Germany’s vakzine fail
Despite over 67% fully vaxxed covid looks worse than 2020
el gato malo | bad cattitude | november 20, 2021
germany reached 50% fully vaxxed on july 27th. that figure is now over 67%.
it is making NO difference.
all else equal, just given prior surges and the greater past generation of natural immunity you’d expect a drop.
but we’re seeing a major rise instead.
to make this easier to see, i grabbed the our world in data data and plotted it year against year starting august 1.
cases are MUCH higher. they are currently 124% higher as a 7 day moving average than this date last year.
as they have been higher throughout, i also plotted this as cumulative cases.
those are 122% higher overall.
they have had well over twice the full period case count vs a year ago.
this is not an artifact of testing.
testing is actually down year on year.
so the reality is actually worse than described above if one were to adjust for sample rate.
cases would be more like triple last year’s count.
so much for “stopping spread.” that looks like spread acceleration (which was predictable)
that is WAY too big a variance to be a 20-45% difference in variant infectiousness.
but that ship had largely sailed.
few with any real familiarity with this data are still claiming that these vaccines stop spread. the evidence has been clear for some time and even the CDC has stopped arguing it.
but perhaps it works on severity?
nope. on a societal scale, it does not seem to. the hospitalization data was sparse and incomplete for germany, so i looked at deaths instead.
they have been higher all along and are basically indistinguishable now.
taken as a cumulative, deaths are 84% higher than the same time span a year ago despite a variant with notably lower CFR.
much of this may be higher case count. higher cases with lower CFR could land you here. it could also be consistent with some vaccine efficacy.
we’re into the realm of error bars too big to do any useful math on that, but it seems plausible to me that we’re seeing a situation like the UK where despite some VE on death, it’s being swamped by the vaccinated being at higher risk for cases and by a leaky vaccine increasing CFR on delta variant so even the vaccinated have become more likely overall to die of covid.
(if you have triple the cases and triple the CFR vs what you would have had, you’d need 89% VE just to break even. none of these vaccines are even close to that in practice)
we’re obviously playing a bit of a mosaic game here, that would be my odds on bet.
this is the shape of the disaster starting to play out all over the world.
these vaccines have not attenuated covid. they have rekindled its spread.
the vaccinated have become a potent vector to carry the disease and to actually make the disease itself worse because leaky vaccines invert the evolutionary gradient and select for hotter rather than milder strains.
this is going to keep happening as regions come into season. people will blame “the variants” but the fact is that the reason delta case fatality rate basically tripled on an age cohorted basis over the summer (when it should have been dropping) IS the vaccines.
this was not exogenous to human action. it did not “just happen.” this is such an outlier outcome that it might as well be water flowing uphill. when you see that, you have to suspect external forcing and there is an obvious culprit, the timing matches, and we know that this is what leaky vaccines do.
boosting is just going to make it worse and invert the viral gradient even further. any short term help from boosted antibodies (at the price of another round of dangerous adverse events) will just run up a bigger bigger bill to pay when it comes due later, and it’s far from clear that this booster strategy even provides short term help.
in fact, there is basically no evidence that their high vaxx rates, green pass, and heavy restrictions accomplished ANYTHING when compared to the neighbors.
i see no way to look at this and say “vaccines worked.”
this is the outcome no one wanted but that many (including certain internet felines) warned against.
rolling out a functionally untested vaccine t this sort of scale was a wildly reckless global epidemiological joyride. it’s not going well.
i wish i had better news here, but this is unfortunately playing out just as one would predict for a vaccine accelerated double dip pandemic driven by hotter substrain selection and reduction of sterilizing immunity.
i suspect the OAS issue here is very real (and possibly permanent in the vaccinated even post live virus exposure and recovery).
there are going to be some rotten surprises for those who thought they had vaxxed their way out of this.
this was not a fire extinguisher.
more and more, it looks like it was gasoline.
Another major red flag about Covid vaccines and death
By Alex Berenson | Unreported Truths | November 18, 2021
People appear to die at rates 20 percent or more above normal for weeks after receiving their second Covid vaccine dose, according to data from a huge Swedish study.
The figures are buried in a preprint paper on vaccine effectiveness released last month. The headline finding of the paper was that protection against Covid, including severe cases, plunged after six months.
The researchers did not explicitly examine deaths from all causes – which have risen since the summer in many countries that have highly vaccinated populations.
But on page 32 of the 34-page report, a chart shows that 3,939 of 4.03 million Swedes who received the second dose died less than two weeks later.
(SOURCE: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949410)
Over a one-year period, that rate of death would translate into an annual mortality rate of about 2.5 percent a year – 1 person in 40 – almost three times the overall Swedish average. In a typical year, about 1 in 115 Swedes dies.
Of course, that huge gap does not account for an important confounding factor: younger people, who have a much lower risk of death, were less likely to be vaccinated.
But Sweden also provides detailed data on overall deaths nationally, making a crude baseline comparison possible.
That data shows that from an average of about 1,650 Swedes died every week between 2015 and 2019 between April 1 and early August, the period in which almost all of those 4 million Swedes in the study received their second dose. Death rates hardly varied over those years.
(SOURCE: https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/population/population-composition/population-statistics/)
In other words, during the spring and summer, Sweden normally has about 3,300 deaths every two weeks – not just in the people who received vaccines, but in all 10.6 million of its people.
So let’s make an incredibly conservative assumption, one that strongly favors the vaccines. (The next couple paragraphs are a bit tricky, but I hope the payoff is worth taking the time to read and think through them.)
Assume that the group of people who received vaccines were so much older and unhealthier than those who didn’t that they would have accounted for every single death in Sweden whether or not they were vaccinated. In other words, assume that even if the vaccines did not exist, every person in Sweden who died would have been part of that group of 4.03 million people the researchers tracked – while not one other person would have died.
In that case, those 4.03 million people “should” have about 3,300 deaths every two weeks. They CANNOT HAVE MORE – because all of Sweden does not have more.
But the vaccines do exist. Those 4.03 million people received them. And in the two weeks after receiving the second vaccine dose, as a group, the researchers reported they had not about 3,300 deaths, but 3,939.
And 3,939 deaths is about 20 percent more deaths than “should” have occurred in those two post-vaccine weeks. Again, the 20 percent figure understates the real gap, because in the real world some deaths will occur in the 6.6 million unvaccinated people too, so the actual baseline number for the vaccinated group is not 3,300 deaths but somewhat lower.
Unfortunately, the researchers did not report any details on the deaths, so it is impossible to know if they are disproportionately cardiovascular. It is also impossible to know whether one particular vaccine was disproportionately linked to deaths. (Sweden used mostly the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, as well as some of AstraZeneca’s DNA/AAV vaccine, which is not available in the United States, and a small amount of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine.)
Of course, it is just possible the extra deaths are due to chance. Or that the handful of elderly Swedes who received vaccines in February and March accounted for a hugely disproportionate number of the post-vaccine deaths. (Because per-week Swedish death rates are higher in the winter, a large number of post-vaccine deaths in those months would somewhat reduce the strength of the signal, though it would still exist.)
But the caveats aside, the Swedish figures offer a very large real-world dataset apparently showing a notable increase in all-cause mortality directly following Covid vaccination.
They are yet another piece of evidence in an increasingly worrying picture – alongside case and anecdotal reports, a known link to heart inflammation in young men, the updated Pfizer clinical trial data revealing a numerical imbalance in deaths in vaccinated people, and most importantly the general rise in all-cause mortality in many countries.
And all of these red flags come for vaccines that – if the Swedish data are correct – may actually raise the risk of Covid infection after about eight months.
Yes, RAISE. See how that black line drops below the zero level on the top chart? That represents negative effectiveness, which is another way to say people who are vaccinated are MORE likely to be infected than those who aren’t.
And, as the second chart shows, effectiveness against severe Covid infection is also spiraling towards zero.
Yet the Biden Administration and governments across Europe continue to try to force more people to take these vaccines.
Why?
NIH Director Calls For COVID Conspiracists to be “Brought to Justice”
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | November 20, 2021
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins has angrily called for anyone who spreads “misinformation” about COVID-19 online to be “brought to justice.”
“Conspiracies are winning here. Truth is losing. That’s a really serious indictment of the way in which our society seems to be traveling,” Collins told the Washington Post.
Citing an onslaught of angry messages directed at Dr. Anthony Fauci, who Collins appears to believe is above criticism, the bureaucrat demanded that those responsible for such behavior should be identified and “brought to justice.”
The article cited one such example of “misinformation” being Fauci’s involvement in barbaric experiments conducted on dogs by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), despite the fact that such cruelty factually occurred under Fauci’s leadership.
While Collins didn’t specify precisely what he meant by “brought to justice,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla previously asserted that individuals who spread false information about COVID vaccines are “criminals” who “have literally cost millions of lives.”
That’s an interesting benchmark given that it was once considered false to claim that COVID vaccines didn’t stop the vaccinated spreading COVID, which is now an all too obvious fact.
Quite what constitutes “misinformation” about COVID-19 is anyone’s guess given that several things that turned out to be plausible or true, such as the origin of the virus behind the Wuhan lab, were once deemed to be “misinformation.”
It seems likely that whatever the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci or Pfizer deem to be “misinformation” will become the standard.
As we previously highlighted, efforts to brand those who question the safety and efficacy of products manufactured by pharmaceutical corporations that have been plagued by a myriad of historical scandals are also underway in the UK.
The Online Safety Bill, described as “the flagship legislation to combat abuse and hatred on the internet,” will apparently include a provision that jails “antivaxers spreading false information that they know to be untrue” for a period of two years.
Dutch deaths more than 20 percent higher than previous year average
Free West Media | November 21, 2021
Last week the number of deaths was more than 20 percent higher than usual for this time of year. The Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) reported 3,750 deaths, nearly 850 more than expected.
According to the statistical office, the higher mortality can be seen in all age groups.
Statistics Netherlands does not yet have an explanation for the higher mortality. More deaths of Corona patients were registered at RIVM last week.
According to the CBS, the excess mortality has clearly increased in recent weeks. But since the beginning of August, the mortality has already been above the usual numbers during this period.
It is estimated that 2,100 people aged 80 and older died last week. That is almost 500 more than expected. Mortality in this age group has been remarkably high for four weeks. This also applies to people aged 65 to 80. In this age group, 1,200 people died last week, nearly 300 more than expected. Among people under the age of 65, the death rate last week was an estimated 450, more than 50 more than expected.
In the Netherlands, 85 percent of people over the age of 18 are fully vaccinated, and many had their jabs only recently. Vaccine salespeople maintain that the shots offer protection in the first few months before the “protection” starts to wane. They blame the unvaccinated for the rise in deaths. This is obviously false.
The number of people getting infected has never been worse, despite the high vaccination rate. The jabs are evidently not doing what had been promised.
In total, 23,680 cases were reported on Thursday, the fourth day in a row of record-setting case numbers following a week that broke the record for the highest number of new infections (110,000) since the pandemic began – a 44 percent rise over the week before, and this week’s figures have not yet been added.
Dutch officials have started injecting those over 80 with boosters on Thursday, weeks earlier than planned.
Anke Huckriede, professor of vaccinology at the University of Groningen, said the intramuscular jabs do not offer protection in the upper respiratory tract, where the virus enters our bodies.
With only some 15 percent of the adult population unvaccinated, the Dutch have a higher vaccine uptake than the majority of the world. But Bas van den Putte, professor of health communication at the University of Amsterdam and a member of the scientific advisory board of the RIVM’s Corona Behavioural Unit admitted that he could not explain the dramatic rise in deaths.
Other “experts” sadly had no explanation for vaccine failure either.
Frits Rosendaal, professor of clinical epidemiology at the Leiden University Medical Center, blamed geography and population density while Huckriede said she had no idea why this was happening. “We just don’t know.”
Based on weekly data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in the UK, vaccinated people under 60 are twice as likely to die as unvaccinated people. And overall deaths in Britain are far above normal.
As in Germany, Swedes also appear to die at rates 20 percent or more above normal for weeks after receiving their second Covid jab, according to data from a Swedish study.
Despite the hard evidence piling up of a complete public health failure on a global scale, governments and politicians continue to stick to their useless mandates.
No Mystery Why Some Countries Are Largely Flu/Covid-Free
By Stephen Lendman | November 20, 2021
Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, Macedonia, Uttar Pradesh, India, Zimbabwe, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, parts of Brazil, and other nations have the following in common:
They use known safe and effective ivermectin for treating and curing flu/covid.
As a result, the incidence of the viral illness in these countries is low.
Their success is in stark contrast to surging outbreaks, serious cases, hospitalizations and deaths throughout the US/West, Israel and in other heavily mass-jabbed countries.
Since discovered and approved for human use, around 4 billion doses of ivermectin have been prescribed worldwide.
The WHO includes it on its list of Essential Medicines.
In 2015, co-developer of the drug, Dr. Satoshi Omura, won a Nobel Prize in Medicine.
In February, British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) — comprised of medical and scientific experts from over 15 countries — recommended global use of ivermectin as a verifiably safe and effective drug for preventing and treating flu/covid.
Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy director and BIRD organizer Dr. Tess Lawrie stressed the following:
“Ivermectin is already in use around the world and can reach the poorest people long before other expensive COVID treatments will ever get to them.”
“Ivermectin has an ever-increasing evidence base that shows that it works.”
“Even the prestigious Institute Pasteur in France has confirmed that the evidence is sound.”
Front Line (Flu/Covid) Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) president/chief medical officer Dr. Pierre Kory explained the following:
“When we examine the extensive evidence on ivermectin as a treatment for (flu/covid), we still see a significant reduction in the spread of (the viral illness), as well as a reduction in hospitalizations and deaths.”
“All science needs to be scrutinized. As some of the most published researchers in our fields, we are used to having our work examined by others.”
Peer-reviewed studies showed that when used as directed, ivermectin virtually eliminates flu/covid, most often in a few days.
Noted journalist and author, former Philadelphia Inquirer/Miami Herald reporter, six-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, two-time National Book Award nominee, National Headliner Award winner Michael Capuzzo wrote about “The Drug that Cracked (Flu)Covid,” stressing:
“Hundreds of thousands, actually millions, of people around the world, from Uttar Pradesh in India to Peru to Brazil, who are living and not dying” are alive and well thanks to ivermectin.
He “saw with (his) own eyes” the other side of the story that MSM suppress, adding:
He “wishes the world could see both sides” — notably that ivermectin is a virtual wonder drug for treating and curing flu/covid.
It’s safe, effective and cheap.
If used worldwide in lieu of toxic jabs — crucial to shun — flu/covid could be largely eliminated.
It’s not throughout the US/West, Israel and elsewhere with mass-extermination and destruction of freedom in mind.
AP News dubiously claimed that “scientists are mystified and wary (about why) Africa avoid(ed) (flu/covid) disaster (sic).”
Outbreaks are largely absent in dozens of African countries.
What AP News called “mysterious” is what it suppressed.
Widespread use of ivermectin rendered much of the continent largely flu/covid-free.
It’s where “fewer than 6% of the people” are jabbed, AP reported.
In its weekly reports, the WHO calls Africa “one of the least (flu/covid) affected regions in the world.”
What AP News should have explained, it suppressed.
Widespread use of ivermectin in many African countries prevented flu/covid outbreaks — and cured the viral illness safely, effectively, quickly and cheaply when they occurred.
Just how rare are ‘rare’ vaccine injuries?
By Harry Dougherty | TCW Defending Freedom | November 19, 2021
‘ULTIMATELY, the mRNA vaccines are an example for that sort of gene therapy. I always like to say, if we had surveyed, two years ago, the public,“would you be willing to take gene or cell therapy and inject it into your body?” we probably would have had a 95 per cent refusal rate. I think this pandemic has opened many people’s eyes to innovation in a way that was maybe not possible before.’
The man who said this is called Stefan Oelrich. He said it publicly, in a speech to the World Health Summit. He is President of Pharmaceuticals at Bayer, one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. That’s right, fact-checkers, Big Pharma just admitted that the Covid19 mRNA vaccines are gene therapy and that most people would not have agreed to be injected with them in normal circumstances.
We are just beginning to see how wise 95 per cent of the public would have been. Indeed, a worryingly higher number of teenagers have died since the vaccine was rolled out to their age group, as Dr Will Jones has noted. There were 351 deaths in teenagers aged between 15 and 19 between week 23 and week 43 2021, that’s 108 more than in the same period last year. Even Fullfact’s attempt to dismiss Dr Jones’s findings was half-hearted. Why wasn’t there a similar rise in age groups that are yet to be offered Covid vaccines? No explanation was suggested.
An Icelandic midfielder collapses on the pitch, a Barcelona striker is forced to consider retirement due to a sudden heart condition, a Slovak ice hockey player dies suddenly midgame, and a member of UB40 dies after a ‘short illness’, all within weeks. Yes, yes, some of these may be coincidences, perhaps all of them. But why would anyone be so quick to rule out the possibility that Covid-19 vaccines played a role in any of these incidents unless they had an agenda or an incentive not to establish a causal link? How many doctors would have the courage to admit that they helped to damage people unnecessarily, even if they had done so in good faith?
Most helpfully, Wikipedia has a page listing the deaths of all association footballers who died while playing, from 1889 to the present. Globally, there were four deaths on the pitch in 2018, two of which were caused by cardiac arrest. There were three deaths on the pitch in 2019 and three again in 2020, all caused by cardiac arrest. In 2021 there were 14. One footballer was killed in a collision, while in another case, that of 15-year-old FC An der Fahner Höhe goalkeeper Bruno Stein, the cause of death isn’t specified. The rest died from cardiac arrest. No other year on the list has had as many deaths on the pitch as 2021. As many footballers died on the pitch in September and October 2021 as died in the whole of 2019 and 2020.
One of the deaths this year was 29-year-old Parma player Guiseppe Perrino, who died in a memorial match for his brother, who also died of cardiac arrest while cycling in 2018. Obviously Guiseppe’s brother’s death could not have been linked to the vaccine, but it strongly suggests that some families are more prone to unexpected heart problems than others, which brings us to the tragic case of Italian siblings Vittoria and Allesandro Campo, both footballers who died from cardiac arrest within two months of each other, in a country where life for the unvaccinated is made as miserable as possible.
According to Italian media sources, Allesandro’s death came two days after he received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and the coroners did not exclude the possibility that his untimely death was caused by the jab. It’s difficult to know what caused Vittoria’s death since some reports say her mother insisted that Vittoria was not vaccinated and that toxicology reports found drugs in her system, while others claim her father confirmed that both of his children had been vaccinated. But both of these sibling tragedies raise the question as to whether the vaccine triggers heart problems in families that are predisposed to heart conditions. This is the problem with difficult-to-obtain ‘genuine’ medical exemptions for Covid vaccines: you don’t always know if you’re ‘genuinely’ exempt until it’s too late.
Would it really be that surprising if it turned out that a vaccine linked to heart problems was causing heart problems? Just days before Boris Johnson threatened 16- to 17-year-olds with the prospect of another ruined Christmas if they didn’t get their second vaccine dose, Taiwan suspended giving 12- to 17-year-olds the second dose over fears of a link between the Pfizer vaccine and heart inflammation.
In Australia, the Herald Sun reports that dozens of teenagers have developed myocarditis after their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. 10,000 Australians have filed for government compensation after being hospitalised by significant side effects from the Covid jabs. As per usual, these afflictions are dismissed as extremely rare, and minimised as mostly trivial. One account from Australian vaccine injury victim Dan Petrovic gives us a clue as to how difficult it is to get vaccine injuries acknowledged by medical professionals. Despite his vaccine-induced heart inflammation, which left him unable to work, walk or play with his daughter, Mr Petrovic says he does not regret having the vaccine.
Each to their own, I guess, but this makes him a reliable source who cannot be dismissed as an ‘anti-vaxxer’. According to Australia’s News.com, ‘neither his cardiologist nor his GP would submit an adverse event report to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)’. One doctor said ‘I’m too busy’ while a cardiologist said ‘I cannot make a medical diagnosis, I’m not a practitioner.’
If health professionals are going above and beyond to not link the vaccine with adverse events, how can we be expected to believe that serious adverse reactions are as ‘extremely rare’ as is claimed?
Thankfully, there are some good blokes left in Australia’s political swamp. One is Gerard Rennick, Liberal National Party Senator for Queensland, where unvaccinated citizens are now banned from doing just about anything that makes life worth living. If you try to message through a question to the Queensland Health authority’s Facebook page, their automated chatbot will suggest ‘Try saying something like . . . Can I visit my family?’
Rennick is no lightweight. He has spent the latter half of this year advocating for the ever-growing number of young Australians who have suffered severe, life-changing adverse reactions to medical procedures they took under the threat of living a ‘lonely and miserable‘ life, as the Queensland health chief Chris Perry put it.
There are many on Senator Rennick’s Facebook account. Look them in the eyes and tell them that their avoidable life-changing injuries are insignificant.
Here is one story he shared, from Candice:
‘Prior to the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, I was a very healthy/fit 38-year-old female that ran and exercised 2-3 times per week and lived a healthy lifestyle. On the 28/8/2021, I had my 2nd Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. The day after the vaccine, I developed a headache, neck pain, swollen lymph nodes under my arms and flu-like symptoms. On the 3rd day after the vaccine, I woke through the night with heart palpitations and sweating. Throughout that day I went for a walk and experienced a very sharp pain across the upper and the left-hand side of my chest. This lasted for approximately 20 minutes. That night I woke two times again with heart palpitations and sweating. I presented at the hospital the next day and they took blood tests. My bloods showed the Troponin enzyme that should be at ‘0’ as ‘2500’. This indicated damage to my heart.
‘After multiple tests, it was determined through an MRI that I had developed Myopericarditis due to the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. I was discharged from hospital 4 days later with medication to reduce the inflammation around my heart and was told I would not be able to run or exercise for around 3-6 months and will be under the care of a cardiologist for this period.’
Another, from Andrew, who was hospitalised by the AstraZeneca vaccine:
‘If winning lotto was as easy as getting a so-called “rare” adverse reaction from these vaccines that are supposedly voluntary but if I don’t get it I can’t do my job, therefore, I can’t put food on the table or pay the rent/mortgage, I’d be a millionaire.’
From Matt:
‘It has now been 10 weeks in hospital and I am still not able to walk. I was admitted 4 days after receiving my AZ vaccine previously being a 30 year old with no medical history to speak of, which left me with loss of function and sensation on my right side.’
From Adam:
‘5 days in hospital after 2nd Pfizer shot, server chest pain, shortness of breath and pain running down arm. ecg was out and bloods were elevated. was diagnosed with pericarditis. With my stay in cardiac ward I was wired up to the heart monitor the whole time, countless blood tests, ecgs, X-rays, CT scan, ultrasound, plus taking 20 tablets a day . . . Now that I’m out of hospital was told to take certain meds for 3 months and take it easy. Doctors and cardiologist wouldn’t go into detail on results.’
This, from Kym, a 38-year-old mother with no prior health problems, is perhaps the most important, because it demonstrates the unwillingness of the medical profession to admit that they have needlessly harmed countless people who would likely not have had any major complications from Covid19. Please share these accounts with your MP.
‘Monday 25/10 discharge dr verbally confirmed that these symptoms are related to the Pfizer vaccine. When I asked for the diagnosis written down on my discharge papers, the tone in the room changed! When asking the doctor for this verbal diagnosis to be put into writing, the answer was: “No, there is no need, this is normal and are just symptoms of the vaccine.” I informed the dr that my “symptoms” were also called “an adverse event” and must be reported to the TGA or QLD Health. Again the response was, “These are just symptoms of your vaccine not an adverse event, they are two different things.” I continued to push the issue with reporting this “event”. I then asked what my prognosis was and when these tachycardia events would subside. The doctor responded, “We don’t know, we don’t have data”, to which I responded that this is why I was pushing the point to have this event documented and reported. Immediately after this question, the doctor stated to me that I was “just admitted for reassurance!” This doctor did not admit me, an Emergency Dr did, this doctor had only met me for 5 minutes, stood at the end of my bed, no physical exam conducted. I was discharged with my papers stating “confident to be vaccination Pfizer-related symptoms/ reported to QLD Health re: adverse following injection”.’
Fact checking the Radio New Zealand fact check
COVID Plan B | November 17, 2021
Radio New Zealand has recently criticized a Facebook live conversation between former National MP Matt King and epidemiologist Dr Simon Thornley. While people should undertake their own research, we provide some comments related to the media’s critique. The evidence related to covid-19 policy continues to change and be updated.
In the interview, Professor Rod Jackson made several claims, decrying Thornley personally during the interview. Let’s examine them in turn.
- “There is no trial evidence that ivermectin [an anti-parasitic drug used as early treatment for covid-19 in some parts of the world] works in people with Covid – it doesn’t exist.”
Trials do exist. In fact a meta-analysis or summary study of six such trials exist. The pooled effect of these trials is a 79% decline in all-cause mortality (95% confidence interval: 89% to 58%). These trials are from Iraq, Iran, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey and India, places less reticent about its use. But they are trials, and the reduction in all-cause mortality is stark, an endpoint which is generally considered clinically important and free of error and bias. Another trial points to effective treatment, such as from vitamin D supplementation, which reduced intensive care admissions to 1/50 (2%) in the treated from 13/26 (50%) in the untreated in Spanish covid-19 patients.
We’re not advocating ivermectin at all. But we are prepared to look at the evidence. The fact that Jackson didn’t know there were trials invalidates his point.
- “Professor Jackson also said claiming Covid-19 was no worse than the flu was nonsense”.
In the interview, Thornley claimed the infection fatality rate of covid-19 was as bad as a ‘severe flu’. A summary study of many countries indicates that the average global infection fatality rate of covid-19 is 0.15% or 1/667 people.
The fatality rate for H1N1 influenza is variable, but this figure from covid-19 is well within the range of estimates presented from a similar summary study.
The comparison between covid-19 and flu is therefore fair and accurate. Jackson’s claim is misinformation.
We should note that many fatality studies take the definition of a covid-19 death at face value but it does not mean the individual died exclusively from the virus. This was exemplified by the counting a recent covid-19 death in a man who was actually shot and killed, yet tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 during the autopsy. This was defended by the Ministry of Health, as it conformed with World Health Organization policy.
We are able to test the accuracy of Jackson’s claimed fatality risk. In May 2020, Jackson admonished Sweden for its lax approach. He said the fatality rate of covid-19 was 1/100 people infected, so predicted 56,000 deaths from covid-19 in the country, assuming 60% of the population would be infected. To date, there have been about 15,000 covid-19 deaths, with an age distribution similar to that of background deaths (figure). In fact, by all accounts, Sweden has fared through the epidemic particularly well compared to other European countries.
Figure. Deaths with covid-19 in Sweden, by age at November 3, 2021. Source: statistica.com
- “This is a severe disease and we have a evidence-based treatment [the vaccine] where there is definitive evidence that it reduces the risk of severe disease and death by 95 percent, in that order.”
This is an extraordinary claim for several reasons. First, the original Pfizer trial reported about the same number of overall deaths in the treated and the untreated groups (14 in the treated and 13 in the untreated). In the six-month trial results, only three covid-19 deaths occurred, one in the treated and two in the untreated group. This is not consistent with Jackson’s assertion of a 95% reduction in risk of severe disease and death.
Given the numbers of deaths in the original trial, it is possible to work out whether the trial would have picked up a 95% reduction as Jackson claims. The trial would have been expected to have only one death in the treated group, and would have detected a difference more than expected by chance with 96% certainty.
There is observational evidence from Sweden of reduced covid-19 hospitalisations and deaths (not from all-causes), however, the vaccine effect diminished to zero for all three outcomes eight months after the date that the vaccine was administered.
To compound the confusion about the effect of the vaccine, the original Pfizer trial now is marred by whistle-blowers who have given the British Medical Journal evidence of fraud occurring during its conduct. Sixteen Swedish doctors have now called for the injection to be suspended as a result of these revelations.
Both Jackson and RNZ use extensive use of ad hominem attacks, which are considered an invalid, and lowest, form of argument.
Examples include:
- “anti-vax”
- “discredited academic”
- “And we have someone who is questioning that evidence, who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, talking to an epidemiologist who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
- “outlier in his field”.
The purveyors and writers of such ‘argument’ appear to have no embarrassment at the anti-intellectualism and inhumanity of their conduct.
We’ll stick to the contest of ideas by again considering Jackson’s accuracy. Back in August 2020, Jackson and his colleagues claimed that elimination was still the best strategy for New Zealand to tackle covid-19. That article has not dated well, yet the personalised tirade and arguments are familiar.
“He [Thornley] is the only dissenter in the epidemiological community,”
“It’s not like this is a discussion like a boxing match with two equal partners. What you’ve got is every experienced epidemiologist in the country supporting the Government’s elimination approach.”
“We are all advising the Government, and we speak with one voice. And you have got a junior epidemiologist who is presenting a different case.”
Jackson has made increasingly inaccurate claims during the pandemic, claiming, unchallenged that one in five infected people will be hospitalised after infection with covid-19. No media have ever fact checked this.
New Zealand’s own government data shows Jackson overestimated by at least a factor of ten, since the proportion of cases (rather than infections) hospitalised is 2% (table).
Table. Counts of cases of covid-19 in New Zealand (16 November 2021).
| Count | % | |
| Self-isolation | 2058 | 56% |
| Isolation Complete | 969 | 26% |
| Managed Isolation | 396 | 11% |
| Hospital | 73 | 2% |
| Other | 198 | 5% |
As sailing great Russell Coutts has recently pointed out, it is questionable how “media entities can maintain objectivity when they have accepted a government grant that is conditional on them promoting certain government policies”.
It is prudent to check all sources of information, not only those who dare to question the what is coming from the Beehive.
Sweden’s “Vaccine Passes” should teach us an important lesson.
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | November 18, 2021
The Swedish Public Health Agency (PHA) has announced that, starting next month, gatherings of more than 100 people will require “Covid passes” showing vaccination status.
Unlike similar schemes in other countries, a negative test will not be accepted as a substitute – either you’re vaccinated, or you can’t enter the venue.
There’s no talk yet of including restaurants, bars or cafes in this… but it is still early.
The PHA published a press release yesterday, detailing the plans. Quoted in The Local, Sweden’s culture minister Amanda Lind said:
Being able to use vaccination certificates is something the government has been preparing for a long time. You have previously heard me talk about vaccination certificates as a “plan B”. Now that situation is here,”
The vaccination pass comes on the heels of announcing the re-introduction of other “anti-COVID” measures, including limitations on mass indoor gatherings. The pass is being described as a way to get around these restrictions by “guaranteeing that participants are vaccinated”.
… and so Sweden falls.
From the beginning of the “pandemic” Sweden has been almost an outlier. Their refusal to lockdown was held up as an example of irresponsible laissez-faire libertarianism in the mainstream press, but made it an important touchstone for lockdown sceptics who viewed it as a bastion of common sense.
It turns out neither is true.
While Germany, Austria, New Zealand, Canada (and others) have gone full fascist brutally suddenly, Sweden is taking the scenic route. Rather than refusing to comply with the narrative, Sweden is simply using a looser net to catch the stragglers.
Those championing Sweden’s approach to Covid have just been caught in a supranational game of “good cop, bad cop”.
It shouldn’t really come as a surprise, the warning signs were all there.
For starters, the sheer amount of coverage given to the “Swedish approach” should have tipped people off.
Let’s take a moment to remind ourselves that the countries that have really rejected the Covid narrative in its entirety – such as Belarus – are never in the news.
In fact the governments that genuinely refused to play ball all had colour revolutions (or attempted ones at least), or saw their presidents die of sudden heart attacks.
Sweden suffered no such bad luck. Because it was playing its part.
For over a year and a half, Sweden has been portrayed as the calm voice in a room of panicking hysterics. They ‘refused’ to lockdown, and their “covid deaths” never reached the disastrous predictions of the modellers, whilst their economy suffered markedly less than the rest of Europe.
Playing that level-headed role has bought them credibility in Lockdown-sceptic circles, which can now be parlayed into an argument for vaccine passes: “Oh you hate vaccine passports? Well you love Sweden and they have them there!”
It’s all about manipulation – getting the doubters to concede to your narratives bit by bit without realizing they are doing so.
By supporting Sweden’s no lockdown approach, because it seems relatively sane, you concede, without fully realizing it, that there is a pandemic, and it does require some kind of intervention.
The same can be said for the “alternate therapies” and “pre-existing immunity” arguments.
Although both seem to have scientific evidence supporting them, the argument is built on a priori assumptions which concede the basic reality of the pandemic narrative.
And you will never win if you play by those rules. This is their pandemic and they can reinvent it in any way they choose.
Think promoting ivermectin is a good way of opposing the vaxx without alienating the believers? No!
You have to follow rules. They don’t. They can just invent a new “variant” out of wholecloth. One that is “resistant to ivermectin”.
And then what do you do?
It’s a simple and important lesson, hopefully, forced home by now:
Don’t part-accept irrationality in an effort to be reasonable. Don’t try and meet insanity in the middle. Deal only in what you can research and observe yourself.
Don’t attempt to compromise with the establishment, because they will never compromise back. There is no middle way.
Never, EVER, accept part of their narrative on trust.
Sweden should teach us never to pick sides in the Covid game, because it’s all rigged and the only way to win is not to play.
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From the Archives
Mutually Assured Delusion (MAD)
By Judith Curry | Climate Etc. | November 5, 2013
Groupthink: A pattern of thought charaterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics.
Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets, by Roland Benabou, published in the Review of Economic Studies. Benabou also has a talk (ppt slides) on this subject.
First, a definition of groupthink (from the ppt slides):
Janis (1972)’s eight symptoms [of groupthink]:
- illusion of invulnerability
- collective rationalization
- belief in inherent morality
- stereotyped views of out-groups
- direct pressure on dissenters
- self-censorship
- illusion of unanimity
- self-appointed mind guards
Sound like any groups that we know? … continue
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