This paper by several HART members misses an obvious explanation for some odd looking ONS data, ignores the ONS' data definitions, then manipulates that data to falsely claim the vaccines cause a (non-existent) spike in deaths!
The data oddity that caught their eyes is a bump in deaths per 100,000 in unvaccinated people in each age group, soon after that group starts being vaccinated.
But as the overall mortality rates show, there is NO spike in deaths during the vaccine rollout.
So what's going on?
The paper's authors wrongly believe the vaccines are killing us, so they present the data like this.
I replicated this graph from the raw ONS data, and it is correct. BUT it has an obvious explanation that doesn't involve claiming the ONS is deliberately miscategorising deaths!
Let's plot that graph another way. Instead of looking at the % of people in the 60-69 age group who were vaccinated each week, let's look at the % of them who are still in the unvaccinated group at the end of each week.
Here it is for 1st doses. Can you see what's going on yet?
It's even clearer for 2nd doses.
When death rates in each age group peak, the population it's taking place in is very small.
Death rates in unvaccinated 60-69 year olds peaked when only 8.3% in that age group were unvaccinated.
For single dosed people it's 2.5% or less!
This is a small and unrepresentative group, likely to include a significant proportion of people who were too ill to get vaccinated at the time.
Which probably explains why their death rates appear higher. Just 180 "extra" deaths a week produces that huge bump in death rates.
In case there's any doubt about this, the Covid Pass has an exemption for people who aren't vaccinated because they're receiving end of life care or have short term medical issues.
This includes cases like Captain Tom, who wasn't vaccinated as he was being treated for pneumonia.
Of course, HART instead assume the data is faulty, and (having failed to read the data definitions, as usual) conclude that the vaccination status of people who die is systematically miscategorised.
In fact, the definitions show the categories do exactly what it says on the tin:
HART then go a step further though. This has Joel Smalley’s grubby fingerprints all over it, as it creates a completely artificial baseline that assumes people die at a constant rate all year (!), and arbitrarily assigns every "excess" death in the unvaccinated to the vaccinated!
This produces an alarming looking graph that claims there's a HUGE spike in non-covid death rates immediately after vaccination.
Which is, of course, complete and utter nonsense. Absolutely nothing in the ONS data they're using supports this false claim.
The paper actually cuts off the top of its graphs to hide how ridiculous the spikes in death rates they claim at the start of the year look.
This is what they're NOT showing you, after I reproduced their data by arbitrarily reassigning every above average death, like they did:
In fact, even ignoring all the other issues with their methodology (if you can call it that), simply using a more representative baseline that varies slightly over the year in line with previous years completely reverses its output:
And if you look at the REAL overall non-covid death rate in 2021 for all people in this age group (the black line in my graph below), there are NO spikes, even though individual subpopulations (due to selection biases over time) go up and down dramatically.
Once again, Joel Smalley has conjured up non-existent excess deaths by creating a false baseline and then manipulating the data to give the answer he wants.
This is far from the first time he's done this. Why do @MartinNeil9 & @profnfenton work with him?
Having missed an obvious explanation for a data oddity and effectively fabricated data to fit their narrative, the authors accuse the ONS of systematically miscategorising deaths based on vaccination status, possibly "as a matter of policy"!
It's real tin foil hat level stuff.
They also claim the ONS' population data is wrong.
But as the paper says, "populations move between age groups as people have birthdays".
They forgot this includes people being added to the data as they turned 10!
This ends 10 years after the March 2011 census used by the ONS:
I pointed these issues out to Martin Neil (as did better qualified people, including an epidemiologist), but he dismissed our explanation for the rise in death rates in the dwindling number of unvaccinated people and simply ignored all the other problems.
The responsible thing to do would be to properly address the issues I and others have raised, or to retract the paper if they can't. Instead they're ignoring all criticism.
In the meantime the paper seems to be wildly mistaken, deliberately misleading, or quite possibly both.
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Last week Andrew Bridgen claimed Ukraine might be working on a dirty bomb to use in a "false flag" attack in Europe. Unsurprisingly his comments have now been amplified by the Russian military and state media, and echoed back by Russian assets and useful idiots here in the UK. 🧵
Andrew Bridgen had an "incredibly productive" meeting with the Russian ambassador in London earlier this year.
Since then he's claimed Rishi Sunak called the election to avoid being a wartime PM, and that Ukraine's planning a "false flag" nuclear attack in Europe "like 9/11". 😳
Meanwhile Russian assets and useful idiots here in the UK have been amplifying these claims of false flag attacks and dirty bombs.
John and Irina Mappin at least are known to have visited the Russian embassy recently, and all frequently share Russian propaganda on social media.
Reform's manifesto (or "contract") panders to conspiracy theorists, falsely linking covid vaccines to excess deaths and pledging to "reject" the WEF, WHO and digital currencies.
Unsurprising, given many of their supporters and candidates have rather odd views on these topics. 🧵
Nigel Farage and his Reform Party recently got an endorsement from Laurence Fox of the similarly named Reclaim Party.
Farage even recorded a video with Fox, who has repeatedly compared the Pride flag to the Swastika and promoted Islamophobia.
With friends like these...
Laurence Fox's fiancée also took selfies with Farage while out supporting him in Clacton.
She's recently claimed (amongst many other things) that the pandemic didn't happen and that "they" manipulate the weather to rob us of vital Vitamin D. Right before a heat wave started. 🤦♂️
Reform's candidate in Edinburgh South West, Ian Harper, was a vocal backer of ivermectin, and the grifters and frauds who promoted it as a cure for covid. In his bio for Reform, he talks about a "globalist agenda" seeking to "collapse society".
Not the worst thing he's said. 🧵
Ian Harper's first Twitter account was suspended, and he's now locked his second (presumably to stop voters seeing it). Luckily the internet (and its archives) remembers.
Most of his pandemic posts seem to consist of vastly exaggerated claims about the wonders of ivermectin. 🙄
Unsurprisingly Reform's Ian Harper was an enthusiastic supporter of Tess Lawrie, founder of a British group called BIRD which promoted the dewormer ivermectin as a miracle "cure" for covid, much of it based on flawed or outright fraudulent studies.
Reform's candidate in Twickenham is a member of anti-vax misinformation group HART. In leaked chat logs, Alex Starling called vaccinating children "a perverted abomination", and talked about sneaking HART content and campaigns into articles he wrote for UK news site Reaction. 🧵
If you've not come across them before, HART identify as "a group of highly qualified doctors, scientists and other experts" who just "question the narrative". But many of their members believe covid vaccines were designed to depopulate the Earth! 😳
Alex Starling fit right in at HART, calling wearing masks at school "depraved cruelty" and vaccinating children against covid "a perverted abomination". He also repeatedly suggested covid vaccines work in the same way lions "work" on a herd of zebras, "by taking out the weakest".
John Mappin appeared on Russian TV at the weekend, claiming the British public doesn't support Ukraine. Because he spoke to a few friends, and they all love Russia too. 🤷♂️
Mappin often retweets Putin's propaganda, and last year claimed he could instantly end the Ukraine war. 🤔
Russian asset / useful idiot John Mappin has also been out campaigning for Nigel Farage in Clacton-on-Sea. Haven't they suffered enough already?
Mappin previously backed Andrew Bridgen, after the MP compared covid vaccines to the Holocaust. Just the man you want on your side. 🤦♂️
John Mappin rather optimistically claimed afterwards that Nigel Farage is going to be Prime Minister, hailing him for "one of the most brilliant and sanest speeches in this island's history". 🤪
But then he's already fallen for Scientology, QAnon, and covid conspiracy theories.
The BMJ has had to issue a statement after everyone from The Telegraph and former Brexit Minister David Davis to anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists claimed that covid vaccines may be responsible for excess deaths, based on a dubious study published in @BMJPublicHealth. 🧵
The Telegraph's @sarahknapton has a history of this. Two years ago she tried to blame excess deaths (including some covid deaths!) on lockdowns, with a clickbait headline that the article (behind a paywall) failed to support. This is more of the same.
As for the BMJ article that inspired all of this, it simply takes excess death data from 47 "western" countries (ranging from the US and UK to Australia and New Zealand to Bulgaria and Moldova), adds them all up, then engages in a lot of vague arm waving.