OPINION
New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science
What are they hiding? Why do Health New Zealand and the Ombudsman decline to provide data about adverse effects of the vaccine?
On 13 Nov 2023 we posted an article about attempts to get information about the Post Vaccine Symptom Check (PVSC) from Health New Zealand via the Ombudsman. It is time to update the saga.
The original request in Nov 2022 to Health New Zealand was made for the contents of the free text boxes in the PVSC. This was a survey sent by text to people after they had received a covid injection. If a person had experienced an adverse effect and they wanted to report more than just ticking a box for sore arm, fever, aches, fatigue, rash they could write in the free text box. It is possible that people described their miscarriage, heart attack, Bell’s palsy, stillbirth, blood clot, paralysis etc. in these boxes.
When the results of the survey were reported by Medsafe, there was no specific comment that the contents of the free text boxes had been evaluated. The results painted a reassuring picture that people only experienced the expected adverse effects. Is that because only the tick boxes were looked at and considered? We were curious to find out what people had said in their own words so asked for the data.
After much less than fruitful correspondence with Health New Zealand, we sent a complaint to the Ombudsman. On 17 Nov 2023, a few days after our article describing the first 12 months of the process, the Office of the Ombudsman (OO) advised that it was finally going to start investigating the complaint dated 30 Mar 2023.
A couple of months later, on 25 Jan 2024 Health New Zealand sent an email with two spreadsheets attached, one containing ‘trigrams’ (1) and one containing ‘quadgrams’ (2). There was limited explanation in the email of what the data represented.
On 29 Jan 2024, due to the data appearing to be unsatisfactory and essentially meaningless, an email was sent back to the Office of the Ombudsman expressing dissatisfaction and asking again for the release of the anonymised raw data.
After much following up, on 2 Apr 2024 a provisional response (3) from the OO was received which advised that the trigrams and quadgrams were sufficient and all that Health New Zealand could provide. Apparently it would take nearly a year of someone’s time to go through the 200,000 responses to make sure there was no personal identifying data in the boxes!! There was an invitation to respond to the provisional report.
A response (4) was sent to the OO on 15 Apr 2024 about the provisional report, stating that the trigrams and quadgrams were meaningless without further information. The response included a series of questions asking for additional information and context in order to be able to understand the data.
After further following up to understand the time frames, a final response (5) from the Ombudsman was received on 3 May 2024. The Ombudsman stated that he considered Health NZ was entitled to provide a summary of the information in the form that they did, and they did not need to answer any further questions. He considered the matter closed.
A similar situation has played out in the US with access to the V-Safe data from their post injection text survey. Legal action has been taken that has required the FDA to release the open text boxes of their survey. In contrast to HNZ baulking over providing 200,000 results, the FDA has been able to provide a series of monthly spreadsheets each containing 390,000 results (6).
If anyone has experience looking at or using trigrams and quadgrams and can help interpret what the data means, we would be interested in hearing from you. Contact us via our website email here.
Below is the full series of events from Nov 2023.
Timeline of the Post Vaccine Symptom Check & Ombudsman:
17 Nov 2023
Email from the Office of Ombudsman (OO) to say they have an investigator and are going to start looking at things.
15 Jan 2024
Email to OO asking for an update. No reply received.
22 Jan 2024
Phone call to OO for update. Liaison person unavailable but advised Health NZ had been notified and asked to provide a response. Case still awaiting allocation to an investigator!?
23 Jan 2024
Further calls to OO to speak to liaison person unanswered. Eventually spoke to a real person who was unable to connect to liaison person but who would send a message asking him to get in touch.
24 Jan 2024
Email from liaison person advising Health New Zealand was revisiting its decision about providing the data and would provide a revised decision directly in due course.
24 Jan 2024
Email back to liaison person to ask for a time frame.
25 Jan 2024
Email from Health New Zealand with two spreadsheets (1,2) containing data.
“Thank you for your patience regarding the concerns you raised with the Ombudsman, following your Official Information Act (1982) request for Post-vaccine symptom information (HNZ00008394). The concerns that you raised were that you did not receive information from the free-text boxes that were part of the Post Vaccine Symptom Check.
As there are privacy concerns regarding the release of information from these free-text boxes, in order to meet what we understand to be your aims of your request, we have included the attached Trigrams and Quadgrams.
The trigram file reflects where 3 words have been used and the quadgram reflects when 4 have been used. This can be seen as de-identified free text box responses.
The information was pulled via a script set up to run through the free text responses. The basic process for the script was to standardize the case (ie. turn eveything to lower case) and remove filler words (i.e. and, in, my, etc.). Then to get the stem of the words (ie. painful, or pains becomes pain). Find the frequency in which each word occurs or two/three/four words were used in close proximity and sort from most frequent to least frequent.
We hope this meets your needs in relation to your request, and have included Rich from the Ombudsman in this response.”
29 Jan 2024
Email back to liaison person at OO saying the data provided was unsatisfactory and could the OO please ask Health NZ to provide the anonymised or de-identified raw data within the free text boxes, rather than data that had been curated and manipulated to such an extent that it was useless.
“Hello X,
Thank you for expediting a reply from Health NZ about my OIA request from 26 Nov 2022, regarding the post vaccine symptom check survey. I received this on 25 Jan 2024.
Health NZ has forwarded some data in the form of Trigrams and Quadgrams. However, this is not the data I was anticipating. I would like the anonymised or de-identified raw data within the free text boxes, rather than data that has been curated and manipulated. I would like to read what people have written in the various free text boxes in the survey.
Please can you ask Health New Zealand to provide this.
Thank you.”
30 Jan 2024
Email from liaison person saying that since complaint not resolved, it would be assigned to a senior investigator.
5 Feb 2024
Email sent to senior investigator to ask about process and time frame. No reply.
9 Feb 2024
Phoned OO and asked to speak to senior investigator but she was not available. Advised that email would be sent to investigator asking her to follow up. Advised to ring again next week if not heard anything. No response.
19 Feb 2024
Phoned OO again asking for an update but unable to speak to senior investigator. Emailed asking again for information about process and time frame. Received email from senior investigator stating:
“I am currently assessing your complaint, and will be in a position to advise of the next steps in the near future.
Generally speaking, the next step would be a preliminary opinion, this would be sent to the relevant party for comment prior to any finding.
I will provide you a more substantive update when I have one.”
10 Mar 2024
Email to OO asking for update. No reply.
18 Mar 2024
Phone call to OO asking to speak with senior investigator. She was unable to be contacted. Was told an urgent email would be sent to her asking her to get in contact to provide an update. No response.
21 Mar 2024
Further email to senior investigator asking where complaint was at and what was holding up its progress. No response.
2 Apr 2024
Rang OO again. Initially unable to get hold of senior investigator but then she became available. She advised that a letter would be sent within a week or two and it would outline the Ombudsman’s provisional decision. She would not elaborate on what the letter might contain.
2 Apr 2024
Received provisional response (3) from OO explaining why trigrams and quadgrams sufficient and why impossible for HNZ to provide any other data. Offered option of responding by 16 April before Ombudsman made his final decision.
15 Apr 2024
Response (4) provided to OO re his provisional decision stating that the information provided was not satisfactory, asking additional questions and reiterating request for full contents of free text boxes.
26 Apr 2024
Further email to senior investigator and liaison person asking for an update on process and time frame. No response.
2 May 2024
Further email to senior investigator and liaison officer asking for information on where the process was at.
3 May 2024
Received final reply (5) from OO. Completely useless!!!
We understand that as more and more damning evidence regarding the vaccines becomes available in the mainstream media, those responsible for the roll-out would attempt to double down. Facing the consequences of the harm caused would be potentially horrifying. Our message to these authorities and bureaucrats is that the longer they look away and attempt to hide the obvious, the harder it will be for them when the inevitable truth comes to light. We know already what these active but secretive pharmacovigilance systems will show, as it is plain to see and hear. Trying to cover up can only make it worse.