Alice Martin
The following Opinion piece was published in the NZ Herald on the 24th of Dec 2021:
It was written by Dr Noelyn Hung, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Rory Nairn. Rory died from myocarditis 12 days after receiving his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. In the opinion piece, Dr Hung attempts to make the case that deaths from Covid-19 induced myocarditis exceed deaths from vaccine-induced myocarditis by a factor of at least 100.
Dr Hung’s self-described ‘simple calculations’ and reasoning are unimpressive. She states, for example, that:
“Most agree that 2 per cent of primary Covid-19 infections lead to death by any complication.”
NZ Herald
But that is not true. See this (from Stuff):
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/explained/127081564/covid19-nz-just-how-deadly-is-the-virus
In this article the author states (noting that IFR is an abbreviation of ‘Infection Fatality Rate’):
“A very early New Zealand model assumed an IFR of 1 per cent, and therefore projected tens of thousands of deaths, assuming we enacted no restrictions … Clearly, our understanding of the virus has evolved since early 2020.”
Stuff
So an estimate of even 1% is now considered to have been excessive, let alone 2%. But whatever the population-averaged estimate of the IFR is, it is irrelevant, because the IFR is strongly age-dependent. And Rory was young – only 26. From this same Stuff article, it can be gleaned that the IFR for people aged between 25 and 29 is 0.01%, which is 200 times less than Dr Hung’s claim of 2%. In fact, it is not until the age band 65-69 is reached that the IFR exceeds 2%.
Dr Hung cites a study that determined that the association between Covid-19 and myocarditis is most pronounced at the extremes of age. She fails to draw the natural conclusion that young adults will therefore be at lower risk of Covid-19 induced myocarditis.
Dr Hung assumes that the entire population will become infected with one variant or another of Covid-19. But that is a dubious assumption. Not everyone in households where someone is sick with Covid-19 becomes infected. And Covid-19 variants are likely to become less virulent over time.
Dr Hung treats the likelihood of death from Covid-19 induced myocarditis differently to the likelihood of death from vaccine-induced myocarditis. She states, with respect to vaccine-induced myocarditis:
“Furthermore, our highly trained medical workforce knows how to manage myocarditis. With good public education about the symptoms and early medical attention, we might be able to avoid post-vaccination myocarditis deaths altogether because it responds so well to treatment.”
I have no idea whether myocarditis does respond well to treatment, but if it does then surely this argument could apply equally to Covid-19 induced myocarditis? Not to mention effective treatments (other than vaccines) for Covid-19 itself? A person afflicted with myocarditis but who has no symptoms will not seek treatment and so their hypothetical response to a hypothetical treatment is meaningless. They may die suddenly in 20 years time, or in 2 years time.
Dr Hung mentions that myocarditis is “only one of Covid infections complications.” With the same one-sidedness that leads her to promote the possibility of effective treatment for vaccine-induced myocarditis but not for Covid-19 induced myocarditis, she fails to mention that the vaccine also causes injury and death by many means other than myocarditis.
Also ignored by Dr Hung is the declining efficacy of the vaccine. Inherent in her ‘simple calculations’ is an assumption that the vaccine is 100% effective. People are receiving 2 or 3 doses of the vaccine and still contracting Covid-19. Although it is frequently claimed, in the manner of some mindless incantation, that the vaccine reduces the severity of illness, it is not known whether it actually does. Pfizer has unhelpfully unblinded its control group. It is possible that the opposite is true. And every extra dose of the vaccine must impose further risks.
The lack of sensitivity and privacy afforded to Rory and his family by Dr Hung’s description of the autopsy is disturbing. Compare this with the Ministry of Health refusing to provide the vaccination status of a person who died from Covid-19 out of “respect for the family”. And there may be a case for that if that is what the family wanted. But what did Rory’s family want? And why did Dr Hung write this article? Did someone ask her to?
Dr Hung has conducted her own hypothetical trolley experiment. If she were in charge of the switch she would send the trolley in the direction of Rory in order to save five old, sick people who would die shortly anyway.
The reality is that Rory’s death saved precisely nobody and contributed in no way to “maintaining a functioning health system for everyone” which seems to be what Dr Hung’s (extremely limited) concept of the wider good amounts to. And even if this did make any sense, since when has it become acceptable to sacrifice the young to the old?
The inclusion of the lovely photograph of a smiling Rory in an article that argues that his death was justified collateral damage evokes in me that ‘uncanny valley’ feeling. Something inhuman, that is pretending to be human, will sometimes give itself away. That is the same feeling I get when I see Jacinda Ardern smiling inappropriately as she discusses the destruction of people’s lives, jobs and businesses and talks about the creation of a two-tier system for NZ citizens.
I was at the Wellington protest where Rory’s partner, Ashleigh, spoke. Her speech was articulate, beautiful and deeply moving. My three youngest children (17, 23 and 24) have recently been vaccinated solely because they have been coerced into it. Informed consent played no role in their decisions. I am heartbroken but I also cannot bear to think what their lives would be like had they not been vaccinated.
The young have been cynically and deliberately targeted by this government even though they are at almost no risk from Covid-19. One of the reasons for this is so that Jacinda Ardern can get her numbers up to ‘world-beating levels’. I hope that one day she will pay for what she has done.