Unburdened by what has been…
There were some great comments after my last article Peak Death Coming.
They raised many things in my mind and in this article, I’ll go through several topics to unburden myself from what has been (with reference to the orations of the possible future president of the United States).
One of the comments asked if the poster Dr Suzie Niblett presented at the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSANZ) meeting could be made available. We checked and it can be freely distributed. Here is the poster in pdf format:
A clip from the poster is shown below.
Hopefully the work will raise some awareness amongst Australian cardiologists. A key figure: 38.1% of all cardiac adverse events ever submitted to the Australian adverse event reporting system in its 52 years history of operation come from COVID vaccines.
Former Premier Unburdened by what has been…
The former Premier of New South Wales, Dominic Perrottet, resigned from state parliament this week and in his “valedictory speech” he admitted to getting one thing wrong.
Perrottet took over during COVID times from previous premier Gladys Berejiklian who resigned under a cloud of corruption allegations. Premier Gladys went a bit mad under pressure. She notably made statements:
"I wouldn't want to be in the room with lots of people who aren't vaccinated,"
"But I just want to make this point very clear: if people want to enjoy the things we have missed such as a meal … they're going to have to be vaccinated."
In his speech the former premier unburdened himself from the past by admitting to the mistake:
“that was the strict enforcement of vaccine mandates.”
He said while health authorities and governments were well-meaning in trying to stop the spread, ultimately individuals’ choices should have been respected.
“If the impact of vaccines on transmission was limited at best, as is now mostly accepted, the law should have left more room for respect for freedom,” he said.
“Vaccines saved lives but ultimately mandates were wrong. People’s personal choices shouldn’t have cost them their jobs.
This made news round the world, ie a politician admitting he was wrong. But the “vaccines saved lives” implicitly justifies the mistake.
There are many comments in response to the article on Perrottet’s mistake and you can see what people think.
I must admit Perrottet actually struck me as a decent fellow. He did seem to try to do the right thing even when it was politically unpopular. An example was trying to do something for the plight of the professional NSW firefighters, some of whom I was fortunate to get to know during this journey. Perrottet did seem to try to resolve the stupidity of the mandates.
Legacy news articles burdening me
Several legacy media articles have reported on the Excess Mortality Inquiry with stupid headlines like the following claiming anti-vaxxers have flooded the inquiry.
Note to read the full article may need subscription, depending on how often you have been to the site (Australian Financial Review).
We have to ask what is the purpose of such a government inquiry? Is it to hear from the government departments who guided us with mistakes?
NO of course not.
The parliament can question government departments any time through regular committee hearings. It seems the legacy media wants to hear repeats of official narratives. The inquiry’s purpose should be to hear from those whose voices haven’t been heard. Irrespective of what the government thinks.
And so this imbecile reporter, with smirk on his face, takes a cheap shot in his headline to categorise all of them as anti-vaxxers. He is not a reporter but a Rita Skeeter.
From the article:
The TGA says deaths from vaccines are extremely rare and in most cases deaths after vaccination were not caused by the vaccine. The CDC points to various peer-reviewed research that finds “people receiving COVID-19 vaccines are less likely to die from COVID-19 and its complications, and are at no greater risk of death from non-COVID causes than unvaccinated people.”
We already know all the tripe from the TGA and CDC.
The article does go on to note some of the other independent organisations offering different views from the government narrative, including Australians for Science for Freedom, Children’s Health Defence and COVERSE, but providing no substantive detail contained in their submissions. Unfortunately, our Australian Medical Professionals’ Society (AMPS) submission doesn’t get a mention as it hasn’t been uploaded to the Inquiry site yet.
I have received some criticism on the AMPS submission, that it should have been a short concise document to get a message across. It has been suggested it is too long and complex a document for anyone to read.
This is where I am conflicted. We are dealing with possibly the most complex challenge in humanity’s existence. And I feel to not provide the detailed evidence is an abandoned opportunity.
It was more than just a novel virus, it was disruption to health systems due to panic, a system in Australia at least, that worked as well as could be expected in normal times but very finely balanced with no spare capacity. A system disrupted where doctors were not allowed to prescribe medicines that they thought would work if delivered in the early stage of infection. Introduction of new medicines with a safety profile that was uncovered on the fly as it was delivered, and a subsequent coverup of those harms and gaslighting of those who were adversely affected. And then looping back to sacking those healthcare workers who didn’t feel the vaccines were as safe and effective as promised, compounding the disruption to the health system. A viscous cycle of incompetence that small-minded bureaucrats, politicians and reporters etc presided over.
The problem covers many disciplines.
Unfortunately many people, and the excess mortality inquiry I suspect, want simple answers. We just need to trust the TGA that there were 14 deaths only from the COVID vaccines in Australia.
The problem is that we are dealing with one of the most complex systems imaginable, across many disciplines that need to be considered. It is a multi-dimensional problem and the agencies that should be vigilant are uni-dimensional, unable to think beyond a line let alone outside a square.
In a response to a questions on notice you can find here from Senator Babet, the ABS was asked if they had done any statistical analysis on the TGA’s adverse event reporting system. The answer is NO.
That pretty much sums it up. The agencies don’t look beyond their remit. There is no advantage to them to do that. The Actuaries Institute, similarly quoted in news articles, have also done no investigation into the adverse event reporting system, neither the hospital admissions, neither anything else apart from a set of numbers and massaged them to give a result that is acceptable.
Frank Chung, from news.com.au, is one of the few Australian mainstream media reporters that provides balanced commentary. See this article:
There is some hope for honest reporting.
Now then, I have unburdened something from the past, from what has been.
Back to the Olympics
The marathon swims were held in the polluted Seine River and there are many reports of athletes being sick after the races, some athletes even pulling out of the races for their own health safety.
But of course, there are officials who claim there is no direct link:
“For the moment, there is no direct link between the Seine and any illness,” Paris deputy mayor Pierre Rabadan said in a press conference Monday.
Hmmm, what does this remind you of? No evidence of any harms caused by a toxic source. There is shit in the river and officials and experts say there is no proof that’s what caused athletes to throw up.
But an interesting point I saw come up is that athletes have found drinking Coca Cola helps kill the bacteria. In fact, it’s one of the Australian swimmers who has said that’s what they all know to do.
This must be gold for Coca Cola, one of the major sponsors of the Olympics.
It’s common experience that after eating out a greasy, oily meal, that drinking Coke seems to settle the stomach. It’s like degreaser. I remember the school experiment where you put a dirty coin in some coke and the coin comes out glistening. It seems the degreaser effect helps after swimming in shit.
The article notes the health experts are suspicious of this folklore that the athletes are touting. There’s no evidence they say.
Another item that caught my attention. Many athletes have caught COVID. The US winner of the men’s 100m sprint backed up in the 200m and was tipped to win. But he caught COVID. He still ran and came third for the bronze medal. His heroics of running while sick with disease were lauded. He had to be taken away in a wheelchair after the race.
It’s hard not to see the irony of this theatre. A few years ago COVID was going to kill everyone. If you weren’t vaccinated or had COVID you couldn’t compete. Athletes finished their race and had to put on masks immediately. You could see them gasping for breath in post-race interviews with the theatre of masks protecting them when they left the water.
The common sense is that if you are sick you need to rest. Not taking immediate precautions when one gets sick typically exacerbates problems. But now it is heroic now to carry on.
It’s hard to express the magnitude of this stupidity in the Western world.
Officials want people to follow their rules. If they say the river is OK to swim in the river, then it is safe. They say there is no evidence drinking water with shit in it will hurt you.
Swimming is my favourite sport. Swimming pools were closed down during the main lockdowns in Australia and then reopened cautiously. When they first reopened you had to be vaccinated because unvaccinated would spread COVID in the chlorinated water. In the 50m pool they put plastic barriers across the width of the pool at the 25m mark. This was some sort of attempt to distance the swimmers to keep everyone “safe”.
Initially you could think this measure is protecting people and then you go hang on? In your own lane it does potentially minimise the proximity with another swimmer in that lane (although it could be exactly the same if you are in sync and reach the barrier wall at the same time). But in the adjacent lanes it means you pass people more often. I actually spent mental energy trying to figure this out. This whole debacle has messed with my mind to that extent, ie spending time trying to explain stupidity. Perhaps COVID transmission is worse longitudinally rather than laterally? So these barriers would have helped.
In the words of Forest Gump “Stupid is as Stupid does”.
Wrap up
I have several other items to unburden from the past that will have to wait. There were good comments on life expectancy to my last article, with one reader pointing out that old mate Ray’s life expectancy was actually 9 years, rather than the 4 he quoted. I find life expectancy a non intuitive concept and I have some more to write on it.
Going through answers to Questions on Notice from the Senators at the excess Mortality Inquiry, I came across mortality numbers quoted to the Senators that differed from ones I had used in my analysis. It got me worried. Had I done something wrong? While the number of all cause deaths is one number we think we can trust, it turns out about 3,000 deaths got switched between years at one point. I’ll write about this soon.
I was meeting with a friend during this last week. We are working on a tutorial for AI. We were trying to work out how to cover some AI concepts, eg explainability, transparency. Some of these concepts overlap. My friend (who BTW is on the same page) suggested that a Venn diagram might be useful. After he said it, we looked at each other and burst out laughing, with people around us wondering what was going on. For the significance of Venn diagrams please watch the following short clips.
Also here.
I’ll finish now as I have unburdened myself of enough from the past week.
Well Andrew I always enjoy your humour and you had me laughing again as I finished this article. But there were some very serious points along the way. Oh dear, the stupidity of it all is so obvious. Why are we humans so like lemmings?
Excellent write up Andrew, gotta love them Venn diagrams.