It appears to me that in retrospect the response was severely overwrought. The numbers of deaths vs the huge costs visited upon children and young people who were at very low risk was a severely warped calculus—my own children are still showing impacts on their educations after 5 years. Young adults without co-morbidities and near zero risk needlessly had their lives disrupted for years, and the safety issues surrounding the poorly evaluated vaccines and clinical heart damage are not to be scoffed at for young to middle aged adults without comorbidities. It is not clear that vaccine benefits outweighed the risks for under 50′s especially after low infection fatality rate Omicron variant came along. We should not be sacrificing the young for the benefit of the old.
I will note that in New Zealand with a population of 5 million we had near perfect shut-out of covid, no respiratory virsuses circulating in 2020 or 2021 - and so less overall death, it was in essence a near perfect control group for vaccine safety. BUT we saw about 1500-2000 (5% more) deaths during the mid-late 2021 vaccine program (without any covid) than in the preceding year [edit, a crude estimate if this was vaccine caused is that vaccination had ~0.05% risk of death, far lower than for covid in elderly but far higher than for covid in young]. It is now reported in major studies that there was a significant increase in cardiovascular deaths in 6 month period after vaccination. The vaccine was probably a good idea for higher risk individuals, but a bad idea for majority of population given tiny infection fatality rate and unknown risks in minimally tested new-tech vaccines that had no long term safety data.
The colossal destructive economic impacts on countries by posturing safety-uber-alles politicians who entirely failed to balance their economic management duties in the decision making processes mean that the cost born per quality-of-life year added (QALY) to peoples lives was at least an order of magnitude above normal cutoff in state medical funding when making medical treatment spending decisions. Their over-reactions unfairly destroyed huge numbers of people’s businesses and savings, representing decades of work in many cases.
[Edit to give idea of cost to new Zealand of covid response was around $100billion, and it added a few years life to perhaps 10,000 mostly elderly or very sick who would have otherwise died (estimating from differential between extreme-lockdown and quarantine NZ 1100 deaths per million and minimal intervention Sweden 2500 deaths per million death rate), meaning it cost several million per QALY in a country where our socialized health system funds things like expensive cancer drugs based on around $50-100k per QALY threshold]
The education in institutional incompetence and malignancy, unchecked power, and irrational, excessive repressive instincts of many in the bureaucratic castes was very useful, and will stand as a life-long lesson and warning for many against the dangers of power in the hands of people who lack wisdom to balance their decisions in a rational way.
And there are now a large pool of laypeople who have a far clearer picture of how to react and what balances need to be struck to future events of this type—particularly in the way in which dangerous viruses mutate towards more transmissible but less lethal variants over time so that response can be dialed back accordingly.
What are you basing the claim that the vaccine is responsible for increased deaths in 2021 on? The NZ statistical agency’s 2021 report says that its due to an aging population and rebound from 2020 when isolation measures decreased rates of non-COVID winter diseases. Basically 2020 was an unusual year for the obvious reasons while 2021 was closer to normal, but still lower than 2019.
In 2021, the crude death rate was 6.8 deaths per 1,000 people. This was up from 6.4 per 1,000 in 2020, but down from 6.9 per 1,000 in 2019. The crude death rate has been below 7 deaths per 1,000 people since 2003.
Median age of death seems to have also continued to rise, which you woudln’t expect if there was a significant surge in vaccine deaths among young people. NZ’s official vaccine safety reporting attributes 2 deaths to myocarditis following vaccination.
It appears to me that in retrospect the response was severely overwrought. The numbers of deaths vs the huge costs visited upon children and young people who were at very low risk was a severely warped calculus—my own children are still showing impacts on their educations after 5 years. Young adults without co-morbidities and near zero risk needlessly had their lives disrupted for years, and the safety issues surrounding the poorly evaluated vaccines and clinical heart damage are not to be scoffed at for young to middle aged adults without comorbidities. It is not clear that vaccine benefits outweighed the risks for under 50′s especially after low infection fatality rate Omicron variant came along. We should not be sacrificing the young for the benefit of the old.
I will note that in New Zealand with a population of 5 million we had near perfect shut-out of covid, no respiratory virsuses circulating in 2020 or 2021 - and so less overall death, it was in essence a near perfect control group for vaccine safety. BUT we saw about 1500-2000 (5% more) deaths during the mid-late 2021 vaccine program (without any covid) than in the preceding year [edit, a crude estimate if this was vaccine caused is that vaccination had ~0.05% risk of death, far lower than for covid in elderly but far higher than for covid in young]. It is now reported in major studies that there was a significant increase in cardiovascular deaths in 6 month period after vaccination. The vaccine was probably a good idea for higher risk individuals, but a bad idea for majority of population given tiny infection fatality rate and unknown risks in minimally tested new-tech vaccines that had no long term safety data.
The colossal destructive economic impacts on countries by posturing safety-uber-alles politicians who entirely failed to balance their economic management duties in the decision making processes mean that the cost born per quality-of-life year added (QALY) to peoples lives was at least an order of magnitude above normal cutoff in state medical funding when making medical treatment spending decisions. Their over-reactions unfairly destroyed huge numbers of people’s businesses and savings, representing decades of work in many cases.
[Edit to give idea of cost to new Zealand of covid response was around $100billion, and it added a few years life to perhaps 10,000 mostly elderly or very sick who would have otherwise died (estimating from differential between extreme-lockdown and quarantine NZ 1100 deaths per million and minimal intervention Sweden 2500 deaths per million death rate), meaning it cost several million per QALY in a country where our socialized health system funds things like expensive cancer drugs based on around $50-100k per QALY threshold]
The education in institutional incompetence and malignancy, unchecked power, and irrational, excessive repressive instincts of many in the bureaucratic castes was very useful, and will stand as a life-long lesson and warning for many against the dangers of power in the hands of people who lack wisdom to balance their decisions in a rational way.
And there are now a large pool of laypeople who have a far clearer picture of how to react and what balances need to be struck to future events of this type—particularly in the way in which dangerous viruses mutate towards more transmissible but less lethal variants over time so that response can be dialed back accordingly.
What are you basing the claim that the vaccine is responsible for increased deaths in 2021 on? The NZ statistical agency’s 2021 report says that its due to an aging population and rebound from 2020 when isolation measures decreased rates of non-COVID winter diseases. Basically 2020 was an unusual year for the obvious reasons while 2021 was closer to normal, but still lower than 2019.
Median age of death seems to have also continued to rise, which you woudln’t expect if there was a significant surge in vaccine deaths among young people. NZ’s official vaccine safety reporting attributes 2 deaths to myocarditis following vaccination.