, which is that only 50,000 people in the UK develop shingles each year out of a population of 65 million.
That’s just 0.076% !!!
A tiny tiny number
You have a 1 in 1300 chance of developing shingles.
Only a carefully crafted “Campaign Of Fear” convinces weak minded people that they need a vaccination for such a tiny perentage outcome.
It’s becomming difficult to not believe that you a part of the Big Pharma food chain desperately trying to defend the business.
Realist I think you have missed the part in the PDF which says "In line with previous years, those who were eligible for the
programme from the start (and who did not previously take up
the offer of vaccination) can still be vaccinated. "
I have already said that those who were eligible in 2013/4 can still take up the vaccine up to age 79. Otherwise it’s only for 70 and in Scotland they appear to be saying the second age is 76, but it’s 78 or 79 in England.
It does not mean there is a universal vaccine for everyone aged 70 to 80, just the original group.
By the way yes it’s wrong to extrapolate to England. It’s this broad brush approach that you always use that leads to your arguments being full of factual holes. This is no different. You cannot argue that the vaccine has any damaging side effects so you are trying to make a deal of how much is spent on it. It’s not a big programme and the NHS focuses on the people who really need it or could benefit from it. It is not just financial considerations that should be discussed here. It also stops people who don’t need to go into hospital from being admitted and frees up those beds for those who really need them.
If we have so many people posting on this thread saying that they have had shingles or know someone who does then that rather blows your argument that we all have a tiny chance of developing it into the ground.
Whatever your shaky stats (and your application of numbers is shockingly simplistic), the chances of developing a shingles attack increase as you get older and your immune system is shot by chronic conditions. At the same time the complications from having a shingles attack increase and it is a killer (which you have admitted but you just see people dying as a % who don’t matter).
This is the equivalent of selective deafness but here it’s selective reading. I will quote again:
“In line with previous years, those who were eligible for the programme from the start (and who did not previously take up the offer of vaccination) can still be vaccinated. This includes those aged 71-74 (inclusive) and 77 to 79 (inclusive) – see Annex B for further detail on dates of birth”
What this is saying is that anyone who was eligible from the outset (i.e. from age 70 at their start date) is still eligible at any age thereafter except for age 75 and 80.
The statement:
"This includes those aged 71-74 (inclusive) and 77 to 79 (inclusive) "
Should make this obvious but you appear to want to ignore it. Bizarre
Why? Just because YOU say so? That’s no argument.
Scotland’s population is 8% of the total UK. One can quite obviously and reasonably factor up the Scotland numbers to UK scale. Scotland isn’t unique or special.
We haven’t discussed the side effects at all in this thread. We could do, but it would be pointless given your selective reading comprehension and purposeful agenda to promote the Big Pharma business.
The FACTS are that there are hardly any studies for this Shingles Vaccine and ALL of the studies that do exist were funded by Big Pharma manufacturers themselves and are thus unreliable. All this is outlined in the Cochrane Library, the defacto internationally respected body for medical research and peer reviewed studies.
So the bottom line is that one can not say that the vaccine is safe or otherwise because the independent unbiased studies have not been conducted.
None of which alters the FACTS that the ACTUAL NUMBERS INVOLVED are absolutely TINY. It’s 0.076% of the UK population. You can not refute this.
Your stupidist comment thus far.
Forum annecdotal input from a tiny handful of people vs real government and health industry statistics. You are looking utterly desperate now.
Well the FACTS speak for themselves. Only 50 people die out of 50,000 who develop shingles and that’s in 65 million people. In real terms this means that 0.000076 % of the UK population dies each year of shingles.
I’m sorry but that’s absolute FACT. Irrefutable.
Your emotional rhetoric is nice, but the facts trump emotion.
My brother in law has every injection offered. Not because he’s worried about his health. It’s because they are free!
I bet that applies to many others too.
Yep, that and they probably come from a generation where doctors and the health service were deemed “authorities” and accepted as such and the mere notion that they might be selling you pills, potions and treatments just to make money would have seemed ridiculous. Today of course the savvy and “awake” people know different whilst the “Sheeple” trudge on in their ignorance and thus become unwitting victims of an insipid and fraudulent industry.
This forum is as good a random sample group of older people as any and given the number of responses here I reckon shingles outbreaks are far more common than your “evidence” suggests. Many people simply don’t bother to go to their GP when they have an outbreak or this isn’t recorded in the surveys you have studied. How do you think they do studies but to select a random group, study their responses and then work out the confounding variables? You can do a sample study by going to a high street and picking the n’th person. It’s all random data. Given the geographical spread of people here it’s more random than some scientific studies.
You can’t extrapolate Scottish data to English. The English NHS system is run separately from Scotland. They have different approaches here and there is a lower uptake. It’s a far more diverse population and while you can make some assumption by extrapolating from a larger group to a smaller group, the other way around just makes for unreliable conclusions. But hey you are no stranger to those! 
I haven’t checked your fifty people assertion against any data. My guess is that that is totally understating the problem because how many people of the 50,000 you mention (again unchecked facts), are diagnosed of dying from unrelated causes but in fact their death is accelerated by a shingles outbreak? 50 unnecessary and avoidable deaths! Countless other avoidable deaths where shingles has been a factor. If even fifty people died unnecessarily of cancer when there could be a way of saving their lives with a vaccine would you still say that’s nothing?
You place no value on human life. It appears human lives are just statistics to you. 50 people a year mean nothing to you? The fact that (an assumed) 50,000 have preventable outbreaks and end up with lifelong post-outbreak complications such as post-herpetic neuralgia, facial paralysis and hearing loss means nothing to you. Never mind the months of intense pain and sleepless nights.
You’ve lost your way in this debate. It has shown you as heartless and soulless in your pursuit of “big pharma” villains. A one-man vendetta blinkered to real suffering of people afflicted with diseases.
Your emotional weakness has sadly lead to a totally unfounded and personal insult. It’s a shame. Your statements are utterly false, and borne of childish sentiments and frustrations because the FACTS have repeatedly refuted your anecdotal rhetoric.
All deaths are tragic but we have to retain a sense of perspective and realism. Every year 1000s of people die in airplane accidents. So far this year alone, 2018, some 690 people have died in aircraft disasters worldwide ranging from small aircraft to large airliners. All tragic deaths.
But with perspective, it’s a tiny number compared to the overall number of people flying. Your emotional rhetoric would see every airline closed down and all air travel curtailed in order that 690 people do not die.
Life is cruel. It is harsh and people die constantly. Understanding this and the numbers involved does not make one heartless, nor does it mean they don’t value life. You simply are unable to appreciate the numbers, you lack perspective.
Your objectivity is compromised by your struggle to maintain a sound argument in this Shingles debate. The FACTS have refuted your sound bites repeatedly.
50,0000 people develop Shingles every year in the UK amongst a population of 65,000,000. It is a tiny number whether you can see it or not. It is 0.076%.
Even if you look only at the incidence of Shingles in the older population (12 million) the percentage of Shingles cases is still less than half a percent (0.42%).
That’s the perspective that is needed. Perspective which you currently lack.
That only 50 die amongst those 50,000 each year is actually good news. It is a tiny tiny number. Thank goodness it isn’t bigger. Countless more people die from other conditions every year and an untold number die from various accidents.
I will say it again. We DO NOT need to vaccinate the entire population of 70+ yr olds just to reduce that tiny number of Shingles sufferers. It’s a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
What SHOULD happen is the health industry develop a treatment for those who DO develop Shingles. A treatment to alleviate the symptoms and to prevent the deaths.
Problem is the target audience is tiny as I have outlined countless times. The industry is interested only in making huge profits. Curing people is not an interest save that it is the selling point for generating huge amounts of money.
That’s why they have developed a vaccine for the 12 million people over 70yrs old rather than develop a treatment for the 50,000 people who actually get Shingles.
It’s all about the $$$$$
It’s a multi-million dollar business, plain and simple.