Ever since the epidemic began, sorting genuine Covid deaths from others has been a major issue. Now we have the added problem of vaccines in the mix. At this moment the UK allegedly has its highest daily “Covid death” rate ever. Even higher than the “First Wave,” in spite of the substantial degree of herd immunity that has inevitably accrued since the beginning. This atypical “Second Wave” coincides with the vaccine roll-out. Are the two connected?
Gibraltar, normally called simply “Gib,” provides a very clear picture. This tiny British Colony, barely three miles long, appended to the South coast of Spain, has only 32,000 residents. It had suffered little from the epidemic before the 9th January this year. The death rate was low, and Gib was way down the Deaths per Million League Table. This was not due to isolation; Spanish workers have continued to pour into Gib every morning, and back out every evening. Months ago, I asked a local what could account for this delightfully low death rate. His answer was “We all know each other. They can’t lie about why people have died!”
Since the 9th of January Gibraltar “Covid deaths” per million have rocketed to Top Place on the Worldometer site. Until that date, Worldometer showed just 11 deaths in Gib for the whole of the epidemic period. Since the 10th, when vaccinations began, there have been a further 72 deaths in only five weeks. Fifty of these deaths occurred in the first fortnight of the vaccination period, when the old and most vulnerable were receiving the vaccine. No other jurisdiction has ever suffered such a massive and sudden change of fortune. What changed on the Ninth? The RAF flew in nearly 6,000 Pfizer vaccines, cooled to -70C by dry ice. They were put to use quickly to avoid the risk of degradation. Two further flights have arrived since. This means that Gibraltar also now tops the World league table for the proportion of the population vaccinated, at around 30%.
Gibraltar actually now tops three World Tables: Death Rate, vaccination rate, and speed of vaccine roll-out. Hence the relationship between vaccine roll-out and death is clearer than anywhere else on the Planet. Local media and Government only talk of “coincidence” or a resurgence of Covid that “coincided” with the vaccines. If someone dies after a positive Covid test, of course, it is always Covid, not coincidence. It is therefore easy to dismiss the coincidence explanation here; the double standard is simply too obvious. What about a resurgence of Covid itself?
It turns out the resurgence explanation is also easily disproved, by what happened in the town of La Linea de la Concepcion. Though separated by an international border, Gibraltar and La Linea are very much just one town. One might almost call Gibraltar La Linea's business hub. Every day thousands of Spanish workers pour across the Frontier, their wages being essential to the economic well-being of the town. Any infection raging in Gibraltar would surely infect La Linea in a similar way. La Linea has double the population, so we might expect to see some 100 "Covid deaths" there in the first catastrophic fortnight of the Gib vaccines.
A trawl through the Spanish media proves very interesting. All the news there was only about increasing "cases", with little mention of deaths. Especially interesting is a typical report in La Opinion de Malaga. It has an "Andalusian map with the incidence rate of the last 14 days." Deaths are also shown in the tables, and again on the map, which is interactive, for each individual municipality. One has only to click La Linea on the map to see that it had 656 confirmed cases in the previous week, and a figure of 43 deaths. That seems straightforward, but the Spanish Press is doing it’s own bit of obfuscation. That figure refers to ALL DEATHS since the epidemic began, not just the last two weeks. Making reasonable adjustments to the available data (see below) we find that Gibraltarian death rate is about twenty times higher. The evidence is, therefore, quite clear that the massive rise in Gibraltar deaths is a result of the vaccine.
La Linea Death Estimate
La Opinion de Malaga also gives total deaths for all the main regions of Andalucia; Cadiz: 767, Malaga: 915, etc. Surprisingly, there is no total for the whole of Andalucia, but by adding the Regional numbers we can find that it was 5,968 on 22nd January. This looks like an awful lot of deaths for a fortnight, and it is. Checking with statista.com we find Andalucian deaths were 5,470 just a week earlier; hence only 498 deaths for the previous week, perhaps 1,000 for the fortnight. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103955/deaths-related-to-coronavirus-by-region-spain/.) Knowing this, it is possible to put a likely figure on recent La Linea deaths. Of all Spanish deaths up to that point, only about 15% had occurred in that fortnight, so for La Linea, of the 43 stated, perhaps 5 happened then. That’s about 5 deaths out of 63,000 in La Linea compared to 50 deaths out of 32,000 in Gibraltar.
“‘Desvastating’ weekend as Gibraltar loses 13 people in two days to Covid-19,” Brian Reyes, Gibraltar Chronicle, 17 Jan 2021
“RAF deliver COVID19 vaccine to Gibraltar,” George Allison, UK Defence Journal, 9 Jan 2021
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