January was the cruellest month. Australians emerged from their long lockdowns only to be confronted with the Omicron variant that largely evaded the vaccinal antibodies they’d acquired over the previous ten months. On the worst day, there were more than 105,000 cases and by the end of the month, there had been 15,993 deaths from all causes, 3,053 deaths above the historical average, an excess mortality rate of 23.5 per cent.
Summer is usually kinder to the sick and the elderly. Excess mortality normally occurs in winter when the flu strikes, and hovers within a band of 5 per cent above or below the predicted death rate. In a particularly bad flu season, such as 2017, it resulted in excess mortality of less than 10 per cent. It puts the death rate in January in perspective. For the first time since World War II, average life expectancy is set to fall.
Did the vaccines save lives? In 2020, Covid was the 38th cause of death. In January, it was the second cause of death, killing 1,750 people, but it still occurred predominantly in the sick and the elderly; 73 per cent of those who die still have pre-existing chronic conditions, the highest number of deaths continue to occur in those aged 80-89, only the median age at death has dropped from 86 to 84 years.
All up, there were 2,521 deaths due to Covid-19 certified by a doctor in the first two months of the year. Yet there were 5,052 excess deaths (20.5 per cent) more than the baseline average. What explains the other 2,531 excess deaths?
Analysis from the Actuaries Institute’s Covid Mortality Working Group assessed that the excess mortality in January and February was so high that it fully eroded the negative excess deaths experienced in the first year of the pandemic when there were around 5,000 fewer deaths.
It also revealed something else of interest; excess mortality for 2021 was around one per cent (around 2,000 deaths) higher than would have been expected had there been no pandemic, and lower-than-expected deaths from respiratory disease, down by around 2,700 (17 per cent) and deaths from dementia, down by 490 (3 per cent), were not enough to offset higher-than-expected deaths from other causes.
What were the other causes? One was significantly more deaths than expected from heart disease (up 930 or 7 per cent). There were very few weeks when deaths from heart disease were lower than predicted and only three after mid-April. Indeed, the trend got worse with deaths from heart disease 14 per cent higher than predicted in December. Deaths were also up from cerebrovascular disease by 420 (5 per cent), diabetes (up 330 or 7 per cent) and other causes (up 2,500 or 6 per cent). The trend continued in January. While there still were fewer deaths due to respiratory diseases, heart disease was 6 per cent higher than the baseline and 14 per cent higher than the previous year. In addition, deaths due to diabetes were 38 per cent higher than the baseline, Alzheimer’s deaths increased by 20 per cent compared to the baseline, and cancer was 7 per cent higher than the baseline.
Is it over now? It’s too early to say but judging by Victoria’s raw mortality data for May, up roughly 20 per cent, the trend appears to continue through to the present.
In other countries, increased deaths from heart disease have been attributed to Covid infection but in Australia in 2021, there was very little Covid in the community. What else might be driving excess mortality?
The taboo consideration that cannot be raised in polite company is the Covid mass vaccination program. It is an article of faith that the vaccine is ‘safe and effective’ and to raise a scintilla of doubt is anathema, punishable by excommunication. Nonetheless, since the program began on 22 February almost 130,000 adverse events have been reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) including 874 deaths. In April, May and June last year when mostly elderly people were vaccinated, there were, on average, more than three deaths a day reported. As the age of the vaccinees declined the death rate eased but it was still more than two a day in July, August and September, and more than one a day in the last three months of the year, a total of 744 deaths. This year it continues. In the first 25 days in May for example, (the most recent data) there were 32 deaths, the youngest, a little boy of five who died of cardiac arrest. He’s not the only child to die. At least five children aged 5-11 have died post-vaccination in the last four months whereas only eight children under 10 have died ‘with’ Covid during the whole pandemic.
This mortality rate is not normal. Before the Covid vaccines, the TGA received only 3,000-4,000 adverse event reports for all vaccines per year and only 2-3 reports of death. Yet to the TGA, apparently, all these deaths, except for 11 following AstraZeneca vaccines, were just a coincidence, even the 12 deaths from myocarditis, a recognised side effect of the mRNA vaccines. A new Israeli study published in Naturedocumented a 25 per cent increase in cardiovascular-related calls for an ambulance by young adults, following Covid vaccination and no increase following Covid infection, but such research is unlikely to alter views at the TGA.
Yet it is the extraordinary diversity of the adverse reactions reported in response to Covid vaccines that is striking, and the way in which they mirror the myriad morbidities associated with Covid. What could explain this? Research from Linkoping University, Sweden, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, offers a chilling explanation.
The spike protein, of which Covid vaccines induce the body to produce trillions, prompts the immune system to dispatch white blood cells which use an enzyme to cut it up. Unfortunately, the S1 section of the cleaved spike is highly amyloidogenic, meaning it rapidly induces the misfolding of proteins to form insoluble fibrils. Deposits of fibrils in organs and tissues throughout the body – heart, liver, kidneys, spleen, brain and blood – produce localised and systemic disorders including clotting, cardiac failure, seizures, neurodegeneration and death. If the Swedish research is correct, we have probably not seen the last of the excess mortality. But don’t expect anyone to mention it, anytime soon.