Statistician Decries ‘Incongruence’ Around Official COVID-19 Data at National Citizen’s Inquiry

A nurse at Three Rivers Asante Medical Center runs to a room in the Intensive Care Unit to help as medical staff treat a COVID-19 patient in Grants Pass, Ore., on Sept. 9, 2021. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

On the first day of the National Citizen’s Inquiry’s (NCI) stop in British Columbia, a statistician said that based on data from the province, COVID-19 was shown to be no more dangerous than the flu.

“With the number of people who died within the median age of death, it’s very unlikely that none of them had comorbidities,” William Munroe testified on Tuesday. “COVID-19 itself can be seen as more of an irritant at the end of life rather than life-threatening. Influenza, it can kill young and old. It’s no comparison.”

The NCI describes itself as a “citizen-led and citizen-funded initiative that is completely independent from government.” The inquiry is examining how the pandemic measures put in place by all levels of government impacted Canadians in the four categories of health, fundamental rights and freedoms, social well-being, and economic prosperity.

Munroe, who worked for the British Columbia Statistics Agency and started up the Populations Projections Project in 2007, said there was “incongruity” around how COVID-19 data was presented to the public.

When Monroe analyzed the province’s COVID-19 statistics beginning in March 2020, he said the first incident report released by the British Columbia medical authority showed that the virus was not as deadly as it was being framed as.

“It was obvious to anybody who looked at the data from British Columbia and also data from China from January and February that this was age-specific, and the median age of death was as old, if not older than [Canada’s average] life expectancy,” he said.

According to Statistics Canada, the average age of death in Canada in 2019 was 76.5. However, the average age of those who died of COVID-19 in Canada last year was higher at 83.8.

Munroe also said that the definition of COVID-19 cases was “malaligned” with the previous definition of disease cases, as Canadians previously had to be sick in order to be counted. He said the inclusion of asymptomatic cases led to the phenomena of people dying “with” COVID-19, meaning they were counted as a death from the disease even though they had died from something else.

The Epoch Times reached out to B.C.’s Ministry of Health for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.