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Dr Sue Ieraci Emergency physician in Sydney , NSW .
The Senate ’ s excess deaths inquiry is
AS some of you following the news may know , the Australian Senate has been holding an inquiry into excess mortality . It sounds important , and you could be fooled into thinking it is — that it is an examination into the lives that could be saved with better funding of general practice or public health initiatives .
But this inquiry was pushed by one of Clive Palmer ’ s politicians , a senator called Ralph Babet , who has long been concerned that the deaths resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic were not just a result of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants but of the vaccines themselves .
Clash of cultures
The inquiry ’ s remit is wider than that ,
of course .
There has been one public hearing so far , with expert witnesses brought before our elected representatives from a variety of organisations , including Professor Garry Jennings from the Heart Foundation and senior officials from the Department of Health and Aged Care as well as the Australian Bureau of Statistics ( ABS ).
The fascination for me lies in
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witnessing the clash of two cultures with two very different fields of expertise : the political and the scientific .
The list of senators asking the questions included Mr Babet himself , Malcolm Roberts of Pauline Hanson ’ s One Nation and Gerard Rennick of the Liberal National Party of Queensland .
As you watched , you could see the spectacle of intended ‘ gotcha ’ questions being shot down with rational explanation and data .
At one point , one of the politicians shared their perspective with a witness from the ABS that their work was not very scientific .
Mr Babet also asked a bureau staffer whether , since the average life expectancy at birth for Australians was higher than the average age at death from COVID-19 , “ Do you find it strange that someone with COVID lives longer than someone without COVID ?” The ABS witness patiently explained how life expectancy at birth differs from age at death . What was remarkable was that they did this without the slightest hint of an eye-roll .
It is worth mentioning here that Mr Babet campaigned long and hard against the COVID-19 vaccine mandates introduced during the pandemic . He refused COVID-19 vaccines , reportedly describing them as an “ emergency-use gene therapy ”.
Red flags
But there were other witnesses too ,
perhaps more sympathetic to Mr Babet ’ s perspectives , including those from a group called the Australian Medical Professionals ’ Society .
You may not have heard about this group — it sprang up among a collection of professional organisations referred to as the ‘ red unions ’ after the COVID-19 pandemic requirements
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Senator Ralph Babet in Parliament House last year .
were imposed on healthcare workers .
Ironically , these groups are neither red ( the concept arose from the Liberal National Party of Queensland ) nor registered unions .
Among their witnesses were an anaesthetist and a cardiologist — neither of whom , to my knowledge , held specialist expertise in pandemic management , vaccine science , infectious
diseases , immunology or public health .
One referred to their “ independent ” analysis of the initial Pfizer vaccine trials .
The same witness also used the phrase “ sudden adult death ”.
This is not a conventional term and appears to confuse the concepts of sudden unexplained death in infancy
( previously SIDS ) and sudden cardiac death in young adults ( mostly due to congenital cardiac conduction defects ).
Mystery solved
The errors in the Pfizer vaccine analysis
were clearly explained by scientist Dr Susan Oliver ( PhD ) in a YouTube video .
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It was an ideologically driven inquiry , with some senators and witnesses having a barrow to push .
FAIRFAX
She said there was no significant difference in deaths in the vaccinated group versus unvaccinated group .
She also described the details of the trial participants who had died : one was a 58-year-old male with a background of previous MI and cardiomyopathy who died of an MI .
Analysis of the case found no link to vaccination .
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This was not a mysterious sudden adult death ; it was a coronary death in a person with known coronary disease .
Another participant who died was a 51-year-old woman with a background of COPD and hypertension . She also died of an MI . Again , the cause was not a mystery .
Ideology over evidence
The inquiry has not been the sort of
retrospective analysis that looks at valid evidence in order to learn lessons and improve for the future .
It was an ideologically driven inquiry , with some senators and some witnesses having a barrow to push .
The expert witnesses who had analysed the data were admirable for their resigned patience in carefully answering questions and explaining methods .
The ideologically motivated witnesses , who were not experts , muddied the waters with evidence that had been debunked .
In Australia , detailed analysis on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been carried out by teams within the Department of Health and Aged Care , the ABS and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare , to name but a few .
These teams include some of the most skilled health data analysts in our nation .
The general consensus ? Excess deaths during the pandemic years were caused by a combination of direct deaths from SARS-CoV-2 infection , deaths precipitated by SARS- CoV-2 infection worsening other chronic diseases , and displacement of deaths from pandemic-management strategies , not by vaccines .
Dr Oliver ’ s YouTube video : bit . ly / 3zSUBW7
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