James Doogue

Questions Journalists Should Ask State Premiers And Chief Health Officers To Allay Panic

- How does current case numbers and deaths compare to the Doherty Institute's modelling on which the National Cabinet based their suppression strategy as explained by the Prime Minister on 7 April 2020?

- What is the average age of all deaths from Covid-19 in Australia?

- On average how many co-morbidities did each person who died from Covid-19 have?

- On average how many co-morbidities did each person who has been hospitalised from Covid-19 have? And each person in ICU have?

- What percentage of those who test positive to Covid-19 are asymptomatic? What percentage have mild cold and flu-like symptoms?

- How does current Covid-19 hospitalisation and ICU admission rate compare to the number of people typically hospitalised and admitted to ICU from seasonal influenza on average, and compared to 2017 and 2019?

- What is the Covid-19 fatality rate for people aged under 75 years? What is the fatality rate for seasonal influenza?

If we got honest answers to these questions perhaps the media, and the population, would realise what has been the truth from day one of this pandemic. We should protect the elderly and medically vulnerable and let everyone else go about their business normally, coping with cold and flu-like symptoms as we have done every year before Covid-19

This should be the immediate case in Australia given every elderly and medically vulnerable person by now has had the opportunity to get vaccinated. If for some reason they haven't been vaccinated, or choose not to be, then they can self isolate.

While most of the world is finally realising the panic-and-lockd own approach to Covid-19 is unsustainable, Australians are inexplicably clutching the lockdown security blanket.

New South Wales are currently dealing with a Covid-19 'outbreak' which has seen Covid-19 infections rise to 112 cases in the last 24 hours. Perhaps many more to come. That brings the total new cases identified to just 2,213 since 1 January 2021. There has been one registered Covid-19 death of a 90 year old unvaccinated woman in New South Wales this year.

These numbers are laughably small considering there have been 260,349 Covid-19 tests carried out in NSW in the past week. These were on people who have been showing flu like symptoms, or who have been a close or casual contact of an infected person, or who have been to a place an infected person has visited, or who was simply panicked into getting tested.

For a supposedly 'highly infectious' Covid strain, these numbers don't demonstrate high infection rates, and certainly not worth panicking about. The table shows Australia is running an average positive test of just 0.1%.

NSW has carried out a total of 7,514,526 Covid-19 tests since the start of the pandemic and had only 6,170 positive cases, more than half of those were infected overseas, out of a population of more than 8 million people.

NSW does not have an emergency, but just like EVERY state in Australia, NSW is operating under a state of emergency order which has stripped citizens of their civil rights.

Our politicians and health officials have taken Australia from a suppression strategy to an elimination strategy, but won't admit it. The three week lockdown in March 2020 was designed to allow our health system to gear up for Covid-19 cases.

Our Prime Minister told us on 7 April 2020 the country is pursuing a suppression strategy. The modelling indicating their best case scenario from the Doherty Institute, based on implementing the lockdown, social distancing, international quarantine etc, projected 11.6% of Australians would eventually be infected. That's 2,958,000 people. They projected 0.8% of the population, that's 204,000 people would be hospitalised, over the length of the pandemic for an average of 7.5 days each. Finally they projected the peak demand for ICU beds at around 5,000.

To handle this they had allowed the fast tracking online training for 102,000 health professionals to gain online ICU qualifications. The PM also assured us there would be more than 30,000 hospital beds and 7,500 ICU beds available for Covid-19 patients.

You can re-read that statement and see the modelling here: https:// www.pm.gov.au/ media/ update-coronavir us-measures-070 420

So if we were planning for almost 3 million infections, over 200,000 hospitalisation s, and up to 5,000 in ICU at any one time, why the heck are we panicking over an 'outbreak' of a few hundred infections with a few dozen in hospital and a handful or so in ICU?

I'll tell you why. It's because we have been taught to consider any death from Covid-19 as a failure of our health system and therefore a failure by our political leaders. So rather than be 'blamed' for deaths, our leaders are trashing our rights and the economy, and telling us they are keeping us safe.

We didn't used to panic about deadly flu seasons. But then we didn't have the media headlining the number of infections and deaths every day. And we didn't have our state Premiers holding daily influenza briefings, telling us we had to fear infection and death.

To demonstrate our current level of insanity in Australia, without spending too much time, I wanted to contrast what's happening now, to what's happened in the past in Australia. Perhaps that will give a less panicked perspective to the current situation.

In 2019 Australia had a total of 310,011 laboratory-conf irmed flu notifications by the beginning of December. That's ten times the number of total Covid-19 infections since early 2020, more than 18 months. Does anyone remember us locking down, closing businesses, stopping sporting and entertainment events in 2019?

By October 2019 there had been more than 800 influenza-assoc iated deaths officially recorded. There was no daily tally of influenza deaths in the media.

By contrast, there's been one death of a 90 year old from locally acquired Covid-19 in Australia in 2020, but we're told this is a deadly disease. [A man in his 70's died in NSW since this was published. Typically we don't know what co-morbidities he had, or even whether he was vaccinated.]

The median age of flu deaths notified in Australia in 2019 was 86 years. We aren't told what the median age for covid-19 deaths in Australia is, but the UK data indicates it is slightly higher than the average age at death from all other causes.

Back in 2019 the age of flu deaths ranged from under 12 months of age to 102 years. But such an age range doesn't mean the flu is equally deadly to all age groups, as the median age of 86yrs for flu deaths in 2019 demonstrates.

Australian officials have tried to peddle the claim that we all need to be equally scared of Covid-19. As the table below shows, Covid-19 deaths are predominantly in the elderly. Like the flu, the medically vulnerable at younger ages can die from Covid-19 but it's quite rare. https:// www.sonichealthp lus.com.au/ health-hub/flu/ 2019-flu-season- 2nd-worst-on-re cord

The peer reviewed journal article referenced below, gives us an insight into two serious influenza seasons Australians didn't turn into police states over. In fact I bet most Australians were unaware we were in an emergency. I know I wasn't walking around wearing a surgical mask back then.

'Severity of the 2019 influenza season in Australia- a comparison between 2017 and 2019 H3N2 influenza seasons.' https:// jglobalbiosecuri ty.com/ articles/ 10.31646/ gbio.47/

Remember that these flu seasons also had the advantage of an at least partially vaccinated population. In 2019 approximately 50% of the population had an influenza vaccination.

'In 2019, 1108 influenza diagnoses per 100,000 population were notified to NNDSS up to October nationally, compared to 1021 per 100,000 for the same time period in 2017.'

In today's population terms that would be 282,540 confirmed flu cases up to October using 2019 flu rate numbers, or 260,355 cases using 2017 flu numbers. Yet we have the Australian media and politicians panicking the population about a few hundred Covid-19 cases in 2021..

'The 2017 Australian season was regarded as the most severe since the 2009 pandemic, with the highest number of cases reported until then (total number= 233,453), an estimated 29,000 admissions to hospital with influenza infection and 745 deaths reported to the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) nationally.'

They coped with 29,000 influenza hospital admissions back then, yet we're supposed to panic about a total of 126 Covid-19 hospitalisation s at this time? It's ludicrous!

Back in 2017, 2019 or 2009, most Australians were unaware of the influenza hospitalisation s and deaths. We weren't avoiding going to work, or pubs or church!

'In May 2019, the notification rate of 121.6/100,000 was approximately 14 times higher than the previous five-year average (8.9/100,000 population) and 9 times higher than in 2017 (13.3/100,000)'

In May 2019 they were getting new influenza infection notifications at a rate of 121.6 per 100,000 population. With a current population of 25.5 million, today that would equate to 31,008 new case notifications in a month, or more than 1,000 new cases a day. Yet NSW is locked down with new Covid-19 cases reaching just 10% of that rate, and other states have locked their borders to NSW.

That panicked reaction has no meaningful justification.

'For the year to date until October 2019, a total of 445 institutional outbreaks occurred in NSW, including 379 in the residential care facilities. In 2017, a high number of institutional outbreaks also occurred; a total of 591 institutional outbreaks were reported in NSW alone, including 543 residential facilities, but mostly during the winter season.'

Was anyone even aware that there were major flu outbreaks in institutions, particularly aged care facilities back then? They weren't locked down and residents weren't deprived of visitors. Yet today, every new Covid-19 infection in an aged facility is headline news.

'The number of reported influenza tests in NSW increased from 370,000 in 2017 to 570,000 in 2019 while the percentage of those tests that were positive decreased slightly from 15.8% to 14.6%'

In Australia and NSW we have a positive Covid-19 test rate of just 0.1% and half the country is in lockdown or under other Covid-19 restrictions. Can you imagine the panic today if 15% of those tested were coming up positive like they were for the flu in 2017 and 2019?

'Between April and September 2019, there were 3732 people admitted to sentinel hospitals due to influenza, and of those, 237 (6.4%) were admitted to ICU. For the same period in 2017, there were 3,536 hospitalisation s with confirmed influenza and 315 (8.9%) of them were admitted to ICU.'

Look at those rates of ICU admissions during the 2017, and 2019 flu seasons to September. Why is it we could handle that many people in ICU with the flu back then, but we panic over a dozen or so in ICU for Covid-19 in 2021?

What Has Happened To Influenza?
It's not like our health system is burdened during the current flu season with lots of influenza cases as well as having to deal with Covid-19 given the recent numbers below.

'There is no indication of the potential severity of the 2021 season at this time. In the year to date, of the 388 notifications of laboratory-conf irmed influenza, no influenza-assoc iated deaths have been notified to the NNDSS.' https:// www1.health.gov. au/internet/ main/ publishing.nsf/ Content/ cda-surveil-ozfl u-flucurr.htm

Instead of dealing with hundreds of thousands, or even tens of thousands of influenza cases, tens of thousands of hospitalisation s, and hundreds of deaths, our health system has had just 388 influenza notifications and no deaths to deal with so far this year. Surely they can easily cope with plenty more Covid-19 cases?

Clearly this low influenza rate is largely because of the Covid-19 hygiene education, and more awareness about spreading infections. What it means is that the health system is not under pressure and should therefore easily be able to take on Covid cases under a suppression rather than the elimination strategy.

The latter requires the hard lockdown and demolition of our rights, and people's lives and livelihoods, and the trashing of the economy. All that and the massively increasing government debt could be avoided!

It's time our supposedly independent media, held the government and health officers to account by asking those straightforward questions I posed at the beginning of this lengthy article.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:51 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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