The hopelessness of the corporate media’s attempts to keep the vaccines-as-saviour story going has hit the wall.

The Australian recently commissioned “research” in an attempt to show that Australian jurisdictions that have higher rates of COVID vaccination have better COVID death outcomes than those with lesser take-ups of the jab.

CRACKPOTS

The Australian, of course, has been The Daily Vaccinator for two years now. Its journalists and (sadly) its columnists, no doubt encouraged (pressured?), have run the line that vaccines will save us from COVID (palpably false), that vaccine mandates are no big deal for rights and freedom (from a newspaper proprietor who was once feted by freedom-loving think tanks for his love of freedom), and that dissidents who oppose vaccine mandates are crackpots (we are not).

The study’s headline reads, breathlessly: COVID-19 booster shots work to reduce the death rate.

“Work to reduce”. That is, do not stop. Do not prevent. The vaccinated still die. In their thousands, in Australia.

Conversely, thousands, indeed millions, would not die from COVID if they got it, absent the vaccine. This basic reality about COVID makes studies like this and their conclusions meaningless.

As per the usual way these reports are put together, a tame academic of apparent weight is suddenly produced in order both to lend weight to the validity of the study and to support its conclusions.

The Australian has these tame academics on speed dial.

Deakin University epidemiologist Prof Catherine Bennett said the apparent correlation between booster doses and death rates was a demonstration of the significant extra protection against severe disease and death conferred by a third shot.

“I certainly think it’s one of the things we expect to see,” she said. “The vaccine efficacy against severe illness is reasonably striking.”

Prof Bennett has form in relation to COVID State spruiking: “Deakin University epidemiology chair Catherine Bennett told The Geelong Advertiser that many lives were saved because of the lockdown.”

A completely unproven, unprovable and indeed implausible assertion. Prof Bennett is also believed to have professional links to Dorevitch Pathology, which makes large sums of money from COVID testing.

Deakin University, of course, has received substantial funding from both the Gates Foundation and from the British Wellcome Trust (and is chaired by Julia Gillard).

FAILS

Deakin here is yet another case of the “two clicks to Bill Gates funding” rule, which seldom fails.

What of the “study” itself? The study notes: “States with higher booster vaccination rates have experienced markedly lower death rates from COVID-19, new analysis shows, as top heath chiefs urge those holding out to get their third shot immediately.

“Only 58.1 per cent of eligible people have had a third shot in Queensland, 64.1 per cent in NSW, 68.1 per cent in Victoria and 68.4 per cent in South Australia.

“Western Australia has the highest booster rate in the country at 80.2 per cent, and despite experiencing the highest number of cases per head of population since February it has had the lowest death rate from COVID-19.”

First, and an obvious point. Weren’t vaccines sold to us as preventing COVID transmission?

That is (or, at least, was) the point of the much-hyped vaccines. All the rabid attacks on those described as “anti-vaxxers” by Jack the Insider and the other media operatives were, I thought, based on this premise.

If the vaccines didn’t stop you getting COVID, what, pray, would be the point of mandates? Any undergraduate student of logic would be scratching his or her head to figure out the point of this particular policy.

Second, there is the problem of correlation not meaning causation. While studies at State or national scale that match the vaccination status of victims of COVID can be useful, they should be augmented (“triangulated”) by other research methods.

Third, the study is selective. Western Australia versus three other States is not conclusive.

GRANULAR

Fourth, the study is not sufficiently granular to support the conclusions that are reached. We would need to know far more about the health status and other circumstances of those who died, for example, in order to reach firm conclusions.

Perhaps more of those vaccinated with boosters in WA were young and healthy.

Fifth, the study only provides a single snapshot in time. Studies taken at different stages of the vaccination rollout might well show very different results.

Sixth, as we shall see, the findings of the research undertaken on behalf of The Australian are contradicted by many international studies of a far more robust nature. The Oz’s study appears to be an outlier.