Pre-Existing Chronic Conditions
for COVID-19 Deaths in Australia
In mainstream media in Australia today some perspective is being presented on the impact of COVID over the last 2 years. This is prompted by a report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on COVID deaths in Australia:
The cynical are saying that this new messaging in the media is in response to the realisation that lockdowns, mandates, etc have caused more harm than good, and so their relaxation by authorities will be in response to the “new science”. Definitely not in response to protests going on worldwide.
The basics of the numbers I cover here are already known.
For overseas readers you would know that Australia has been one of the most locked down countries in the world. In fact, one State, Western Australia, is still isolating. A funny story is that the Premier of that state is being sued by a businessman and the court case is being held in New South Wales (NSW). The Premier tried to get out of having to travel to NSW, but the court did not allow it. I believe the Premier is now changing the quarantine laws in his State.
So, our numbers are rather different to other countries on a population basis, but we may be able to learn from things like ratios. For reference in NSW vaccination rates are high, approximately 94%.
A summary of the media report today (News Corp, Rupert Murdoch publication)
The statistics, released by the ABS on Tuesday, showed there were underlying health issues involved in 92 per cent of the 2639 deaths attributed to Covid-19 between March 2020 and January 31 this year. The underlying conditions ranged from pneumonia and kidney infection to chronic heart illnesses.
During the same period, 100,000 Australians died from cancer, 32,000 from heart disease, 30,000 from Alzheimers and dementia, and 10,000 from diabetes. The Covid-19 deaths, meanwhile, made up only one per cent of all fatalities nationwide.
From the ABS report another interesting number I find:
Number of Deaths, where COVID alone is reported on the Death Certificate, was 220, ie 8.6% of the total.
This number is interesting, in the light of UK data release under a Freedom of Information Request
Dr John Campbell does a nice video on this data:
For England and Wales deaths, with COVID alone on Death Certificate, for 2020 and 2021 (Q1-Q3), were 17,403. Going to the https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk website, I make the total COVID deaths for the same period 120,442 and 5,925 for England and Wales respectively. Dr John uses whole of UK numbers for his comparison in the video.
So that’s a ratio of 17,403/126,367 = 13.7%. So, it’s a bit greater than in Australia but roughly 10% of COVID deaths have COVID-only on the death certificate in both countries.
In Australia the pre-existing conditions of the 92% of COVID deaths are broken down below:
The median age for those who died from COVID-19 in Australia was 81.2 years for males and 86.0 years for females.
Our average life expectancy in 2020 was 81.2 years for males and 85.3 years for females (source ABS).
In the Dr John Campbell video, for the UK, he notes that for males the effect of COVID is a decrease in life expectancy for males of 7 weeks and an increase of 4 days for females. The expression on his face at this part of the video is priceless.
If we could make a society made up of average people, COVID would be taking out those who are at their specified age of death by a few weeks early. Of course its not that simple.
It’s clear that the impact of COVID has been on the most vulnerable in terms of their background health and age. And this appears to have been forgotten by health bureaucrats, in their newfound power. In a previous newsletter I have written about aged care issues in Australia. In the state of New South Wales today, nurses have gone on strike for the first time in many years. They have had enough with conditions, long hours and poor patient to staff ratios.
Media reports, citing the unvaccinated being majority of deaths and filling up ICUs, pay no respect to the individuals. For example, is it necessary to vaccinate people with end stage cancer? There are many people who, because of their condition, have not been vaccinated or were only given one shot. The question of the danger to those with existing cardiac conditions is another thing.
In the Pfizer clinical trial data there were 7 deaths due to COVID, both vaccinated and unvaccinated. Numbers are too small to give an efficacy against death. But you can read a short description about each of the cases of death. All had significant underlying conditions. So none of this information on the risk of underlying conditions is surprising.
You can find links to the Pfizer summary reports from an Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) legal update, sent out today, regarding questions to the FDA on discrepancies in the Pfizer trial.
There are some very interesting points made in the ICAN report, regarding inconsistencies in the data, but that’s a subject for a future bulletin.