Dr Gerrard on apples and oranges

Unfortunately, he’s learning the ropes of message management in an incurious press room:

Chief Health Officer John Gerrard said having just six people on ventilators and 27 in ICU showed the vaccine was having an impact in preventing people getting seriously ill.

“To put that in context, I was in Tokyo at the beginning of the pandemic dealing with the Diamond Princess outbreak, where we had 700 people infected with COVID-19, of which over 30 were on ventilators and in intensive care units,” he said.

“Now in Queensland, we have well over 100,000 people that are infected, we have documented over 100,000 infections through testing, and we have just 27 people in intensive care units in Queensland at the moment.

“The lesson is the vaccines are working, they are specifically working on preventing people from getting critically ill and reducing hospital admissions.”

Unlike the situation in Queensland now, the Diamond Princess outbreak was not of mild Omicron. Plus, as the science shows, it was elderly passengers – an overrepresented group on a cruise – who were most vulnerable to symptoms, illness and death. For the purpose of selling the efficacy of the vaccines, the comparison is flawed. So much so that I have no idea what the CHO is trying to prove by citing it. As the dumb panic surrounding the availability of totally unnecessary vaccine doses for children demonstrates, there is a damaging real-world price being paid by the public because of the intellectual cravenness of reporters.

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11 Responses to Dr Gerrard on apples and oranges

  1. Despite being massively over represented in the old age category, the original diamond princess is a great data point. Only 30 were badly ill from over 700. That being the worst case scenario, old people, confined, no escape.

    Only 4% became badly ill. Less than 1% died (death on cruises is common, they have their own morgue), and the ship fitted the norm that 80% are naturally immune so weren’t affected.

    We’ve destroyed everything over nothing.

  2. C.L. says:

    And then there’s that.

    Bizarre comments from Gerrard.

  3. Entropy says:

    The extent of selective omission and lack of direct comparison of statistics amongst the health bureaucracy fuels suspicion amongst those not susceptible to hysteria.

    A great example was the 11 in Qld ICU yesterday.
    Five were vaccinated but had underlying conditions
    Six were unvaccinated, and that is all we are told. Whether or not they had underlying conditions was not disclosed.

  4. Chris M says:

    He’s being deliberately dishonest with this comparison with what is almost a completely different disease – omicron has little lung involvement. And he knows this.

    Far too many Australians will sell their souls for their job.

  5. jupes says:

    Trump was right. Journalists really are the enemy of the people.

  6. Buccaneer says:

    The other thing that seems obscured is the rate of transmission for those who are vaccinated vs those who are not. My suspicion is that if there was a demonstrable benefit in the reduction of transmission for those who are vaccinated we would be hearing about it front and centre. This seems to me to be the only actual reason that anyone without a comorbitity under 40 might need to be vaccinated. Otherwise the risk vs reward simply doesn’t seem to stack up and every health professional who is advising their patient to be vaccinated would appear to be indulging in malpractice.

  7. C.L. says:

    He’s at it again today:

    Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard said the data coming through now – with 525 cases now requiring treatment in hospital – was making it very clear that people needed to be vaccinated.

    “You are nine times more likely to end up in hospital if you are unvaccinated than if you are triple vaxxed,” he said.

    The double-vaxxed – formerly known as the ‘fully vaxxed’ – are now being counted as unvaccinated for political purposes.

    To put it another way: most of the hospitalised are now vaccinated.

  8. Chris M says:

    You are nine times more likely to end up in hospital if you are unvaccinated

    He’s smarter than the current boss of Pfizer apparently who now says the two jabs have “little if any effect” on covid.

    Oh well, reasonably effective at heart damage so there is that.

  9. To put it another way: most of the hospitalised are now vaccinated

    Two tricks. Now 2 shots is unvaccinated, before you were unvaccinated up until 2 weeks after your second shot.

    Clusterfuck.

  10. Tel says:

    … before you were unvaccinated up until 2 weeks after your second shot.

    In NSW they extended that out to 21 days.

    Check the fine print in the “Glossary” section at the back of the Weekly Surveillance Report.

  11. C.L. says:

    The fine print to all this is becoming more copious than the Old Testament.

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