The South Australian government wants you to take their word for it that the unvaccinated are 5x more likely to die from Covid

A masterclass in PR & marketing

The government of South Australia has made provocative claims this week regarding Covid risk among the unvaccinated…

...But no one can find the report that purportedly shows these horrendous rates of hospitalisation and death.

An SA Gov press release (20 Feb 2023) cites research by the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) which they say shows, “unvaccinated people have an eight times higher risk of hospitalisation and five times higher risk of death, compared to people with up-to-date vaccinations.”

The press release was sent out the same day that the 5th Covid jab was released to the Australian public. Timing is everything in marketing health.

The shocking research findings were shared widely. Here is epidemiologist , biostatistician and Covid Expert, Prof Adrian Esterman, sharing the “excellent analysis” on Twitter:

Professor Adrian Esterman @profesterman

Unvaxxed five times more likely to die of COVID: SA research indaily.co/406553 via @indaily An excellent South Australian analysis

indaily.coUnvaxxed five times more likely to die of COVID: SA research - InDailyUnvaccinated people are five times more likely to die if they contract COVID-19 than those who are fully-vaccinated, an analysis of South Australian cases has found.

As this analysis claims to find the polar opposite of what NSW Health Covid data shows (ie: more jabs, more hospitalisation and deaths), I was curious to read the research for myself, so I went to the SA Gov press release and scrolled down for the link. No link.

I called SA Gov. The phone operator advised that she only had access to the press release and could not direct me to the report. I should email the Premier’s office and contact the group responsible for the research, SAHMRI.

I emailed SAHMRI and SA Gov. SAHMRI replied first.

"Unfortunately the full report belongs to SA Health and so is not ours to publish or share... ultimately it will be up to the department to decide whether it is published."

While SA Gov was moving at the speed of bureaucracy in processing my request, I emailed Prof Esterman, who had so enthusiastically shared the findings. He is a highly regarded academic, so he would not have shared it without having seen the report.

Prof Esterman replied:

"I have not seen the report myself, and have no access to it!"

Finally, SA Gov replied with two links to the same document: a fact sheet summarising the results of the analysis.

I have restated my request to SA Gov.

In the meantime, we have marketing materials being provided by government in lieu of serious research.

We have sound-bytes from a mystery report that no one can produce being pushed out to audiences by Experts who haven’t even read it.

We have three days of news items pumped out by mainstream media.

9News Adelaide @9NewsAdel

A large-scale study of South Australian COVID-19 cases has revealed the dangers of not being vaccinated against the virus. @benavery9 #9News

Whether the analysis gets published quietly in two weeks time, or never, is irrelevant at this point.

The headlines have done the rounds, and the majority of the public have absorbed the information and moved on.

This is a supreme PR and Marketing strategy.

So if SA Gov and SAHMRI are PR and Marketing, who is the client?

A $10 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wouldn’t be relevant - would it?

UPDATE

The missing SAHMRI report has finally been published, linked in the post below.

Missing SAHMRI report on SA Health Covid data finally published