What happened with COVID-19 in NSW in 2022? (Part 1)
A critical examination of COVID-19's impact in NSW, by vaccination status, from the Omicron era to the end of 2022.
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Introduction
As NSW emerged from lockdown in late 2021, it stood at the forefront of Australia's battle against the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 pandemic, assured that the arbitrary “double-dose” vaccination target it had reached would provide protection against severe outcomes from COVID-19 disease.1 But, irrespective of their vaccination status, individuals faced significant risks of COVID-19 hospitalisation, admission to intensive care units (ICU) and death in NSW during the Omicron wave, which continues to this day. In this article, we will explore the “clinical severity outcomes” for NSW by vaccination status, for the period 26 November 2021 to 31 December 2022.
We will show how dodgy data collection and reporting processes from NSW Health could have been used to heighten the fear and panic of the pandemic in NSW. These processes included counting all hospitalisations as “COVID-19 hospitalisations” even if their hospitalisation had nothing to do with COVID-19; double-counting a “COVID-19 ICU” patient as a “hospitalised” patient; and, counting all incidental deaths “with” COVID-19 as a “COVID-19 death”.
We will show that the unvaccinated did not experience proportionally worse outcomes than the other cohorts in our study period (one dose, two dose, three or more doses, four or more doses), but in fact experienced quite the opposite. We will dissect the significant reduction in COVID-19's clinical severity observed in February 2022 across all demographics, including the unvaccinated to further demonstrate this point.
We will analyse the disproportionately adverse outcomes for individuals who received a single vaccine dose, suggesting potential evidence of vaccine-related harm in NSW's data.
Finally, we will analyse the alarming discrepancy between NSW Health’s data and those from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) regarding COVID-19 deaths in NSW for 2022, revealing that in several weeks of 2022, NSW somehow magically experienced more COVID-19 deaths than the entire nation.
Methodology
Data was obtained from “COVID-19 Weekly Surveillance Reports” in the period 26 November 2021 to 31 December 2022, spanning the duration of the Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, from its onset until the week ending 31 December 2022. The selection of this specific timeframe is deliberate for two reasons. First, it coincides with the sharpest and unexplained increase in Australia’s record excess mortality in Australia. Second, at this present moment, we have near complete mortality data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (subject to further revisions in the coming years). In this article we refer to this period as “the study period”.
The evolving nature of the pandemic and the changing criteria for vaccination status required us to adapt our analysis over the study period. For example:
Initially, “fully vaccinated” status was defined as having received two doses of a vaccine. However, early in this study period, additional booster shots were introduced, shifting the criteria for being considered “fully vaccinated”;
The introduction of first and second booster shots (constituting the third and fourth doses, respectively) necessitated the creation of new vaccination status categories in the NSW Health reports (“three or more doses” and then “four or more doses”). In some reports, the “three doses” category exists alone, later being expanded to “three or more doses”. By week 20 in this study period, a category for “four or more doses” was established, amalgamating individuals with varying levels of booster shot reception into a single group;
In the week ending 22 January 2022 in the study period, the vaccination status listed as “under investigation” disappeared from the reports and was replaced with “unknown” from the report in the week ending 29 January 2022 until the report in the week ending 12 February 2022; and,
In the report for the week ending 5 March 2022, the “no dose” category was merged with the “unknown” category to form the “no dose/unknown” super-category.
To streamline the data, we merged some of these unique categories of vaccination status into the more common categories which persisted for a greater part of the study period:
“Fully vaccinated” was combined with the “two dose” category;
“Partially vaccinated” was combined with the “one dose” category;
“Under investigation” was combined with the “unknown” category;
“No dose/unknown” was combined with the “unknown” category;
“Not eligible for vaccination (aged 0-11 years)” category was combined with the “no dose” category; and,
“Three or more doses” was combined with the “three doses” category.
The data was obtained by downloading the weekly reports from the NSW Health webpage, converting the .pdf documents to spreadsheet format and then selecting the section entitled “Clinical Severity by Vaccination Status” which refers to patients who were hospitalised, admitted to ICU or died because of COVID-19. The data from these tables were compiled into this Google Sheet for analysis and creating the visualisations in this article. This Google Sheet provides the data in a more readable format which could be cross-referenced against the weekly surveillance reports published on the NSW Health webpage here for those interested in doing so.
We also compiled all of the NSW Health Reports into one .pdf document which you can download here in their entirety, or download only those sections from the weekly reports with the pages showing “clinical severity by vaccination status”.
Many of the visualisations in this article show a 50 week period which commences 1 January 2022 and ends 31 December 2022 (longer than an actual 50 weeks) because there were several instances where one weekly surveillance report contained a fortnight of data in one single report. For example:
A report was not published in “Epidemiological Week 7” because “there were a number of changes to the production process of these reports at that time. These changes affected the production and publication of a report for that particular week”2 ; and,
The reports for the final two weeks of 2022 were bundled together in the one report:
Results
These visualisations are interactive which do not display in an email message. Please either access this article directly via SubStack or click/tap the visualisation to open it in a new window to view the interactive elements and to view them in their intended aspect ratios.
A broad overview to start:
In the chart above, the “vaccinated” category is the combination of the “four or more doses”, “three or more doses” and “two doses” categories only. The “unvaccinated” category is solely the “no dose” category and the “unknown” remains as shown.
Second, we present the clinical severity by vaccination status for these as separate categories as described in the methodology:
Third, deaths by vaccination status shown for the study period. The x-axis shows the weeks in the study period:
Fourth, ICU admission by vaccination status for the study period. Again, the x-axis shows the weeks in the study period:
Fifth, hospitalisations by vaccination status in the study period. Once more, the x-axis shows the weeks in the study period:
Discussion
Our discussion of the data is divided into these key questions:
What happened in February 2022?
Were the “unvaccinated” really worse off?
Why were the “one dose” recipients so worse off?
Why did NSW Health record so many more COVID-19 deaths than the ABS?
What happened in February 2022?
Extraordinarily, COVID-19 hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths all seemingly fall off a cliff in the period spanning week 6 (the week ending 12 February 2022) to week 7 (the week ending 26 February 2022) in the study period. As shown below, dramatic decreases were evident for all clinical outcomes and for all vaccination statuses in NSW from the period 5 February to 26 February 2022:
Though this “week” in our analysis actually comprises 21 days and could, therefore, capture a larger variation in outcomes compared with the other “weeks” from our analysis, this abrupt reversal in the trajectory of the pandemic in NSW is probably best explained by changes in reporting processes at this time. In an 11 February 2022 press conference, NSW Health explained how it had employed an “expert clinical panel” to review how best they should capture COVID admissions to hospital.3 The review was conducted because, as it turns out, for the entirety of the pandemic until this review, NSW Health had counted all incidental COVID-19 hospitalisations as “COVID-19 hospitalisations”. Prior to this review, “hospitalised” COVID-19 patients did not need to be included in these data in NSW Health reports because of COVID-19 infection, but, simply because of COVID-19 infection in the time up to and including 28 days prior to admission to hospital.
We infer that the only change adopted from this review was to limit the window for being classified as “COVID-19 hospitalised” to 14 days, because NSW Health continued to count people who were admitted to hospital for unrelated reasons as “COVID-19 hospitalisations” from all reports in the period 19 February to 31 December 2022.4
If these sloppy processes applied for capturing “COVID-19 hospitalisations”, they were likely applied for “COVID-19” ICU admissions and deaths reporting too. It is not as though the trajectory for the pandemic (as shown in this visualisation here) showed NSW was exiting the COVID-19 wave at this point. The change was far too sudden, and, if anything, the trend was showing that hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths were increasing at the time.5
Some of these changes from the one reporting period to the next were so astonishing to be believed that, if true, would have been promoted as an absolute medical miracle of epic proportions, particularly during peak pandemic hysteria. Examples of these remarkable changes from week 6 to week 7 (5 February to 26 February 2022) include:
4,158 “fully vaccinated” COVID-19 hospitalised patients overcoming their COVID-19 infections and presumably being discharged from hospital. We infer that these patients did not progress in their illness to be admitted to the ICU because COVID-19 patients in the ICU during this period also experienced a similar and dramatic reversal of fortune;
408 “fully vaccinated”, six “one dose” and approximately 150 “unvaccinated” COVID-19 patients miraculously left the ICU during this period. We infer that these patients did not die in this period because COVID-19 deaths decreased significantly across this 21 days;
COVID-19 deaths reduced by 425 for the “fully vaccinated”, 20 for the “one dose” and perhaps an approximate 100-150 “unvaccinated” in this 21 day period.6
But, a “medical miracle” did not occur. These changes reflected nothing more than changes in data collection and reporting from NSW Health.
It is also not as though the protective benefits of widespread vaccination in NSW contributed to the observed changes clinical severity of COVID-19 outcomes in this 21-day period for the following reasons:
NSW had already reached a vaccination coverage of 93.6% by the end of 2021 which only extended to 94.2% by 11 February 2022. Orthodoxy suggests that the relatively high vaccination coverage in NSW would confer protection against severe illness and death from COVID-19 for the absolute majority of the population. Therefore, any observed declines in COVID-19-related hospitalisations, ICU admissions, and deaths during the specified time frame were less likely to be directly caused by the incremental increase in vaccination coverage in this time. Otherwise put, nothing would explain the much greater January peaks in infections, hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths if we were to believe that vaccination played any part in this trend;
It follows too, because NSW had reached “vaccination milestones” more than five months prior to February 2022 (50% “fully vaccinated” by 17 September 2021) “vaccine effectiveness” would have waned substantially in this time and reduced any presumed protection from the miracle vaccines;
As stated previously, NSW Health had fudged the COVID-19 hospitalisations data for the entirety of the pandemic prior to the period on or around 11 February 2022 (coinciding with the time when a “Weekly Surveillance Report” was not published so they could get their “production processes” in order). Therefore, the hospitalisation numbers were certainly significantly overestimated and it was not vaccination that changed the clinical severity outcomes for COVID-19, it was simply a change in how COVID-19 hospitalisations (and we assert, likely COVID-19 ICU and deaths data likewise) were “captured”; and,
The time span between Week 6 and Week 7 is relatively short (21 days in this study period) for such dramatic changes . In the pandemic, no changes as abrupt as these have been observed.
So, the dodgy data collection and reporting processes from NSW Health could have been used to heighten the fear and panic of the pandemic in NSW because the numbers of hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths were overestimated by a significant factor.
Were the “unvaccinated” really worse off?
The data provided by NSW Health is aggregated and does not include individual-level information on important variables such as age, underlying health conditions, vaccination history and timing, and other potential confounders. Without this granular data, it is challenging to control for factors that could influence clinical severity outcomes and potentially bias the results. Despite these limitations, however, we have reason to believe that the unvaccinated were not actually worse off at all.
There was no clinical progression from hospitalisation, to ICU admission to COVID-19 death for the unvaccinated:
Conventionally, if COVID-19's impact was escalating, one would anticipate a sequential flow from increased hospitalisations to ICU admissions, culminating in deaths over successive weeks, given the average clinical course of a COVID-19 fatality is around 33.3 days. This pattern suggests that a surge in hospital admissions would logically precede a rise in ICU cases, followed by an increase in mortality rates. However, the data does not corroborate this progression.
Remarkably, post the week ending 12 February, the figures for hospitalised, ICU, or deceased under the “no dose/unknown” category—which later simplifies to “no dose”—fail to display a consistent pattern. This anomaly indicates that a significant portion of COVID-19 attributed deaths within this cohort might have been due to alternate causes, or were instances of deaths “with” rather than “from” COVID-19. This hypothesis is credible, given the steady numbers for unvaccinated COVID-19 hospital and ICU admissions from mid-May 2022 onwards, suggesting that many fatalities likely occurred outside of hospitals, such as at home or in aged care facilities, without significantly impacting hospitalisation or ICU figures.
To support this, let's look at some key data points:
From 26 November 2021 to 1 January 2022, there were 344 hospitalisations, 45 ICU admissions, and 7 deaths among the unvaccinated.
The week ending 12 February 2022 saw a peak with 655 hospitalisations, 61 ICU admissions, and 157 deaths.
However, from the week ending 28 May 2022 onwards, the numbers drastically change. For instance:
The week ending 28 May reported 1 hospitalisation, 2 ICU admissions, and 14 deaths.
By the week ending 06 August, there were no hospitalisations, 1 ICU admission, and 30 deaths.
This data suggests that the expected correlation between hospitalisations, ICU admissions, and deaths does not hold consistently, particularly in later periods where hospitalisation and ICU numbers do not align with the mortality figures. Such discrepancies point towards a potential misattribution of causes of death or indicate that many deaths occurred in settings that did not contribute to the expected healthcare pathway from hospitalisation to ICU and ultimately death, such as in aged care facilities or at home, which we address next.
The healthy vaccinee bias makes the outcomes for the unvaccinated look worse:
The disparity between COVID-19 hospitalisation/ICU data and COVID-19 deaths for the unvaccinated underscores the importance of considering the “healthy vaccinee bias” when interpreting these outcomes. The bias suggests that the apparent higher mortality rate among the unvaccinated could be misleading, as it does not account for the inherent differences in health status between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups, particularly among the elderly.
Many of these unvaccinated individuals likely had significant comorbidities, rendering them particularly vulnerable to severe outcomes from COVID-19. The presence of multiple health conditions would not only increase their risk of mortality but also complicate the decision-making process regarding vaccination and hospitalisation for COVID-19 treatment.
A substantial subset of this group may have been receiving palliative care, emphasising the complexity of their health status. Palliative care, focused on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of a serious illness, often involves decisions against aggressive treatments that might not align with the goals of care for individuals with a limited life expectancy. For patients in advanced stages of palliative care, the decision against vaccination or hospital treatment for COVID-19 could stem from a broader approach that prioritised quality of life over the extension of life through invasive medical interventions.
We acknowledge that the healthy vaccinee bias also could potentially make the unvaccinated outcomes look better than they actually were. The unvaccinated cohort included children, who for a part of this study period, were not eligible for vaccination and for whom a COVID illness was typically mild and rarely required hospitalisation, or extremely rarely caused death.
Another factor that might have made the unvaccinated cohort’s outcomes look better was that a larger proportion of elderly cases, as well as more people with immunosuppression who were eligible for a third vaccine dose earlier and would have been more susceptible to severe outcomes from COVID-19 infection, would also make the vaccinated and many vaccinated outcomes appear relatively worse.
Yet, for the duration of 2022, NSW Health stated in its reports that COVID-19 was far worse for the unvaccinated, and that they were overrepresented as a proportion of total cases and clinical severity outcomes. It appeared that NSW Health was caught between two conflicting ideas that, on the one hand, COVID-19 outcomes for the unvaccinated were far worse, yet simultaneously on the other hand, COVID-19 outcomes appeared far better for the unvaccinated because of these age and health status confounders. Every NSW Health report from 19 February to 15 October 2022 stated “people who are not vaccinated remain far more likely to suffer severe COVID-19” [emphasis added]. By the 15 October 2022 report, the language softened to say “people who are not vaccinated remain more likely to suffer severe COVID-19” [emphasis added]. In the 22 October 2022 report, it was softened again, saying simply “likely” before ramping up again to “more likely” in the next week’s report (week ending 5 November 2022), to once again “far more likely” in the following week’s report (week ending 12 November 2022), back down to “more likely” for all the remaining reports for 2022 from this point onwards.7 No underlying data to support the truthfulness of these claims was provided by NSW Health in any of these reports.
Whilst it is true that COVID-19 deaths stayed proportionally higher for the unvaccinated cohort, as we have shown previously in our analysis, severe COVID-19 outcomes were practically non-existent as far as COVID-19 hospitalisations and ICU admissions were concerned for the unvaccinated from the period 21 May to 31 December 2022 (when “no dose” data was again provided separately from the “unknown” data):
So, if these patients were closer to death already and were, therefore, unable or unwilling to be vaccinted, the “healthy vaccinee bias” likely made unvaccinated COVID-19 mortality outcomes appear worse.
Ambiguous definitions of “COVID-19 deaths” make the unvaccinated outcomes look worse:
We assert that many of these unvaccinated deaths would have been deaths “with” COVID-19. As we have addressed in a previous article, COVID-19 was reported as an underlying cause of death for only 3.5% of all national COVID-19 deaths in 2022. As a result, we have reason to believe that the number of NSW “COVID-19 deaths” were overestimated by a significant factor because they were considered so if one died “with” COVID-19, not necessarily because COVID-19 was the cause of death.8 Whilst this method of counting COVID-19 mortality might also inflate the deaths figures for other cohorts in our study period too, it is the unvaccinated cohort’s mortality outcomes which do not align with their hospitalisation and ICU outcomes, suggesting that overestimates make the unvaccinated outcomes look proportionally much worse.
Ambiguous definitions of vaccination status make the unvaccinated outcomes look worse:
The way NSW Health defined the vaccination status of patients further complicates a clear reading of clinical severity outcomes for the different cohorts in these reports. According to NSW Health criteria, individuals were classified according to how much time had elapsed since their most recent dose or infection. Here are two examples of this categorisation in action:
A patient was considered “unvaccinated” despite having received one dose:
An individual received their first dose of a two-dose vaccine series. If this individual was exposed to COVID-19 or arrived in Australia less than 21 days after this dose, they were classified as “unvaccinated”. This meant that although they had initiated the vaccination process, they have not reached the 21-day window that NSW Health required to acknowledge vaccination protection.
A patient was considered “single dose” despite having received two doses:
An individual received their second dose of a two-dose vaccine regimen. If they were exposed to COVID-19 or arrived in Australia within 14 days of that second dose, they were considered “partially vaccinated” according to NSW Health. This was because they had not reached the 14-day threshold post-second dose, which was the period NSW Health deemed necessary for “fully vaccinated” status.
Under these guidelines, an individual who contracted COVID-19 just thirteen days after receiving their second vaccine dose would technically be considered “partially vaccinated”, even though they would technically be close to presumed full vaccination efficacy. This suggests that many instances of COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations, and deaths were potentially incorrectly attributed to “unvaccinated” individuals, when they might have been more accurately recorded as “partially vaccinated”, therefore, making the unvaccinated clinical severity outcomes appear relatively worse.
That aside, the claim that vaccines offer “maximal protection” after 21 days is also not established. According to the Australian Federal Government information page, full vaccine efficacy may be reached within 7-14 days after a double-dose regimen, yet this same page also acknowledges that even after one shot some protection is provided. While some studies suggest a 21-day period is linked to a rise in antibody levels, antibody titers have not been proven to be indicators of improved protection against symptomatic or severe COVID-19, which is separately confirmed by the real-world observational data we have showing comparatively poorer outcomes for the many vaccinated.
Why did we ignore the miracle recovery of the unvaccinated?
Another aspect that has been overlooked in these data is the miraculous recovery of the unvaccinated occurring from 21 May 2022 onwards (when the “no dose” category was disaggregated from the “unknown” category once again). From this time until the end of 2022, there were only 22 unvaccinated COVID-19 hospitalisations and 12 unvaccinated COVID-19 ICU admissions, significantly below the fully and many vaccinated cohorts:
Therefore, for the above reasons, the unvaccinated were not proportionally worse off than the vaccinated and boosted and many boosted.
Why were the “one dose” recipients so worse off?
The “one dose” cohort experienced demonstrably worse outcomes in this study period, both proportionally and in absolute terms, particularly with respect to hospitalisations and ICU admissions for COVID-19 disease:
The “one dose” cohort is most notably overrepresented in COVID-19 hospitalisations despite being a minor segment of the overall NSW population. For example, 31 “one dose” patients were COVID-19 hospitalised in the week ending 2 April 2022 (representing 2.85% of all COVID-19 hospitalisations) despite this cohort only comprising 1.45% of the NSW population at the time. Similar results occurred in the two successive weeks, where 2% of all COVID-19 hospitalisations occurred in the “one dose” cohort. In contrast, once the unvaccinated cohort was disaggregated from the “unknown” category in the reports starting “the week ending 28 May 2022”, the highest “no dose” weekly hospitalisation for this cohort was four people. This is despite the unvaccinated cohort accounting for roughly 3.96% of the total NSW population at the time.9
It is possible that adverse reactions to first COVID-19 vaccine doses were mistakenly (or deceptively) classified as “COVID-19 infection” related, therefore inflating the total “one dose” cohort’s clinical severity outcomes. This misattribution could involve COVID-19 hospitalisations, ICU admissions and even deaths being recorded under the broader umbrella of “COVID-19” complications despite potentially initially being triggered by adverse events to COVID-19 vaccination. The hypothesis is credible because, as discussed earlier in the article, there were circumstances where a person who received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine could still be considered as having a “one dose” vaccination status as late as 13 days after their second dose (or confirmed COVID infection). Adding even further weight to this hypothesis is the often repeated assertion that the safety of COVID-19 vaccines was established because most side-effects occur within one or two days following vaccination. Whilst this claim is often made to support the safety of vaccination, it also proves the point that side effects can and do occur immediately following vaccination, in which case when they do, this could lead to a misattribution of one’s COVID-19 vaccination status as “one dose” if the adverse event occurred soon after the patient’s second dose.
To reiterate the earlier point, a single dosed person who had an adverse reaction to their COVID-19 vaccine would be considered “unvaccinated” if the adverse reaction occurred within 21 days since their first shot. A double-dosed person who had an adverse reaction to their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine would be considered a “one dose” patient if they experienced an adverse reaction to this second shot within 14 days of their second dose. In this hypothetical, had these patients attended hospital because their reaction was sufficiently serious to do so, in all likelihood they would have presented with symptoms that resembled COVID-19 infection, or indeed, anything that was “clinically compatible” with the symptoms of COVID-19 infection and therefore, they would be admitted as a “COVID-19 hospitalisation”, or worse, a “COVID-19 ICU patient” or in serious cases where the reaction results in death: a “COVID-19 death”.
We speculate that many of the “one dose” had a negative reaction to their initial COVID-19 vaccination and decided against further vaccination. In support of this claim the size of the “one dose” cohort does not significantly reduce over time, suggesting that those who had only one shot had firmly decided against another. By the end of 2022, the one dose cohort aged 16 and over was just 1.28% of the the 16 and over population in NSW, a small reduction from the 1.45% approximately seven months prior. The trend in vaccination uptake for this cohort suggests that their severe clinical outcomes did not occur in the interval before they were allowed to get their second shot, it suggests that this second shot was not wanted by the individuals in this cohort.10
Why did NSW Health record so many more COVID-19 deaths than the ABS?
In the most revealing of all the statistics from the NSW Health COVID-19 surveillance reports, NSW somehow recorded approximately 40% more COVID-19 deaths than the ABS did for the same period.
So far, our analysis has included the period when the Omicron wave commenced (26 November 2021) but, for comparison in this section, we limited our analysis to the year 2022 to cross-reference NSW’s COVID-19 deaths data from both the “Causes of Death” and the “Provisional Mortality Statistics” releases from the ABS for the 2022 reference period. The “Causes of Death” data provided the total COVID-19 deaths in NSW and the “Provisional Mortality Statistics” provided the weekly deaths from all-causes in NSW as well as national COVID-19 deaths by week.
For 2022, the total COVID-19 deaths recorded in the NSW Health reports were 5,671, however, the NSW COVID-19 deaths recorded in the ABS data was 3,607: an incredible 2,064 extra COVID-19 deaths in NSW Health’s data.
Recalling that NSW Health did not produce a weekly surveillance report for the week ending 19 February, and therefore, we do not have COVID-19 deaths data for that week from NSW. In contrast, the ABS data shows that 206 national COVID-19 deaths occurred in this week, so, the ABS COVID-19 deaths data even narrows the gap with the NSW COVID-19 deaths data by including this extra 206 COVID-19 deaths. So, NSW Health’s COVID-19 deaths data could be out by 2,270 deaths!
Even more strangely, we have NSW COVID-19 deaths exceed national COVID-19 deaths for several weeks in 2022. In weeks 4, 5, 6, 36 and 38, NSW somehow recorded more COVID-19 deaths than all Australian COVID-19 deaths put together:
Although hospitalisation and ICU data collection and presentation has been shown to be peculiarly sloppy, deaths data is not something that should easily be fudged or miscounted. ABS data is much more rigorous than the NSW Health data and we speculate that, because not all deaths occurred in the weeks in which NSW Health published them in their reports, this explains the variation.
Similarly, we understand that the ABS data undergoes a “revisions” process and so we could have expected more NSW COVID-19 deaths added to the weekly tallies in some weeks if some coronial investigations concluded during 2022 and were added to later reports. However, these were likely only a very small minority of the extra 2,000 deaths to account for, if any at all. The Coroner’s Court has made it clear that death by COVID-19 is a “natural death” that does not require a coronial investigation, even in circumstances where that death was sudden, unexpected or even if the death followed a “medical procedure” which could include vaccination.11
We have previously addressed just how little was needed to certify a death as “from” or “with” COVID-19, and so we speculate whether it was possible that NSW Health perhaps indulged in their own speculation during peak pandemic hysteria as deaths skyrocketed.
Further questions
So, we have some questions which we will put to the Minister for Health in NSW following publication of this article:
Was NSW Health aware of the significant discrepancies in these data?
At a later point, were these deaths reclassified, and if so, when?
How many of the deaths were reported to the coroner and later reclassified following the investigation?
The “unknown” category was available to be used by NSW Health and persisted for the duration of 2022, so why was it not used if there was any uncertainty about the underyling cause of death?
What assurances can NSW Health give that an error of this magnitude will not recur and what systems have been put in place to ensure this?
Will the error be acknowledged and further explained by NSW Health as needed beyond the responses to these questions?
We will update you here with their response, if any to the above questions.
Privately, we have our own questions for reflection from our analysis of these data:
How many people were scared by these alarming death reports; manipulated into thinking that COVID-19 was a disease of unprecedented lethality for everyone?
How many people were manipulated into thinking that the unvaccinated really did experience more severe outcomes from COVID-19?
How many got vaccinated and boosted because they feared being hospitalised, admitted to ICU, being ventilated or dying from COVID'-19 infection because of these data?
Was this error accidental or was it something else?
Conclusion
The findings from this analysis contribute to growing concerns regarding the transparency and accuracy of public health reporting and policy-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, it challenges the prevailing narrative that unvaccinated individuals faced disproportionately worse outcomes than their vaccinated counterparts. Instead, the data suggest that, even accepting the data at face value (which is problematic at best), the outcomes for the unvaccinated in terms of hospitalisations and ICU admissions, when adjusted for their proportion of the population, were comparatively better than those for individuals with various levels of vaccination.
This revelation not only questions the “effectiveness narrative” surrounding COVID-19 vaccines but also sheds light on the broader implications of how public health policies have been communicated and enacted. Now that the underlying data underpinning these reports has been destroyed, we can only speculate about what they may have revealed.
Considering the evidence outlined in this article, we have substantial grounds to regard these reports as strategically crafted to fulfill five objectives: first, to influence individuals to accept COVID-19 vaccination through manipulation; second, to affirm to those already vaccinated that they made the correct decision and “did the right thing”; third, to perpetuate the narrative that positioned the unvaccinated as irrational, irresponsible and at risk; four, to manufacture the hysteria required to warrant continued public health interventions (masking and vaccination mandates); and five, to distract from the failure of the COVID-19 vaccines to prevent severe outcomes among the vaccinated and boosted, thereby concealing the significant harms revealed in the Australia’s significant excess mortality data.
Notwithstanding the promise of the protection from the miracle vaccines against infection and/or transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus or COVID-19 disease - which is, and always was, a complete fabrication.
Confirmed via email from NSW Health in response to our inquiry: “Is the NSW Health Weekly Surveillance Report available for epidemiological week 7 of 2022? It skips from week 6 to week 8 on the archive page.”
NSW Health Press Conference, 11 February 2022, https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=473592924408252, accessed 19 February 2024.
All NSW Health “NSW COVID-19 Weekly Data Overview” reports are available here https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/covid-19/Pages/default.aspx and are provided as a combined .pdf document in this article for review. Search for the phrase “unrelated to COVID” to find the number of times this appears in the reports.
We acknowledge too, of course, that trusting these data to make claims about trends in clinical outcomes in NSW at the time is problematic for the reasons already stated in this article.
We calculated the differences between weeks 6 and 7 for hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths for the “three or more doses” and “two doses” (together referred to as “fully vaccinated”) and the “one dose” group. We estimated the “no dose” group (referred to as the “unvaccinated”) because from the week 7 reports onwards until week 20, they were bundled with the “unknown” category.
All NSW Health “NSW COVID-19 Weekly Data Overview” reports are available here https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/covid-19/Pages/default.aspx and are provided as a combined .pdf document in this article for review.
This statement is included in every report in the period spanning 21 February 2022 to 22 October 2022. However, we have good reason to believe that this approach to coding deaths in these reports had existed for the entirety of 2022.
Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, “COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout Update”, https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2022/04/covid-19-vaccine-rollout-update-2-april-2022.pdf, accessed 23 February 2024, p. 7.
The Australian Government’s daily updates provide an imperfect, yet generally helpful indication of the size of the “one dose” cohort in NSW. There are limitations with these data which are discussed in each update. We estimated the size of “one dose” cohort in the NSW population aged 16 and over by calculating the difference between the one dose 16 and over from the two dose 16 and over populations (96.04% one dose minus the 94.59% two dose).
One caveat with the hospitalisation and ICU data is that, for a time at least, both categories were not mutually exclusive. For example, in the earlier reports for 2022, we were told that a hospitalised COVID-19 patient admitted to ICU would be double-counted as a “COVID-19 hospitalised” patient. This double-counting did not persist for the duration of 2022 because, following the change in the “production process” for these reports in February 2022, the phrasing around hospitalisations and ICU data did not carry the disclaimer about not being mutually exclusive and instead, clearly distinguishable categories of either “admitted to hospital (but not to ICU)” and “admitted to ICU” were added to the reports. As the data in this section of the article addresses what occurred from 21 May-31 December 2022, however, this caveat does not impact our assessment of the significantly worse outcomes for the “one dose” cohort who were in a clearly distinguishable category in these reports for the entirety of 2022.
Coroner’s Court of NSW, “When a death must be reported to the Coroner”, https://coroners.nsw.gov.au/reporting-to-the-coroner/when-a-death-must-be-reported-to-the-coroner.html, accessed 23 February 2024. The Coroner’s Court of NSW has confirmed in correspondence with us that COVID-19 deaths are “natural deaths” that do not require a coronial investigation.