The University of Otago publishes a blog called Public Health Expert. The 24th August edition was entitled “The Covid-19 experience in Aotearoa New Zealand and other comparable high-income jurisdictions and implications for managing the next pandemic phase“.
The authors were Dr Jennifer Summers, Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Lucy Telfar Barnard, Dr Julie Bennett, Dr Amanda Kvalsvig, Prof Michael Baker who all work at the Otago University Department of Public Health.
This blog has been picked up uncritically by newspapers across New Zealand. For example the Otago Daily Times claims that:
“A new analysis has shown how New Zealand’s pandemic response left it with one of the lowest rates of excess mortality in the world – sparing it the thousands of extra deaths seen even in elimination countries like Taiwan and Australia.”
The blog uses data from Our World in Data, a US website, in order to compare New Zealand data with Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Australia, and South Korea. Based on their analysis the authors of the blog advise extending NZ pandemic policy including vaccine enforcement, mask wearing, home isolation, and vaccines for the under fives.
The blog prints a graph (below) apparently showing that New Zealand has the lowest rate of excess all-cause deaths among the six countries for the years 2020, 2021, and 2022 (the small print notes that the graph might not count all deaths due to incomplete coverage and delays in reporting).
The graph appears to show that all cause deaths in New Zealand have remained well below pre-pandemic levels throughout the three years covered by the pandemic. The Y axis is labeled ‘number of deaths per million relative to previous years’. The graph does not state whether this is a weekly total or a cumulative total or something else.
A naive reading of the graph, which was presumably the approach of the various poorly qualified science explainers in MSM, appears to show that excess deaths per million are currently at a rate of 200 deaths below previous levels (per week, per year, per three years??? the blog doesn’t tell you), but you would be completely wrong to read the graph like this.
If you go vertically up from the date 1 July 2022 to the graph and then across to the Y access, as we are trained to do in school, you reach a figure—minus 250. If you think that means in the week ending 1st of July all-cause deaths were 250 below the long term average, you are being misled. The all-cause death rate for the most recent week of August is actually 246 ABOVE the long term average.
Close inspection shows that the graph is a measure of the accumulating excess death rate for the entire pandemic, not the current death rate. In other words the early death data before Covid infection and vaccines is averaged with present data which appears to lower the current death rate.
The success claimed for New Zealand by the blog and the low death rate reported by MSM is actually due to the extreme lockdown measures of 2020 and the consequent zero flu rate. Since then, matters have consistently deteriorated and now deaths are accelerating to unprecedented high levels.
In 2020 there were virtually no Covid infections and no vaccines. The closure of borders and lockdowns ensured there was no flu season. All-cause deaths were very low. For most of 2021 lockdowns continued and Covid cases were very low, vaccines were rolled out. Deaths rose and peaked parallel to the vaccine uptake. In 2022 all-cause deaths have risen dramatically. Deaths because of Covid form a very small percentage of the all-cause deaths.
Official New Zealand Ministry of Health figures from last week show that all cause deaths were 946 for the week. This is a record for New Zealand. The pre-pandemic average number of deaths per week was 663. Taking into account seasonal fluctuations (winter deaths are higher) the current excess number of weekly all cause deaths is 35% above the long term average. A very worrying figure indeed. Among the highest in the world, not the lowest.
The correct interpretation of the 2022 figures in the graph is as follows:
All six countries which have followed vaccination policies very similar to New Zealand now have rapidly rising all-cause death rates.
Are you impressed or are you disappointed with the rather deceptive approach being taken by Otago scientists? If you are concerned you are not alone, in fact you are in august company. Rishi Sunak, until recently UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, currently in the last weeks of his bid for the Tory leadership, has given an interview with Spectator magazine entitled:
“The lockdown files: Rishi Sunak on what we weren’t told”
These are some of his conclusions he reached from inside the UK government decision-making process:
“When the evidence started to roll in, a strange silence grew in government: dissenting voices were filtered out and a see-no-evil policy was applied.”
“A cost-benefit calculation – a basic requirement for pretty much every public health intervention – was never made…. The script was not to ever acknowledge side effects [of policies]”.
One of Sunak’s big concerns was about the fear messaging, which his Treasury team worried could have long-lasting effects. “In every brief, we tried to say: let’s stop the “fear” narrative. It was always wrong from the beginning. I constantly said it was wrong.”
The UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson wanted to present it as ‘following the science’ rather than a political decision, and this had implications for the wiring of government decision-making. It meant elevating Sage, a sprawling group of scientific advisers, into a committee that had the power to decide whether the country would lock down or not, but it was a forum where questions could not be asked. Sunak said:
“This is the problem, if you empower all these independent people [advisors], you’re screwed.”
Sunak said that questions and concerns raised by some Sage scientists during their private meetings were withheld from government. As a result, according to Sunak, government pandemic policies, especially lockdowns, created an economic disaster.
This week’s Public Health blog from the University of Otago is a prime example of what Rishi Sunak has revealed. The blog is aimed directly at informing future government policy. It says:
“Based on a comparison of responses we provide updated recommendations for the NZ Government around strengthening existing public health measures to reduce the immediate and long-term impacts from Covid-19.”
In fact, the information provided by the Otago Department of Public Health scientists to the government in this blog is lacking key explanatory information and apparently biased in favour of particular policy decisions. It suggests that prior NZ policy has been the best in the world and should be extended.
Their recommendations include:
- Extending current government messaging encouraging boosters
- Strengthening measures in schools.
- mRNA vaccines for the under fives.
- Deploying new biotech vaccine types.
- Stronger measures to ensure vaccine acceptance.
- Mandates to enforce mask wearing.
- Longer periods of home isolation
The sole reference in the blog to the rapidly accelerating all-time record levels of all-cause mortality in New Zealand is this phrase:
“…the direction of the curve suggests that the reduction is decreasing in magnitude.”
Do you think that is sufficient information for politicians to make informed policy decisions? We don’t. As Benjamin Franklin said many years ago:
“There’s none deceived but he that trusts”.
As I wrote to Prime Minister Ardern last week, we are not recording the vaccination status of people on death certificates. As a result, we don’t know what is causing the excess deaths in New Zealand. In the UK, such figures are kept and they show that excess deaths are disproportionately affecting the vaccinated, especially the boosted. Data from other countries indicates the causes might include high cancer rates, blood clots, and cardiovascular illness. Crucially, deaths rates are unusually affecting working age people and the young. Have our experts informed our government? Apparently not.
As Rishi Sunak advises: “Find out what you are not being told”.
Guy Hatchard PhD was formerly a senior manager at Genetic ID a food testing and certification company (now known as FoodChain ID). Website: HatchardReport.com.
Guy is the author of ‘Your DNA Diet: Leveraging the Power of Consciousness To Heal Ourselves and Our World. An Ayurvedic Blueprint For Health and Wellness’.
Thanks Guy, always helpful.
But it seems that the medical professionals, and I am really struggling with that term in this context, who advise Government, the media and by extrapolation all New Zealand, are entirely complicit in the rate of all cause mortality due to their massive bungling and juggling of the facts. These charts are not hard to read and figure out. The evidence is overpowering in its simplicity. And yet, here we go again. I have to wonder what they will be saying a year from now, when Jabinda has abandoned them all…
Self-made wannbe professional advisors are at their worst in a gaggle when they play number crunchers. I kept a UN official at bay while we published domestic migration tables. He had the reward of being labelled a golf piker for mis-stating his handicap–useless.
Number crunchers must pre-prove the validity of their work. Numbers can be intoxicating but should not be poisonous to the population.
Otago University Department of Public Health has many astrologers I guess. In order to argue for causality, there are many tests; some of them are common sense tests.
For example, sugar is sweet is statement we agree on. This does not change in NZ or in UK. When it comes to excess mortality, causality argument must keep every other things equal or adjusted for. For example, sugar may be mixed in a bitter pill and it may not be sweet; alternatively sugar may be mixed with honey and the sweetness may be enhanced. Comparing NZ with countries to wich Covid entered at different points of time is nonsensical because the variants have very different effect. Even Jabcinda admitted in public that we were lucky in not getting Covid firat and it entered very late and much of the strain entered are later variants which are less lethal.
Which country is similar to NZ based on entry time, population density, jabbed or not are important. These astrolgers are cooking up narratives to please jabcinda to get more funding. Intellectual dishonesty I would say.
Truth can be contrasted easily from lies.
It was first claimed that the jab will stop infection. (We know it is a lie)
It was then claimed that it will stop spreading and the virus is looking for unvaccinated (Jabcinda lied on TV)
It was then claimed that the jabbed population is protected (which is a lie even based on NZ hospital admission data)
It was then claimed that boosters will protect (which is also lie and boosted population suffers more from data)
So many lies starting from 100% protection claim slowly lowered to 20% protection in media).
If we compare like with like, the excess deaths are much higher in NZ when compared its own past. No need to compare with others even.
The so called fake experts have no qulaification is data analytics or vaccince science etc. They are doing a great disservice to science as it truly stands. Psedo-science (Sh*t) is sold as Science (Sugar). We can smell it and no need tpo taste it at all. 🙂
Common thread here… LIES.
Lying to NZ. Continually.
Even this small group will be needing a couple of million dollars to support their propaganda. Dollars & Lies is the nexus. System pigs.
It’s important we all know the CDC is backtracking on all its COVID guidelines as of 11 August.
Perhaps because Fauci’s jumping ship.
And Americans hardly shy away from class action lawsuits, suing for seven figure sums.
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/08/26/cdc-covid-guidelines-2022.aspx?ui=0fad59f650f767efc72ceec071819a50cec4f9aa04b1ad11a0b030e55150d52a&sd=20141005&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20220826Z2&mid=DM1237875&rid=1586486536
I cant find any blog on how to build health from this propagandistic “researchers”. Vitamin D enrichment for example. Are they getting paid for promoting unhealthy immune comnpromised population so that “end justifies the jabbing means”?
Sunak is campaigning to be next Pm of the uk. Throughout the covid crisis he was minister of finance. The spectator article was to assist his bid but if you check out the copious comments it has had the opposite effect. For example, “I had to stop reading, this made me so angry. Sunak could have gone public with his concerns. There were many people from the outset who questioned all this. After the first few weeks, my view was that we should have fully understood how covid transmitted and how dangerous it was (and, of course, since the flaming thing had been studied and probably created in a lab, this information was known by at least some months before we’d even heard of it). I wrote to my MP repeatedly, setting out my concerns about the downsides of lockdowns, masks, etc., and asking for help. She did, eventually, come out against lockdowns.
I have a micro professional services business. I am mother to two children who were aged 6 and 9 when this started, one of whom was about to have surgery and had it postponed, at great cost to his health, by more than 6 months. My husband was one of those relatively rare civil servants who actually had to work longer hours during covid. I had to do the homeschooling (and in so doing identified how shocking the real schooling had been, but that’s another story) and could barely work. Just considering the impact on me and my family makes me angry, but I look around and it has affected others so much more badly.
From children who seem to have forgotten how to smile, the fearful still wearing masks outdoors, the vaccine deaths, the heartbreaking loneliness inflicted on so many (particularly the elderly and those in hospitals and care homes), the damage to education, the epidemic of missed cancer (and other) diagnoses, the loss of community fabric, the list goes on and on and on.
Rishi Sunak’s wealth, if it helps us at all, should have allowed him the position of strength to speak out. He didn’t. The fact that he wasn’t engulfed in sheep-like fear makes him even more culpable than the rest, in my opinion.
Political leaders in UK are corrupt as well as of low IQ. Kier Starmer is a design dress wearing hypocrite who plotted and betrayed Jeremy Corbyn who is a honest person. Lizz Thrash is low IQ (didnt know the difference between baltic and balcon countries) and using race card and the globalist playbook; Sunak has no touch with reality and only after power and betrayed BoJo. Britain is poaying for its past Karma, and it is going to be just above a third world coiuntry with standard of living below mexico or malaysia.
There is no Covid. CONVID on the other hand is thriving. Convid was imagined to pump up the masses with ‘vaccines’ for the criminal elite to make cupious amounts of money. Everything else is just spin.
Thanks. Great article as always from Guy Hatchard.
An alternative Headline:
HOW A SMALL CABAL OF FANATICAL MARXIST PSEUDOSCIENTISTS ALMOST DESTROYED NEW ZEALAND.
https://rumble.com/v1hjc8d-what-if-these-cold-blooded-snakes-had-to-sell-it-to-you.html
Bernard Valter aka Sanity4Sweden asks a commonsense question. Why the proportion jabbed is falling when it is free? If a product is of good quality, it will sell. Customers wont run away.
From the jab statistics, it is sad to see the most fools are in AU/NZ. Only a third in US took the third jab.
Another brilliant article by Guy Hatchard.
These deranged quacks are consumed by scientism, groupthink, communism and safetyism.
Reputationally it’s going to end extremely badly for them.