In our recent article “The Royal Commission Report is a Scientific and Ethical Failure“, we reported on some of its key deficiencies. With the benefit of some more time to reflect, we want to address additional significant factors that the Commission overlooked which it should have highlighted and addressed. During the last five years the Hatchard Report has published more than 500 articles covering every aspect of the pandemic, we have had a policy of referencing published scientific studies. A feature that has been conspicuously absent in advice offered to the public by the government, Health NZ and the media. The Commission scandalously also omitted any reference to research. It failed to recognise that the questions raised by the Covid pandemic demand scientific answers, nothing else will suffice. We will cover additional deficiencies in the report in bullet points in no particular order. Conclusions that we feel the Royal Commission (RC) should have come to are printed in bold italics below.
1. New Zealand is in a unique position to provide unambiguous answers
New Zealand is virtually the only country in the world that instituted a Covid mRNA vaccination policy before the vast majority of the population had been exposed to the virus. This came about because of our geographic isolation, the closure of our borders, efficient track and tracing and social isolation measures. This meant that the impact of the vaccine could have been studied in isolation from the confounding effect of Covid infection—a colossal opportunity that was not just missed, the relevant data has been and still is being deliberately kept out of public view.
Over three quarters of a million scientific articles assessing the Covid pandemic in all its facets have been published worldwide. The vast majority of these have failed to adequately distinguish between the effects of Covid infection and the effects of Covid vaccination. In other words, people suffering the ill effects of Covid infection including long Covid symptoms, hospitalisation and deaths have usually also been vaccinated, but the methodologies followed by scientific papers have largely ascribed outcomes solely to the effect of Covid infection without taking into account the effect of vaccination.
In NZ’s case, it is possible to assess the effect of Pfizer mRNA Covid vaccination in isolation from Covid infection. From the limited official health and mortality data that was published in 2021, it is very clear that there was a death signal accompanying Covid vaccination—mortality rose in tandem with Covid vaccination. It was also clear from adverse events monitoring and vaccine trial outcomes that there was a colossal red flag safety signal involving a huge range of health conditions that dwarfed that of all previous vaccines added together.
We studied the relationship between mortality and vaccine uptake using time series analysis to compare the weekly totals of Covid vaccination with all cause deaths for those over 60 years old. We found a significant relationship in the absence of Covid infection and influenza infection. See Relationship Between Covid-19 Vaccination and All Cause Mortality for the 60+ Cohort in New Zealand. Time Series Analysis. Any follow up to this initial study was hampered by the restrictions Health NZ began to apply to the release of Covid health data. The implications were further underlined when a Health NZ data analyst, Barry Young, turned whistleblower and released source data of mortality and vaccination status which further corroborated these findings. Rather than initiate a close examination of the concerning association between mortality and Covid vaccination, Health NZ pulled up the data drawbridge and manned the ramparts. Barry Young was arrested and any sharing of the relevant health data became a criminal offence.
The Royal Commission failed to appreciate that NZ data can help resolve a key controversy of the last six years—apportioning the relative importance of Covid vaccination and infection as causal factors in the huge increase of a broad range of health conditions and all-cause mortality that has been evident in global health statistics. According to Our World in Data a total of 30 million people have died worldwide. Health authorities all over the world continue to be overwhelmed with a range of conditions including heart disease, cancer, neurological disease and mental illness. The RC Report should have required Health NZ to open relevant health data for independent scrutiny.
2. The RC failed to appreciate that mRNA vaccination was an entirely novel genetic technology fraught with risk
mRNA vaccines are designed to cross the cell membrane and repurpose the genetic functions of billions of cells which control the entire physiology including the immune system. It was already established by extensive research conducted prior to the pandemic that this would have unanticipated mutagenic effects and disease outcomes across a very broad spectrum of conditions. There was also the known possibility that vaccine genetic sequences and their functions might integrate into the host DNA.
In fact biotech researchers, developers and manufacturers are huge risk takers. They are editing genetic structures whose detailed functions remain largely unknown to science, especially their higher or holistic functions. Thus how our genetics support the expression of consciousness remains largely unknown. The myriad of effect pathways inside the cell cytoplasm are still a matter of guesswork. A study published in 2026 has found our longevity is 50% determined by our genetics, but no one knows how that happens. Thus gene editing involves a great deal of guesswork which makes the whole enterprise risky. The outcomes of animal research confirm high risks of deformity, disease and developmental damage. The RC were made aware of this but put the whole issue in the too hard basket.
The fact that advice offered to Health NZ and the government sought to characterise the effects of mRNA vaccines as similar to traditional vaccines, and in addition limited possible causal adverse outcomes to a highly restricted known list of adverse outcomes of traditional vaccines, was entirely contrary to established science. mRNA vaccines had been developed, tested and manufactured within a very short time frame which was unable to capture long range effects. Moreover indications in CARM and VAERS data and more specific published research of broad scale effects on immunity were discarded as irrelevant. The RC should have investigated and labelled the naive assumption of safety and efficacy as an extreme deficiency of government policy that should never be repeated.
3. The RC failed to appreciate the implications of the origins of Covid
It has become the clear conclusion of a number of highly respected government agencies and scientists around the world that Covid originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a result of NIH funded gain of function research designed to transform a strain of coronavirus limited to bat populations into a virulent and highly infective human disease which then escaped the confines of the Wuhan laboratory in 2019. To underline this, over six years of extensive research has failed to find a zoonotic source Covid-19 strain endemic in any animal population.
As seems to be the majority opinion at this point in time, both Covid infection and Covid vaccines share manmade genetic features. The cardio toxic Covid spike protein affects the physiology during Covid infection and is also produced by Covid vaccines. Therefore to a certain extent it is immaterial whether the generalised ill health of populations experienced during the last six years is due to Covid or Covid vaccines, they both originated as a result of biotechnology research employing gene editing to produce novel genetic sequences. This raises a number of important points:
a) Covid vaccination and Covid infection are highly likely to be cofactors of ill health—they exacerbate one another. Therefore the practice of designating Covid infection as a sole cause of disease, hospitalisation or death is a misleading practice which can overestimate the effects of Covid and hide the adverse effects of Covid vaccination. Government policy and statements encouraged attitudes which wrongly dismissed vaccine reluctance as the result of conspiracy theories. This polarised opinions when the evidence including the VAERS and CARM stats were unequivocally pointing to adverse effects of Covid vaccination. The RC should have acknowledged a high degree of scientific uncertainty concerning pandemic causal factors. They should have advised NZ health authorities to stop advertising Covid vaccination.
b) The RC should have noted the lack of absolute safety of biolabs—studies show accidental releases of material are routine in biotech labs. No safety protocol is fool proof. The RC should have alerted the government to serious novel risks resulting from the proposed liberalisation provisions of the Gene Technology Bill. It should have flagged risky genetic experimentation as the ultimate source of the pandemic and its negative outcomes.
4) The RC failed to recognise the implications of the principal factor that affected Covid infection outcomes
Early on, extensive research recognised that individuals with pre-existing health conditions were most likely to be severely impacted by Covid infection. The RC failed to conclude that the growing prevalence of chronic illness needs to be redressed by strengthening preventive health measures. Thus, the RC should have recommended improvements in diet, food quality, and exercise. These could be a focus in education. These are responses that research shows are most likely to have a large effect size improving public health outcomes in the future.
5) The RC did not quantify the effects of pandemic interventions
Covid variants rapidly mutated to become a relatively mild endemic illness with outcomes similar to flu. Despite this, excess deaths (currently running 3% above pre-pandemic levels) and elevated levels of hospitalisation for a range of illnesses are continuing to the present day. The RC did not seek to investigate the possible causes of these alarming statistics which might be related to the continuing Covid vaccination program.
The RC did not comment on the very low effectiveness of mRNA Covid vaccination, which did not prevent disease transmission or infection. Any possible reduction in severity was very low indeed and a matter of scientific dispute. In any case, studies and NZ health data show any small effect wanes to zero and even becomes negative after approximately ten weeks subsequent to vaccination. In this light, mRNA injections do not deserve the title vaccine. Certainly the constant assertion on the part of Health NZ that the pandemic response in NZ was a great success deserved to be censored by the RC.
6) The RC gave us the worst of all worlds
Unbelievably, the RC Report came to the worst of all conclusions. In effect it recommended that in the likely event of another pandemic or medical emergency the government is entitled to mandate compulsory medical interventions for the whole population which could be novel in character, known to be ineffective, and carry a very high rate of adverse effects. They thereby normalised high risk high adverse outcome medicine. In doing this, they overrode the standing practices of precautionary testing, informed consent, and right of medical choice (contained in the Bill of Rights). This central RC recommendation reeks of unfounded fear, the worst excesses of commercial medicine, foreign interference in the rights of Kiwis and entirely unfounded biotechnology promises of so-called miracle cures. Instead the RC should have paused mRNA vaccine approval pending comprehensive independent assessment of NZ post pandemic health outcomes with full access to data.
Our Conclusion
No one in government is going to successfully look after our health for us or protect our rights. We as individuals are going to have to do that for ourselves. Because risky biotech experimentation is continuing in insecure facilities around the world, we do believe there will be new health challenges emerging in the near future. We should be making personal self-sufficient decisions now about food, water, exercise, well being and community involvement that research shows will improve our individual and collective immunity sufficient to give us the best possible health outcomes as we go forward. We should be highly suspicious of gene editing as a technology. Its implementation poses novel risks to mental and physical health that cannot be contained, recalled or remediated. We should oppose government overreach in the field of health care, especially regarding automatic approvals and mandates.
With this we are drawing a line under the deficiencies of the Royal Commission process and putting our faith in the resilience of nature itself, which ultimately is our own nature. Sadly a great many Kiwis suffered serious adverse effects thinking they were doing the right thing. This should never have been allowed to happen. This was an attack on the NZ Bill of Rights, our well being and our democracy. This is a great tragedy which ultimately is to the detriment of the whole nation.
