This week Dr. Ian Town, chief scientific advisor to the Ministry of Health, announced that the unvaccinated are six times more likely to be hospitalized with Covid than the vaccinated.
Dr. Town prefaced his remarks with the caveat “the data is reasonably preliminary”.
Two weeks ago epidemiologist Dr. Michael Baker told us that the unvaccinated are 9 times more likely to be hospitalized.
So who is right, or do you, like me, smell a rat?
The answer is neither, and the sleight of hand involved makes for gripping science fiction.
Every day the New Zealand Ministry of Health issues daily data for Covid infections, hospitalisations, and deaths. Our team here at the Hatchard Report copies and compiles these figures.
We also communicate with the Ministry of Health and Medsafe, sometimes with OIA requests, to clarify the reporting procedures that are being applied.
Our figures are therefore official, but strangely they differ by a huge margin from those hinted at by Dr. Town.
Click image to view
The light blue line indicates hospitalisations for unvaccinated, the light red for the vaccinated. These are rates per 100,000 population so they are strictly comparable.
The daily volatility is due partly to delays in the collection of data from around the country. For this reason, the long term trends are calculated in thick blue and red lines respectively.
You can clearly see the unvaccinated are becoming progressively less likely to be hospitalized with Covid, whilst the rates among the vaccinated remain more or less constant.
The graph shows that the unvaccinated are gaining a measure of herd immunity as more and more of them catch Omicron and recover, but why aren’t we seeing a similar result for the vaccinated?
The answer lies in something termed immune imprinting. A paper published a few days ago in the journal Science investigated 750 triple vaccinated individuals and found that vaccination combined with their various prior infection or immunity histories had conferred some protection against earlier Covid variants but often left them vulnerable to subsequent variants, especially the B.5 variant.
Ten Ways the Government Controls the Covid Narrative
So how is it possible for Dr. Town to claim that the unvaccinated are not only worse off than the vaccinated but 6 times worse off, when official figures show it is the vaccinated who are actually worse off?
1. Distortion of Population Data
The Ministry of Health overestimates the percentage of vaccinated individuals and undercounts the number of unvaccinated individuals. The Ministry of Health says that in any group of 100 people 97 are vaccinated and 3 are unvaccinated.
The true ratio is closer to 85 vs 15. The effect of this is simple. Undercounting the unvaccinated artificially inflates their rate of hospitalisation.
2. Poor Definition of Unvaccinated Status
The Ministry of Health counts all people who have had just one jab as unvaccinated. No one is counted as vaccinated who received their jab less than seven days ago.
So for example, if a person catches Covid during the week after vaccination and then dies four weeks later, or they have only had one jab, they are counted as an unvaccinated Covid death.
This also artificially inflates rates for the unvaccinated and conversely hides hospitalisations and deaths among the vaccinated.
3. Amalgamation of Historic Covid Figures
The Ministry of Health adds all historic Covid data together, this confuses the current Omicron situation with past variants and makes the short lived effect of vaccination look more significant.
It also ignores the impact of herd immunity among the unvaccinated.
4. Lack of Peer Review
The government and its advisors are quoting figures out of the context of peer review. Dr. Town used the term preliminary to describe his figures.
The government is ignoring the results of carefully performed published work that has gone through scientific peer review in favour of its own in-house data which as we have seen is biased by poor reporting practices.
5. Lack of Debate
There is no provision at press conferences or in the media for genuine debate of government data.
6. Control of Media
The government is continuing to provide significant funding to media to support Covid coverage which is favourable to the government’s position.
It surely cannot escape our notice that such cosy arrangements are alien to our conception of a free and honest democracy.
7. Funding of Fake Science
The government funds Te Punaha Matatini to issue unreviewed science papers which have grossly overestimated the impact of Covid.
These papers have for example labelled the established scientific concept of herd immunity as a conspiracy theory.
8. Discouraging Social Communication
The government has informed people that social communication has been hijacked by conspiracy theorists, thereby reducing the opportunity for and trust of peer to peer communication essential for a lawful society.
9. Failure to Publish Key Data
Emergency departments and heart specialists have been overwhelmed with an unprecedented surge in cardiac cases which an Israeli report shows are related to vaccination but not to prior covid infection.
The government has failed to make these facts public. Worse, the government and the media have tried to relabel such sudden cardiac problems as due to other causes.
10. Coercion of Medical Professionals to Remain Silent
Medical professionals wishing to speak up and voice concerns face loss of their profession and media vilification if they do so.
The Sun is Trying to Break Through the Clouds
Yesterday an article by the NZ Herald science reporter Jamie Morton said:
Unfortunately, the article and this rare paragraph of clarity disappeared from the online headlines very quickly. You can’t have too much of a good thing.
In any case, the paragraph was incomprehensibly followed by a quote from epidemiologist Michael Baker drawing the conclusion that the pandemic would stop when everyone was fully vaccinated and masked.
Jamie Morton and the editor of the Herald must have missed the oxymoron.
Science has standards. These involve communication, debate, and publishing. If you remove these, as our government has done, you don’t have science, you have something quite different—mass deception.
Dr Guy Hatchard is a former senior manager at Genetic ID, food testing and certification company. This article was first published HERE
Every day the New Zealand Ministry of Health issues daily data for Covid infections, hospitalisations, and deaths. Our team here at the Hatchard Report copies and compiles these figures.
We also communicate with the Ministry of Health and Medsafe, sometimes with OIA requests, to clarify the reporting procedures that are being applied.
Our figures are therefore official, but strangely they differ by a huge margin from those hinted at by Dr. Town.
Click image to view
The light blue line indicates hospitalisations for unvaccinated, the light red for the vaccinated. These are rates per 100,000 population so they are strictly comparable.
The daily volatility is due partly to delays in the collection of data from around the country. For this reason, the long term trends are calculated in thick blue and red lines respectively.
You can clearly see the unvaccinated are becoming progressively less likely to be hospitalized with Covid, whilst the rates among the vaccinated remain more or less constant.
The graph shows that the unvaccinated are gaining a measure of herd immunity as more and more of them catch Omicron and recover, but why aren’t we seeing a similar result for the vaccinated?
The answer lies in something termed immune imprinting. A paper published a few days ago in the journal Science investigated 750 triple vaccinated individuals and found that vaccination combined with their various prior infection or immunity histories had conferred some protection against earlier Covid variants but often left them vulnerable to subsequent variants, especially the B.5 variant.
Ten Ways the Government Controls the Covid Narrative
So how is it possible for Dr. Town to claim that the unvaccinated are not only worse off than the vaccinated but 6 times worse off, when official figures show it is the vaccinated who are actually worse off?
1. Distortion of Population Data
The Ministry of Health overestimates the percentage of vaccinated individuals and undercounts the number of unvaccinated individuals. The Ministry of Health says that in any group of 100 people 97 are vaccinated and 3 are unvaccinated.
The true ratio is closer to 85 vs 15. The effect of this is simple. Undercounting the unvaccinated artificially inflates their rate of hospitalisation.
2. Poor Definition of Unvaccinated Status
The Ministry of Health counts all people who have had just one jab as unvaccinated. No one is counted as vaccinated who received their jab less than seven days ago.
So for example, if a person catches Covid during the week after vaccination and then dies four weeks later, or they have only had one jab, they are counted as an unvaccinated Covid death.
This also artificially inflates rates for the unvaccinated and conversely hides hospitalisations and deaths among the vaccinated.
3. Amalgamation of Historic Covid Figures
The Ministry of Health adds all historic Covid data together, this confuses the current Omicron situation with past variants and makes the short lived effect of vaccination look more significant.
It also ignores the impact of herd immunity among the unvaccinated.
4. Lack of Peer Review
The government and its advisors are quoting figures out of the context of peer review. Dr. Town used the term preliminary to describe his figures.
The government is ignoring the results of carefully performed published work that has gone through scientific peer review in favour of its own in-house data which as we have seen is biased by poor reporting practices.
5. Lack of Debate
There is no provision at press conferences or in the media for genuine debate of government data.
6. Control of Media
The government is continuing to provide significant funding to media to support Covid coverage which is favourable to the government’s position.
It surely cannot escape our notice that such cosy arrangements are alien to our conception of a free and honest democracy.
7. Funding of Fake Science
The government funds Te Punaha Matatini to issue unreviewed science papers which have grossly overestimated the impact of Covid.
These papers have for example labelled the established scientific concept of herd immunity as a conspiracy theory.
8. Discouraging Social Communication
The government has informed people that social communication has been hijacked by conspiracy theorists, thereby reducing the opportunity for and trust of peer to peer communication essential for a lawful society.
9. Failure to Publish Key Data
Emergency departments and heart specialists have been overwhelmed with an unprecedented surge in cardiac cases which an Israeli report shows are related to vaccination but not to prior covid infection.
The government has failed to make these facts public. Worse, the government and the media have tried to relabel such sudden cardiac problems as due to other causes.
10. Coercion of Medical Professionals to Remain Silent
Medical professionals wishing to speak up and voice concerns face loss of their profession and media vilification if they do so.
The Sun is Trying to Break Through the Clouds
Yesterday an article by the NZ Herald science reporter Jamie Morton said:
“Local cases of BA.4 and BA.5 – which have been shown to be more effective at causing breakthrough infections among vaccinated and boosted people – likely now numbered in the thousands here.”
Unfortunately, the article and this rare paragraph of clarity disappeared from the online headlines very quickly. You can’t have too much of a good thing.
In any case, the paragraph was incomprehensibly followed by a quote from epidemiologist Michael Baker drawing the conclusion that the pandemic would stop when everyone was fully vaccinated and masked.
Jamie Morton and the editor of the Herald must have missed the oxymoron.
Science has standards. These involve communication, debate, and publishing. If you remove these, as our government has done, you don’t have science, you have something quite different—mass deception.
Dr Guy Hatchard is a former senior manager at Genetic ID, food testing and certification company. This article was first published HERE
1 comment:
All I know, is that once you have been proven to be lying to the population, you lose trust. Once you have crossed over that line, and lost the trust of the general population, it is very difficult to 'un lose' it. From here on out, even if you are telling the truth, it will be seen as a lie. Most adults understand that.
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