Australian Bureau of Statistics report on Covid deaths misrepresented by rightwing media

Analysis: Commentators and news websites have spread incorrect information on Covid deaths in Australia, feeding conspiracy theories

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The Australian Bureau of Statistics last week released a new report on Covid mortality in Australia. The data is important – it exposes the inequality in how the pandemic is affecting Australians, with deaths higher among people from lower socioeconomic areas, and shockingly high death rates for people born outside Australia.

Experts told Guardian Australia a key reason for this is Australia’s reliance on migrants to undertake essential, insecure work and a failure of government to engage migrant communities early in pandemic planning.

Of the 2,639 deaths, 96.7% of those already had serious, life-threatening underlying health conditions … So, how many people have actually died, not with, but exclusively from Covid in Australia in the past couple of years? It is 83. Now every one of those is absolutely a tragedy, as is the two and a bit thousand before that.

Get rid of the codes, pull down the borders, take care of the people that are most at risk.

We know Covid-19 is serious, but it doesn’t warrant the fear campaign we’ve been seeing. Today we have further proof. This isn’t opinion, it is certified data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Again, let me be clear because some people take these stats the wrong way. We’re not playing down the situation, we’re not ignoring the grief of families. But these records expose the overblown scare campaign that we’ve witnessed.

In 92% of our Covid-related deaths to 31 January each patient had roughly three other underlying health conditions. In other words it wasn’t just Covid that claimed their lives.

If you’re overweight or smoking, you’re putting yourself in danger, and you’re more likely to be in the 1% of Australians who have died with coronavirus. Yes, 1%. If you need any further evidence that it’s time to get on with our lives, you’ve just heard it.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics put out some crucial data this week that should shame every alarmist bureaucrat, politician and media blowhard who championed lockdowns, school closures and mandates.

Of the 2,639 deaths from or with Covid-19 in Australia, 2,556 had serious pre-existing conditions, on average three pre-existing conditions.

It’s hard not to conclude we needlessly crippled our societies, debased our hard fought for liberties and caused untold damage to children, not to mention accumulating enormous debt and destroying countless lives and livelihoods.

And now we have formal confirmation from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that not only did so-called “Covid deaths” account for just 1% of fatalities during the pandemic, but 92% of that 1% were people with pre-existing health problems ranging from pneumonia to heart disease.

All the scare-mongering was wrong, all the catastrophic predictions were wrong, all the fear and fury at lifting of restrictions was wrong, wrong, wrong.

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