There follows a guest post by Ramesh Thakur, Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University and former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, who is based in Ocean Shores, NSW, Australia.
What does the Australian experience teach us about the efficacy of Covid vaccines? Why, for instance, have infections and ICU admissions been hugely higher after vaccination campaigns really got under way? Australia hit 50% of the population double-vaccinated (meaning a much higher percentage of the adult population) on October 10th 2021, and 70% in mid-November. On October 10th our total Covid-related deaths were 1,448. On February 15th 2022, with 79% of the total population fully vaccinated, the total number of deaths was 4,726. So the number who died with Covid after we hit 50% vaccination is 2.3 times higher than the number before that point.
To come to the same conclusion from a slightly different angle – Our previous highest Covid mortality rate was 0.85 daily new deaths per million people, on September 3rd 2020. On that date, vaccines had not yet been developed anywhere in the world. The rate was exceeded on January 11th this year with 0.97 daily new deaths per million people, when we had 77.5% of the total population fully vaccinated. The rate peaked on January 30th at 3.39 daily new deaths per million people: four times higher than the pre-vaccination peak. At this time 78.3% of the population was fully vaccinated.
Now let’s look at ICU numbers, especially as this has been the most often cited public justification for encouraging and requiring vaccination. The pre-vaccines peak was on August 9th 2020 with 2.17 ICU patients per million people. The highest rate of ICU daily occupancy was on January 18th this year, 16.44 ICU patients per million people.
Finally, we see a similar absence of correlation between vaccination and COVID-19 infection, ICU and mortality rates in four major country examples: France, Sweden, U.K. and USA.
I am not questioning the decision of any individual to get vaccinated. I am double vaccinated.
Rather, what I am asking is: How can it possibly be justified to mandate universal vaccination on this data? This is simply not defensible on medical and ethical grounds. Globally and in Australia, hard data clearly show there is no discernible difference in transmissibility between vaccinated and unvaccinated of any significance to base policy on.
Finally, does the country, or any private company or public entity including a university, really want to lock itself into a never-ending cycle of boosters, which is a very real prospect both on overseas trends and also on the numbers of vaccine doses Australia has already purchased or ordered?
What the data do show is continuing strong protective benefits of the vaccine for the elderly and vulnerable. What might make more sense would be to make the vaccine compulsory for people 65 and older – not that I am suggesting that older people should be compelled in this way to have regard for their own safety, as they may wish to assess the equation differently, which they should be entitled to do. But such a policy – though still illiberal and unethical – would at least have some kind of evidence behind it, which universally mandating this vaccine plainly does not.
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How dare you make such a suggestion! Deciding on any age is making ‘jabs’ an arbitrary generalisation and is equally ‘mandatory’! I am 82, already above the average mortality age but, apart from a touch of osteoarthritis, in reasonable health. I do not need a carer to get me up in the morning nor to prepare me for bed in the evening. I cook most days unless we go out for lunch and enjoy drinking wine. I run a Creative Writing Group, which keeps the little grey cells in good order, and have set up a fairly recent Ukulele Group for adult learners to play and sing, which keeps the fingers and the lungs pleasurably activated!
If you were to attempt to jab me without my consent (which you will never obtain) I will physically resist and I vow that my ghost will come back to persecute you and your fellows!
Since the writer of this article seems to think it’s acceptable to force people over a certain ago to do as they’re told and take something they may consider harmful or useless or just plain wrong – perhaps he should also advocate that ‘big boned’ people be forced to as well. Or smokers, or those with diabetes, etc, etc.
I’m in my early 60s, but slim, fit and healthy. Based on my health and fitness levels, I self-identify as a 45 yr old.
Mandating “vaccination” for anyone, regardless of the date on their birth certificate, is an abuse of their human rights.
“What might make more sense would be to make the vaccine compulsory for people 65 and older”
OVER MY DEAD BODY.
What is it with you people? You write a really good article and then suddenly the thought police get hold of you and you go and ruin it all by singing the praises of what is clearly a killer.
Don’t believe me? Go and ask the families of the 2000+ people that have died or the 1.4 million citizens who have suffered with adverse reactions some of which (not an insignificant sum) have been life changing and that’s just here in the UK.
I can only assume you don’t want to be “labelled” anti-vax.
Ramesh, please read Nuremberg Code … no way can you ever lawfully mandate any medical treatment for anyone who doesn’t want it, even if they are ‘elderly’ …
New Zealand led by the infamous lady with some serious gnashers, is paying the price for locking down for SOOOOO long. Covid cases skyrocketing.
Meanwhile, will the Australian authorities let us know how many people died from 1) the common cold, and 2) ordinary influenza?
Or do these one-time seasonal causes of death no longer exist?
How very inconvenient.
Thank you for the charts. Very interesting, especially because the seasonality factor should see Australia at record lows when combined with vaccines.
I too am double jabbed. I have not gotten my booster (despite constant messages from our friends at the NHS). When I do have to travel again I will get mine, but only then. The idea is mandates for a vaccine that doesn’t prevent you from getting the virus or transmitting it makes no sense whatsoever. And indeed, how many boosters will people need? These provide £25 a pop for Pfizer, so, they aren’t saying no.
The madness must end. Provide a voluntary option for boosters alongside your flu shot (also voluntary). But let’s stop pretending it’s a vaccine. It’s not, but if does reduce hospitalizations (in theory). We must say no to boosters! Until there is good longitudinal data taking jabs whose impact lessens each time is simply foolish.
And please, free Australia and Canada from Covid fever!
Well, some brave souls in Canada have been attempting to just that (free themselves) and look where it’s getting them. Australia is trying too, as is New Zealand, Israel, etc, etc.
Nothing in the way of outcry from Western leaders, is there, for the brutality being used to ‘change their minds’ and persuade them it’s for their own good that ‘mandates’ remain?
Thanks Ramesh, a calm, rational piece but I have two main objections:
1/
Mandating a Covid-19 vaccine for ANY (semi-arbitrary) demographic can NEVER be justified – it is a gross twisting of bioethics to suggest otherwise, even if you caveat it.
2/
I do take exception to this statement: “What the data do show is continuing strong protective benefits of the vaccine for the elderly and vulnerable.”
For a piece written with an emphasis on data-led evidentiary based decision making, you seem to not be “up to speed” with what is happening in Israel?
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/321674
“‘80% of serious COVID cases are fully vaccinated’ says Ichilov hospital director. Vaccine has “no significance regarding severe illness,” says Prof. Jacob Giris.”
61, and no intention of rolling up my sleeve for the Fauci junk juice at any age.
And while I agree with Prof Thakur’s basic line, I still doubt the government’s statistics on the number of vaccinated. Twenty years from now, perhaps, the truth will be made public… at about 5:05pm, on a Friday.
They will ban all stats, figures and graphs pointing to Covid being spread by their ‘vaccines’ and people dying – give it a few more days .
I see Sturgeon has jumped the gun again by suppressing ‘inconvenient’ Covid facts.
Heart attacks in children now ‘perfectly normal’ by the way.
Amazing just how far the WEF’s and Gates’ Writ now extends
Seen on the side of a bus in Ontario a while back: ”Children have strokes too”.
Yeah but… without the vaxxines, it woulda coulda shoulda been much worse!
So the jabs really do work then?
NOT. As we all know
“I am not questioning the decision of any individual to get vaccinated”
Why not? I am – I want to know why people have made this decision – they have had the same chance as everyone to say, no I will wait – I will look to understand the clinical trial data from the Phase 3 trials.
My much maligned in this BTL section F-in-law claims it was to get his right to travel back – since his second does in idk June last year he has been precisely nowhere. I just don’t understand why people would take a risk in order to jump on an easy jet flight and elbow some germans out of the way for a sun lounger.
I know lots of BTL commentators have taken a jab, but I can’t for the life of me understand why – even the risk of death or serious illness is really low in the vulnerable.
all cuase mortality was lower for the placebo group.
We’d expect MORE deaths from jabbing.
Mass jabbing with a higher all cause mortality is extremely reckless.
As our ‘scientific leader’ Prof Wittery assured us all on 11 May 2020 ”UK Gov’t confirms Covid19 harmless to VAST MAJORITY of people
and those included the ”vulnerable” ones.
Another example (re.the aged and ‘vulnerable’) of shocking statistical illiteracy re. Absolute and Relative risk.The potential reduction for that group is minimal – and not tested.
I recall what Robert Malone referred to as an arms race between this endless jabbing of populations and a limitless mutating virus – the more people you vaccinate, the greater the number of vaccine-resistant mutations you are likely to get, the less durable the vaccines then become so ever more powerful vaccines will have to be developed to combat the new mutations which in turn will once again mutate to overcome the new vaccine – essentially what you doing is creating an arms race between endless vaccinations and an neverending mutating virus.
I agree, but I feel the issue is that the rise of these “vaccine-resistant mutations” will firmly and clearly be blamed on the unvaccinated by everyone from the top down.
It doesn’t take much scientific acumen to realize the fallacy and falsity of this assertion, but that’s largely irrelevant in the world of “Covid-science”: critical thinking, reasoned analysis or even simple observational truths are smothered by the stinking, cesspool of lying, corrupt politicians with “advisors” in their back-pocket, either through financial or bullying coercion.
The narrative shifts: the reluctant acceptance that the unvaccinated are not transmitting SARS-Cov-2, nor are they clogging hospitals now means that we are breeding factories for new variants.
Sigh …….. Bring it on, I never thought this fight was over, not remotely close, in my humble opinion.
I was hoping for a brief rest period so I can once again go on holiday.
Now 14 month’s into the biggest coerced biological experiment that the world has ever seen, and the compliant, critical thought devoid cretinous demographic, still can’t read the statistics writ large on the wall! But are the sheep slowly awakening? The most profound question of the last 14 month’s is still valid, if your vaccine work’s, why do i need to be vaccinated? Or is my right to bodily autonomy secondary too a political ideology built on the lies of an evil global technocracy?
Sheep only wake up when they smell the abattoir!
I don’t think they’d understand the question – or they wouldn’t think deeply enough about it to appreciate its import or give an answer. Or they just wouldn’t listen.
300 medics demand halt to child vaccination as ‘all risk and no benefit’
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/300-medics-demand-halt-to-child-vaccination-as-all-risk-and-no-benefit-%ef%bf%bc/
TCW
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I see Herr Trudea is planning to kill the Canadian protesters pets.
Move the truck or we euthanize your dog – Ottawa By-law : AskThe_Donald (reddit.com)
What next?
IF they want to put a dog down I suggest Trudeau is euthanised.
You beg the question – the answer would probably be censored but we can ask when will they kidnap and incarcerate the children of protesters?
That has already been mooted. Videos on Yootoob have shown what violence the police have been capable of. They’d probably welcome a violent reaction to interference with children or pets. An excuse for even more brutality.
I wonder what happened to the motto of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police: Maintiens le Droit?
(They’re not all RCMP though and are so heavily muzzled and padded and disguised in many cases, it’s hard to tell what they may be.)
It is interesting, but unsurprising, that individual autonomy and liberty never feature in the pronouncements and policies of global organisations and their acolytes.
Yes, sadly Mr Thakur appears to be part of the problem not the solution.
Taking a look at Canada the Gobalists are clearly too busy working out and experimenting with methods of cruel, viscious, illegal and tyrannical oppression of world populations now their Covid/ “Vaccine” scam has been exposed.
We note UK MPs are too cowardly and terrified to say one word about Canada while the Gates Media keep the people in total ignorance of events by their silence!
Do we see our future in their behaviour?
It’s only private videos posted on Yootoob that give an overall impression of just what is happening in Ottawa. The session of Parliament (to discuss the ’emergency powers’) was cancelled yesterday because the police were about to move in, allowed by the ’emergency powers’.
Meanwhile in the UK we have solved the issue of high rates of infections and deaths in the vaccinated that showed up in NHS Scotland’s reported figures – we are not going to publish them any longer.
Huzzah
Shooting the messenger is now official Government policy in Scotland.
Arrrghhhh its not a bloody vaccine its a course of increasingly dangerous drugs.
Exactly – its a bioweapon which forces the body to produce toxic synthetic proteins on the tin. Thats it. These people are morons.
“Its not a vaccine it’s a poison ” Luc Montagnier ,, virologist and Nobel Prize winner (deceased)
I think the 67 year-old bloke on the Watts bike next to me this morning who averages 4W/kg over his 45min ride might argue that he needs your thoughtful protection.
There is no need to abrogate responsibility for your own health & instead vest it to the tender care of big pharma; is the core problem.
As would my 76 year old rellie who runs at least three miles a day, followed by 60 press-ups.
Be great for Ramesh to have a chat with Steve Kirsch, who is also double vaccinated – and now is against injecting this poison.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many, what I would have thought as intelligent, well meaning people, be so duped. These academics and higher-ups need to walk with people. Literally walk the streets.
“Why, for instance, have infections and ICU admissions been hugely higher after vaccination campaigns really got under way?”
This indeed.
Maybe he could utilise all his professorly skills to, you know, maybe make that obvious connection.
That’s a tricky question – I wonder what absurdly fantastical, devious diversion from the obvious truth the Globalists will come up with for their sleepy sheep and order repeated by their servile and now ‘complicit in crime’ MS Media operatives?
Heart attacks and myocarditis are common in the young now apparently (official) Fancy -just think – no-one ever knew!
and AIDS is making a comeback.
Anyone seen the Welsh Dictator since he tested positive on the 10th?
Covid has slowed the fitting of a new skin suit for his repitlian body?
Not to forget that this is the Aussie summer so none of the winter deaths we have here.
I’m 66 years old and I have seen no data which is unbiased that the writer of this article states ……
“What the data do show is continuing strong protective benefits of the vaccine for the elderly and vulnerable. What might make more sense would be to make the vaccine compulsory for people 65 and older”.
Why do writers of these articles keep asking a question without answering it?
The data clearly shows that the experimental jabs themselves are the reason for the increase in hospitalisation and deaths.
It makes no logical sense to start with “Deaths have been far higher since the vaccine rollout” and then claim there are “strong protective benefits”.
Thank you for stating the simple shocking truth – which still seems to elude so many on here!
Why do they have such trouble accepting it?
“Why do they have such trouble accepting it?”
Perhaps like the writer of the article they have all been jabbed themselves and are now regretting their decision.
Ramesh has been a strong and principled opponent of lockdown from the start, which leaves me a little surprised at the tone of parts of this article.
Establishment figures seem to struggle with the idea that some things purporting to be “vaccines” could be a bad idea, or struggle with saying it out loud
Anti-vaxx is almost as powerful a smear as “racist”
The Big Pharma marketing machine has done it’s job.
Yes, that and I think people’s desire for safety through technology. The idea of a vaccine is very appealing, so if you question whether a vaccine is any good you are undermining that comfort
So have the “Gates Global Media Corps”.
Just because he agrees with you on opposing lockdowns doesn’t mean he must agree with you about everything else. Or is dissent from your opinions not allowed?
It’s the new definition of liberalism here in the Trulag archipelago. I’ll defend to the death his right to agree with me about everything 🙂