Corrected and updated: 14 May 2023
We have arrived at a point in an election year when our votes matter, so expect some surprising replies to our emails and even some answers to our questions. BUT, if today was anything to go by, it won’t be without fireworks.
Yesterday, I fact checked David Seymour, who, in his Reality Check Radio interview, had asserted very strongly that New Zealand has had no excess deaths. I used the statistical graphical interface from the Human Mortality Database run by the University of California and the Max Planck Institute in Germany to generate charts to illustrate Seymour’s misunderstanding. This interface queried the same official data as Our World in Data referred to by David Seymour.
Once you factor in the absence of seasonal flu in 2021, these charts illustrate very clearly that New Zealand has had elevated rising rates of excess deaths beginning in 2021 and continuing since.
Clinging to Total Lunacy
However, David Seymour and Rachel Beauchamp, his Executive Assistant, wrote to a number of correspondents this morning (12 May) rejecting the information I posted. David stood by his assessment that deaths in New Zealand were below historical averages. In fact, a little bit more than that, David said that anyone who clings to the idea that mRNA vaccines killed anyone is in his words “clinging to total lunacy” (???).
In February, the New Zealand Herald, that bastion of mainstream Covid orthodoxy, published an article entitled “New Zealand records biggest increase in registered deaths in 100 years” The Herald article referred to 2022 mortality figures.
From the headline, it won’t have escaped your notice that the excess deaths have become so large that even the Herald wasn’t able to ignore them, but politicians apparently can. So who are the lunatics now?
The Herald article did its best to downplay the significance of so many people dying:
It began its statistical sleight of hand by comparing 2022 to 2021 rather than the historical average of deaths.
Then mentioned that 2020 had very low deaths because border controls and lockdowns kept seasonal flu and respiratory illness at very low levels. That is true, but it forgot to mention that the same controls and no flu conditions applied to most of 2021 as well.
A Lot of People Are Dying
Was it just a selective memory that made David forget that the Herald had published the official record of elevated excess deaths? Should we expect the Ministry of Health to warn politicians about the elevated number of people dying? Or have they been making sure that the concerning data has a low profile in order to protect themselves from criticism? Is it all going very wrong for the Covid vaccination lobby? Are they panicking? What do you think?
No worries though, the Herald called in that well worn epidemiologist Michael Baker, who for the first time seemed to admit that something might be going wrong. Rather than claiming, as he has previously, that New Zealand has no excess deaths, he started reminiscing about the great success in the initial years of the pandemic, (presumably 2020 when we had no Covid, no vaccines, no flu, and very few doubts about Michael Baker).
In his email, David Seymour asserted that New Zealand has negative excess deaths (less than expected from historical trends). The fundamental of this assertion is that if you average the very low death totals from 2020 with subsequent years, you can make the excess deaths in 2021, 2022, and 2023 look a lot less concerning.
This cumulative averaging of deaths used by Michael Baker, tends to hide what is really going on. In fact, unexplained New Zealand excess deaths are getting larger year by year since 2020. It also avoids facing the fact that hospital admissions are also getting larger year by year and disproportionately affecting the vaccinated. Like the rise in deaths, hospital admissions began to rise in 2021, before we had Covid, but after we had the vaccine rollout, despite the relative absence of seasonal flu.
The Elephant in the Corner of the Room is Becoming Too Large to Ignore
We have reached a point now where the elephant in the corner of the room is becoming too large to ignore. The record-breaking mortality figures from 2022 were complicated by the high number deaths recorded as Covid related. These have tailed off in 2023. Therefore the continuing high rate of excess deaths is doubly concerning.
Have we entered the phase of political disbelief, when it becomes clear that something has gone terribly wrong, but no one wants to accept responsibility? In which misdirection and finger pointing become routine responses.
David Seymour wants us to doubt our sanity. Public health should not be a political football, it is a matter of life and death. Right now, while death is getting the upper hand, no one in authority wants to accept responsibility or do anything about it.
New Zealand is not alone. Overnight the UK Mirror published an article ‘Brits are dying in their tens of thousands – and we don’t really have any idea why‘ It continued:
“Tens of thousands more Brits died than usual from May to December 2022, excluding Covid as a cause of death, raising serious questions as to why so many died”.
It described the figures as “shocking.”
Professor David Coleman, Emeritus Professor of Demography at Oxford University, told the Mirror:
“a lot of Brits are dying, but not necessarily of a specific cause”.
After talking to the experts and considering everything from hot summers to obesity to dementia to flu to old age to demographic changes, the Mirror concludes:
“This still leaves tens of thousands of dead Brits, with no clear explanation as to quite how they died”.
New Zealand Excess Deaths 18% Above the Five-Year Average
Just as in New Zealand, the high level of excess deaths in the UK is continuing unabated. The week ending April 21 2023, the Office of National Statistics reported excess deaths were 21% above the five year average. That is 2540 excess deaths in one week alone. Currently, in New Zealand, 2023 excess deaths are running at 18% above the five year average, a very comparable figure.
For two years we have been writing about published scientific research containing evidence of increased illness related to Covid vaccination—cancers, heart disease, myocarditis, kidney disease, strokes, neurological illness, etc. These are all conditions with long term implications for health and longevity. We seem to be facing these consequences now, but the government and the health authorities are looking the other way.
The level of polarisation around the issue of Covid vaccine safety is highly concerning. This is a time to carefully examine the excess mortality and hospitalisation data by age, vaccination status, and disease category. Instead, we are finding that considerable efforts are being made to ensure data is hidden from the public. It is especially concerning to find the leaders of New Zealand political parties continuing to push the idea of vaccine safety in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.
Please continue to speak up. The more sane voices we can raise, the greater the chance of someone finally taking these excess deaths seriously.
