Claims of excess deaths ‘nonsense’
“Nonsense” is the overwhelming consensus from experts in vaccine safety, data and public health regarding claims from a Te Whatu Ora staffer that health data – allegedly downloaded illegally – is evidence the Covid-19 vaccine has been killing people.
Barry Young, sometimes known as Winston Smith, appeared in court yesterday facing one charge of dishonestly accessing databases belonging to Te Whatu Ora, which runs the country’s hospitals. He was suspended from his role after allegedly downloading a large amount of information from Te Whatu Ora related to vaccines. Young appeared in videos with Liz Gunn – a former broadcaster and would-be politician now accused of spreading conspiracy theories – where he presented the data, which is subject to a non-publication order. He now faces up to seven years in jail.
But experts who have seen the data say the situation is an example of misappropriating numbers in order to support an agenda.
“This is quite classic,” vaccine safety expert and Associate Professor Helen Petousis-Haris said.
“This is what people who are in this game do all the time. They take people who’ve had an event [like] an illness or death, and they attribute it to exposure to a vaccine. If you go out and you vaccinate 90% of the population, of course, people are going to continue to die as per normal. We saw an increase in mortality at the increase of Covid outbreaks.”
The four deaths most likely to be due to the Covid-19 vaccination had been through robust investigation, Petousis-Harris said.
Mathematician professor Michael Plank said the data “looks like it’s been picked to tell a certain story”.
“If you look at the crude number of deaths, yes, that has gone up a little bit since before the pandemic. But if you actually account for the fact that the population is larger and older now ... that age, standardised mortality rate is actually lower now than before the pandemic.”
Young had no clinical background or expert vaccine knowledge, Te Whatu Ora said. He remained an employee while an investigation was under way, but his access to all systems was revoked last Thursday as soon as Te Whatu Ora became aware of the breach.
Public health professor Michael Baker was baffled by the alleged data thief’s motivation, saying if they were concerned about what they were seeing, they could have acted without breaking the law.