Australian Election

and update on infection rates post lockdowns

In my last newsletter I reported that Australia was second only to New Zealand in COVID-19 infection rate. This week Australia is the world leader as reported by our ABC News.

I haven’t checked the numbers myself but assume them to be correct. Apparently, this is ignoring small countries of Montserrat, Anguilla and the Falklands. You may recall in my analysis of Effectiveness around the World I did not include small population countries as the reporting consistency appeared to vary significantly for them.

While Australia isolated, the States in Australia isolated themselves within the country. The State that isolated the most significantly, Western Australia (WA), is “bracing for new infection records” according to the news article. The geography of Western Australia is such that it is isolated from the rest of Australia. For example, it is quicker to fly to New Zealand from Sydney than it is to Perth in WA. The middle part of Australia is relatively empty and so the nature of its location has made WA fairly self-sufficient with respect to most services, making it feasible to lock itself away within the country.

The dubious honour of highest infection rate has been shared amongst island countries, besides Australia, that attempted COVID Zero policies, e.g. New Zealand, Taiwan. All are highly vaccinated populations.

It tells us the danger of making significant changes to a system with no reference testing and expecting there to be no collateral damage effects. Clearly the human immune system, if not challenged, becomes weaker. The last two newsletters on Excess Mortality showed the reduction in deaths due to influenza in the Winter season, while locked down, may not be without side effect. Perhaps the frail that did not die from Winter flu are caught in the next bad thing.

I have become aware how different dealing with mortality data is to other data work I am used to. That is because the thing we are looking at, ie human life, has an inevitable end point. This is in contrast to the signal to noise type problems I typically deal with in my work. Signal and noise can keep going on forever. In mortality, if we delay deaths because we isolate from normal environment, it can come back with a vengeance. This makes it challenging to pick out the true excess mortality. Looking into mortality of younger ages is therefore the key here.

I put in a Freedom of Information (FOI) Request in my State, New South Wales, to obtain mortality data stratified across age and vaccination status. This is what Professor Norman Fenton has demonstrated is the only valid way to tell what is going on given the misclassification of data that has gone on (see his YouTube presentation here). This FOI was recently rejected on the basis that, while it was considered a “valid” request, the State was not responsible for all the data. In Australia we have a situation where responsibility for health is bounced back and forth between State and Federal governments as it suits them. I know if I make the request to Federal Health department the response will be that data is held by the State. If anyone has suggestions let me know in the comments.

What the above discussion highlights is that infection rates are higher in highly vaccinated, previously locked down populations. This is not saying it is causal, but it is a correlation that should be a start for further investigations.

Looking into the data, that showed vaccinated were infected at significantly higher rates than unvaccinated, from the end of last year, started me digging further into the data. It was the risk of infection and spreading the virus that was the rationale to discriminate against those who chose not to be vaccinated. A large number of people in Australia have lost their jobs as a result of choosing not to take the COVID vaccinations.

People have handled this in different ways. Some have chosen alternative careers or lifestyles. Hopefully this will be for the better for them anyway. For some there is a mental health impact that is ignored by those supposedly looking after mental health on behalf of government.

Through being a volunteer firefighter, I have got to know some of the people in the permanent Fire and Rescue service and Rural Fire Service who have lost their jobs.

Father and son volunteers. Old one on the left, younger one in charge on the right.

What is bizarre is that these people have been prepared to risk their life for others. Now, after they have chosen not to take an experimental therapy, for which it is now clear leads to a higher chance of being infected (due to some sort of suppression of the innate immune system) they are deemed a risk. And if they are under 60 it has become clear that the mRNA vaccines lead to an unnecessarily high risk to benefit ratio for their own health.

I have been privy to some of the information used in dismissing these people.  It is basically configured as misconduct for not following orders. Information provided to “convince” people in the services to comply included rates of hospitalisation and death for vaccinated relative to unvaccinated, relevant to 80-year-olds. No mention of adverse events and deaths in their age group was provided.

The Election

We have an election in Australia this weekend. I know some of the readers of my newsletter from overseas are interested in what is happening in Australia. It is unbelievable to some friends overseas how things have played out here. I gather Canada is in the same situation.

In this short video in a Sky News report there is a clip from a town hall event to meet the candidates in a Sydney electorate.

One of the candidates is unvaccinated and another (climate change activist) is demanding they have demonstrated a negative test in the middle of the discussion. The legacy media host of the event is calling for a check of the venue’s health and safety rules. It is bizarre. It is also unnerving.

Around the same time the local Rebel News reporter retweets a post showing the climate candidates supporters at work in their Porsche SUV!

It is worth following to the original post and looking at some of the amusing comments to the post like “Saving the climate one SUV at a time” and detailed analysis of mileage of the particular model of car.

For many Australians it is a place we don’t recognise.

To finish up a childhood friend is running as a candidate in the election. His name is Father Dave Smith. He is known as the “Fighting Father”. See his website here.

He is a boxer and does work with youth on the streets. He has stood up for political prisoners and taken on other just causes. I admire his courage. He is particularly concerned with an increase in suicides, which he is personally aware of through his work. These have occurred during and subsequent to the lockdowns. Father Dave and I became particularly close when we were young as both our mothers had cancer and they also became friends during this time. Unfortunately, they both passed away at an early age. This had a big impact on us both and affected us in different ways. One thing in common was a concern for the health of others.

Data analyst with Fighting Father Dave

I’m working on further in-depth analysis on data Excess Mortality and will report again soon. There are other strange things like increases in single car accidents occurring.

Please wish Australia all the best for this election.