September 24 2021

Are hundreds of Australians dying from the vaccine?

Have you heard from some people on social media that there are hundreds of deaths from the covid vaccines in Australia?

To set the facts out right from the start… It’s not true. There have been only nine.

But, here is where this misinformation comes from.

Misreading the TGA

Often, people point to the DAEN (Database of Adverse Event Notifications) report released weekly by Australia’s TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration). In the report, it states how many number of cases there were “where death was a reported outcome”. For the latest report that number is 556.

Understandably, people read that and at first presume that means that there were 556 deaths from the covid vaccine.

This then gets passed on and circulated without question and eventually it even ends up on official politcal party websites (such as THIS from Clive Palmer and the United Australia Party), further giving seeming credibility to the idea.

If you have been mislead by this claim going around, I understand. We trust claims when they sound official and espcially when they are supposedly backed up by the country’s offical reporting agency.

But this is not what the report is saying.

The fact is, whenever someone died within a timeframe that is close to their vaccination, their death gets reported to the TGA. Hundreds of these reports come in, but each one gets carefully assessed to see if the vaccine contributed in any way to the death. After they make their assessment, they publish both sets of data. The number or initial reports and the number of actual cases where the death was caused by the vaccine.

Happy Birthday!

A Birthday Cake Illustration

Think of it like this. If you were asked to find every single death that occured in the week following after the deceased person had eaten birthday cake, you might find hundreds of such cases. Let’s say you found 556.

Then, they investigate each case and discover that out of the 556, 2 were poisoned by the cake, 3 had an allergic reaction to one of the cakes ingredience and a further 4 choked on it. The other 556 were just people who died, because humans are mortal, with no connection to the birthday cake. So 556 reports of death and 9 confirmed deaths by birthday cake.

Now imagine you released both those numbers to the public and people took the chart that reported the 535 cases of death that occured after eating birthday cake and made the claim that the official “Birthday Cake Death Toll” was 556! This would be reporting the death number in your report correctly, but interpreting what it means completely wrong.

It would be especially incorrect if people didn’t even mention how you had also published the actual confirmed death toll from birthday cake as 9.

This is exactly what is happening with the TGA’s report on covid vaccine deaths.

This is how the TGA themselves explain it

If you think I am misinterpreting the data, this is it from the TGA themselves:

“Large scale vaccination means that coincidentally some people will experience a new illness or die within a few days or weeks of vaccination. The TGA reviews all deaths reported in people who have been vaccinated. As the number of vaccinated people has increased, so has reporting of fatal events with a coincidental association with vaccination. This does not indicate a link between vaccination and the fatalities reported. Review of individual reports and patterns of reporting does not suggest the vaccines played a role in these deaths.

Since the beginning of the vaccine rollout to 19 September 2021, approximately 24.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been given. So far, the TGA has found that 9 reports of deaths were linked to immunisation from 556 reports received and reviewed.

The overwhelming majority of deaths reported to the TGA following vaccination occurred in people aged 65 years and older. The deaths linked to immunisation occurred after the first dose of Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) – 8 were TTS cases and one was a case of immune thrombocytopenia (ITP).”

Catch that? 556 reports. 9 deaths from the vaccine.

The misinformation that there have been hundreds of deaths caused by the vaccine is all the more persuasive to people because it uses a misreading of a true and official TGA report. But it is so important that we understand what these reports are actually showing and how to read them.

The TGA is also very aware that people have misinterpret and misued the data they provide:

“We are aware of false claims that have been circulating based on misinterpretation of information published in the DAEN. Reports are entered into the database without being assessed to determine if they are caused by the vaccine. We encourage people to report suspected side effects, even if there is only a small chance that the vaccine caused them. For this reason, publication of a report in the DAEN does not mean that the vaccine caused the adverse event, but simply reflects the observations of the person who reported the event. 

In some states and territories, the reporting of specific events, such as death, that occur closely following a vaccination is mandatory for health professionals. For this reason, the number of adverse events and deaths reported in the DAEN is not an indication of the safety of the vaccines. Expert review and investigation are needed to determine which events were caused by the vaccine. The outcomes of our analysis of adverse event reports are communicated in this report each week.”

And just in case you think I took the TGA out of context, you can read the above quotes HERE.

You have a 1 in 1.6 million chance of getting struck by lightening in Australia

Staggeringly Safe

The big message we can actually interpret from the TGA report is just how ridiculously safe the vaccines actually are. Think of it. 9 deaths in around 26,130,313 doses of vaccine so far in Australia! That’s a 1 in 3 miliion, or 0.00003% chance of dying from the vaccine based on Australian statistics. Don’t believe anyone who tries to exaggerate the risk or tell you the lie that “more people die from the vaccines than from covid”.

You’ve literally got about twice as much chance of being struck by lightning in Australia.

Staggeringly Transparent

The other thing this report shows is how much our health system is actually committed to transparency. Despite all the claims of cover-ups and conspiracy and data being swept under the carpet, if that were the case, then they are doing a terrible job at hiding the information. On the TGA website, they list every single reported side effect and death of every medicine in Australia. It’s crazy transparency.

But with that exhaustive amount of data, it is understandble that the interpretation can easily be lost in translation by those who are afraid of the vaccines and will gravitate to anything that might confirm their fears (not to mention others who are deliberately trying to undermine vaccines).

PLEASE, if you have been fooled by this misinformation, do not receive any judgment from this article. Just treat it as a learning experience and look twice next time. Always check the source of the information you are being given and have a healthy level of skepticism in our institutions, but not an unhealthy level.

If you know people who might find this article helpful, please share this information and if you see people suggesting there have been hundreds of deaths from the vaccines in Australia, please lovingly and patiently help them see what the TGA report actually says.

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August 31 2011

3 Options for the Origin of the Universe

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When you see a photo like this, with a car stuck in a tree, you ask the obvious question, “How the hell did that get there?” It demands some form of an explanation. I think the universe is like that.
The very fact that we and everything else is here rather than not, demands some form of explanation. I’m not talking purpose (although that may be related). I’m talking origins. When you look at the world, when you stare up at the stars, when you look at your own hand, you can not ignore the obvious question, “How the hell did all this get here?”

Now I am absolutely no expert in science or quantum mechanics, but it seems to me that there can only really be three options for the origins of the universe. Each option is in it’s own way whacky and unbelievable. Each one involves an idea that is bigger and weirder than anything we can see or experience or test scientifically, but all scientists still fall into one of three camps in how the explain the ultimate question of origins.

These are the 3 options:

Option 1. Magic Gun Theory – The material reality had a beginning that was from nothing and caused by nothing.
Option 2. String Theory – The material reality is eternal and had no beginning.
Option 3. Creator Theory – The material reality had a beginning that was caused by an eternal, non-material reality (God).

Now, I’ll explain what I mean by these three option in a moment, but as I see it, every theory imaginable must fall into one of these three. Consequently, every person must chose to side with one of these three options if they are to answer the “How did it get here?” question. You could, of course, go with Option 4. which is “I have no idea” (this by the way is my answer to the car in the tree) but if it really is the case that there are only 3 mutually exclusive options for the origin of the universe, then you still would have to conclude that one of these three options must be the answer, even if you feel there is no definitive way of discovering which one is true.

The terrifying thing about the idea that we can never know the answer is that the implications that stem from each option are vastly different. If there is a non-material (or spiritual) reality and if that is in the form of a personal deity then a mountain of questions arise and the relevance of theology and philosophy about the nature of God and spiritual reality becomes incredibly important. If on the other hand, there is no spiritual reality and that the material reality is all the is, then that has great implications for the irrelevance for all religion and raises many questions about the origins of morality and the claims of those who have experience of the spiritual. This is of course only skimming the surface of the implications that arise on both sides, but hopefully the point is clear that trying to work out which of the three options is true is a vitally important and practically relevant pursuit.

Let me now try to simply describe each of the three options:

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Option 1. Magic Gun Theory

This is the theory that claims that the material reality (including all matter and energy that exists) came into existence as some point in history, exploding on to the scene with the Big Bang. This is supported by what we observe about the universe – that it is expanding – giving the impression that it had an origin at some point. The reason why I call this the “Magic Gun Theory” is because it states that this event somehow created matter and energy out of nothing and nothing at all (non-material or otherwise) caused the bang to happen in the first place. It all just magically happened and appeared for no reason. This theory seems like an easy way of combining what we observe about the universe with an atheistic view of the world. The problem with this view is that it is completely unscientific. No modern scientist would claim that matter and energy can all of a sudden just appear from absolutely nothing, with nothing causing that to happen. It is simply a theory that defies all we know about science, for the sake of marrying evidence (that there seems to be a beginning) with prejudice (that they want to believe in nothing spiritual).

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Option 2. String Theory

The material reality is eternal and had no beginning.

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Option 3. Creator Theory – The material reality had a beginning that was caused by an eternal, non-material reality (God).

Now in the end, although this theory seems quite ridiculous, I guess I have to admit that each theory has it’s element of wackiness. In this case, you either believe in a magic universe that can defy scientific logic or you believe in a magic deity that defies scientific logic. I personally think that

The Origin and Fate of the Universe – Steven Hawkins

According to this theory [strong anthropic principle], there are either many different universes or many different regions of a single universe, each with its own initial configuration and, perhaps, with its own set of laws of science. In most of these universes the conditions would not be right for the development of complicated organisms; only in the few universes that are like ours would intelligent beings develop and ask the question: “Why is the universe the way we see it?” The answer is then simple: If it had been different, we would not be here!

There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with eighty zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle parts. But that just raises the question of where the energy came from. The answer is that the total energy of the universe is exactly zero. The matter in the universe is made out of positive energy. However, the matter is all attracting itself by gravity. Two pieces of matter that are close to each other have less energy than the same two pieces a long way apart, because you have to expend energy to separate them against the gravitational force that is pulling them together. Thus in a sense, the gravitational field has negative energy. In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero.

Now twice zero is also zero. Thus the universe can double the amount of positive matter energy and also double the negative gravitational energy without violation of the conservation of energy. It is said that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But the universe is the ultimate free lunch.

One could say: “The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary.” The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE.

The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started – it would still be up to God to wind up the clockwood and choose how to start it off. So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundaries or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

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