Australian excess deaths probe
Government passes off a hot potato; a group of independent experts picks it up and returns it to Canberra
Earlier this year, Australian Senators voted down a motion calling for acknowledgment of Australia’s record-high excess deaths, and the need for an inquiry.
Now, the Australian Medical Professionals’ Society (AMPS) has taken it upon themselves to conduct an independent inquiry, and they’re taking it to Parliament House, Canberra.
On Wednesday 18 October, a panel of Australian and international experts will address an audience at Parliament House in an effort to answer the question: What is causing Australians to die at unprecedented rates?
The list of presenters and contributors includes many esteemed names at the forefront of medicine, science, statistics, data analysis, and industry. The presentations will be filmed, available for viewing at a later date, and will be accompanied by a book ‘Too Many Dead’, to be released after the event.
AMPS advises that all state and federal politicians, all colleges and associations, and the heads of ATAGI, the TGA, the Department of Health, and key institutions were invited to make a submission and attend the event.
While the presentation at Parliament House is invite-only, a public event will also be held at 6pm on Wednesday evening, in Kambah, ACT. If you’re local, you can find out more about this public event here.
Record high excess deaths
In 2022, Australia started racking up excess deaths at rates not seen since World War II, with an extra 20,200 Australians (12 per cent), dying over and above the expected number of deaths, according to Australia’s peak actuarial body, The Actuaries Institute. For the first half of 2023, excess deaths are at seven per cent, or 5,500 higher than predicted.1
That’s 25,700 excess deaths across the country in 18 months.
When the plane carrying 239 passengers on flight MH370 went missing in 2014 with six Australians on board, the Australian government took interest at the highest levels, setting aside nearly $90 million ($15 million per Australian passenger) to fund search efforts. Politicians gave condolences, and the West Australian Government planned a memorial for the passengers presumed deceased (it was put on hold).
In the last 18 months, Australia has lost in excess deaths the equivalent of well over a hundred MH370 plane loads of people. Yet, Australia’s political leadership has barely raised an eyebrow.
In March of this year, United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet tabled a motion calling for acknowledgment of Australia’s record excess deaths, and the need for an inquiry. The motion was voted down 30:29, with most Liberals, Nationals and the cross bench for Aye, and most Labor and Greens for No.
Anything but the vaccines
The Actuaries Institute pins at least half of Australia’s 2022-2023 excess deaths on Covid, by a definition that attributes to Covid any death where the virus may have been a primary and/or underlying cause of death.2
Deaths from influenza, pneumonia and lower respiratory diseases are lower than expected, which is suggestive that some of these deaths have simply moved over to the Covid column, especially considering that viral interference is the official explanation for why the flu disappeared around the same time that governments began obsessively tallying Covid infections.
The Actuaries explain the other half of Australia’s excess deaths as attributable to: mortality displacement; undiagnosed Covid; mental health issues; and unhealthy pandemic-influenced lifestyle changes. Note that the latter two are documented knock-on effects of government pandemic policies.
The Actuaries say that “vaccination is highly unlikely to be a cause of excess mortality” (their emphasis not mine) because they appear to actually believe that of the more than 1,000 deaths and over 139,500 adverse events reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), only 14 deaths are actually associated with Covid vaccines.
This is despite the fact that the TGA has admitted that it has no idea how many adverse events (including serious life-altering conditions which could lead to death) are actually caused by the Covid vaccine products.
And despite known problems with systemic undercounting of vaccine injuries and deaths in official data.
And despite the only Australian study of all-cause mortality trends conducted on a pre-Covid but post-vaccinated population showing that death rates started trending upwards with the vax rollout, not Covid.
And despite known quality control issues with the Covid vaccine products.
And despite a growing index of academic studies linking the Covid vaccine products to excess deaths.
And despite the most robust data set in the country showing that the risk of being hospitalised, admitted to ICU or dying increased with each dose of vaccination received.3
But it is “highly unlikely” that the vaccines could have contributed in any way to Australia’s excess deaths.
No serious official response to excess deaths
There has been no attempt at the official level to properly account for why Australia is experiencing a sustained period of excess deaths, at least half of which cannot be attributed to Covid.
“We are seeing too many excess, unexplained deaths in our nation every month,” said Senator Babet in a statement in support of the AMPS inquiry. “This is a matter of life and death and should be our top priority.”
Senator Babet commends AMPS for undertaking this excess deaths inquiry, and urges his parliamentary colleagues to, “attend with an open mind” to hear what the expert panel has to say.
Too Many Dead – An Inquiry into Australia’s Excess Mortality
Excerpt from the AMPS announcement:
“This inquiry delves into the regulatory failures hindering the proper analysis of preclinical data concerning experimental COVID-19 vaccines. It has unearthed serious shortcomings, potential data discrepancies, and alarming signals of harm being overlooked.
“The inquiry sheds light on the inadequacies within the Therapeutic Goods Administration's (TGA) pharmacovigilance systems.
“The analysis conducted by AMPS indicates that Australia is facing an iatrogenic crisis – one that has resulted from policies based on insufficient evidence.
“Conclusions from AMPS are documented in a book due for release titled, Too Many Dead – An Inquiry into Australia’s Excess Mortality. In collaboration with our international colleagues we are calling for an immediate suspension of the vaccination rollout, pending a full and transparent investigation.
“As a society committed to the well-being of all Australians, AMPS is unwavering in its commitment to ensuring accountability, transparency and justice, even when the facts may be unpalatable.
“The number of dying Australians constitutes an unfolding catastrophe and we owe it to all those dead Australians and their grieving families and friends to investigate what is killing people at such an alarming rate. Failing to seek answers is negligent and far beyond disrespectful.”
Book your ticket to the Wednesday evening 18 October public event here.
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The Actuaries’ figures are more conservative than the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures for 2022, as they use a different baseline from which to calculate the number of excess deaths. However, in 2023, the ABS updated its modelling and revised its figures down. As the Actuaries Institute is Australia’s peak body for this kind of data analysis, and it has been consistent over time in its methods, I use these figures. Read about how the Actuaries calculated baseline average here.
As far as I can tell, the attribution of deaths from Covid is determined by how the deaths are coded on the death certificate. This data is collated by the ABS. So, the Actuaries Institute does not determine how many deaths are attributed to Covid - the attribution occurs upstream, at the coding of the deaths and collation of death data by the ABS.
Neither the ABS nor the Actuaries Institute distinguish between deaths from Covid alone as compared to deaths from Covid with comorbidities or causal chains. Earlier in the pandemic, the ABS did make these distinctions, and it was reported that only 8.6 per cent of deaths from Covid were actually from Covid alone. Pre-existing health conditions were present in approximately 70 per cent of deaths from Covid.
In January 2022, the ABS reported that pneumonia was present as a consequence of COVID-19 in over two-thirds of deaths where a causal sequence was certified by a doctor. This is significant in light of the fact that the protocols for managing post-viral pneumonia were changed in April 2020 to remove antibiotics, thereby increasing the likelihood of Covid infections advancing to pneumonia deaths in the most vulnerable. In other words, medical experts are of the view that the care pathway may have had more to do with these Covid-pneumonia deaths than the virus itself.
NSW Health data showed that with increasing doses, outcomes for patients worsened, giving the appearance of negative vaccine effectiveness. It is possible that the vaccines worked well in some age groups (eg: the very elderly) but that this positive effect was hidden by Simpson’s Paradox.
To rule out Simpson’s Paradox, NSW Health would only have had to release its data age stratified by vaccination dose. NSW Health went to great lengths not to do this, refusing all FOIs requesting this information, and claiming, in a tribunal hearing over the matter, that they had erased all the relevant data.
Well ... here’s hoping something comes out of it. Titanic forces are working against the inquiry gaining any kind of traction but I’m going to try to stay positive ...
My professional work life was in Actuarial Science (9 years, before motherhood). I thought the work of the "actuaries" was biased, thoughtless and cowardly.
The experience of 2020 has to inform the baseline of 2021, recognising the downward pressure on death brought by the absence of infections.
I recall they also inferred that circulatory system deaths were in a normal range, without allowing for the enormous and instant deviation from the predicted trend across 2015-19.
An easy ballpark number is 6000-9000 lives cut short by the vaccines in 2021 alone. I really must do that substack...