Clive Palmer, the chair of the United Australia party, graced the airwaves this morning.
He managed to stay on the line for 12 long minutes, without hanging up on ABC Radio National breakfast host Fran Kelly.
Spare a thought for factcheckers everywhere, including here at Guardian Australia.
We’ve spent the morning dissecting some of Palmer’s wilder claims.
Palmer said there was no data to support the notion that fewer people were getting sick or dying from Covid, due to vaccination.
“There’s no data to support that in Australia,” he said.
He also said vaccination “makes no difference from a public health context”.
Both statements are patently untrue.
The data clearly shows the dramatic impact vaccination has had in reducing hospitalisations and deaths.
Let’s take NSW as an example. It was hit by huge increases to case numbers during the Delta outbreak.
Data from NSW Health shows of the 8,660 cases hospitalised between 16 June to 7 October, only 5.7% (493) were fully vaccinated and just 3% (30) of the 1,015 cases who were admitted to ICU were fully vaccinated. Twenty-six of those 30 people had significant underlying health conditions.
The ICU admissions in NSW peaked between 8 September to 21 September. During that two week period, unvaccinated individuals were more than 16 times more likely to be admitted to intensive care or die.
Of course, a small number of people will still die...
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