I asked the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) about their new publication, which compares excess deaths against a baseline using regression analysis. This approach is the proper method for reviewing excess deaths. The dataset relates to excess deaths DURING COVID, so it would make sense for the ABS to include vaccination rates in the analysis. This would enable a direct comparison of COVID vaccination rates and excess deaths.  

The claim that the data comes from other sources is specious. The ABS website is replete with datasets that combine data from multiple sources.  Furthermore, the ABS utilises data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), so the suggestion that “they do that” is not acceptable. In fact, in this case, the AIHW does not compare vaccination status to excess mortality or the increased prevalence of conditions like Alzheimer’s and cancer.  

Who is instructing the ABS and AIHW to AVOID producing data that allows direct comparisons between these datasets? I also highlighted a recent paper from UNSW, which made the comparison that found a strong correlation of 0.71 between booster shots and excess mortality.

I will not give up on my quest to get honest data on our COVID response so that we can all identify where the Senate went wrong and ensure the Government never repeats these mistakes again.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: I’ll just table this for my second question. My first question refers to your comparison of all-cause mortality—you’d be familiar with this—

Dr Gruen: Broadly, yes.

Senator ROBERTS: and COVID deaths against baseline using regression data. Firstly, thank you for the analysis. It provides a clear idea of where we are. I note that excess deaths are staying above the baseline, above the upper range of the baseline. It is something the monthly provision of mortality data also shows has continued into 2024. My question should be familiar to you. Is the ABS doing enough to produce the wealth of data the government and our health agencies need to review their decisions during COVID? Specifically, why haven’t you added vaccination rates to this data?

Dr Gruen: The mortality data we get from births, deaths and marriages from each of the states and territories—I will make certain that this is correct, but my understanding is that vaccination status does not come with the births, deaths and marriages data that we get and publish. This is the publication that come out two months after the period?

Senator ROBERTS: I’m not sure of the agency’s name. I think it’s the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare or maybe the national institute of health and welfare—

Dr Gruen: No, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

Senator ROBERTS: They are able to provide the vaccinations, I think.

Dr Gruen: Then they may well have done the analysis. Vaccination status exists, and it’s, for instance, in our integrated data assets, and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare does analysis on our data and produces reports. So I’m not saying the data doesn’t exist. I’m saying it’s not in the form that we get from the births, deaths and marriages from each of the states and territories on which we base the mortality statistics that I think you’re talking about.

Senator ROBERTS: So isn’t it just a matter of adding another dataset, getting that from somewhere—because this would be valuable information for health authorities.

Dr Gruen: The answer is that it requires analysis, and that’s not what we do for that publication.

Senator ROBERTS: Do the health departments and health agencies use your data?

Dr Gruen: Yes.

Senator ROBERTS: So wouldn’t it be helpful to them to understand the vaccination rates?

Dr Gruen: I think there’s been quite a lot of work on vaccination status and the implications of vaccination status for mortality. There was a very big study published in the Lancet that was done by the University of New South Wales which looked at that. It followed 3.8 million Australians over 65 in 2022. So there have definitely been studies.

Senator ROBERTS: Okay. Let’s move on. The scientific paper that I tabled—Melbourne university have done the work that you haven’t done, and they’ve used regression analysis to test for the relationship between COVID boosters, if you have a look at the abstract—

CHAIR: The committee tables the document.

Senator ROBERTS: Yes. If you have a look at the abstract, it summarises what I’m saying. I’ve circulated their paper, published by the European Society of Medicine. This is their conclusion: ‘The results suggest a strong regression relationship with an adjusted R squared of 71 per cent.’ Correlation of zero is no correlation. One is a perfect correlation. In this paper, they found a correlation of 0.71. That’s very strong, and it suggests that boosters are linked to excess deaths. As you already do this work—that’s the graph again—why won’t you just add vaccinations and boosters to the data and give the Senate better information upon which to base better decisions?

Dr Gruen: I’ve already answered that question.

Senator ROBERTS: I wasn’t happy with the answer.

Dr Gruen: The point is—

Senator ROBERTS: You haven’t explained it.

Dr Gruen: the data comes from somewhere else.

Senator ROBERTS: Why can’t you do that?

Dr Gruen: I explained. Those data come from births, deaths and marriages from all the states—

Senator ROBERTS: I understand that.

Dr Gruen: Right. The vaccination status comes from elsewhere. It comes from the Australian Immunisation Register.

Senator ROBERTS: So you don’t merge the two together; you won’t do that?

Dr Gruen: We publish the data that is available to us. Others do analysis on that data. It is perfectly open to anyone who has a well-defined project to use the data that we have generated and to produce research on that. That’s completely up to them. We are an organisation that produces the data, and it is predominantly others who do the analysis.

Senator ROBERTS: Okay. So you collect data from various agencies, you summarise it and present it, and other people use that data to do the analysis.

Dr Gruen: Yes. There are circumstances where we do some analysis, but in this case it’s others who do the analysis on linking vaccination status and mortality.

Senator ROBERTS: Okay, thank you.