Data camouflage in NL and UK: Deltavax in two languages

“Anyone who introduces a new argument after every objection gives the impression of concealing an underlying motive.”

“Concealing core argumentation sequence” aka “The Hidden Argument Salad”

There is a term missing in argumentation theory: “Concealing core argumentation sequence” aka “The Hidden Argument Salad”, a discussion strategy in which a position is defended by a succession of diverse, not or weakly coherent arguments, with the aim of keeping the actual underlying reason out of view. The desire to withhold the underlying motive can arise in many situations: veiled activism, emotional involvement, illegal behavior, attempt to preserve reputation, forms of damage control, etc.

In the terms of Van Eemeren & Grootendorst¹See Pragma dialectics, Wikipedia is at the “Argumentation Salad” this concerns:

• Violation of the sincerity rule, because the speaker does not actually defend the arguments he puts forward in support; and
• Derailment of strategic maneuvering, because the balance between reasonableness and effectiveness tips towards strategic self-protection.

This argumentation is reserved for governments and institutions. For other parties it is interpreted as sabotage of research, obstruction of legal procedures, forgery, fraud, data manipulation, deception and fascism - but the latter is more of a metaphor.²I will explicitly say that 'fascism' is meant metaphorically because Jetten got away with it, but Wijers kept taking it literally, very childish!

NL: Deltavax

Let's cut to the chase. In February 2022, the Biomedical Audit Chamber (BMRK) submitted a request for access to the dataset in which vaccination data is linked to mortality rates: the so-called Deltavax dataset. This involved anonymous data that allowed independent researchers to check whether the official analyzes of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) and the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) held up when it came to vaccination and mortality levels. Now, three and a half years later, the Council of State is considering the request. At this time (November 14, 2025), no hearing date has been set.

So the BMRK continues to ask questions, their confidence in the government is indestructible. But it is now almost 4 years later. How could it take so long?

CBS and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) initially claimed that the requested dataset did not exist. That was argument one.

However, letters to parliament and RIVM reports gave the impression that that information was available and used. For example, we read in the RIVM dossier “Vaccination and (excess) mortality” that the RIVM has conducted research into protection against death (2021–2022). “We do this with the help of data from Statistics Netherlands.”
This is not possible without data on vaccination status for deaths.³Vaccination and excess mortality: Rivm

In July 2022, Minister Kuipers informed the House of Representatives, in response to parliamentary questions: CIMS vaccination registrations (RIVM) will be linked to CBS mortality to, among other things, determine the “vaccine effectiveness against death” to determine and “to what extent vaccination contributed to total mortality in 2021”.⁴Answer to parliamentary questions: Open government Another example, from the RIVM report of December 2023: “The absolute number of COVID-19 deaths was highest among unvaccinated elderly people at the beginning of 2021, and at the end of 2021 among elderly people with a completed basic series…”.
This is only possible with knowledge of the vaccination status of the deceased.⁵COVID-19 vaccination and mortality in 2022: Rivm

So that was a joke, it didn't hold up. The next argument was that generating the requested dataset would take too many resources. From one foot to the other: argument two.

The judge also did not require CBS to regenerate the dataset that apparently once existed. Legally, they do not have to carry out orders from third parties, that is also determined by law (argument three, if you like). And not 'having to' in this context means: 'not lifting a finger'. Transparency is clearly not an aspiration, let alone social accountability.

An underlying motive?

Now, a realistic scenario is conceivable in which the reluctance to release the Deltavax data stems from the realization that disclosure may expose policy decisions that were taken with culpable disregard of risks. After all, the risks were known, as we know from VWS's own documents and the EU contracts with vaccine manufacturers:

• men knew that the dates were uncertain;
• men accepted unknown risks;
• men contracted suppliers in a manner that avoided liability;
• a but avoids now disclosure of data that would make the consequences visible.

WOO requests also showed that irresponsible policies were deliberately pursued and scientifically sugarcoated.

It is precisely this foreknowledge, the premeditation, that makes transparency threatening for those involved: the excess mortality then turns out to be no coincidental outcome. It is the accepted consequence of decisions whose implications were known in advance – and which have been completely neglected.

Actually, it's already clear that all that happened. That was risky business! The only question now is: Did that actually end well?
(And: will everyone continue to sleep peacefully?🤔)

Internal deliberation then

The legal core of the rejection then lay in the concept internal summit: internal notes (apparently this is how these data were considered, purely for internal use), considerations and draft decisions may not be made public according to the Woo. Argument 4…? Again that 'may', not 'must'. In theory, this is intended to allow civil servants to discuss freely without political pressure. In practice, however, this means that precisely the documents that would provide insight into the intention behind policy choices - such as the extent of permitted data provision or manipulation - remain systematically out of reach.

There doesn't necessarily have to be a malicious conspiracy involved, but it doesn't rule it out either: we simply don't know about it. The system is designed in such a way that, if desired - and that wish is apparently there - one can hide on formal grounds. In the case of Deltavax, the government is not legally obliged to release the original dataset, even though it is the only party that has the crucial link.⁶Woo and CBS law – exceptional position for internal deliberation: wetten.overheid.nl.

The protection of institutional responsibility outweighs scientific verifiability.

Eh… let's see: privacy maybe…?

For each defense a new argument was introduced, sometimes even several. One of the reasons for not providing the information was that it was not possible due to an appeal to the General Data Protection Regulation (AVG), Argument five, six..? (I lost count, there is a table further down.) Privacy protection became the new defense. Statistics Netherlands stated that releasing exact mortality and vaccination data could lead to the traceability of individual persons. That is of course correct: Fauci, von der Leyen, Kuipers, de Jonge – but they did not mean them.

But that was also unsustainable: irreducible anonymization is no problem at all (see box Jittering further below).

Thus, the requested microdata were excluded from disclosure under the Open Government Act (Woo). CBS is excluded from this. This exceptional position was confirmed by the court in The Hague in October 2024.⁷District Court of The Hague - ruling 25 Oct 2024, ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2024:23004: rechtspraak.nl ⁸CBS – Woo request from BMRK Foundation regarding Deltavax (overview and decision): cbs.nl

From CBS Act stipulates that the data collected by Statistics Netherlands are “intended exclusively for the production of statistics” and not for other purposes. Er However, it does not state anywhere that CBS has the exclusive right to compile these statistics. Yet CBS (and the court) interprets that provision as an exclusive right to use microdata and the court has confirmed that interpretation.

You know what: dump something unreadable, I'll talk to the judge

Long story short: in the end something was delivered: an almost unreadable PDF with low-resolution scans of tables. I also wrote about it in July 2024.¹¹Article with PDF screenshot: Overweight and target weight, excess mortality and willingness to vaccinate The judge found that this satisfied the WOO request. After all, they were PDFs with tables. Also the source Excel¹²Deltavax: Download Excel file with corrupted data had come into circulation.

If you look at the actual data supplied, you will see that much more has been disabled in the supplied dataset than was necessary for anonymization. Most disastrous intervention: dates moved to the first day of the month. This sabotaged the ability to investigate temporal relationships.

If you want to read everything in detail, visit the website of the Biomedical Audit Chamber¹³Biomedical Court of Audit - “Revelation of injection mortality table nears apotheosis”, June 14, 2025: biomedische-rekenkamer.nl ¹⁴Biomedical Court of Audit – “Appeal on inadequate Deltavax dataset”, September 5, 2024: biomedische-rekenkamer.nl

The order of my summary may not be exactly correct, but it's good enough to see how it went. I have listed below the arguments that have been put together to avoid having to provide the vaccination/mortality data.

...

That's how I came up with “Concealing core argumentation sequencd” aka “The Hidden Argument Salad”.

The Deltavax case has resulted in a bitter paradox: the same government that claims to protect citizens by mutilating data, thus frustrates the scientific control that can protect citizens: against misinformation, against abuse of power, against data manipulation, in short: against mismanagement.

The chosen method – monthly rounding instead of jittering – had nothing to do with data security, but everything to do with preventing testability. This has created a worthless dataset that is formally public and on which the court finds nothing to criticize.

Those who are paid from our tax dollars and who have been given the mandate to collect and manage data, refuse to share with us the data describing our own health.

Dutch variant in England!

What recently happened in the UK with the FOI case of Dr. Clare Craig looks like a copy of the Deltavax dossier: with every refutation a new argument emerged, so that the underlying motivation remained out of sight. It is the same argument and the result is also identical in both countries: no usable data.

The English remake of the Deltavax soap

It looks like an English dubbed version. Pathologist Dr. Clare Craig requested a fully anonymised dataset through a Freedom of Information request: age at first vaccination, dates of all doses and date of death.¹⁵Clare Craig reports on Hair Substack Completely anonymous, nothing traceable. To cover all risks, she proposed to 'jitter' the dates by ±3 days and not to include small groups.

Yet the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) refused to grant the request. First because the requested table “didn't exist” (sounds familiar, right?) and because delivery “creating new data” would be far too time-consuming (well!). The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) initially disagreed — but after additional defense from UKHSA, the ICO completely changed its mind. Suddenly data provision could damage the “mental health of relatives” and possibly cause “misinformation”(!). Every time one argument was debunked, another appeared.

At the hearing (the 'tribunal') things became even stranger. Some of it was kept behind closed doors, which is exceptional for an FOI case. Craig's lawyers were not allowed to see important documents, but had to fight the arguments based on them. Also, it was not the UKHSA itself that acted, but a representative of the British Statistics Service (ONS). The normal course of events was not sufficient for a while.

The core argument in that closed session: even anonymized data could "in theory" be traced back to individuals through 'triangulation', for example if someone had proudly shared on social media when he had been vaccinated, his death had been announced and his birthday or even date of birth could also be traced. That argument is internally inconsistent: such people are only identifiable because they have already made the core data (birthday, injection date) public themselves, and privacy is therefore no longer an issue. Certainly not their date of death. And for anyone who has not thrown everything at socmed, that risk of diversion simply does not exist. This risk reasoning therefore only holds up as long as the rickety substantiation remains secret. And so it remained a secret.

The tribunal ultimately accepted the privacy claim and the cost argument (“too much work to create the dataset”), despite the fact that UKHSA regularly shares the same data with pharmaceutical companies. However, they claimed that generating such an anonymous dataset would take 76 years.

Constitution and European Court of Human Rights

The end result, just like ours, was a legal refusal based on hidden arguments. No independent data analysis desired. Just like with Deltavax, a series of excuses that together reveal one pattern: it is not the citizen who is protected, but the institutions that should be publicly accountable.

This tension between State and Citizen interests affects the Constitution, which must protect citizens against the State. Given our deplorable House of Representatives, supported by the drip media, the constitution in the Netherlands is a paper tiger. Perhaps a route via the ECtHR is still conceivable, or is the ECtHR not yet out of vax psychosis?

The stakes are really too high right now. The expected unrest and erosion of confidence in the government and vaccinations outweigh transparency for those involved - and (therefore) for the court.

There is a good chance that the Council of State will also protect the government's position. And don't blame them: why bring up those vaccinations again? They just get a little out of sight! That makes people stressed, especially vaccinated people, and that is not good for them. Look at the precedent in England: there the experts even take psychological problems into account. We really have to protect people from that. We must take responsibility here and let the interests of the citizen prevail. Besides, it's been five years now and there's nothing that can be done about it! Jannie, please work that out, thank you. Like this. OK. Anyone else have a booster?

Epilogue

As long as CBS remains an administrative body in a legal sense and not a scientific institute, the datasets collected with our tax money and on our behalf, with data that concerns us, fall under administrative law protection, not under scientific verifiability. In practice, this view is now used to deny parties outside the government network access to data from and about the population, even when their goal is also statistical and scientific in accordance with legal requirements.

The House of Representatives could arrange for a change in the law. But yes – there too we encounter reluctance out of self-protection. Because they have all made quite a few crazy decisions in connection with corona. Who wants to expose that? Even the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry does not get to see all the documents, which are preventively censored by officials.¹⁶Gideon van Meijeren on YouTube PE chairman Daan de Kort (VVD) called the accusations “beyond the truth” and was “unpleasantly surprised”. He literally stated (and was widely quoted in the media): “Everyone can access documents.” That is of course a truism that says nothing about whether PE members have access to ALL documents.

There is something else interesting at VWS and related agencies: they are allowed to consult interested parties, even if they are financially or politically intertwined with the subject (see also the climate tables). This is called “stakeholder consultation” or “scientific advice”. So the controllers (CBS, RIVM, EMA, WHO) operate within legal exceptions, the auditees (pharma, government itself) join in as “experts” and the outside world has no access to the underlying data or decision-making.

It's something to me. That we have been so comfortable with that all this time!

References

• 1
  See Pragma dialectics, Wikipedia
• 2
  I will explicitly say that 'fascism' is meant metaphorically because Jetten got away with it, but Wijers kept taking it literally, very childish!
• 3
  Vaccination and excess mortality: Rivm
• 4
  Answer to parliamentary questions: Open government
• 5
  COVID-19 vaccination and mortality in 2022: Rivm
• 6
  Woo and CBS law – exceptional position for internal deliberation: wetten.overheid.nl
• 7
  District Court of The Hague - ruling 25 Oct 2024, ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2024:23004: rechtspraak.nl
• 8
  CBS – Woo request from BMRK Foundation regarding Deltavax (overview and decision): cbs.nl
• 9
  Eurostat – “Guidelines for the Treatment of Confidential Data in Microdata Sets”, 2019: ec.europa.eu
• 10
  CBS – Microdata Manual, version 5.1, section 4.2 “Anonymization techniques”: cbs.nl
• 11
  Article with PDF screenshot: Overweight and target weight, excess mortality and willingness to vaccinate
• 12
  Deltavax: Download Excel file with corrupted data
• 13
  Biomedical Court of Audit - “Revelation of injection mortality table nears apotheosis”, June 14, 2025: biomedische-rekenkamer.nl
• 14
  Biomedical Court of Audit – “Appeal on inadequate Deltavax dataset”, September 5, 2024: biomedische-rekenkamer.nl
• 15
  Clare Craig reports on Hair Substack
• 16
  Gideon van Meijeren on YouTube