Heavily vaccinated New Zealand is a country that is often cited as proof that the vaccines do not cause excess mortality. After all, there is undermortality there. That turns out not to be the case, as I will show. Whether this is a case of mistakes or scientific fraud, you can decide for yourself after reading this article. It actually comes down to this: If the best boy in the class suddenly gets 6 minuses and the rest gets threes and fours, then you can't say that it can't be the new teacher's fault because that kid still gets passes, can you?
New Zealand is one of the countries (along with Sweden which seems to have had less bad batches that keeps getting cited as proof that it can't be the vaccines.
ASMR for dummies
The composition of a population varies from country to country. One of the differences is the age structure. Few elderly people or many, or a baby-boom that is slowly pushing into the group of octogenarians: these are slow processes but do affect mortality rates. ASMR (Age Stratified Mortality Rate) was devised to make comparisons between countries. It shows how mortality would be if all the populations compared had the same “model structure” in terms of age. A kind of average population composition was chosen for that purpose (in fact, two; often the one from WHO 2019 is used and it is backwards compatible). The mortality rates for each country are applied to that model population - et voilá, we can compare countries. The rule of thumb for normal ASMR mortality is 750 per 100,000 people (100k). Sort of an international average.
Using the ASMR calculation, the graph with excess mortality comparison below, by @dobbsi at X. New Zealand actually has a slight under mortality in this graph in the 2020-2023 period. The only one in the world.
As for vaccines, it is surprising that 2020 is included. In that year, there was no jab. On the contrary, measures then put society on hold which may have led to less activity and fewer accidents. So we zoom in on that New Zealand block 2020-23.
Per 100K, no ASMR
Indeed 2020 pulls the average down but even 2021-2023 still remains below the ASMR standard of 750. Even if we include 2024 (estimated).
How can that be? On OurWorldInData I had seen a completely different graph. Surely around 10 to 15% excess mortality post-vaccination. (And Covid came post-vaccination there too, so those vaccines didn't really work well anyway).
Now, OWID's baseline can be questioned. It works with averages and therefore does not take into account increasing or decreasing trends. If you extend a downward trend from 2015-2019 to 2024, it comes out very different from a horizontal average. So I made my own baseline for NZ, based on mortality per 100K (Crude Mortality Rate).
On Twitter I showed some graphs but they were dismissed by Pieter Trapman and Dobbsi because they were not ASMR graphs. That doesn't really matter that much but yes - you have to show that again first because those experts don't believe you anyway and arguments don't help.
You should ALWAYS look at ASMR, say the real statisticians. Only. Otherwise you're just messing around.
Now I may be too easily blown over by a piece of mystification but still I wouldn't know why that matters so much, if you only compare consecutive years from 1 country. Then the accumulation per year differs at most by a few tenths of percent, and that is totally irrelevant to this story.
New Zealand's ASMR graph
OK - I threw in the age-stratified source data.
- Population data Summary-figures-for-the-NZ-population-1991-2023.xlsx (2024 I estimated myself based on this and some other sources)
- The mortality data are also there, age-stratified to 2021. The 2022 and 2023 totals are already there, though, and the 2024 total is pretty much there as well. So based on those totals and the trends by age cohort, there is an estimated age structure as of 2022, in line with previous trends. That is this file.
Now I am willing to assume that ASMR is 'more accurate' or something, in a scientific sense. If you want to compare the population mortality of 30 years ago with that of today, you obviously have to look very carefully at the population structure and size. If you compare countries with each other, it is even necessary to look at ASMR as well. 'Also', I say emphatically, not 'just'.
Then it turns out that New Zealand is simply an exceptionally healthy country with excellent health care, a younger population (on average 5 years younger than NL), possibly cleaner environment, more sports, less crowded, better weather, you name it. And that healthy country has suddenly become a lot unhealthier post-vaccination. But then you don't just have to look at the ASMR norm in a given year. Then you have to look at the past.
The ASMR chart looks very much like the “crude” per 100K chart. Note that it starts in 1996 and continues through 2024.
So those 100K graphs on Twitter weren't all that wrong after all. If you compare 2021-2023 to the 750K baseline proposed by the WHO (gray line), you can indeed say, In New Zealand we see no excess mortality. But then you don't tell us that New Zealand has had a huge under mortality for 25 years for years, around -10%. They lost that health overnight in 2022.
The excess mortality rates relative to the trend line after 2021 suddenly become 4x higher(!) than in the past 25 years...!? Ten percent above the NZ baseline! Make it 8% if necessary if you accept the curling up baseline. Not seen in decades and now 3 years in a row.
If you call that 'undermortality', are you mistaken or are you lying?
Why?
A graphing machine like @dobssi concerned with 'the corona period' and not specifically interested in any effect of vaccines, you can think something of that. But the fact that Prof. Dr. Pieter Trapman, University of Groningen refers me to him like "look this is how you do it"... I don't get it.
And Prof. Dr. Ruben van Gaalen mouthpiece of CBS 1Numerical Confirmation of State Lies, or Maarten Keulemans, our science crack of quality medium De Volkskrant... The fact that they cite New Zealand as a shining example of vaccine safety; they should have punctured this a long time ago, shouldn't they?
Do they really think they can get away with these excuses in the long run? Or are they just really bad at their jobs?
I really wonder what's going on in the media and in science – and why.
References
- 1Numerical Confirmation of State Lies
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