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From the Infowars article 5162% INCREASE IN EXCESS DEATH! Australian Government Data Shows MASS Vaccine Death Toll

Josh Sigurdson reports on the massive increase in excess death in Australia and throughout the world as more and more studies come out utilizing the government’s own statistics.

In Australia in 2022, the excess deaths were 5,162%. That is a massive increase from 2021 and an astronomical increase from 2020 which was minimal to none.

The obvious culprit is, of course, the mass injections which in Australia were essentially forced upon people by locking unvaccinated people out of basically every public place with camps built throughout the country.

Is this true?

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  • For anyone that doesn't want to watch the video, it seems to be based on this article.
    – Mad Scientist ♦
    Mar 27 at 5:56
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    one could just as well way: "The obvious culprit would be, of course, the mass virus inhalations which in Australia were essentially forced upon people by taking away COVID-safe people's money and letting them starve on the streets"
    – user253751
    Mar 27 at 8:56
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    Related: excess deaths did steadily increase in a number of countries 2020-2023; some graphs in the final part(s) of my answer to another Q. Whether that's caused by the vaccines though...
    – Fizz
    Mar 27 at 11:11
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    Typically, whenever people claim that mortality/Covid cases in Australia "skyrocketed after vaccinations", they tend to ignore that reaching significant vaccination levels was a trigger for opening borders.
    – IMil
    Mar 27 at 13:43
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    @Fizz Good point. But worth noting that, in countries with good universal health records (like the UK), it is possible to compare the death rates of the vaccinated to the unvaccinated. When done in the UK, this shows that the vaccinated have lower overall, demographically adjusted, death rates than the unvaccinated. This is hard to reconcile with the idea that vaccination has caused any notable excess deaths.
    – matt_black
    Mar 27 at 14:00

4 Answers 4

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I'm basing my answer on the article "Secret Government Documents confirm COVID-19 Vaccine roll-out caused Excess Deaths in Australia to increase by 5,162%" in The Expose. As far as I can tell the video is just discussing this specific article.

The authors seem to have missed a very obvious source of the excess deaths: the actual COVID-19 pandemic that was the reason for these vaccines in the first place. They almost entirely ignore the elephant in the room and barely address the pandemic at all. The only reference seems to be this part:

Australia suffered a shocking 5,162% increase in excess deaths in the first 38 weeks of 2022 following the repeat rollout of the Covid-19 injections compared to the first 38 weeks of 2020, at the alleged height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and prior to the rollout of a single Covid-19 injection.

They claim that the height of the pandemic was in 2020, which is a blatant lie for Australia. They closed the borders early, and the course of the pandemic was significantly different from most countries due to that:

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COVID Data from Our World In Data

The vast majority of cases in Australia happened during 2022, not 2020 which the article alleges to be the height of the pandemic.

Another issue with the dramatic percentage claimed here is that this kind of comparison doesn't make much sense for excess deaths. The baseline the deaths are compared to here is the average number of deaths that usually happen, which should be close to zero for years without any big health-affecting situations. So if you calculate the increase as a percentage, the actual value is extremely affected by small variations in the base excess deaths, which should fluctuate around zero. It simply does not make sense to calculate the increase in excess mortality this way. The excess mortality itself is already a comparison to the base mortality, so you just take this value. If you need a percentage increase you compare it to the base mortality.

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    You mean the excess deaths are close to zero? The baseline deaths are not.
    – OrangeDog
    Mar 28 at 9:08
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    Not only did Australia "close the borders early," they adopted "an initial maximum suppression strategy" that included significant movement and activity restrictions in 2020. This included measures in Victoria that amounted to a lockdown that was "one of the toughest in the world." Comparing a period when they successfully took enormous measures to control the virus to a period when they didn't isn't going to tell you much about vaccine safety.
    – Zach Lipton
    Mar 30 at 6:05
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    Note that proponents of these types of conspiracy theories don't just overlook the COVID19 pandemic as an actual cause of excess deaths, they're actively trying to imply and suggest that the pandemic doesn't actually exist.
    – Shadur
    Apr 1 at 9:15
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Were there a massive increase in excess death in Australia in 2022? Yes, there was.

Was it 5,162%? Not even close.

Was it caused by COVID-19 vaccinations? No.

The Provisional Mortality Statistics for 2022 were released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Feb 24th, 2023. [I note that a new update is due this week; that link may have updated data by the time you read this.]

In 2022, there were 174,717 deaths that occurred by 30 November and were registered by 31 January 2023, which is 22,886 (15.1%) more than the historical average.

15.1% is both a massive increase and nowhere near the reported 5,162%. [Given a baseline average of 40 deaths per 100,000 Australians, a 5,162% increase would basically mean that 1 in 50 Australians died last year.]

Note: The provisional numbers cannot directly calculate excess deaths; further analysis is required, as the caveats of the document explain. These numbers are provisional and only rough.

Note: A comment from @user253751 proposes a different interpretation of the 5,162%. If true, the number is misleading - a 5,162% increase could indicate that the number of deaths has dropped dramatically below the long-term average. If this interpretation is the one intended, the wording of the linked source is misleading and their figures are largely gibberish.

Deaths with COVID-19 identified as the cause of deaths account for a large amount of the excess death. Deaths with COVID-19 as a contributing factor accounted for some more.

All deaths, broken down by COVID

Note: This graph's Y-axis does not extend to zero, which may exaggerate the size of the difference to readers unfamiliar with that.

The document also identifies increases in deaths due to Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, and in increase in chronic lower respiratory diseases but a decrease in influenza and pneumonia.

These figures were widely reported and subjected to further analysis that explored the reasons further:

  • SBS: Australia recorded 20,000 more deaths than expected last year. This is why

    The excess mortality is largely due to the coronavirus pandemic.

  • Actuaries Digital: COVID-19 Mortality Working Group: Almost 20,000 excess deaths for 2022 in Australia

    • Our expectation is that excess mortality for the full year 2022 will be 12% i.e. there were nearly 20,000 more deaths in 2022 than would have been expected if the pandemic had not happened. [...]
    • Just over half of the expected excess mortality for 2022 is due to deaths from COVID-19 (+10,300 deaths), with another +2,900 where COVID-19 was a contributing factor, and the remaining excess of +6,600 with no mention of COVID-19 on the death certificate.
    • While most of the excess deaths are in older age groups (i.e. 65+ years), excess mortality is a significant percentage in all age groups in 2022. Most states and territories have had broadly similar levels of excess mortality in 2022, but the delayed re-opening of WA’s borders is reflected in a delayed uplift in mortality.

  • Sydney Morning Herald: Almost 20,000 more people died last year – the highest excess death rate since WWII

    “Part of the explanation could be that people are going to hospital and not being able to access treatments because hospitals are full of COVID patients. At the peaks of COVID, ambulance and emergency department waiting times are high. We think that’s one factor in why there’s more non-COVID deaths coming through,” Cutter said.

    “The other aspect of people not getting medical treatment could be they didn’t get the treatment they needed or the screening tests they should have in 2020 and 2021, so they’re having worse health outcomes that have taken a while to emerge.”

The linked article also claims:

The obvious culprit is, of course, the mass injections which in Australia were essentially forced upon people by locking unvaccinated people out of basically every public place with camps built throughout the country.

As an Australian who lived through the pandemic, I find this characterisation laughable, but I won't address it here. It needs a separate question.

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    Excess deaths can easily increase by 5162% if you consider the normal value of excess deaths is 0. Let's say it was 1 last year (5000 baseline deaths, 5001 actual) and then 53 this year (5000 baseline deaths, 5053 actual) that's a 5200% increase in excess deaths, which doesn't mean much.
    – user253751
    Mar 27 at 8:58
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    @user253751 I can't really fault Oddthinking here for not even considering this absurd calculation. The only reasonable way to calculate the excess death increase as a percentage is the one he mentions here, a comparison to the average number of deaths. Of course the calculation you mention is used by articles like this one to create scary numbers, but in the end the number is entirely meaningless and extremely misleading.
    – Mad Scientist ♦
    Mar 27 at 9:06
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    @Oddthinking that is the incorrect formula, but yes, when one of these grifters says something like "excess deaths rose 5000%" the only interpretation which makes that a remotely valid statement is that the excess deaths number is 5000% higher than it was previously.
    – user253751
    Mar 27 at 10:44
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    @Oddthinking Wow! is correct. "Excess deaths" is a comparison of a forecast vs an observation. As a % it can be negative, zero or positive. If it increases from a zero in one year to any positive number the next, then the % change in the % value will be infinite. The only meaningful number would be the percentage point change in the % excess deaths not the % of one year over the previous year.
    – matt_black
    Mar 27 at 13:55
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    @matt_black: Right, but what I find worse: If the actual was 0.1% below the predicted, and the following year it is 5% below the predicted, (-0.05)/(-0.001) = 5000%! A drop can be read as a huge hike!
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Mar 27 at 15:01
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Here are a chart and some numbers for total excess deaths in Australia from Our World in Data:

Excess mortality: Cumulative number of deaths from all causes compared to projection based on previous years. Graph shows negative values from July 2020 to Dec 2021, then steeply increases to 20,000 by Dec 2022

Date Cumulative excess deaths
Mar 1, 2020 312
Jan 3, 2021 -3394
Jan 2, 2022 883
Nov 22, 2022 20254

These are unlikely to be the numbers used in the claim, but let’s suppose these suggest about -3,706 excess deaths in the Covid period of ten months in 2020, then +4,277 in 2021, and +19,371 in almost eleven months of 2022 (the full year would be higher).

Then this 2022 number of excess deaths would be 453% of the 2021 number and a nonsensical -523% of the 2020 figure. Presumably the claim used different numbers, perhaps a 2021 value closer to 0 and a higher 2022 value, but it is likely to have used the same peculiar calculation.

Doing a similar kind of thing for cumulative confirmed Covid-19 deaths in Australia (where all the numbers are actual counts rather than possibly negative differences and we can match 2021 and 2022 better) could give 920 in 2020, 1,509 in 2021, and 15,387 in 2022. Here the 2022 number was just over 10 times the 2021 number (1019% will tend to confuse) and almost 17 times the 2020 number. This is more meaningful and says that Covid-19 mortality in Australia was indeed much higher in 2022 than in the two earlier years. This is true for Australia, but it is not news when taking into account when it closed and then opened its borders.

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    The question asks not just whether there was higher mortality, but whether COVID vaccines caused it
    – user253751
    Mar 28 at 17:35
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    @user253751 - looking at vaccine-caused deaths requires considering more than one country since they had different time patterns of infection and of vaccination. My answer was concentrating on the numbers and presentation of numbers for Australia
    – Henry
    Mar 28 at 17:41
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There have been excess deaths post-pandemic in many countries, and there are many plausible explanations.

See for example:

These include:

  • deaths caused by delayed effects of COVID
  • deaths caused by the effects of lockdown (e.g. mental health, reduced immunity)
  • deaths which would have happened earlier but for the pandemic (for example, there were fewer flu deaths during lockdown)
  • deaths caused by inability or reluctance to get medical help during the pandemic (e.g. delayed cancer treatment)

In the UK, the heatwave in the summer of 2022 was also identified as a contributory factor: excess deaths often occur when temperatures are unusually high or low.

In reality there is likely to be more than one cause, and distinguishing them is extremely difficult: there are many projects attempting to do this analysis, and as far as I'm aware there is as yet no consensus.

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    It isn't clear how your references support your claims. For example, The Guardian blames the health care system being overloaded, but you don't. Meanwhile, who is saying that flu deaths avoided in 2021 lead to more than normal flu deaths in 2022? That might be true, but who is saying it? Please quote the appropriate parts of the references.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Mar 30 at 18:29
  • I'm also not sure this even addresses the question. The issue isn't about persistent excess deaths after the pandemic but excess deaths during the pandmeic coincident with vaccinations. In a year or two we can (maybe) judge post-pandemic excess deaths but it will be harder to claim any coincidence with vaccination.
    – matt_black
    Apr 3 at 9:10
  • It's also hard to call any deaths measured "post-pandemic" when COVID infection rates are still enormous. Post-vaccination, for rich parts of the world, maybe.
    – jdunlop
    Apr 11 at 23:00

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