Thread by @ClimateAudit

last week, in another avatar of Big Government ("Anti")disinfo, a Canadian NGO claimed that "COVID misinformation" cost at least 2800 lives and $300M. This was breathlessly and uncritically reported by Canadian news organizations cbc.ca/news/politics/…

the report was published by an "expert panel" of the Council of Canadian Academies, who prefaced their remarks by asserting that their offices were on "unceded unsurrendered ancestral home of Anishinaabe Algonquin" who "cared for the environment for millenia"

their news release cca-reports.ca/wp-content/upl… proclaimed "misinformation ...is a defining issue of out time". Stephan Lewandowsky, a lead author, launched his career in disinformation as a climate partisan about 12 years ago. I was one of his main targets climateaudit.org/tag/lewandowsky

unfortunately, in their zeal to silence supposed disinformation, Lewandowsky and his "Expert Panel" perpetrated analysis of the type that we've seen too often from the fellowship that countenanced Hide the Decline.

let's start with sourcing "2800 deaths". This figure appears in their Table 4.2, which stated that misinformation resulted in 8% fewer vaccinations, resulting in 2800 extra deaths (35% !) in period from Mar 1, 2021 to Nov 27, 2021. Compared to model.

cca-reports.ca/reports/the-so…

Lewandowsky illustrated the misinformation "gap" for COVID cases in Figure 4.3 which compared observed ("baseline") to modeled cases in theoretical worlds (NoHoax, NoCoverUp). Ponder this figure for a moment - there's some glaring aspects to it.

NoHoax in Lew jargon includes belief that risk is "exaggerated" - more common among younger where risk of hospitalization was actually much less than for seniors.
Actual concern over side effects included concern about potential unknown side effects - not just overt conspiracy

but don't worry about Lew definitions for now. In figure below, I show Lewandowsky time period in context of total Canadian COVID experience. It ended in Nov 2021, thereby cutting off the huge increase in cases in Dec 2021-Jan 2022 as vax protection against cases evaporated. Why?

here's Lewandowsky's excuse: "the model was not extended past November of 2021 to give the Panel adequate time for report drafting and peer review". Puh-leeze.
Are we really supposed to believe that they could not have included Dec 2021-March 2022 data in a Jan 26, 2023 report?

let's look at what Lewandowsky failed to show. Data below shows Ontario and Quebec case data by vax status from summer 2021 to July 2022 (when both provinces STOPPED this reporting.) From Dec 2021 on, overwhelmingly cases were fully vax and then boosted. Why didnt Lew show this?

the same is true for hospitalizations: from Dec 2021 on, fully vax constituted overwhelming proportion of hospitalized as well (Quebec data shown below to July 2022 - data then discontinued.)

Lewandowsky cited a Sept 2021 quote from Canadian Chief Medical Officer Tam that "unvaccinated were 12 times more likely" to get COVID. But by Dec 2021, caserates per 100K among vax were as high or even higher than unvax.

even within the cherry picked interval of Mar-Nov 2021, Lewandowsky's model for excess deaths is implausible. There were 2511 COVID deaths in his period, but only 550 from July 1, 2021 to Nov 27, 2021. Vaccines arrived VERY late in Canada and were rapidly taken up in spring 2021.

to the extent that Lewandowsky's model attributes COVID deaths in April 2021 to delays in vaccination arising from "misinformation", it is additionally bogus. Vaccines were being distributed as rapidly as possible with sensible priorities.

in period from July 1, 2021 to Nov 27, 2021, there were 550 COVID deaths in Ontario - which is ~40% of Canadian population. Not nearly enough to make Lewandowsky's claimed 2800, even if EVERY death was avoidable thru vaccination, which they werent