(LifeSiteNews) — What is the best way for governments to cover up the evidence that they have failed in their policies on COVID-19? Either make the evidence disappear or keep insisting that everything went well until the attention of the population eventually shifts elsewhere.
That appears to be the tactic of Australian state and federal governments. In New South Wales (NSW) the most populous state, data is being made unavailable, probably to discourage scrutiny.
When Sydney-based data analyst Xin Yin Ooi was analyzing statistical breakdowns provided in NSW Health’s weekly surveillance report she noticed a strange figure in one table. She requested the underlying numbers to check the work for herself and was told it had been erased. As Ooi pointed out, the state’s premier, health minister, and chief health officer repeatedly insisted that two injections were not enough to deal with COVID’s omicron variant because “the data” showed this.
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So why was the data unavailable? Ooi put in a freedom of information request to NSW Health but was denied. She appealed to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) and lost.
In a similar vein there is a reluctance to look deeper into some disturbing developments. There has been a startling rise in all-cause mortality in the country, which is about 15 percent above the baseline average, and the highest level since World War II. Yet the Federal Senate, Australia’s upper house, decided not to investigate the surge in deaths. A motion to hold an inquiry was voted down.
Australia’s politicians and bureaucrats are keen to give the impression that the whole episode is closed and that their policies were largely effective. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), however, is telling a very different story.
In 2021 Australians were told that a pandemic comparable to the deadly 1919 Spanish flu was sweeping the country. The only alternative was to get the entire population vaccinated. Yet according to the ABS in 2021the mortality rate in Australia from respiratory diseases was the second lowest on record (after 2020). The bureau found that there were 1,122 deaths attributable to COVID-19 in 2021 and that the virus19 was the 34th leading cause of death. So where was the deadly pandemic?
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Vaccine mandates were nevertheless introduced in mid-2021 across the country and approximately four-fifths of the Australian population was inoculated. Millions had to choose between their health and their job. As Victorian premier Daniel Andrews menacingly insisted at a press conference, those who refused to comply would be “locked out” of society, not even able to go to a café.
It was claimed that mass vaccination would keep Australians safe from the deadly disease. So what happened? In 2022, according to the ABS, there were 10,134 deaths from COVID – a nine fold increase after the vaccine mandates. The push to make Australians “safer” appears to have failed completely. It may even have made things worse.
Australia’s politicians and bureaucrats have become skilled at unfalsifiable arguments: claims that are impossible to prove false so we can never unveil the truth. As the theorist Karl Popper demonstrated, such arguments are antithetical to the proper practice of science. The technique is to say that, no matter what happens, the vaccine mandates were the right policy. Thus, when Andrews contracted COVID after being inoculated he said, without supporting evidence, that it was a good thing he had been vaccinated because otherwise his illness would have been far worse. Had Andrews remained free of COVID he would no doubt have claimed it was because he was vaccinated.
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Similar non-arguments will probably be used with the total number of COVID deaths in the unlikely event that Australia’s alleged journalists report on the ABS data. If the deaths rise, as they have, politicians will claim that things would have been a lot worse if people had not been vaccinated (although there is strong evidence that the more vaccinated you are the more likely you are to get sick). Had the number of deaths fallen then it would have been claimed it is proof that the vaccines work.
No matter what happens the answer is always the same – “We did the right thing.” Not so much following the science as sticking with the propaganda.