Australian Health Department quotes Covid study and it's misleading

In the past, I have asked the Health Department why they think the Covid vaccine is fit for purpose, because it didn't stop transmission and it didn't stop infection.

Professor Kelly and others would always reply that it reduced the severity of disease. So I've asked the Health Department in prior questions on Estimates for these figures and the response I got was that the unvaccinated death rate from Omicron was running at about 32% for people over 70, versus the unvaccinated death rate for people from Alpha, that had a death rate for people over 70 who are unvaccinated, of about 22/23%. So the death rate is almost 40% higher for Omicron than what it was for Alpha.

I then proceeded to go back to Estimates and ask Professor Kelly why these figures were higher for Omicron than they were for Alpha. He replied that he conducted a study, or his department conducted a study, of 3.8 million people. This study was by the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance and and is titled "Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination against COVID-19 specific and all-cause mortality in older Australians: analysis by vaccine dose and time since receipt in 2022".

After I questioned him in Estimates, I had a constituent send me that study, and I'm very glad that he did. Now, it turns out that this so called study of 3.8 million people was really more of a data analysis program rather than a study. I don't know about you, but I don't know of people over 65 who were rung by the Health Department and individually studied by the Health Department for the purposes of determining whether or not the vaccine was effective. I know my father, who's 89, has never been contacted by the Health Department. So for them to claim that they've conducted a study of 3.8 million people without individually diagnosing those 3.8 million people, I think is a furphy in itself.

But the study also concludes that the vaccines actually reduced all cause mortality. Now, I find that incredible in light of the fact that actual deaths jumped by almost 10,000 people in 2021, and remember, this was the year in which COVID didn't really escape into the community. We did have 1,300 deaths in 2021, which was 300 more than 1,000 deaths in 2020 from COVID, but that's a long way short of explaining the increase in 10,000 deaths. And then the following year, we went from 172,000 deaths to 190,000 deaths in 2022.

So for this study to conclude that they've reduced all cause mortality is just a furphy. And let's not forget that they didn't actually diagnose every individual in that 3.8 million study. So how would they know when these people had symptoms or adverse effects, or what the adverse effects were from? Were they from the vaccine? Were they from the virus? Were they from pre-existing comorbidities?

To just make a generalisation across 3 million people based on an analytical study rather than a diagnostic study just goes to show how desperate they are to come up with any sort of story to continue to push their narrative that the vaccines are fit for purpose when they clearly aren't.