The ‘hermit kingdom’: how Western Australia became the control group in the global Covid vaccine experiment

WA vaccine safety data round up

During the Covid pandemic, Western Australia’s strict closed border earned the state the moniker of the ‘hermit kingdom.’

In the hermit kingdom, zero-Covid policies like the border closure and snap lockdowns meant that by 31 December 2021, WA had only counted 1,158 Covid cases since the start of the pandemic. At the same time, the McGowan government’s heavily promoted vaccination program and aggressive work mandates ensured that, by the end of 2021, more than 90% of WA’s population (age 12+) had received at least one dose of Covid vaccine.  

This unique situation - high vaccination rates, almost no Covid - made WA the perfect vaccine safety control group in the global experiment. The control group data, published in the form of the WA vaccine safety surveillance report (2021) shows that Covid vaccines are associated with significant harms.

Harms like generating 24x the normal rate of reported adverse events. In October 2021, WA Premier Mark McGowan announced that the hospitals were “under enormous pressure,” but no one knew why. McGowan speculated that it must be due to “some sort of delayed reaction to Covid.” There were only 16 cases of Covid in WA in October, but there were >1400 vaccine adverse events reported.

Read the full story via Umbrella News:

How the ‘hermit kingdom’ became the world’s control group for the largest vaccination trial ever

The Umbrella News article summarises and contextualises the more in depth dive I did on WA vaccine safety data, in this Substack:

West Australian government finally releases 2021 vaccine safety data: vaccines have been pulled from the market for far less than this

Two notable Substackers have also weighed in on the 2021 WA vaccine safety data.

Steve Kirsch cross references estimates of the under reporting factor (URF) for Covid vaccine adverse events against WA’s 2021 vaccine safety data to surmise an adverse event rate of one or more per 100 doses. Kirsch has written a fair amount on URF - this TrialSite News article offers a good summary. The Fraiman et al. reanalysis (2022) of the Pfizer and Moderna trial data found a combined adverse event rate of one incident per 800 doses. WA Health did not propose an estimate of URF in the 2021 vaccine safety report.

Australia government numbers confirm rate of serious AE's is >1 in 100 doses

Meryl Nass made the pithy observation that, “The vaccine injury clinics did a lot more business in 2021.” Nass highlights that there were 7x as many visits to the vaccine injury clinics as the year before, after the covid vaccine rollout in WA. However, some of the visits were for vaccine hesitancy and needle phobia.

Western Australia releases vaccine safety data: adverse events reported for covid vaccines 24x higher than for non-covid vaccines

I had the opportunity to discuss the WA vaccine safety data, along with a few other topical issues, with Damien Richardson on TNT Radio. Follow the link below to have a listen.

Listen to Rebekah Barnett with Damien Richardson on TNT Radio

If you’re on Twitter, I encourage you to share this thread unpacking the Umbrella News article. The thread has over 440K views and that number continues to grow.

dystopian down under @dystopian_DU

🧵1/ 'How the ‘hermit kingdom’ became the world’s control group for the largest vaccination trial ever' Western Australia in 2021: - No Covid in the community - 90% vaccination rate (age 12+) - The cleanest Covid vaccine safety data in the world umbrellanews.com.au/featured/2023/…… https://t.co/TAmdPW5ewa

Finally, on Friday afternoon 31 March, I received advice from the WA Health media department that, “DOH public health experts have raised concerns regarding some of your assertions,” in the Umbrella News article.

Note that WA Health have still not provided answers to the questions raised in my media request of 11 March, and they have offered no detail as to what specific concerns have been raised by the “experts,” or who exactly these “experts” are. I will keep readers up to date if/when I hear more from WA Health on this.