There’s a quote floating around on Twitter and in the media, which I’ll be fact-checking in this video, which was released by the Burnet Institute, “an Australian, unaligned, not-for-profit, independent organisation that combines medical research with practical action to address health issues globally”. The Twitter quote states, “I have absolutely no doubt that Australians don’t know that COVID is putting 50x more people in hospital than the flu, it’s killing 50-100x more people than the flu, that 5%, if they get infected, even if they’re vaccinated, are likely to get long COVID”. The part that I’ll be fact-checking is the one that states COVID is killing 50-100x more people that the flu. This quote is by Prof Brendan Crabb. Taking a look at his Twitter profile – yes, he’s one of those people who still wear a mask in their Twitter profile – he’s the director & CEO of the Burnet Institute: parasites, viruses, global health, medical research, and health equity. Okay, so the first thing I did was look up the most recent COVID data on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website. This data was released on the 24 January 2023, and is a summary report of provisional mortality statistics for 2022. For example, there was a total of 9,440 deaths that were officially attributed to COVID in 2022, noting that the majority of these deaths occurred in the earlier months of the year with often more than 1,000 deaths per month, whereas recent months show significantly less deaths, well under 500 per month. I’m going to go out on a limb here, and predict that 2022 will be the worst year for COVID in terms of deaths. I’d suggest that based on recent months, this will get better as time goes on. After downloading the data and graphing it, deaths are definitely trending downwards in 2022 as more and more people build up immunity to the disease. Hence why I state that 2022 will probably be the worst COVID year we’ll ever experience. It certainly looks that way, anyway. Assuming that 2022 is one of the worst years for COVID, well it would make sense to compare it with one of the worst years for flu if you want to compare apples with apples (don’t worry, I’ll compare it with a lower year later). A quick Google search tells us that 2017 was one of the worst years for flu. This archived report from the ABS titled, “Causes of Death, Australia, 2017”, specifically, “Deaths Due to Influenza”. In 2017 there were 1,255 deaths due to influenza, which is a significant increase from 2016 where 464 influenza deaths were recorded. First, let’s compare the 2017 figure of 1,255 with our 2022 COVID figure of 9,440. So 9,440 divided by 1,255 equals 7.52. That means, there were seven-and-a-half times as many COVID deaths in 2022 as there were flu deaths in 2017. I’m not saying that’s not significant. That’s certainly a lot, however, it’s nowhere near the 50 to 100 times more that the good Professor was proclaiming. To give him the benefit of the doubt, let’s assume that he compared 2022 with a lesser year, say 2016 (noting that he didn’t tell us how he calculated his numbers – please correct me if he did). 2016 had significantly less flu deaths at 464. Running the numbers, we find that there were 20 times as many COVID deaths in 2022 as there were flu deaths in 2016. Yes, it’s significant, but it’s still not anything like the 50 to 100 times the good Professor was quoting. So how did he get his figures? Well, I think he used the latest Provisional Mortality Statistics from the ABS, noting that this has a reference period of January to September 2022. If you scroll down to the “Doctor certified deaths by cause” table, you’ll see that in September 2022, there were 234 deaths from influenza and pneumonia, of which 230 were from pneumonia. That leaves us with four flu deaths in September. If we compare that with the 420 COVID deaths that occurred in the same time period, we get 420 divided by 4, which means we could say that there were 105 times as many COVID deaths, which is something akin to the good Professor’s tweet. But I would suggest that comparing a single month of data would not be a very accurate way to come up with these statistics. If we look at the same set of data, but instead look at the baseline average, 404 minus 242 equals 162 flu deaths on average (noting that we don’t have a baseline average for COVID as it hasn’t been around long enough). But comparing our average flu deaths with our total 420 COVID deaths for September, we find that there were approximately 2.6 times as many COVID deaths as compared to historical influenza averages, which is a lot, lot less than the quoted 50 to 100 times that Professor Crabb has been telling everybody. Yes, those are crabs on his mask. So in terms of my fact check. Is it true that 50 to 100 times more people are dying from COVID than the flu? Well, in the spirit of our public broadcaster, the ABC, Professor Crabb’s figures are severely overstated! MUSIC Allégro by Emmit Fenn ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g6bLG2tAT8

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