The Eagle and the Emu
What if you organised a world wide pandemic and Australia didn't show up for 2 year. Why Americans and Australians may have different opinions on excess deaths and lock-downs.
I was reading a great article by
who writes titled “American excess mortality does not reflect Covid vaccine harms (yet).” In the article Brian discusses another article by Ron Unz, “Obesity and the End of the Vaxxing Debate?” (2023, January 9.) The Unz Review. Both articles are well worth a read even if you disagree. I note Unz used “working age” in his article (like I have below) for his comparison, did he select this age group to skew his obesity hypothesis?
Apart from the articles and discussion with Brian in the comments, it also led me to a fantastic all cause mortality visualization tool that was used by Ron Unz in his article, Brian also suggested in the comments a paper1 which I haven’t read in full yet, but this quote from the abstract is very fitting:
“However, the debate on Covid-19 has exposed that calculations of excess mortalities vary considerably depending on the method and its specification.”
I’ve used the tool to chart some interesting differences and similarities, for example we have different animals on our coat of arms but we both have birds as part of our national symbols. The United States of America has an Eagle and we have an Emu. One is fierce and the other is just annoying. The stark differences in the charts surprised me and made me think that the reason we may see things differently is because the data make it look like we live on two different planets. We think were talking about the same phenomenon but we clearly aren’t, something is very different between the two countries in regards to excess deaths.
I’ve used “death rates” which are displayed on a scale of 100,000 person-years for the y-axis, otherwise Australia pretty much just appears as a line close to zero because our population is so much smaller than the US, this should account for the population difference. I’ve also used a baseline of 2015-2019 for both countries, this is a different baseline to that used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), I don’t know what is normally used in the US but I’ve used the same baseline i.e 5 years pre-covid as the base. This is not meant to be an in depth analysis, I just wanted to show readers that this tool exists and show the type of charts it generates. I suggest you try it for yourself, it’s very easy to use and spits out some nice charts and the baseline can easily be changed to see it’s effect on the excess deaths.
Did I mention I like charts? You can never have too many.
If you’re not good at reading charts these are easy. Light blue (aqua) is good, the more aqua the better (more people lived than expected), orange is bad, more orange means more excess deaths (more people died than expected). The baseline (or reference level) is the aqua line which is the expected deaths, in this case the average weekly death rate over the reference period (5 years). If you use a different baseline you’ll get a different result, that’s why there is no “true figure” for excess deaths, even if you know exactly how many deaths you have, there is always an argument over what baseline should be chosen.
Excess Deaths 2022 - Living with the virus
Pretty much what I was expecting, superficially similar, lots of excess deaths in both countries, which has been covered elsewhere ad-nauseam, there was a much bigger Omicron peak in the US, probably due to it coinciding with their winter flu season, less women die than men and the US has a higher overall death rate than Australia. No big deal so far.
Here’s what I wasn’t expecting, deaths in what I will call, “working age” i.e. 15-64 y.o. Unz’s choice of age group for his “Obesity and the End of the Vaxxing Debate?” article.
So where did most of the Australia’s excess deaths come from?
They’re people over 65 y.o. especially those over 85 y.o. also remember that our winter flue season is in the middle of the year, hence the big hump in the middle for Australia.
Excess Deaths 2021 - The Year of our Salvation
Australian lock-downs plus denied or delayed medical treatments led to a gazillion excess deaths due to suicide despair etc. etc. in those of working age. The vaccine stroll-out roll-out began about week 7 2021, with excess deaths in all age groups happening shortly afterwards as can plainly be seen in the chart below. The vaccine seems to save Australians but not Americans of working age, did the talisman worn over the mouth not work for you? Maybe it was our self anointed lock-down gods that made the difference.
Sorry, I meant it can plainly be seen in the chart of the very old Australians below. Can you see it?
Excess Deaths 2020 - Australia (The Hermit Kingdom), USA (The Year of Living Dangerously)
As you can see Australia needed to get a vaccines out stat, Australian’s of working age were dying in droves.
Sorry, I meant old Australian’s in nursing homes were dying in droves.
You killed granny! You bastards.
Well maybe Australia actually did prevent the grannies dying in 2020 and 2021 with lock-downs and vaccines.
Which do you think had the greatest effect in preventing old people dying in Australia?
If you said vaccines, I’ve got a rather large bridge for sale, going cheap, if your interested.
It was of course due to our compassionate state governments. Who knew pepper spray, rubber bullets and having a boot pressed down firmly on your neck would be so good for you health.
Flu Shots
Every man women and child should get the flu shots to protect themselves from seasonal flu (I’ve purposefully compared Australia 2017 and US 2018 because I think these were the worst flu seasons in the period for both countries).
Were did the flu season go?
Found it, it was hiding with the very old people in nursing homes. Looks like Australia had a particularly bad flue season in 2017, lucky everyone got vaxxed against the flu, could have been worse. As you can see the flu vax works a treat in the old. They probably should have taken some Tamiflu as a prophylactic or just after symptom onset to make sure they recovered quicker. You know the stuff really works when the same government that approved the covid-19 vaccines won’t approve Tamiflu as a subsidized medicine (PBS) based on it’s cost/benefit analysis.
Vaccines as the cause of Australia’s Excess Deaths
The only way I could get anything resembling evidence of vaccination being the major cause of excess deaths was to roll all the age groups together. If anything Australian women look to fit the hypothesized timing best. Most of the oldies got vaxxed first with AstraZeneca (AZ), Pfizer was in short supply and reserved for the younger cohort due to AZ causing thrombosis with thrombocytopenia (TTS). Remember the “it’s a rare side effect, no need to worry, just take it isn’t all good, she’ll be right, no worries” gas-lighting at the time. Anyway, there might be something worth look at here, but I think neglect and mistreatment of the old probably explains it better. Remember the Aged Care Quality & Safety Royal Commission which commenced in 2018, I’m sure they fixed everything by 2020. Bridge is still for sale.
What happened to AZ?
It went the way of the University of Queensland trial vaccine that made people test positive with HIV, all good one minute, then never to be spoken of again.
I’m sure there are plenty of vaccine adverse events and deaths, but not enough to explain the large number of non-covid excess deaths. Western Australia may hold the answer, but they don’t have good public data available (or at least any that I can find).
12 hr ago Author
Australia might be a case where the previous year's mean vs. trend makes a big difference -- ie, even without the virus or injections, there would have been a big increase in deaths and healthcare usage. I haven't looked into it. This is a paper that uses trend instead of mean for EU countries, and the expected deaths against which "excess" deaths are measured end up very different in some cases https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.22.22283850v1
“Which do you think had the greatest effect in preventing old people dying in Australia?”
I think not diagnosing COVID and treating large number of patients with COVID protocols saved the grannies in Australia in 2020-2021. Its these protocols along with health care service disruptions that occur with big COVID waves generated by massive PCR testing of asymptomatic people that killed them in US.
Australia was spared that so when they decided to start diagnosing and treating large numbers COVID during Omicron, perhaps to drive Vax/booster uptake you still had a large supply of dry kindle (grannies) who made up most of the deaths
Pfizer causes blood problems as well. TTP was even officially admitted on Israeli television and the same signal was picked up in Belgium.