Australian Excess Mortality in 2022
Has the Lockdown Effect finished? Are Lockdown Deaths still driving the Excess Mortality figures? Or is something else at play...?
Mortality data used in this Substack comes from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and can be found here.
You should also know that I use a different Baseline to the ABS. To understand why you should first read this.
Before continuing, it is probably best to read my previous Substack - Lockdowns in Australia - did they cause an increase in Mortality?
2021 - The year of the Lockdown Death
In my previous Substack, I laid out the case that the correlating increase in Chronic Mortality and decrease in Sudden Mortality was a clear indicator that Lockdowns in Australia were the clear driver behind an increase in overall mortality.
But 2021 was more than 11 months ago, so it’s time to look at the available data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to see what may have changed in 2022 and see if we can tease anything out of what out national statisticians have deigned to reveal to us.
2022 - Significant Increase in Mortality
It only takes one glance to see that, while there has been a change in 2022 Mortality compared to 2021, it is not the change that anyone wanted to see:
2022 vs. 2021 (YTD - January to August):
Overall Excess Mortality has increased from 4.94% to 18.36%;
non-COVID Excess Mortality has increased from 4.94% to 11.24%;
“90% of COVID Deaths are Miscategorised (and should be non-COVID death) - 4.94% to 17.65%.
Something is not right in Australia in 2022…
The Lockdown Effect - gone?
The first thing we should do is check if the Lockdown Effect is over.
As per my first Substack, the Lockdown Effect is characterised by an increase in Chronic Deaths being (not entirely) offset by a decrease in Sudden Deaths. If this theory holds true then once The Lockdown Effect has run its course you should see both categories return to their baseline.
Something like this:
But that is not what we see when we start digging into the categorisation of mortality within the ABS data.
(Some examples - full breakdown by all ABS subcategories can be found here)
Sudden Mortality does increase, as the above theoretical graph would predict:
But this is not accompanied by a decrease in Chronic Mortality:
We do not see what we would expect, which is this:
But instead we see something more like this:
And what’s worse - we see this across all ABS subcategories - Cause of Death, by Age, by Age and Gender, and by State or Territory.
Some examples (All subcategory graphs can be found here):
So, what happened?
The January Spike
The change from ~5% Excess Mortality in 2021 to 18% Excess Mortality in 2022 was not a gradual change that transpired over many months, which, if it had occurred, some might rightfully point out could theoretically be a ramping up of the Lockdown Effect as it moved from increasing only Chronic Mortality into also influencing Sudden Mortality, and across a wider age range. The longer you Lock Down, the worse it gets, is I guess what they might say…
But there was no gradual change. Rather, there was a sudden change - the January Spike.
You can see it clearly in the Overall Mortality:
As well as in certain Causes of Death:
And Age Groups:
Once again, graphs for all ABS subcategories can be found here.
But the January Spike wasn’t a singular event that subsequently saw Excess Mortality settle back into the pre-Spike 5% range once it was over. For from it - in most subcategories the post-Spike Excess Mortality was more than double the pre-Spike Excess Mortality. The January Spike was simply the explosion that started a new phase in Australian Excess Mortality.
Something happened around the end of 2021 / beginning of 2022 that saw a surge in Excess Mortality in Australia that is still leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.
Factor X (or should it be called Factor V…?)
I wonder what could have occurred in Australia around the 2021 / 2022 changeover that could have caused a surge in deaths followed by a more than doubling of Excess Mortality from the previous year?
Who, Where and How?
So, having now identified that the Booster Push in late 2021 / early 2022 is temporally linked to the January Spike in Australian Excess Mortality, with the continued Feb22-onward uptake of the Booster continuing to be temporally linked to the doubling of Excess Mortality from the pre- to post-Spike eras, it might behoove us to see if we can find any other associations deeper down in the subcategory data.
An overall summary of subcategories contrasting YTD (Jan to Aug) 2021 Excess Mortality with 2022 Excess Mortality looks as follows:
Sorted into rank by Highest to Lowest Excess Mortality jump, it looks like this:
Now, the following is only conjecture. It is in no way scientific. I’m just looking at how things bunch up:
75 and older (both genders) - Dementia and Diabetes:
NOTE: Pretty much all Dementia can be attributed to 65+, but not all Diabetes can;
Most Respiratory Mortality can be attributed to 65+.
45-75 years old (both genders) - Ischemic Heart and “Other”:
Some Respiratory in the 65-74 age group;
Some Diabetes across the 45-74 group, especially 65-74.
Cerebrovascular staying at Negative Excess Mortality (or thereabouts) outside of the January Spike;
Vaccination Rates and Excess Mortality - a State and Territory Match Up
One last thing that we can possibly take a look at, because we have the Vaccination and Booster data for this, is whether the uptake in Vaccination is matching with the increase in Excess Mortality that we see in 2022 vs. 2021.
2 Dose (“Fully Vaccinated”) rates at the end of January, 2022 (because we see the Spike here) by State and Territory can be found here.
NOTE: Look at the 16+ Population figures as these are the only ages eligible for the Booster.
Booster Uptake rates at the end of January, 2022 can be found here.
And with this data, and the above data looking at the increase in Excess Mortality, we can produce the following:
NOTE: I have combined % of Population having 2 Doses with % of Population having taken a Booster and labelled this “2 Dose + Booster %”. It is, essentially, a “Doses Administered in 16+ Population” figure. This is what I henceforth call “Vaccine Uptake”.
Now, to be fair, it is not a perfect correlation. Queensland has high EM but lower Vaccine Uptake, while Tasmania has low EM but higher Vaccine Uptake.
However, interestingly:
5 out of the 8 states and Territories in Australia hold the exact same ranking for Excess Mortality Increase (2022 vs. 2021) and Vaccine Uptake Rates;
1 state (Western Australia) holds a very close ranking in both (6th for Vaccine Uptake vs. 7th for Excess Mortality Increase), and;
Only 2 states - Queensland and Tasmania - seem to have no connection between the two rankings.
The highest Vaccine Uptake has the highest Excess Mortality increase (ACT or Australian Capital Territory, which is not surprising regarding Vaccine Uptake since that is almost purely a Federal Government Bureaucracy Territory).
The lowest Vaccine Uptake has the lowest Excess Mortality increase (Northern Territory, which is not surprising regarding Vaccine Uptake since it has the most remote communities and the highest % of Indigenous Australians, who have very low trust in our governments).
Anyway, you can be the judge on this one. Unlike the government, the media, Big Tech and much more…I’m not here to tell you what to think.
Using Lockdown to explain the rise in xs mortality is like believing in a geocentric solar system. We are a long way post giving this any fuel, but still the death count mounts from p-MRNA linked deaths. In NZ, we are almost 15% above the 2015-2019 average, with a werkly average of 740 deaths per week, compared to 645. We never really got the boosters rolling until February. January was a very quiet month, but all havoc has broken loose since then. November is traditionally a month in which deaths average around 620, but the figure for the last week in November 2022 is going to hit 720÷. That's like an extra 2 tourist buses crashing a week, all passengers dead. It's been like that all year since February, but the police have not investigated.
Well done fellow Aussie. Even though I live in NZ and I've kept a close eye on NZ figures, I've seen strong parallels with my mother country. Speaking of mothers, my mother died on the 24th August 2022 after contracting Covid. The Death certificate states there were 4 comorbidities, Dementia, COPD, CKD and Covid. Honestly, the doctors can play with these death certificates anyway they want. The docfor never visted my mothers nursing home after she died, so he made up anything he wanted to include on the DC. If he wanted to protect his treatments, he would put down dementia, COPD, or CKD as the cause of death.
Now what were the treatments? My mother was triple jabbed with Pfizer, the booster sometime in April '22. I did not approve a "winter" booster, so she should not have received it (I've ordered her records). The doc thought she had a Covid cough in late July after contracting Covid, so ordered an Xray. She was also put on Molnupiravir as the nurse said this is what they do for residents who weren't doing well in the first few days of infection. I zoomed mum every Tuesday and we could see that she was holding up fairly well in the first week. She was tired and couldn't talk for longer than a few minutes, but had no obvious respiratory symptoms . As the weeks went by she grew weaker and conversations were limited to around 30 seconds. On the 24th August she apparently died in her sleep. Now here's the kicker: mum was one of 5 that died in the days immediately surrounding her death. There had been an outbreak of Covid in the fully vaccinated and staff, fully masked building. 37 residents and 18 staff came down with the infection. The residents were isolated when testing positive.
A memorial service was held on the 15th September for all those who had been lost in the last year. From late October 2021 to August 25th 2022, there were 22 deaths in a home with 75 - 80 occupied beds. I know there were 3 deaths in September 2021, as they used to publish a newsletter and that was the last issue. I wonder why? My mother lived in that home for 28 years and 4-5 deaths per year, was the norm. It was not a high care home and most residents were semi-independent. So there were 25 deaths in the last 12 mknths
So Covid deaths can be hidden by a doctor if it suits the narrative.