NZ Whistleblower Released on Bail as Scientists Debate Leaked Vaccine Data

Scientists and statisticians continue to debate the accuracy of a large database of COVID-19 vaccine-related deaths released less than two weeks ago by a New Zealand Ministry of Health whistleblower.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website.

Scientists and statisticians continue to review and debate the accuracy and completeness of a large database of COVID-19 vaccine-related deaths released less than two weeks ago by a New Zealand Ministry of Health whistleblower.

Meanwhile, the whistleblower — Barry Young — was charged by New Zealand authorities with “accessing a computer system for dishonest purposes.” The 56-year-old appeared in Wellington District Court on Dec. 4. and was released on bail the next day.

Young, who also has used the pseudonym “Winston Smith,” was a computer systems programmer for New Zealand’s Ministry of Health, administering a computer payment system for certain vaccine administrators.

Police raided Young’s home on Dec. 3, and arrested him. Police raided the home of an associate the same day.

Young, who was reportedly offered two safehouses in New Zealand and one overseas but refused the offers, now faces at least seven years’ imprisonment. According to Newsweek, Young shouted “freedom” as he departed the courtroom on Dec. 4.

Young released the anonymized data with the assistance of Liz Gunn, a former lawyer, television journalist and candidate for public office for the NZ Loyal Party.

According to mathematician Igor Chudov, who analyzed the data, the database included information on the vaccine type, batch number, dose number, vaccination date, age, date of birth and date of death of the anonymized vaccine recipients.

The dataset was related to so-called pay-per-dose providers, such as individual doctors and drugstores. It did not include data on vaccinations administered at mass vaccination centers and by mobile vaccination clinics.

Data raise questions government ‘can’t ignore’

According to the New Zealand Herald, Health New Zealand, the national public health system also known as Te Whatu Ora, has opened an investigation and attempted to discredit the whistleblower, claiming Young “had no clinical background or expert vaccine knowledge.” Some analysts noted Young’s expertise in data administration.

Health New Zealand’s public messaging has centered around the security of personal data. “What [Young] is claiming is completely wrong and ill-informed … We take the security of the information we hold extremely seriously, and this is a significant breach of trust,” said Margie Apa, Health New Zealand’s chief executive.

In an interview with The Defender, Australian attorney Katie Ashby-Koppens said Health New Zealand was also granted an injunction from New Zealand’s Employment Relations Authority, prohibiting the publication of the leaked data.

Ashby-Koppens, who worked with New Zealand groups promoting medical freedom and transparency, questioned the legality of this injunction, which reportedly was used to pressure hosting providers to remove copies of the leaked data stored on their servers, leading some providers to remove accounts hosting the anonymized data.

Minister of Health Shane Reti sought to reassure the public about vaccine safety.

“There are many conspiracy theorists out there who unfortunately disseminate harmful disinformation, however, as Minister and as a physician, the public can and should continue to have confidence in vaccines,” he said. “I am reassured by experts confirming that there is no evidence supporting the allegations that have been made.”

According to the New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science (NZDSOS) media team, consisting of Dr. Cindy de Villiers, Dr. Alison Goodwin, Dr. Matt Shelton and Anna McLoughlin, such statements are a continuation of official COVID-19 narratives.

“The official mainstream media narrative is that New Zealand did very well during the pandemic, having negative excess mortality,” a spokesperson for NZDSOS told The Defender. “The New Zealand government and media have adopted a ‘shoot the messenger’ approach and then studiously ignored the issue, such that the average person on the street probably is unaware of what is happening in New Zealand.”

Yet, members of the public “who know what is happening absolutely support the whistleblower,” NZDSOS said, noting that “the media is so controlled and captured that large chunks of the population remain unaware of the data release or its significance.”

New Zealand authorities acknowledge only four COVID-19 vaccine-related deaths.

“The data has been very controversial, with people finding opposing things from their analysis of the data, despite being on the same side of the COVID debate,” Ashby-Koppens said. “The data is not complete [but] it raises a lot of questions, questions that the new New Zealand coalition government can’t ignore.”

Norman Fenton, Ph.D., a mathematician and professor emeritus at Queen Mary University of London, also examined the leaked data. He told The Defender the reaction of New Zealand’s authorities to the leak was “very strange.” He added:

“I understand that releasing confidential medical records is a criminal offense, but … the whistleblower only released an anonymized version of the data.

“Given the advanced publicity by people like Steve Kirsch about what the data revealed, I would have thought the New Zealand government would have been better advised to do nothing rather than raiding homes, arresting the whistleblower and erasing files from people who had gained access to the data. It is almost as if they wanted to get more publicity for both the data breach and what the data revealed.”

Presenting one possible reason supporting such an explanation, Fenton said:

“Not surprisingly, this has also led to conspiracy theories of which the most notable is that the government knew that this particular dataset did not contain (as some have claimed) any ‘smoking gun’ on vaccine safety and therefore it was deliberately released so it could be used to discredit ‘anti-vaxxers’ who claimed it did, and also act as a warning against any others who had access to more incriminating data to shut up.”

But for Kirsch, the founder of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation who examined the data and publicly claimed it proves that the COVID-19 vaccines killed 1 in 1,000 people globally, Young “is a hero.”

“He knew he would risk his life and could spend the rest of his life in jail, but he made the courageous move to expose the data for all to see,” he wrote.

According to NZDSOS, Young is due to appear in court again on Dec. 18 to submit a plea and is “represented by a large legal firm in New Zealand.”

Whistleblower noticed ‘really big safety signals’ in the data

In his Nov. 30 interview with Gunn accompanying the release of the data, Young said he helped build the very database from which the data were leaked. Access to such data led him to note items of concern that he decided to go public with, he said.

“I helped build it. I implemented it,” he said. “When I was looking up the data, I noted discrepancies with the dates of death. People were dying almost straight away after being injected and that sort of prompted my curiosity and I dug a little deeper.”

According to Young, he previously was vaccinated, but said that whether he’d get another dose was “a different story.” He added that he “believe[s] in fundamental freedoms of humans and [that] we shouldn’t have a procedure forced on us because of a mandate,” calling this “a huge overreach by the government.”

Following his release on bail, Young granted an interview to Infowars producer and host Alex Jones, stating that he noticed “really big red flags” and “really big safety signals” in the data. “Statistically, it may be killing people,” he said.

“I just looked at the data and what I was seeing, since the rollout, it just blew my mind. I was just seeing more and more people dying who shouldn’t have been dying. It was just obvious,” Young said. “I want people to analyze this … We need to open it up and the government needs to have an inquiry about it. Just bring it to the public’s attention.”

According to New Zealand police, Young’s post-bail interview with Infowars did not breach his bail conditions. He has since granted other interviews.

Scientists disagree on significance of data

According to NZDSOS, the leaked data “cover[s] vaccines that were administered as pay-per-dose. There are 2.2 million people and approximately 4 million doses included.” This compares to a total of 12.78 million doses administered in New Zealand.

Statistical consultant William Briggs is one of the analysts who reviewed the data. On his Substack, he wrote that “we cannot tell for sure” what the data definitively indicates, as there are important items of information missing.

“There was no cause of death given for anybody,” Briggs said. “Just death date for those who had at least one shot and died in this window. There can therefore be no certain proof of any cause of death,” he wrote.

Briggs added:

“An insurmountable problem in ascribing cause is the lack of data on people who did not get any shots. Their death and age data is missing. There is no comparison group for the people who got shots. …

“… this means there is no natural comparison group and nothing about cause, therefore, can be said with certainty.”

Briggs said that the data indicated a small increase in deaths among young people soon after receiving the first and second dose, but said this may be “because the young tended to get fewer shots.”

The analysis that has perhaps garnered the most analysis, though, comes from Kirsch, who wrote, “There is no confusion any longer: the vaccines are unsafe and have killed, on average, around 1 person per 1,000 doses.”

Kirsch noted that this figure “is consistent with other careful analyses,” such as one by Canadian scientist Denis Rancourt.

According to Kirsch, one safety signal he identified in the data is a “mortality hump that peaks around 6 months after a dose is given.”

“The data from New Zealand is not perfect; it is not a complete sample,” Kirsch conceded. “But, by using a cohort time-series analysis, it doesn’t matter. There is no possible way that this data is consistent with a safe vaccine.”

Fenton, who analyzed the data on his Substack, took a different position, telling The Defender, “The dataset is a very large subset of those vaccinated in New Zealand, and is potentially one of the most important publicly available datasets for examining COVID vaccine safety. But I don’t believe it is the ‘smoking gun’ as some have claimed.”

He noted the absence of a control group (the unvaccinated) and that “the age profile seems higher than the national age profile of [the] vaccinated, so there is some bias.”

However, he said the data “does provide some evidence of lack of safety of the vaccine, in particular supporting our own previous observations (from U.K. data) that in older age groups, all-cause mortality is higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.”

“What is less clear is the claim concerning batches with exceptionally high mortality rates,” Fenton said. “The claim that these batches were especially deadly due to the contents of the vaccine or its delivery is confounded by their very different age and time of vaccination profiles,” he added.

Chudov, in a pair of posts on Substack, also presented his analysis of the data. In his initial post, he suggested the public “be wary” of the data and noted that Gunn “is misinterpreting it by trying to pass normal nursing home deaths as evidence of ‘super deadly batches’ and ‘mass vaccine casualties.’”

In a follow-up post, Chudov acknowledged that some of his original questions about the completeness of the data were subsequently addressed, stating his belief that “Barry Young was more likely to be sincere than insincere in his intentions and actions.” Yet, he said his questions “about nursing home deaths and data quality still apply.”

Some analysts also pointed to official data indicating that excess deaths in New Zealand continue to be significantly above the long-term average — 17% in September and early October 2023, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Some also pointed to data indicating sharp increases in the incidence of heart attacks in New Zealand.

Yet, Apa said, “We assure people there is no evidence whatsoever that vaccination is responsible for excess mortality in New Zealand and that they can continue to have confidence in the vaccine,” in remarks quoted by the New Zealand Herald.

“We hope that additional independent assessment of the data by credible analysts will lead to further scrutiny of the vaccine rollout in [New Zealand] and that the whistleblower will not have risked everything for nothing,” activist group Voices for Freedom wrote.

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Related on Substack:

What should we believe and who can we trust?

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Political questions surrounding the data leak, subsequent government actions

According to Voices of Freedom, Young reached out to them “a couple of years ago” and had reached out to several other organizations during this period, prior to telling Gunn about the data and releasing it with her assistance.

Voices of Freedom, as well as some other analysts, have nevertheless raised questions as to whether Gunn handled the release appropriately.

Young and Gunn told Infowars they attempted to contact Winston Peters, leader of the New Zealand First political party and current deputy prime minister and foreign minister, regarding the data, but were unsuccessful in doing so.

But according to analyst Tony Mobilifonitis, Peters “most likely is limited in what he can do because of the delicate politics of the three-party coalition.” Analyst Markus Mutscheller wrote that while Peters had previously “aligned with the NZ freedom movement … His priority is always to keep his position of power in the cabinet. Without it, he can’t do anything.”

NZDSOS told The Defender, “So far, there has been no public comment by NZ First or the ACT party, both of which championed a broader inquiry,” adding that Reti “is from the National Party, which firmly backs the use of mandated vaccines.”

“The Associate Minister of Health, Casey Costello, is from NZ First, who is well aware of what is happening. However, ministers are not able to comment on cases that are before the court,” NZDSOS added.

According to the New Zealand Herald, an inquiry examining New Zealand’s COVID-19 pandemic response has been convened. However, according to NZDSOS, it is unlikely to examine the leaked data, as the inquiry “specifically excludes vaccine efficacy and does not include vaccine safety.” Instead, it aims to “strengthen … preparedness for, and response to, any future pandemic.”

According to NZDSOS, “The new coalition government has promised a broader public inquiry, but terms and conditions have not been decided upon to date. It is not clear whether there will be additions to the existing inquiry or whether a completely new inquiry will commence. Our preference is for a brand-new inquiry.”

‘Still no letup’ in narrative that COVID vaccines are ‘safe and effective’

Several scientists, analysts and activists have called on the New Zealand government to release full, anonymized COVID-19 vaccine data and its own analysis.

“They should release the data on the unvaccinated so that a full direct comparison can be made,” Fenton said. “We also need all the (anonymized) patient-level data on new health conditions/hospitalizations since 2021, for both vaccinated and unvaccinated, so that we can determine the true level of vaccine adverse reactions.”

Similarly, NZDSOS said, “The best approach would be to release all the data in an anonymized form and for the Ministry of Health to discuss their analysis.”

Kirsch wrote, “Nobody will debate me on this,” adding that New Zealand authorities “should be releasing the full [12 million-person] record dataset to remove all doubt and prove to the world the vaccines are safe.”

“Clinical outcomes are never improved by keeping public health data hidden from public view,” Kirsch wrote. “Yet every health authority in the world has kept this critical record-level safety data hidden from view.”

In a subsequent Substack post, Kirsch wrote, “Health New Zealand: Where is your analysis of your data? Why aren’t you publishing it?”

Voices for Freedom called on New Zealand authorities “to be transparent with NZ’s vaccination data,” noting that “There appears to be no official denial of the accuracy of the downloaded Health NZ data set.”

NZDSOS said that New Zealand authorities have a history of not being transparent, telling The Defender that Official Information Act requests are fraught with “often lengthy delays and redaction of data” and the system “is not particularly functional.”

“Some of these requests have been acknowledged, but the length of time in releasing information of this kind in any form has been delayed time and time again … We have not heard of any data/information releases that have come out yet,” NZDSOS said.

Fenton said New Zealand authorities are not being forthcoming regarding the data because it would likely “reveal much more evidence on just how ineffective and unsafe the vaccines have been and on how it likely has led to increased all-cause mortality in all age groups who have taken it.”

“There is still no letup in attempts by governments and pharma companies to close down all discussion and evidence of vaccine harms and to maintain the ‘official’ line that these vaccines are ‘safe and effective’ and need to continue to be given,” he added.

“It appears that the measures taken to silence Barry and avoid discussing the data are designed to deter others from doing the same thing,” NZDSOS said. Similarly, Fenton shared his belief that “the very public actions taken against the whistleblower [were] likely intended to dissuade other whistleblowers everywhere, not just in New Zealand.”

NZDSOS said that prospective whistleblowers should nevertheless not be dissuaded.

“Do what will allow you to sleep at night. It is not about any legal advice, as we know that it is likely that the legal system is compromised. It is about doing what is right,” NZDSOS said. “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.”

This article was written by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. and originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

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