The Claim That COVID-19 Vaccination Protected Australians from All-Cause Mortality Is Not Plausible

We examine the plausibility of Liu et al’s findings that COVID-19 (covid) vaccinations in 2022 protected older Australians from death from any cause, cerebrovascular disease, ischaemic heart disease, dementia, respiratory disease, and cancer. Such findings of protection from all-cause death need to be scrutinised given the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) report of 13% excess mortality in 2022 in people aged 65-plus, a heavily vaccinated group. We examine the compatibility of a weighted average of Liu et al.’s all-cause mortality vaccine effectiveness data in the context of the ABS data on excess mortality. We find that the study results imply that, if there had been no vaccination of Australians
in 2022, the excess mortality would have been 121%. Two independent lines of evidence (one based on OECD data, the other on Australian historical data) show 121% excess mortality to be implausible. We conclude that the effects on all-cause mortality attributed by the authors to the vaccine are more likely due to the study methodology. This raises concerns about the study findings on the effectiveness of the vaccines against covid itself. We suggest that the study should not be used to make recommendations for elderly Australians.