CDC director gives misleading testimony to Congress
Walensky misled Congress on vaccine effectiveness against viral transmission and on Cochrane review of face masks
BY MARYANNE DEMASI, PHD | APRIL 20, 2023
This week, CDC director Rochelle Walensky provided witness testimony to the House Committee on Appropriations responsible for overseeing the funding of various federal programs related to labour, health, education, and other related agencies.
But serious questions have been raised about the veracity of Walensky’s testimony.
Congressman Andrew Clyde (R-Ga) asked Walensky if her March 2021 public statement on MSNBC, in which she unequivocally said that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, they do not get sick” was accurate.
“At the time it was [accurate]” Walensky replied confidently.
She then proceeded to explain, “We’ve had an evolution of the science and an evolution of the virus” and that “all the data at the time suggested that vaccinated people, even if they got sick, could not transmit the virus.”
However, there was no such evidence at the time and it prompted criticism from scientists who said there weren’t enough data to claim that vaccinated people were completely protected or that they could not transmit the virus to others.
One of those critics was Jay Bhattacharya, professor of health policy at Stanford University School of Medicine.
“Back then, Walensky didn’t know if it was true. It was just an irresponsible use of a bully pulpit as a CDC director to say something that she did not know for certain to be true at the time,” said Bhattacharya.
“Unfortunately, people used that information to discriminate against unvaccinated individuals and would certainly have been used as fuel for very destructive policies like vaccine mandates,” he added.
Notably, only days after Walensky made that statement to MSNBC, a spokesperson from her own agency had to walk back the comments saying, “Dr Walensky spoke broadly in this interview” adding that it was possible for fully vaccinated people to get COVID-19.
Walensky missed the memo
Walensky should have known that when mRNA vaccines were first authorised in 2020, the FDA listed critical ‘gaps’ in the knowledge base. One of them was the vaccine’s unknown effectiveness against viral transmission.
Also, in Pfizer’s and Moderna’s original pivotal trials, there were 8 and 11 people respectively, who developed symptomatic COVID-19 in the vaccine group, proving the vaccines never had absolute effectiveness, like Walensky had claimed.
Several months later, the FDA’s evaluation stayed the same. In a clinical review, the FDA wrote, “remaining uncertainties regarding the clinical benefits of BNT162b2 in individuals 16 years and older, include its level of protection against asymptomatic infection and transmission of SARS-CoV-2, including for the delta variant.”
Even today, the FDA remains clear that efficacy against transmission is unproven. The FDA’s website states, “While it is hoped this will be the case, the scientific community does not yet know if Comirnaty will reduce such transmission.”
Walensky says Cochrane summary ‘retracted’
Another astonishing falsehood made by Walensky was her response to Congressman Clyde’s question about the Cochrane review which found that wearing face masks in the community “probably makes little to no difference” in preventing viral transmission.
Walensky enthusiastically stated, “I think its notable, that the Editor-in-Chief of Cochrane, actually said that the summary of that review was…[stumble]..she retracted the summary of that review and said that it was inaccurate.”
However, the summary of the review was not retracted, nor have the authors of the review changed the language in the summary.
Misleading statements by New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci has likely led to this falsehood being repeated (which I cover in a previous article).
In response to Walensky’s comments, Tom Jefferson, lead author of the Cochrane study said, “Walensky is plain wrong. There has been no retraction of anything.”
“It’s worth reiterating that we are the copyright holders of the review, so we decide what goes in or out of the review and we will not change our review on the basis of what the media wants or what Walensky says,” remarked Jefferson.
Bhattacharya was also stunned by Walensky’s comments. “It’s irresponsible for her to claim that the Cochrane review [summary] was retracted when it was not. It damages her credibility and harms the scientific process, which requires public officials to be honest about scientific results,” he said.
Did Walensky lie to Congress or is she poorly informed?
Witnesses at these hearings are expected to provide truthful and accurate information to the committee and may be subject to legal penalties if they provide false information or knowingly make false statements.
But will Walensky be held accountable for misleading Congress? Unlikely.
Former Director Of National Intelligence Admits That Fauci Lied About Gain Of Function Research
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | April 19, 2023
Only two years ago numerous alternative media sources including Zero Hedge were accused of spreading “conspiracy theories” and false information relating to the origins of the Covid-19 virus. Specifically, anyone who dared to suggest that the Level 4 virology lab in Wuhan, China (right across town from covid ground zero) might be the source of the outbreak, faced outright censorship on social media. The question many people should have been asking is: “Why?” – Why was the censorship so aggressive over clearly reasonable investigations into Wuhan lab operations?
Not only that, but why were the denials and spin from officials like Anthony Fauci so swift? Why not simply examine the evidence instead of dismissing it out of hand?
The real reason for the campaign to silence discussion on the Wuhan lab becomes evident as the connections between Fauci, the NIH and the lab are revealed. Elements of the US government including Fauci were in fact bankrolling gain of function research on coronaviruses at Wuhan, and shielding it from government oversight. It is undeniable. If one accepts that the most likely source for the covid pandemic was the Wuhan laboratory then one must also accept that Fauci and his associates helped to create the pandemic.
Fauci lied about these connections incessantly under oath. Here is Anthony Fauci defending his initial lie to Congress using further lies during questioning by Sen. Rand Paul:
Evidence of the research includes documents from the Department of Defense (obtained by Project Veritas ) which confirm that EcoHealth Alliance approached DARPA in 2018 about gain of function research on bat borne coronaviruses under a proposal called Project Defuse. DARPA rejected the proposal on the grounds that it did not outline the risks of such experimentation and violated a moratorium on gain on function research. EcoHealth then went to Fauci and the NIH for funding, and Fauci was quick to support it using the labs in Wuhan.
Documents from the NIH itself also show that the group engaged in gain of function research at Wuhan focusing on developing coronaviruses that could be transferred from animals to humans. Fauci was aware of this research by at least 2021 (and was likely involved from the very beginning) and yet continued to lie about NIH involvement.
Meanwhile, the National Pulse – which has done multiple deep-dive investigations on the topic, uncovered in May of 2001 that the WIV scrubbed all mention of its partnership with the NIH from their website.
Scrutiny over Fauci’s disinformation campaign may be too little too late, and we have to wonder if the man will ever face consequences for his actions. However, the exposure of Fauci and the NIH is so overwhelming that the former Director of National Intelligence now admits that Fauci misled Congress and the American public.
Hopefully, this revelation will help to discourage people from blindly following the claims of government bureaucrats during the next manufactured global crisis.
Fear of a Microbial Planet
BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | APRIL 13, 2023
Fear of a Microbial Planet, by Dr. Steve Templeton, is a wonderfully accessible book on the Covid era now published by Brownstone institute, offers desperately needed clarity and science on the organization and management of individual social life in the presence of pathogenic infection. It can be read as a definitive answer to expert arrogance, political overreach, and population panic.
For three years following the arrival of the virus that causes Covid, the dominant response from governments and the public has been to be afraid and stay far away through any means possible. This has further mutated into a population-wide germophobia that is actually being promoted by elite opinion.
Steve Templeton, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute and Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Indiana University School of Medicine – Terre Haute, argues that this response is primitive, unscientific, and ultimately contrary to individual and public health. The most unhealthy populations are those which preserve immunological naivete in the presence of a virus that is otherwise going to circulate widely.
Dr. Templeton’s story is both scientific and highly personal, taking the reader through the basics of immune response and public health even while relaying his personal frustrations with trying to talk sense to others in senseless times.
If a public health response is like an immune response, then consider this book as immunization against germophobia, politicized science, a self-defeating safety culture, and misplaced faith in experts. Dr. Templeton is our guide to helping us gain a new and more robust understanding of the relationship between the microbial kingdom and our own lives.
The pandemic forecasts in the United States were very grim. Experts were predicting that 60-70 percent of the population would ultimately be infected resulting in over 1.5 million deaths in just a few months. People on social media were in an absolute panic. Stories about empty shelves and runs on toilet paper were everywhere. Those who tried to refute these doomsday predictions were shouted down and eventually silenced.
And yet, the science on the virus was very clear. Disease severity was age-stratified. Extreme measures would not drive it away and would cause a tremendous amount of collateral damage. Even if the worse-case scenarios were true, it was extremely important that we take measures based on evidence.
But eventually, the cry to “do something” became overwhelming, and the costs no longer mattered. Trying to calm people with wisdom about infectious disease became nearly pointless. Germophobia swept through society and political culture.
Hardly anyone wanted to hear the truth that microbes are everywhere, and they cannot be avoided. There are an estimated 6×10^30 bacterial cells on Earth at any given time. By any standard, this is a huge amount of biomass, second only to plants, and exceeding that of all animals by more than 30-fold.
To live at peace with the microbial kingdom requires trained immune systems, as George Carlin said years ago. That means exposure and the protection of normal social functioning even under pandemic conditions with a new virus.
Many books have been and will be written about pandemic response mistakes, and that’s a good thing. There can’t possibly be enough reflection on what went wrong, otherwise we will be doomed to follow the same path, or an even worse one, next time. This book argues that the safety-at-all-costs culture will continue to result in counterproductive policies until it is challenged at its root.
How did people in our communities and around the world get to the point of hysteria over a pandemic with a clear age-stratified and comorbidity-amplified mortality? Why were young and healthy people with very little risk for disease and death treated as if they were a grave danger to others?
It was always pointless to try to stop much less eradicate this virus. We’ve evolved with pathogens and need to learn to live with them without imposing mass psychological, social, economic, and public-health damage.
Everyone who panicked to the point of meltdown needs this book as a corrective. And even if you did not, everyone knows someone who did, public-health officials above all else.
“They deliberately gave the unvaccinated a lower standard of care” – An honest doctor speaks out
This is an important testimony to add to the historical record
Forgotten Side of Medicine | April 12, 2023
I am a physician who stood against the false narratives swirling around Covid and, for a time, it seemed like I lost.
Before Covid became a public reality, I was working as a successful trauma surgeon and surgical ICU physician in the hospital that had the first diagnosed Covid case in America. I was working as one of the more senior surgeons of a team of 12 surgeons. The hospital and medical community had already been struggling prior to Covid with various departures from reality with narratives including ‘racism everywhere’ and ‘diversity as long as it supports deviancy’, but it wasn’t appearing to dramatically affect patient care.
In 2018-2019, I stumbled onto a fraud scheme perpetrated by some of the administrative doctors in our hospital that did cause patient harm, so I reported our hospital administration for fraud. I similarly observed and discovered other connected issues that caused patient harm by various other providers that I tried to bring to light in our hospital. I was ‘rewarded’ with 12 complaints filed against me over a two week period, in retaliation. These complaints accused me of breaches of almost every aspect of professional behavior and ethics. They followed one of the administrators sending out an email asking her colleagues to “get rid of Dr. Miller”. None of these allegations stood (they were all false to begin with), and I continued to do my job to the best of my abilities in this hostile situation, but it became increasingly difficult. Eventually, every single complaint was dismissed as unsubstantiated.
Then, through February and March of 2020, our hospital had a large number of Covid patients including a real upsurge of many sick patients in early March. A couple of weeks later, it hit the news, but only after the virus had passed its inflection point in our hospital and after our healthcare system was not in any threat of having inadequate resources. Things then went completely mad with hype and fear – again, this was after the real infectious surge was passed.
Suddenly, our hospital outcomes and quality data became hidden and opaque to us. Prior to this, almost all data were openly shared and discussed in quality assurance meetings. The hospital forced upon us a narrative that was pure lunacy and contrary to all available observations and previously available data. A chilling example is the following.
I was working a shift in the ICU in late April 2020 and had basically nothing to do because greater than half our beds were empty. We were ‘low censusing’ any nurses willing to go home because there were so few sick patients. I was having a cup of coffee, chatting with the staff and another ICU physician, who was in leadership, when the daily newspaper was delivered. Prior to the paper being delivered, we were all relaxed, jocular and noting how little work we all had. The other ICU physician picked up the local paper where the main headline said, “Local ICU Overwhelmed”. The article was referencing our ICU, as we were the only hospital in the county. He looked at me, started sweating, panicked and said, “What are we going to do? We may not be able to handle this!” I replied with, “Pour another cup of coffee and laugh at the morons writing the paper.” He became visibly distressed and left to call the hospital administration about the situation, who confirmed they were complicit with the newspaper article. This colleague was one of the medical directors of our ICU. Our hospital and ICU were not overfull at the peak number of infections in March 2020. In fact, the ICU was never overfull, even after the horrible protocols that hurt so many patients were established. I knew we were in serious trouble as a medical community when clinical leaders started believing the words in a newspaper and hospital administrators more than their own eyes and experience.
Then, I watched as every policy, practice and quality metric that makes a trauma and surgical programme have good patient outcomes was undermined or abandoned by my colleagues and hospital administration. I filed countless complaints to our quality department for disgusting breaches of care that were now becoming commonplace. I could not turn my back on my oaths taken to advocate for patients. Between mid-2020 and 2021, following a leak of information from the opaque administration, I learned that our unanticipated morbidity and mortality numbers had more than doubled for indexed trauma patients. It was horribly demoralising to watch.
After the vaccine was rolled out in late 2020, it became a functional mandate in the broader community, and then definitively mandated by the late summer of 2021. The medical community in the county I was working in (Snohomish, Washington State) started refusing to care for unvaccinated patients except in the hospital setting. I couldn’t believe that patients were banned from accessing basic primary care at first, but then I spoke to a man at my church who was denied both refills of his diabetic medications and treatment for a sinus infection by his primary care provider, all because of his Covid vaccination status. This was so inconceivable that I still didn’t believe it. Even when patients did make it to the hospital, I learned that the physicians and staff in the emergency room were directed to provide a lower tier of medicine to this group of patients. It was less than acceptable, and worse, less dignified, than the care given to any other patients pre- and post- Covid. I had to verify with physician leaders that they approved of this inhumanity. I found out that all the major healthcare systems in the county had agreed to this action, and drove the creation of the policies that demanded physicians act in direct opposition to their oaths. After discovering this, I departed from the medical community in spirit.
Working with my pastor, we turned our church into a free clinic to care for those ostracised from society. I obtained independent malpractice insurance and we started seeing patients. People were desperate. We didn’t advertise, but there were so many people seeking basic healthcare that we struggled to see everyone. I did my best to see people in their time of need, but it was hard. I was still working in my full-time hospital position. I just didn’t have enough hours in the day. Most of the people I cared for were seen at the church – they were met with maskless smiles, prayer, support and free medical care. Sometimes, people would be waiting in my driveway for me when I arrived home in the early morning after a night shift or late at night after I finished a day shift. What became obvious as the most important thing about our clinic is that our patients needed to be treated as valuable people created in God’s image.
Prior to this experience, I was a seasoned (and hardened) subspecialist with the best reputation one could hope for in the hospitals I worked in. When other doctors, health executives, nurses and local politicians or their families had surgical problems, I was often the one asked to deliver their care even if I wasn’t scheduled to be working. After our health care system abandoned the oaths we took as physicians, I had an identity crisis and pivoted to putting more efforts into the free clinic, caring for the dispossessed patients.
Eventually, my work at the free clinic treating unvaccinated patients became known, and the hospital administration learned of it. Subsequently, the real pressure against me started. The hospital responded by opening an investigation of me on synthesised charges of ‘micro-aggression’. There ended up being two separate and independent investigations (one by the hospital, one by my physician group leadership who were working in tandem with the hospital) into my conduct. My colleagues, who months earlier asked for my help and guidance about both professional and personal matters, would no longer return my calls, text messages or emails, or speak to me in public, for fear of being labelled as affiliated with me while in my state of political disfavour. The investigations themselves and the repercussions to my reputation were the punishment. I was treated as guilty, even when proven innocent, by the hospital administration and my colleagues. The investigations eventually exonerated me, my behaviour and my healthcare delivery, but left open the possibility for immediate suspension or termination if I committed a ‘micro-aggression’ in the future. Obviously, this was a no-win scenario for me since micro-aggressions are subjective, undefinable, unprovable and therefore indefensible. I refused to continue working without an independent mediator, so the hospital gladly paid out my contract instead of mediation and restoration.
Separately during this time I was reported to the State Medical Board by an outpatient pharmacist for prescribing a two-week course of fluvoxamine (an anti-depressant) to help a patient recovering after Covid. This prescription had been banned by the Washington State Medical Association as a treatment for Covid or its repercussions. Incidentally, the patient had a positive response and near complete recovery from her illness, but the pharmacist and WSMA didn’t seem to care about that data point and were apparently just offended that I violated their protocol.
By March and April of 2022, multiple other clinics in the county began to accept care for most patients, regardless of vaccination status, and so we wound down the free clinic at my church, transitioning people’s care to physicians in established practices who would now agree to deliver appropriate care. As I had been reported to the state (although no formal charges were brought) and I was being pushed out of hospital medicine for practising ethical medicine, I knew it was time to leave Washington State. The message to me was clear: if I stayed, I would have formal investigations that would prohibit me from obtaining a medical licence in another state. My livelihood would be stripped away. So, we sold our homes and boats, liquidated our assets and moved to South Florida in May 2022. I was, and am, bitter at the medical establishment that committed these crimes, so I planned to retire at age 50 with the move and have nothing further to do with the establishment.
However, after the hurricane came through Florida in the fall of 2022, I started doing volunteer work for hurricane victims. This included some medical relief work. I realised there is still good that can be done in medicine, that people need healthcare providers, and that by nature, I am a healer.
So, in February of 2023, I returned to practising medicine and started working as a primary care physician at a holistic clinic where no patient is turned away. I discovered that I enjoy being a family physician, too. I lost my prestigious career and my social position, but I did not lose my ethics or integrity. I did not violate my oaths of practice. So, ultimately, I have won. And I’m happy.
COVID deaths up 39% after vaccines rolled out in Ontario Canada
Weren’t the vaccines supposed to REDUCE deaths from COVID? Oddly, there was no press coverage on this.
By Steve Kirsch | April 7, 2023
Executive summary
The official government numbers show COVID deaths are up in Ontario by nearly 40% since the vaccines rolled out and hospitalizations due to COVID are up by 31%!
Both hospitalization and deaths from COVID were up dramatically.
You can see it yourself (see the red box below):
Deaths went from 5,485 in 2021 to 7,625 in 2022.
Could that be statistical noise? Not likely. Sigma is 74 so it’s a 29-sigma increase. In other words, this increase in death didn’t happen by chance; something caused it.
The data from the Ontario website
We know the vax makes you more likely to get COVID. If you had 3 shots, the Cleveland Clinic study showed you are about 2.5X more likely to get COVID. So that big spike in cases in 2022 is totally expected: it was our own doing. The more people who got COVID, the more people who died from COVID.
You’re less likely to die from a COVID case in 2022 than in 2021 because the variant is less deadly, not because the vaccine worked.
Cases
Hospitalizations
Deaths
Possible explanations
Was this because the virus was more deadly in 2022? I don’t think so.
Let’s look the world’s least vaccinated countries: Yemen, Haiti, and PNG. As you can see, deaths are way down in 2022 because the variants are less lethal:
These numbers show that the “it would have been worse if people weren’t vaccinated” excuse won’t hold any water.
Furthermore, we know the vaccines are super deadly. Consider the following recent post which is based on CDC data:
If it wasn’t the vaccine that caused this dramatic rise, what caused it?
Also, even the US data shows a decrease in 2022 vs. 2021, so it’s hard for Ontario to argue that the virus was more deadly in 2022:
This visualization was done on the CDC website on the Weekly Provisional Counts of Deaths page
So there is no rock they can hide under.
Of course, this is embarrassing for the narrative which is why nobody is talking about it.
Even Professor David Fisman is silent about the report. I reached out to him for an explanation and he ignored it, exactly as expected.
This is why there is no press coverage of this: because the numbers are inexplicable if the vaccine worked.
I just thought you’d like to know.
Summary
It’s unfortunate that the mainstream press isn’t covering this.
I can’t figure out why. The press is supposed to report this and get comments from both sides. Instead, they ignore the story.
A nearly 40% increase in COVID deaths and the mainstream press ignores the story!?! WTF is going on here?
But I thought people would want to know the truth.
Half of ‘Long Covid’ Sufferers Have Never Had Covid, Says New Study
BY IAN MACLEOD | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 3, 2023
The battle of ideas around Covid has few clashes as hotly contested as Long Covid. Alarmists have hyped the frequency and severity with which infection causes long-term damage. Sceptics see no reason for panic. A new study helps to settle at least part of this debate.
The paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s (JAMA) Network Open looked at “post–COVID-19 condition (PCC) in young people after mild acute infection” to find how common it was and to find risk factors. Participants were aged between 12 and 25.
The authors offer this straightforward conclusion: “PCC was not associated with biological markers specific to viral infection.” That is, participants were equally likely to suffer from ‘Long Covid’, whether or not they had suffered from acute COVID-19.
The researchers concluded that Long Covid is predicted by “initial symptom severity” and, intriguingly, “psychosocial factors”.
The full article is available on JAMA Network Open.
The main results from the present study were: (1) the prevalence of PCC six months after acute COVID-19 was approximately 50%, but was equally high in a control group of comparable SARS-CoV-2-negative individuals; (2) acute COVID-19 was not an independent risk factor for PCC; (3) the severity of clinical symptoms at baseline, irrespective of SARS-CoV-2 status, was the main risk factor of persistent symptoms six months later.
Symptom prevalence data are consistent with other controlled studies of young people after acute COVID-19 reporting a high symptom load, with only subtle differences between individuals testing positive and negative for SARS-CoV-2. Correspondingly, a large population-based study found no associations between most persistent symptoms attributed to COVID-19 and serological evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection. …
These findings suggest that persistent symptoms in this age group are related to factors other than SARS-CoV-2 infection, and therefore question the usefulness of the WHO case definition of PCC.
Worth reading in full.
Highly Vaccinated COVID ‘Success’ New Zealand Sees Huge Increase in Death Rates
Concerning increase in mortality in New Zealand
By Ian Miller | Unmasked | April 7, 2023
COVID has unfortunately created any number of repetitive stories.
Jurisdiction imposes mask mandates, population complies, masks prove ineffective, media claims masks didn’t work because of lack of compliance.
Another example would be when countries with extraordinary compliance, such as Singapore or South Korea, would see increases ignored entirely, or blamed on the population not wearing masks of a correct level of quality.
Yet as a general rule, the most consistently predictable repetitive storyline has been the media and expert community declaring that a country was a pandemic success, only for their results to dramatically change in a relatively short period of time.
This was the case with the Czech Republic, with Australia, with Taiwan and many other locations.
Even within the United States adjustments showed that states like California – heralded as pandemic winners – actually had significantly worse results than previously realized.
But few places on earth have been as heavily praised as New Zealand.
Their science-following leadership was repeatedly hailed, honored, and praised for their effective communication, endless lockdowns, tyrannical response to protests, and prolific commitment to mandates.
All of the above, combined with their strict border controls, should have meant that New Zealand would avoid the significant increase in negative outcomes seen in other parts of the world.
At least, that’s what the media and activist public health authorities claimed would happen.
The reality is far more complicated.
Throughout 2020 and into 2021, New Zealand saw very little COVID transmission.
Unsurprisingly, the BBC praised the country for their efforts, explaining in detail how the country had become “COVID free.”
Jacinda Arden, now former prime minister, was once so completely committed to maintaining an illusion of infallibility that she claimed that the only source of accurate information available to the public was the government.
Of course, Arden then made the provably inaccurate claim that those who were vaccinated would net get sick and would not die.
The ridiculous over-confidence in the proclamations of public health authorities led to Arden convincing New Zealanders that strict mandates and interventions could stop the spread of the virus.
As winter and new variants arrived in 2021, Arden and local leaders predictably enforced increasingly strict measures. Mask mandates, lockdowns and “red traffic light” policies include vaccine passports.
Surprise. None of it worked.
After several months of completely unchecked spread, even the country’s cumulative metrics, once seemingly so impressive, exploded in dramatic fashion.
Consistently and exceptionally high mask wearing rates were also entirely ineffective.
And yet defenders of New Zealand’s authoritarian policies still believed that the country’s strategy was warranted, for one specific reason.
They had delayed the spread of the virus until the COVID vaccines became widely available.
In theory, that was supposed to prevent a substantial increase in deaths, especially considering their extraordinary rate of uptake.
That didn’t work either.
While these rates were generally lower after adjusting for population than many other countries, they still represented an obvious, significant surge compared to previous time periods.
But COVID related deaths only tell a part of the story, often influenced by attribution methodology and testing.
In theory, New Zealand’s exceptional vaccination rate and consistently high mask compliance should have meant that all cause mortality would also remain low.
So did it?
Fortunately, thanks to the New Zealand government’s own data, we now have an answer. And just as the country’s failure to stop omicron, it presents another contradiction to the endless media praise.
Despite the exceptionally high vaccination rate, despite their exceptionally high booster rate, despite vaccine passports, strict lockdowns, “red traffic light” policies and border controls, the pandemic came for New Zealand as well.
The government’s own data shows that all cause deaths in New Zealand jumped significantly in 2022, to the highest level in recorded data.
The country universally praised for their dedication to following The Science™, whose leadership told the public that following her dictates would keep them safe, stop the spread and control outcomes, has seen a record level of all cause mortality.
Exactly the same as other countries who were criticized for their supposedly less effective response.
Even after adjusting for population, the scale of the surge in 2022 is exceptional.
In fact, it represents an over 17% increase from 2020.
Not to mention that the one year increase, over 10%, represented the largest single year increase in New Zealand since the 1918 flu.
So why didn’t their policies prevent this? Why didn’t waiting for widespread vaccination to open up prevent this?
The New Zealand government themselves blame COVID for at least a portion of the increase. So why were so many people dying of COVID given the country’s exceptional vaccination and booster uptake and masking?
After all, ~95% of the population over 12 had been fully vaccinated by the middle of 2022, with over 90% fully vaccinated by early 2022. Similarly, adult booster rates were nearly 80% by early in 2022.
Why didn’t it work?!
Some may try to claim that their results would have been worse had they not had such policies.
But countries like Sweden thoroughly debunk that theory. Sweden had one of the least restrictive responses anywhere on earth, yet their results were among the best in their region.
Even throughout 2022, excess deaths remained low.
So why did New Zealand fail?
Compared to other countries, New Zealand’s cumulative COVID mortality rate still remains low. But the all cause mortality tells a different story.
Their strict policies and delayed opening were supposed to prevent this exact situation from occurring. All because the government put their faith in experts.
The experts mistakenly believed that vaccinations would prevent virtually all deaths, as Jacinda “we are your sole source of truth” Arden explained.
Obviously that was not the case.
It’s not clear what percentage of the excess mortality rate came from vaccinated people. But even more importantly, the majority of the increase was entirely unrelated to COVID.
Nearly 6,000 more people died in 2022 than did in 2020, despite a relatively small population increase. Yet the government says just 2,400 were associated with COVID.
So what caused the other 3,600 unexpected deaths?
In raw numbers, nearly 7,500 more people died in 2022 than in 2016. Accounting for population increases, that meant virtually 100 more people per 100,000 died in 2022 than in 2016.
What happened?
Whatever it was, it’s almost certainly related to New Zealand’s mistaken assumptions. Ancillary lockdown-related causes, missed health screenings, side effects — any or all of it could have contributed to the dramatic increase.
And all of it was because the government mistakenly proclaimed that they could control COVID. Instead, they delayed the inevitable.
Governments have many lessons to learn from the pandemic, but the first should be to never, ever, put blind faith in “experts.”
All too often they’re flying blind themselves.
Featured Video
US Military: Who’s Pulling the Strings? /Lt Col Daniel Davis
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Cuba: the Weight of a Long History
200 Years of US Interventionism
By MANUEL R. GÓMEZ | CounterPunch | February 27, 2015
… As far back as 1809, Jefferson tried to purchase Cuba. In 1820 he went further; he told Secretary of War J.C. Calhoun that the U.S. “ought, at the first possible opportunity, to take Cuba.” As President, John Quincy Adams predicted that Cuba would fall “like a ripening plum into the lap of the union.” These are but two of many prominent examples of a widespread ambition to annex Cuba, or at least to control its destiny, from very early in U.S. history. After “the West,” Cuba figured as a prominent second place in U.S. expansionist aims from the beginning of the Republic. … Read full article
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Israel Kidnaps, Tortures, and Rapes Humanitarian Activists
- Iran demands ‘zero-tolerance’ on nuclear strikes, cites 17 US-Israeli attacks against its facilities
- ‘Biden’s war’ has become Trump’s – Lavrov
- Suspected Ukrainian drone explodes in Romanian port
- ‘Let That Sink In’: Feds Charge Two NIH Researchers With Smuggling Mpox Into U.S.
- Thousands protest in Albania over Kushner tourism project
- Gitmo and Torture Revisited
- The Quiet Coup That Put Israel Inside Americas Intelligence Core
- China Will Absorb Taiwan
- US Military: Who’s Pulling the Strings? /Lt Col Daniel Davis
- If Americans Knew
- Pro-Israel voices win out, kill bill to stop US-Israel military integration
- Revealed: Israel’s curriculum for ‘influencing public consciousness’
- Finally: House votes to end Trump’s war with Iran
- Iran Never Threatened to ‘Wipe Israel Off the Map’
- Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon devastates centuries of history
- This Pro-Israel Group Paved the Way for Trump’s Disastrous War in Iran
- Kushner floats cash-for-normalization with Israel to expand ‘Abraham Accords’
- More Mass Displacement: Israel’s Plan to Deepen Gaza Occupation
- “No place is safe in Gaza,” as family of 5 incinerated in their sleep – Daily Update
- The battle for Al-Aqsa: How Israel is reshaping the status quo
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
- Germany’s Ecological Holocaust… Once Fairy Tale Forests Getting Cleared For Wind Turbines
- A Grand Solar Minimum Has Arrived…Global Cooling Of At Least 1°C Is Expected By The 2030s, 2040s
- European “Expert Commission” Urges COVID-19-Like Global Climate State Of Energency!
- Real-World Observations Do Not Support The Position That Climate Change Is Human-Caused
- Germany’s AfD Party Calls Debunked Climate Scenarios “Greatest Fraud In Human History”
- Researchers Find Rapid Global Warming Phase At End Of Last Ice Age (Ca.18,000 Years Ago)
- Even The DNA Of Single-Celled Plankton Can Upend Alarmist Arctic Sea Ice Melt Claims
Aletho News 