By: Rebekah Barnett 

The argument for Collective Good is on shaky ground

Is NSW Health aware that there are barely any unvaccinated patients being hospitalised with Covid? In last week’s Covid surveillance report, there were 0 (zero) unvaccinated patients hospitalised with Covid. In the past 3 months, there was a grand total of 21 unvaccinated patients (0.2%) out of a total 9, 348 Covid hospitalisations.





​


I’ll let that sink in.
The remaining 9, 327 is comprised of:
4+ dosed (1, 935),
3 dosed (3, 274),
2 dosed (1, 762),
1 dosed (122),
Unknown (2, 234).
NSW Minister for Health Brad Hazzard’s vaccinations may be up to date, but unfortunately, his Covid FAQs are not.

Additional observations from the NSW surveillance reports
(which can all be found HERE)

5. Aged care deaths account for 774/1645 deaths with Covid from this period, or 47%.
6. 77/1645 of deaths with Covid occurred at home.
7. For weeks 21-30, NSW Health gave a tally of the number of deaths with Covid under the age of 65. During this 10 week period, there were 76 deaths with Covid in the under 65 group (4.6% of total deaths). 73/76 of these people (96%) were reported to have died with significant comorbidities. From weeks 31 onwards, NSW Health stops reporting on the number of deaths under 65 and on associated comorbidities.

At this stage, Woolworths has not made any statements to indicate that they will adjust their discriminatory policies to fall in line with the latest health advice.

A trustworthy brand would acknowledge the mistake, adjust the policy, and apologise to those whom it wrongfully sacked while operating under misguided health advice.

​
https://rebekahbarnett.substack.com/p/australias-most-trusted-brand/comments?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

How did we get to the point where anyone who asks even the most commonplace question about vaccines is reflexively reviled and dismissed as an "antivaxxer"?

In Part 1 of this series, I explored the ways that researchers aligned with the vaccine-industrial complex frame “vaccine hesitancy” amongst the public.

Part 2 delved into the full-spectrum warfare that is launched on any clinician or researcher who uncovers data that contradict the dogma that all vaccines that gain regulatory approval are “safe and effective”.
​
But how did we get to the point where anyone who asks even the most commonplace question about vaccines is reflexively reviled as an “antivaxxer”, a pejorative which permits instant dismissal of any consideration of their question? How did vaccines become such a sacred cow?

The Church of Modern MedicineWhen I was in my early twenties, I read Confessions of a Medical Heretic by Dr Robert Mendelsohn. Mendelsohn’s conceptualisation of the Church of Modern Medicine, with its priests (doctors), temples (hospitals), rituals (such as useless and possibly harmful annual check-ups), sacraments (pills, procedures and injections) and, of course, heresies (such as rejecting the sacraments of Modern Medicine in preference for other ways of understanding health and disease), resonated strongly with me.
This framing helped me make sense of much of the strange behaviour I had already witnessed in close family members. Why would intelligent and competent adults who routinely invested considerable time and effort in researching which toaster to buy, or which tradesman to hire to renovate their bathroom, simply do anything their doctor said without question? Because they believed in their doctor. As Mendelsohn wrote,
“Modern Medicine can’t survive without our faith, because Modern Medicine is neither an art nor a science. It’s a religion.
One definition of religion identifies it as any organized effort to deal with puzzling or mysterious things we see going on in and around us. The Church of Modern Medicine deals with the most puzzling phenomena: birth, death, and all the tricks our bodies play on us—and we on them—in between. In The Golden Bough, religion is defined as the attempt to gain the favor of ‘powers superior to man, which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.'”

But Mendelsohn’s metaphor of Western medicine as a religion didn’t fully explain how vaccines, in particular, had become sacrosanct to researchers and policy-makers.
It’s relatively easy to put one over on the public, most of whom have precious little knowledge of even their most basic bodily functions (which I consider to be a major failing of our schooling system), let alone the complexities of individual and herd immunity and how mass vaccination programs have interfered with both.
And it’s easy to dupe doctors too, since they receive only the most rudimentary ‘education’ – if you can even call it that – on vaccines, as was acknowledged by Vaccine Confidence Project director Heidi Larson in her presentation to the World Health Organisation’s Global Vaccine Safety Summit on 3 December 2019:
“In medical school you’re lucky if you have a half day on vaccines, never mind keeping up to date with all this.”Heidi Larson: ‘Vaccine Safety in the Next Decade: Why we need new modes of trust building?’


But it should be harder to sucker scientists. After all, science is supposed to be defined by scepticism – the relentless questioning of everything, even (and perhaps especially) those things that “everybody knows” are true. The scientist is meant to take nothing on faith, to demand evidence for every assertion, to assiduously search for and then determinedly point out facts that contradict every hypothesis, and to be prepared to abandon even the most well-established theory if sufficient evidence accumulates against it.
At least, that’s what we’re told that scientists do. The reality is very different.

The vaccine-industrial complexIn his farewell address before handing over the office of President of the United States to John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers to liberty and democracy posed by the multi-headed hydra that he described as “the military-industrial complex”.

Eisenhower coined this term to refer to the incestuous relationship between the military, the defence contractors who supply it, and the congresscritters who benefit from the flows of money between the two by receiving campaign financing, insider information and the promise of lucrative consulting gigs after they leave office, in return for approving military spending.
As you read these words (or listen to them, starting at 8 minutes 40 seconds in) spoken by the five-star general who founded the Psychological Warfare Branch of the Allied forces during World War II, notice how they apply equally to the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, and most particularly, the vaccine-industrial complex.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961)


Now, ask yourself, has there been “unwarranted influence” from the vaccine-industrial complex in public policy? Yes, without a doubt. The supernova-scale expansion of the childhood vaccination schedule in my lifetime, and the tying of vaccination status to access to government benefits and preschool education, was not driven by any genuine threat to public health posed by infectious diseases. These had ceased to be a significant contributor to serious illness and death in children (and indeed in the whole population) long before vaccines were widely employed:

Has “the weight of this combination endanger[ed] our liberties or democratic processes”? Hell, yes. Anyone who has lost their job, or been barred from visiting their loved one in a nursing home or hospital, or travelling, or dining in a restaurant, or going to the cinema – and all without any public consultative process being followed – because they didn’t accept a COVID-19 injection can attest to this.

Has the enterprise of science become dominated by government-funded (that is, taxpayer-funded) research and contracts? Self-evidently so. The development of expensive, patented COVID-19 injections that have reaped record profits for their liability-free manufacturers was bankrolled by government funding:
“Out of $5.9 billion in investment [in COVID-19 injection research and development] tracked up to March 2021, 98.12% was public funding. The money primarily went to private companies with both Moderna and Janssen receiving more than $900 million. Pfizer and BioNTech, who developed the first Covid-19 vaccine authorized in the United States, received some $800 million in R&D funding. Practically all of the money invested in the three companies came from public funding.”
Which Companies Received The Most Covid-19 Vaccine R&D Funding?
Meanwhile, promising treatments including nutraceuticals and repurposed, out-of-patent drugs were left to wither on the vine, with trials funded only by outsiders to the pharmaceutical-industrial complex.

Finally, has “public policy… itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite”? Again, the answer is unquestionably yes. So-called “public servants” who have assumed dictatorial powers since the inception of the manufactured COVID crisis, have repeatedly refused to release the data on which their draconian restrictions were supposedly based, for the scrutiny of the public that pays their salaries. US Chief Medical Adviser for COVID Response, Anthony Fauci, has asserted that he “represents science” and hence that anyone who questions his pronouncements is mounting an “attack” on him which constitutes an “attack on science“. College drop-out and convicted antitrust violator Bill Gates decreed that the only way “the world will be able to go back to the way things were in December before the coronavirus pandemic… is… when we have an almost perfect drug to treat COVID-19, or when almost every person on the planet has been vaccinated against coronavirus.”
This self-appointed “scientific-technological elite” feels no obligation to justify its actions to the public, let alone consult them on the policies they inflict upon them. You and I are supposed to just sit down, shut up, and do as we’re told by “the experts”. This is, of course, the complete antithesis of the scientific method.

It stands to reason that those at the top of the scientific totem pole, who have proved themselves useful foot soldiers to the captains of industry, should be the most vocal supporters of policies that privilege corporate profits over public good. But why don’t we hear more dissenting voices from among the rank and file?

From scientist to salespersonAs Bret Weinstein has pointed out, the application of the scientific method requires a steadfast commitment to attempting to disconfirm your own hypothesis – even, and especially, if you desperately want to prove that it’s correct.
However, the system by which scientific work is funded requires scientists to effectively become salespeople for their hypotheses in order to win grants, which prevents them from thinking and functioning as scientists (listen below, or start watching at 19 minutes, 10 seconds in):
Furthermore, peer review – developed as a quality control assurance mechanism to ensure poorly-conducted or fraudulent science doesn’t get published – was revealed by the Climategate scandal to have devolved into a system for suppressing any voices of dissent from the dominant paradigm.

And, counterintuitively, the more scientific papers are published in a particular field, the less innovative and more conformist the scientists working within it become. As a paper titled ‘Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science’
explains,
“A deluge of papers does not lead to turnover of central ideas in a field, but rather to ossification of canon…
A novel idea that does not fit within extant schemas will be less likely to be published, read, or cited. Faced with this dynamic, authors are pushed to frame their work firmly in relationship to well-known papers, which serve as ‘intellectual badges’ (19) identifying how the new work is to be understood, and discouraged from working on too-novel ideas that cannot be easily related to existing canon.”
Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science
For an incisive but concise analysis of the impact of this “ossification of canon” on the manufactured COVID crisis, read Eugyppius’ superb article:
eugyppius: a plague chronicle
Study: The larger a scientific field, the more conformist that field becomes, and the more lethargic its progress
A leitmotif of this plague chronicle is the profound decadence and dysfunction of modern academia. Following the Science would be inadvisable even if we had some semblance of science. Instead, alas, we have a massive, overbuilt, over-enrolled university apparatus that primarily caters to the careerist concerns of students, researchers and teachers. It i…
Read more
25 days ago · 377 likes · 166 comments · eugyppius

To summarise, Western medicine has taken on cult-like qualities in order to fill the religion-shaped hole left by secularisation, the vaccine-industrial complex has co-opted “public health” policy which now serves its own interests rather than those of the public, and science has devolved into “a factory, not of free inquiry, but of conformity”..

What can we do to fix this mess? Fortunately, some of the work is inadvertently being done for us, by the vaccine-industrial complex itself.
BacklashIn the study on the suppression of scientific discourse on vaccine safety which I referenced in Part 2, respondents referred to one more consequence of the relentless attacks on their academic freedom and medical ethics, which the authors dubbed a “backfire effect” or “censorship boomerang”, defining this as “a counter-reaction that draws more attention to the opponents’ position”.
They go on to point out that
“In the field of vaccination, signs of a boomerang effect can be found in the growing number of groups expressing dissenting views on vaccines on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter… Studies examining the growing global phenomenon of ‘vaccine hesitancy’ usually link it with the activities of such ‘anti-vaxx’ groups.”
Suppressing Scientific Discourse on Vaccines? Self-perceptions of researchers and practitioners
Why would vilifying scientists and clinicians who speak up about vaccine harms cause more people to be curious about what they have to say? Because, contrary to what the “scientific-technological elite” would have you believe, the average person isn’t stupid. He or she understands intuitively that when an immensely powerful force exerts considerable time, money and effort to utterly crush a powerless lone doctor or scientist, it embodies George R. R. Martin’s pithy saw, “When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say”.
Or, to put it in more sober academic-speak,
“Suppression of critical voices in science violates scientific principles, prevents a substantive discussion in a controversial field, and may establish a pattern of unfair conduct that diminishes public confidence in science and medicine.”
Suppressing Scientific Discourse on Vaccines? Self-perceptions of researchers and practitioners
And of course, scientists who wander naively into the vaccine-industrial complex buzzsaw may, if they have sufficient courage and integrity, be provoked to dig deeper and share what they learn about the nature of the beast that has tried to swallow them whole, with the public.
Gary Goldman (whom we met in Part 2) was a computer scientist and inventor (he developed the first microcomputer-based computer aided drafting [CAD] system) who probably never would have given vaccines a second thought, if the CDC hadn’t hired him to analyse the impact of the chickenpox vaccine, and then engaged in a protracted harassment campaign to attempt to prevent him from publishing the harms that he had discovered. Goldman went on to become a health advocate and found a journal, Medical Veritas, devoted to promoting increased awareness of vaccine adverse reactions, depoliticising public health, and retooling the current Big Pharma-dominated disease-treatment system into a true health-care system. Nice work, CDC.
An end to faith-based medicine?While we can all draw inspiration from beacons of integrity like Gary Goldman, at the end of the day we have to recognise that no one is coming to prise us from the tentacles of the self-appointed “scientific-technological elite” that Eisenhower foresaw. It’s up to us to opt out of the control system that they wish to impose on us – for our own good, of course – by taking responsibility for ourselves in every sphere of life in which we’re being shunted into passive dependency on the structures and institutions that they have created.
Taking responsibility for our own health – through eating a wholefood plant-centric diet, daily physical activity, prioritising sleep and rest, cultivating meaningful social connections and centering our lives around purpose and service – is an obvious first step.
As Robert Mendelsohn wrote back in 1979,
“Modern Medicine relies on faith to survive. All religions do. So heavily does the Church of Modern Medicine rely on faith that if everyone somehow simply forgot to believe in it for just one day, the whole system would collapse. For how else could any institution get people to do the things Modern Medicine gets people to do, without inducing a profound suspension of doubt? Would people allow themselves to be artificially put to sleep and then cut to pieces in a process they couldn’t have the slightest notion about—if they didn’t have faith? Would people swallow the thousands of tons of pills every year—again without the slightest knowledge of what these chemicals are going to do—if they didn’t have faith?”
Confessions of a Medical Heretic, p. xiv
And, I would add, would people allow themselves and their children to be injected with novel substances that have no long-term safety data, if they didn’t have faith?
If you want to place your faith in anything, have faith in the self-healing capacity of your own body. There’s a role for medicine, of course, in limited circumstances such as physical trauma, acute heart conditions and serious infections. But for the vast majority of ailments for which people seek medical advice, the bon mot attributed (probably incorrectly) to Voltaire rings true:
“The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”

https://robynchuter.substack.com/p/backlash-how-the-vaccine-pushers-6c8
https://robynchuter.substack.com/

On Covid, vaccines, and the Indonesian government
I met an intelligent and articulate young man on one of my longer drives when I was in Bali just recently. We talked about many things, but mainly Covid vaccines, and the Indonesian government mandates. He expressed concern about discussing these things for fear of being reported, so I will be careful not to reveal any identifying information. I will call him K.

K has not had Covid yet. He is double-dosed because it was a government requirement for working.
He doesn’t think the vaccines probably do anything much, but he got it so that he could work. The way he said it, ‘it’s like 50/50’ whether it helps with anything. K knows the vaccines don’t stop you from getting Covid but he thought in some cases it can help lessen the illness. He said that he doesn’t pay much attention. He seemed to think Covid is a non event. He said it’s on the news all the time, but he didn’t have much experience of it in his own community. Either people had it, but it was just a regular type of virus and testing is lax and so no one noticed, or people hadn’t got it yet. He doesn’t know anyone who died from Covid.
On government and media comms about vaccines, he said they are, “mixing truth with lies”.

K told me that several people in his community have died from the vaccine. I asked how he knows that it was the vaccine that killed them. Was there an autopsy? He said well, they were injected, then they got very sick and died within 2 weeks. He said that they all died of different symptoms, but the trajectory was the same. Injection, very ill, death.
I asked how he knows about these vaccine deaths. Were they reported on the news? K said no, the deaths were not reported on the news, but Balinese communities are tight-knit, and when something like this happens to someone, everyone in the community knows about it. He did say that early on in the vaccine rollout, there were some vaccine deaths reported on the news, but not so much now.

I asked, well if people are dying from it, maybe some people don’t want to take it. What happens if you don’t take the vaccine? K said, “that is not possible.” Why not? First, he said because you cannot work without it. I said, what if you find a way to live without working? K said no, then the government will send people to your house to inject you. I asked if this happened to people he knows? K said yes. Ok, but what if you still just say no to the people when they come to your house? K said then you go to jail, so it is simply not possible to say no. I asked if K knew anyone who had been taken to jail. He said no, because everyone is too scared and so they capitulate in the end. We discussed this a bit more and arrived at the idea that jail is a threat moreso than an actuality, but as people are too afraid to test the threat, it is highly effective.
K said that that he was nervous to discuss vaccines with me. He worried that someone might report him. Someone in your community? No, the foreigners, he said. I promised not to report him.

I asked how he felt towards the government for making people take the vaccines in order to go to work. He said it is normal in Indonesia, that most people don’t think, they just do as they are told. He said that people don’t really trust the government, but they just don’t think about it. He said that there wasn’t choice between different vaccines – they had to take whichever one was being offered in their local area


I was curious to see if K’s views were typical of Balinese sentiment, or were just his own.
Here are a couple of other conversations that were had in different regions, with a salon worker and a hospitality worker.

T, a salon worker
T has had 3 doses because she needed to work and to go back to Timor to see her family. She cannot do either without being vaccinated against Covid. T was very scared of getting the vaccine at first. She said she felt very bad. I patted my tummy – like a bad gut feeling? Yes, yes. She said she felt like it was an experiment, like after 4 or 5 or 6 doses maybe, “we will turn into chickens.” T didn’t get vaccinated at first, but when members of the local government came to her house to check on her vaccination status, she was spooked and made her appointment. I asked, what would have happened if you didn’t get it? Would you go to jail? T shook her head, not jail, but you cannot work or travel to your family. T seemed to be very bothered by the government workers visiting her house. That was enough for her to roll up her sleeve and get on with it.
When I questioned further about penalties for not getting vaccinated, T said that if you don’t get the vaccine, you are not eligible for government assistance. She said that during the lockdown periods, many people were unable to work and so had no money and very little food. The government issued food subsidies such as packets of rice and eggs, but only to people who had received the required doses of vaccination. So, with the combination of lockdowns and vaccination mandates, the penalty for not receiving the vaccine could be starvation if you were too poor to buy your own food.

B, hopsitality worker
Noticing that B’s colleague was wearing a mask, I asked if she was trying to avoid Covid? B gave me a wide grin. No, he said, she is cleaning the kitchen with chemicals – the mask is to protect against chemicals. I laughed, oh ok. Have you had Covid yet? He snickered, “I don’t believe that.” Don’t believe what, that Covid is real? “It’s not real, all made up, if you’re sick you’re sick.” He laughed again and I was on my way.
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My reflections
Regarding K’s comments on vaccine deaths, perhaps there is wisdom in the simplicity of interpretation. If a number of healthy people get injected, then immediately get very ill and die shortly after, chances are that whatever they were injected with is the problem. In Australia, medical professionals seem hell-bent on finding any other number of unlikely reasons. Many of the people I interview for Jab Injuries Australia whose symptoms started from 5 minutes to several days after the injection get hustled off to all manner of specialists to look for mystery reasons that could have caused their illness. Health professionals are generally reported as being highly reticent to attribute any post-vaccination illness or deaths to the vaccine.
This has filtered down to public consciousness too. The husband of my friend became partially blind in one eye after his first Pfizer. On alerting the doctor to his sudden blindness, the doctor confirmed that this is not uncommon in coeliacs receiving the Pfizer, and that his partial blindess was an unpleasant side effect. In fact, the doctor said, he has observed this happen on numerous occasions, and the attendant nurse confirmed this. (This man is still partially blind 8 months on, by the way. Also, note that informed consent was not given. No one thought to ask if he was a coeliac before injecting him with the Pfizer vaccine.) On telling a friend about the situation, she countered, “but maybe he had an underlying condition, you don’t know it was the vaccine.” Pause and think about the absurdity of that statement. Multiple coeliacs would all have to have the same underlying condition that had previously never presented. These unusually similar coeliacs would then suddenly experience presentation of their underlying illness with same kind of blindness, immediately after being injected with the Pfizer, but the Pfizer had nothing to do with it, the timing was just sheer coincidence. The doctor and nurse’s professional opinion that the Pfizer injection caused these coeliac patients to become partially blinded would have to be an incorrect assessment of what is perhaps the most stunning coincidence in their career.

K’s explanation seems more logical (occam’s razor).

The disparity between K’s and T’s perception of penalties for not taking the vaccine may be due to differences in local government. They are from different areas. It seems that in K’s area, local government officials threatened jail for vaccine refusal, while in T’s area, the threat was harassment, and being cut off from government assistance.  

https://rebekahbarnett.substack.com/p/conversation-with-a-balinese-driver?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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By : Rebekah Barnett

Never let the data get in the way of pushing jabs


​The stats don’t lie, but politicians do.
Over the weekend, WA Premier Mark McGowan posted an update on his Facebook page:

McGowan states that, “Out of the people in hospital with COVID-19, nearly one three were unvaccinated.” A shocking statistic, which McGowan uses as the basis of his plea to West Australians to go out and get their fourth dose.^
The most up to date published data on WA hospitalisations states that 27% of hospitalisations between 20 June - 03 July 2022 were ‘Not Vaccinated’, which “includes unknown vaccination status.”
What the hell, Mark.
The Not Vaccinated and the Unknown categories are blended.
Not Vaccinated means no Covid-19 vaccination has been administered.
Unknown means the status is unknown. Unknown could be all vaccinated. Unknown could be all unvaccinated. Unknown could be a mix of the both. We don’t know, because they are Uknown.
It is misleading - misinformation even - to state that nearly one in three West Australians in hospital with Covid is unvaccinated.
What McGowan should have said is,

’Our record keeping is sloppy so we don’t even know how many unvaccinated people are in hospital, but we can tell you that 61% of those in hospital have had 3 or more doses.’
Of course, that would have to be followed by, 'this means it’s working and you should get boosted (again).’
But at least the statistics would be accurate.

UNKNOWNS
On the categorisation of Uknown hospitalisations, NSW Health states on their Respiratory Surveillance Reports:
“Vaccination status is determined by matching to Australian Immunisation Register (AIR) data. Name and date of birth need to be an exact match to that recorded in AIR. People with unknown vaccination status were unable to be found in AIR, though may have vaccination details recorded in AIR under a shortened name or different spelling.”

As for the distribution of Not Vaccinated and Unknown categories within the combined group, after comparing WA against NSW, I think it’s likely that almost all of the blended group are Unknowns.
During June and July (to date) in WA, the combined Not Vaccinated and Unknown groups comprise between 21-27% of Covid hospitalisations.
Compared against NSW Covid data, the rate of combined 0 Dose and Unknown hospitalisations falls within the same range. What is most significant though, is that almost all of the NSW combined group (0 Dose + Unknown) are Unknown. In the past 7 weeks, 0 Dose hospitalisations have not exceeded 1% of hospitalisations in NSW. In contrast, 23-30% of NSW Covid hospitalisations were of Unknown vaccination status. Both states have similar rates of vaccination, although NSW has a slightly larger group of eligible unvaccinated and has lower booster uptake. Comparing rates of hospitalisation for the 2 Dose and 3+ Dose groups, the states track fairly closely, although WA shows slightly lower rates of 2 Dose hospitalisations and slightly higher rates of 3+ Dose hospitalisations compared to NSW. This variation could be explained by the higher booster uptake in WA.
View Australian vaccination statistics by state HERE
NOT VACCINATED
Up until 03 June 2022, the Not Vaccinated group was listed on WA Health reports as simply that - Not Vaccinated. There was no Unknown category on the reports. From 10 June onwards, the disclaimer, “includes unknown vaccination status” was added in fine print after the category name Not Vaccinated, indicating than Unknowns have been lumped in with the Not Vaccinated category all along.
This means that the West Australian public was misled on the rates of hospitalisation by vaccination status for the entire first half of the year. Worse, McGowan is still peddling this misleading information in support of his (seemingly never ending) booster drive.
But McGowan is not done with the misinformation.

McGowan states, “To put that into perspective - less than two per cent (sic) of all eligible Western Australians are unvaccinated.”
This is his sucker punch. One in three hospitalisations are coming from only 2% of the population. The implication - only a crazy person would take that risk. The sane thing to do is book that appointment for your fourth jab.
Except this too, is factually inaccurate.
On 16 July 2022, the day of McGowan’s post, 5.35% of the eligible WA population had received 0 doses of a Covid vaccine.

There is also the problem that McGowan dishonestly uses the vaccine eligible population to frame entire population hospitalisation statistics. Groups not included in the vaccine-eligible population are children aged 0-4 and those with medical exemptions due to contraindication (such as myself). Note that on the WA Health table, hospitalisations include all age groups, with children under 10 accounting for 12.4% of hospitalisations with Covid. If I had thought it ok to use selective ‘part of population’ statistics to frame entire population data, I would barely have graduated from high school, let alone university. For McGowan to be using such dishonest framing without being checked by even one of his recent graduate interns suggests to me that this is a wilful error.
As of December 2021, the WA population was 2 762 200, and was tracking a 1.1% growth rate. Population Australia estimates the population to be 2.84 million at June 2022. I’ll be conservative and underestimate the WA population by using the December figure of 2 762 200. The Australian Government counts total 2, 492, 010 West Australians as having received at least one dose of Covid vaccine. That leaves a 0 dosed population of 270, 190 people, which is 9.8% of the total WA population.
*Update* I found an accurate source which indicates 11.4% of the WA age 0+ population is 0 dosed. Figure correct as at 18 July 2022.
Who makes up this 11.4%? In 2020, children aged 0-4 made up around 3.3% of the total WA population. Assuming that the rate has not changed much more than a decimal point, children aged 0-4 should account for about 91, 150 of the 270, 190 undosed West Aussies. What about the other 179, 040 undosed West Australians? Do they all have medical exemptions? Is 6-7% of the WA population aged 5+ ineligible for Covid vaccination? WA Government does not publish any information on this cohort, so we don’t know.
Now that we have parsed the facts, let’s review the situation.

CLAIM: Mark McGowan says that nearly one in three WA Covid hospitalisations is Unvaccinated.
FALSE: 27% of WA Covid hospitalisations are either 0 Dosed or Unknown. This is a combined statistic for two separate groups. We do not know how many unvaccinated people are in hospital with Covid, but after making comparisons to NSW data, it is probable that the true rate is somewhere between 0.5-5% (with the Unknown group making up the majority of the 27% figure).


CLAIM: Mark McGowan says that less than 2% of the eligible WA population remains unvaccinated.
FALSE: 5.35% of the eligible WA population is unvaccinated (0 Dose), according to Australian Government official statistics.


CLAIM: Mark McGowan proposes measuring the efficacy of vaccines on preventing hospitalisations by using a false ‘vaccine-eligible population’ statistic to frame ‘all population’ hospitalisations.
MISLEADING: McGowan should use all population vaccination statistics to frame all population hospitalisations. 11.4% of the WA population has not received any dose of a Covid vaccine. This is compared to an undetermined rate of 0 Dose hospitalisations, as the WA Government does not release this information to the public.


Now more than ever, when public trust in our government and institutions is at such a low ebb, it is essential that politicians speak truthfully. Sleights of hand and outright lies such as those posted by Mark McGowan this weekend only serve to further undermine trust and foment civil unrest. McGowan has been caught flying fast and loose with the facts. If the misinformation is in error, the appropriate action to take is to admit the error, amend the data, and proceed truthfully from here. Your move, McGowan.



POSTNOTES: I HAVE QUESTIONS

• Does McGowan really not know that Not Vaccinated and Unknown aren’t the same thing?
• Are his health advisors not aware that Not Vaccinated and Unknown are being conflated in the data?
• Aren’t our ‘experts’ making extremely important decisions about public health measures based on these data? In which case, don’t they need to know the difference between Not Vaccinated hospitalisations and Unknown hospitalisations?
• Or perhaps they do know and record the difference, but they conflate the two groups for publication? Why would they do that?

As for answers - the WA government is notoriously cagey about Covid-related information. WA Today journalist Heather McNeil detailed the ridiculous lengths she had to go to in order to obtain the number of Covid patients who required a ventilator in hospital. I have been trying to find out the vaccination breakdown of the cases arising out of the Perth Mess Hall outbreak since January this year. I have sent 8-10 emails requesting the information and I have been interviewed on the phone twice by WA Health employees asking what I want the information for. They promised to reply to my emails, but as yet all my emails remain unanswered.

^ATAGI has not taken the step to recommend the fourth dose to people between the ages of 30 to 49. While the fourth dose is available to this group, ATAGI states, “the benefit for people in this age group is less certain.” It would be wonderful to know why Mark McGowan believes he is qualified to recommend a fourth dose to all those eligible, when the national advisory body does not do so.

https://rebekahbarnett.substack.com/p/misleading-wa-premier-mark-mcgowans?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

By : Rebekah Barnett


​In news that will surprise no one, a major Facebook Fact Check partner is revealed to be significantly funded by Pfizer.
Know what that sounds like?



GB News’ Mark Steyn interviewed Natalie Winters from The National Pulse last night to expose independent fact checkers as anything but independent. The International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) partners extensively with Meta to combat Covid misinformation worldwide. Turns out, though, that Pfizer has been funding programs for the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) since 2008.
Watch the interview below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkpIUKgSmHs&feature=emb_logo


Read the original National Pulse article HERE.
Of course, large organisations need funding. The problem is that these fact checker organisations purport to be independent. This is a clear conflict of interest. When a company funded by Pfizer is tasked with flagging ‘misinformation’ regarding Pfizer products, can we trust them to be truly independent in their decision making? Should any company funded by a huge pharma organisation with a history of criminal conduct be allowed to be involved in the sorting of true from false when it comes to matters involving their sponsor?
This is corporate capture, masquerading as independent journalism.

Naomi Wolf provides another high profile case. Booted from Twitter for her critical tweets about Covid measures (including vaccines and lockdowns), Wolf cited anecdotal evidence that Covid vaccines were causing disruption to women’s menstrual cycles. This was branded as publicly dangerous misinformation by fact checkers. The claims are now well documented and accepted as hard fact, even by the NIH. For a good 12 months, women were falsely assured by health agencies that Covid vaccines could have no impact on their fertility or cycles, and, with the removal of any dissenting comments or commentators from major platforms, women were denied the opportunity to be exposed to counter claims. Counter claims which turned out to be correct. The shutting down of public discourse in this way has serious implications for public health.
Israeli writer Etana Hecht wrote a great piece on the censorship surrounding Wolf and pandemic related content, here:

• A report addressing Covid management and policy. By Dr Philip Altman, Clinical Trial & Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs Consultant.
  
• A declaration for health reform. “It is not only regarding COVID-19 that AHPRA has been perceived to show over-reaching powers. Dissatisfaction and fear of AHPRA is widespread amongst many health professionals as evidenced by the Victorian branch of the AMA calling for a Royal Commission into AHPRA’s conduct.”
  

The AMPS is a non-partisan union of doctors formed as an alternative to the AMA. They support the primacy of the doctor/patient relationship, the ability to speak out about on a range of health issues without fear of de-registration, and resisting government coercion.

Find out how to join or support the AMPS HERE.
When I read letters such as this, I am struck by the strength of character displayed by doctors who have publicly criticised our governments’ and health bodies’ pandemic responses to date. Kudos to these doctors who have risked their careers and reputations to do what they believe is right.

Where there is risk, there must be proper, informed consent. The implications of vaccine shedding effects on unvaccinated contacts must be part of this conversation. Where heath policy and laws protect individuals from wild virus shedding but not vaccine virus shedding, these contradictions should be assessed and rectified. We need to consider whether, as a society, we think that transmissible diseases and associated interventions should be managed socially, at the level of individual and community, or whether they should be managed legally, by state and federal governments. These are big questions. I’d love to see them parsed out in the public discourse.

FURTHER READING

Health Australia Monkeypox Info Page HERE
ATAGI Guidance on Vaccination Against Monkeypox HERE
ACAM2000 Product Info HERE
ACAM2000 Consumer Info Sheet HERE
RX LIST ACAM2000 Product Summary HERE
JYNNEOS Info Sheet HERE
RX LIST JYNNEOS Product Summary HERE
*Acknowledging that STIs can be viral or bacterial