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Excess deaths and the elephant in the room - Part 1

From InfoCheckers

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In Europe, in the summer of 2021, there was a definite excess mortality for all except the youngest age groups - outside of the normal range according to Euromomo.eu. The "normal range" is indicated by the grey band. At that time, the pandemic was all but gone.

Excess mortality in Europe for two age groups.
(source: Euromomo.eu)

Could that have to do with the new Covid19 vaccines? If not, what else? Governments came come up with all kinds of unfounded explanations. The Scottish government's explanation attempts are criticized here.

Unexplained excess mortality in 2021 was noticed not only in Europe but in many countries worldwide, and discussed in a number of reports. See for example this report on New Zealand's unexplained excess deaths, also discussed on YouTube. New Zealand is in the special situation that it suffered little from Covid so that blaming Covid doesn't work. Other, similar video discussions with "vaccine questions" are here and here. It appears that the risk from Covid vaccination is considerable for the elderly.

60+ Covid19 vaccinations and mortality in New Zealand
(source: Hatchard report)

Also in the USA, young people died much more than usual, even during the summer:

Excess mortality of young adults in the USA
(source: USmortality.com)

Questions were also asked about the unexplained excess mortality since September 2021 in political circles in Germany, including discussion of the striking observation that over the period from week 36 to 40, German states with higher Covid vaccination levels had a higher total mortality. It should be noted that according to the same analysts, by including week 41 (with more Covid deaths) the total mortality became roughly equal between states with high and with low vaccination levels.

Even Pfizer[1] and Moderna[2] could not demonstrate an overall short time benefit from vaccination with their vaccines during the Covid pandemic, as during their clinical trials slightly more vaccinated than unvaccinated people died from any cause (in equally sized groups): with Pfizer, 15 vaccinated vs 14 placebo died according to their "Adverse Events" section, while with Moderna, 17 vaccinated vs. 16 placebo died according to their Table S19. In other words, the results did not demonstrate that their vaccines save more lives than they take.

A particularly thorough analysis that focused on Germany was done by Prof. Kuhbandner, his report[3] is in German.

Analysis on correlation of deaths (red lines) with Covid infections (yellow lines); first doses (top), second doses (middle) and boosters (bottom). Kuhbandtner

His graphs above show striking correlations, almost "hand-in-glove", between first doses (top, circle), second doses (centre, circle) and boosters (bottom). Only the effect of boosters is not telling as they were given simultaneously with the Delta wave; how much is due to Covid and how much due to boosters cannot be estimated from that graph. A curious detail: the peak of the death curve precedes the peak of the booster curve. Prof. Kuhbandtner shows in his report that this can be an optical illusion, if those who were vaccinated first (the elderly) have a higher mortality than those who were vaccinated later.

Kuhbandtner also found that even individual German states show such strong correlations, at different times.
Consequently, the correlations are strong both in time and in place: mortality increased both when and where Covid19 vaccinations were given. That is strong evidence of a causal relationship. In principle, a common cause could provide a possible alternative explanation - but no reasonable possible common cause has been proposed that causes deaths and vaccinations to increase and decrease in lock step, when and where people are vaccinated.

A striking exception that I found, at first sight, is Switzerland. During most of 2021, mortality after the winter Covid wave looked quite normal and the strong excess mortality towards the end of the year is only ascribed to Covid19 in the official discussion.

Weekly deaths in Switzerland (source: bfs.admin.ch)

However, there is reason for doubt as the number of excess deaths is far higher than the number of reported deaths with Covid, and a first analysis indicates also a strong correlation with booster injections, with follow-up here. Note that just as in Germany a peak in deaths occured before the peak in total vaccinations; also here the later vaccinations were given to younger people.

Correlation between boosters (black) and "Covid deaths" (pink) with excess deaths of two age groups (red, orange). (source: Coronagate.blog)

I'm now analyzing this in more detail; to be discussed in Part 2.


Comments, corrections and suggestions are welcome!
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Admin

20 months ago
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I received a first comment by email:

'Your comments form is broken, so I send it here: A single search, first hit:

https://www....tistik/123/'
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Admin

20 months ago
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Thanks.
- At first sight that criticism to Kuhbandner looks interesting and useful, but not really:
"One is therefore interested in whether deviations from the trend are still parallel or not. If they do that, it would at least be clear that there is not simply a temporal effect - for example in the case of corona vaccinations, because in some months there are more infections and more vaccinations are given to protect against these infections. But there is no such control in this analysis. "
That's simply not true, I even mentioned part of that control in my comments: "deviations from the trend are still parallel", or, as I put it, almost like "hand in glove" as well as locally at different times. That it could be a coincidental "trend" match is thus excluded based on the exact criterium of that blog post.
- The study on Austria looks interesting, that's perhaps another exception. If I find time, I may also take a look at Austria after finalizing Switzerland.

- Likely you forgot to log in. As a reminder, the last sentence of each post: 'For anti-spam, anonymous comments (without site registration) cannot include web links.
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Admin

20 months ago
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PS. I think that I already found the "trick" of the Austrian analysis. If I correctly understand it, they found that when reducing the time window of observation to September-December - that is, only looking during the Delta wave - during that time vaccinated people died less than unvaccinated people. Indeed, a different finding would be quite shocking!
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Admin

20 months ago
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As a reminder, last summer I estimated that Covid vaccines are less safe than advertised so that, in general, they may not be a good idea for young people, but that nevertheless the benefit/risk of full vaccination with mRNA vaccines looked good for older people (not including boosters).
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Anonymous user #1

20 months ago
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If the analysis was indeed correct (I have no time to check myself), then we might consider the correlation proven. But what really needs to be proven is the causality. The only value of a correlation is to raise the assumption that there might be a causality. Not more. Not a basis for any claim. In this case I see not even a hypothesis for a cause. Maybe in part 2?
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Admin

20 months ago
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None of the proposed causes by the Scottish government has been proven either. And I don't think that such a causality can be proven in the strict sense of the word; usually what is done is to aim for sufficient plausibility. As mentioned, causality can be made plausible by analysis of possible causes. For example, if when the wheel of my car is turned clockwise, the car usually turns to the right, then I may conclude that the steering has a plausible causal influence on the turning of the car. It is that type of correlation that Kuhbandner showed for Germany, as others also did for other countries.
Thailand paid so far $45 million to Covid vaccine victims, but it's unlikely that in most cases hard evidence was given; just correlation and plausible cause.

However, Switzerland seems to be an exception (counter evidence?), which makes a detailed analysis interesting, especially as data for splits in age groups is available. Part 2 will therefore attempt to make sense of the apparently inconsistent evidence from Germany and Switzerland, and assess if the earlier risk/benefit estimations need to be adjusted.
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Admin

20 months ago
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Footnote: the New Zealand case is a matter of debate, as it's normal that there's a higher mortality in the middle of the year (New Zealand winter), see https://mpid.../stmortality. However as argued by Hatchard and as that same site also shows, in the similarly abnormal year 2020 there was no such mortality peak.
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