It's a fair question. A recent Washington Post column didn't look at the data. A few times during the pandemic, we have overcounted Covid deaths. Mostly, though, we undercount.
This is my experience from Aug. my 93 yr old father in law and his 87 yr old lady friend got Covid .My fil got Paxlovid ( getting a hold of that is another story!) and got better . His friend originally just had a mild cold and did not pursue Paxlovid despite my strong advice. She thought she was fine .She had a host of comorbidites which put her at risk She started coughing , constantly , and with it came a lot of pain- that was a preexisting problem . Ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. Was discharged after a few days but got worse again so was readmitted. I talked to her right before EMS came and she had severe conversational dyspnea. Not clear on all the details since I wasn’t family but I think she developed sepsis and a decision was made not to pursue aggressive treatment . So my father in law says the doctors said it wasn’t Covid that killed her. I know I am not a doctor ( retired critical care) but I strongly disagreed with that. She was chronically ill but in a steady state. Covid upset that balance. I would bet, as you allude to it Dr Faust ,that many deaths do not present the way they originally did in the year before vaccines . I think the medical community needs to admit that in certain cases if it wasn’t for Covid people would still be alive .
"Covid upset that balance." EXACTLY. Flu does this too. But Covid is just so, so, so much more prevalent, that we are seeing this much more than usual still. And this, in my view, is why we still have excess mortality.
She was responsive to my first email and I find her to be open-minded in our conversations. (She get's so much hate online, which I think is awful; we've had disagreements on the merits of a bunch of issues, but the way she gets attacked and threatened online is genuinely disturbing and toxic.) We'll see if the Post changes/walks back the headline.
I think every expert commentator on this subject gets a lot of hate mail. I don't think that excuses them -and her specifically - from receiving sharp criticism for misleading the public. She should be sharply called out. In her columns there has been a consistent bias toward underestimating the current threat of COVID. You have beautifully highlighted this recent one. Anecdotes are not data. Somebody with a prominent "pulpit" like a columnist for the Post should be held to a very high standard. There has been an unfortunate, I would say "coordinated" if that didn't sound too much like conspiracy spouting, prevalence of this kind of "oh well it's over, don't worry about it anymore" communications. It is found in the comments of "experts", CDC reporting (or lack thereof), politicians and media. In short all of the "thought leaders" of our society. It is a message that most people are very happy to hear - it's human nature to believe what we want to believe. That's why I am subscribing to your newsletter - you aren't interested in echoing popular claims, but rather on evaluating real data. Thanks and please keep it up.
Thank you and still so very sad that we are losing so many. It is like whiplash in the media and it is just exhausting trying to figure out we where are. Why is the White House Response Team not out front and center. I know we all have individual risks AND I feel like we need more reliable generalized guidelines. Sadly people have to be able and willing to subscribe to reliable sources, like yours. I am just trying how my family can live, be responsible and mindful of others all while not getting this awful virus. I have been way more cautious than most five shots, COVID twice. I am still only eating outside, test if I have symptoms, and need a break from the anxiety of it all. Wishing the virus would cooperate! Grateful to have you out there doing the hard work!
Thanks Michael, and those are interesting points, yes.... I'm curious if Jeremy also has anything to say about my comments, particularly how to explain why excess mortality is even somewhat higher recently than it was during the (according to the CDC,WHO, etc) much deadlier Covid waves of 2021? And why would excess deaths now be higher in places (such as Massachusetts and other parts of New England, as well as in Spain, Italy and France, for example) where vaccination levels are considerably higher, than in various places with much lower vaccination levels that nevertheless have had lower levels of excess deaths, if in fact Covid continues to be the main driver of excess deaths?
I have a number of epidemiologist colleagues who are also clinicians at major university hospitals, such as the University of California, San Francisco , and nearly all of them say they haven't had a Covid patient in the ICU, let alone dying in the hospital, for up to a year now, so how to explain the apparently near invisible mountain of Covid deaths still happening out there?
It would be interesting to know what Dr Wen would make of these questions as well? Dr Faust has challenged her published article, but she evidently hasn't had the opportunity to respond, at least publicly?
It looks like I will, with all due respect, be taking a rather different stance than the other commentators so far. That said, I'm glad that Dr. Faust, who I do highly respect, has raised the issue of excess mortality, something I have also been thinking about for a rather long time. In my book on COVID-19 published in July 2020, for example, I pointed out that -- despite pervasive warnings by many experts and journalists that the country of Sweden was fast becoming, as a New York Times headline put it, "the cemetery of Europe" due to its distinctly non-alarmist approach to the pandemic -- in fact excess deaths data at the time showed it to have much lower levels than many other developed countries. (And a year later, it ranked 27th lowest out of 30 European In terms of excess mortality, according to WHO data.)
However, while I agree with Dr Faust's analysis that examining excess deaths was a useful methodology early in the pandemic, nearly 3 years later there are just way too many other complex factors (and potentially confounding variables) to continue simply assuming, as we did in 2020, that the bulk of excess deaths are due to the coronavirus. Just a few of those many other potential causes are the massive increase in fentanyl overdoses as well as increasing obesity directly and indirectly related to the pandemic (and particularly to our response to the virus).
By the way, as some readers may already know, a number of anti vaccine folks also like to talk about the current excess deaths situation, claiming the reason that excess mortality remains higher than normal almost everywhere (notice I said "almost") is because considerable numbers of people are dying from the vaccines.
In my view, and in that of many of my epidemiologist colleagues, it's not scientifically sound to automatically assume that any one factor, such as Covid 19, accounts for the above normal level of excess deaths. For starters, there is a major contradiction that would need to be explained: If one believes (unlike the vaccine skeptics) that the vaccines can prevent deaths to a considerable extent, then how to account for the fact that the continuing above-normal levels of excess deaths is occurring not only in almost all places, but those levels are about the same (and often considerably higher!) in countries with some of the highest vaccination levels in the world, compared to excess deaths levels in countries with much lower levels? How can this observation be explained, if indeed the disease is the main reason behind the excess deaths?
Furthermore, there's a perhaps interesting exception: one of the very few economically develped countries that continues to have a normal level of excess deaths is... Yes, Sweden. (The anti vaccine folks claim this is merely a "statistical anomaly," since Sweden is one of those countries with very high vaccination levels, and perhaps it is just a chance statistical outlier?) Yet personally I find it worth at least musing that it also happens to be almost the only country in the world that has pursued a very different approach to Covid, since the very beginning? The Swedish people I've asked about this, including several top notch epidemiologists, say that because schools were never closed, the economy wasn't shut down and thus people weren't thrown out of work, etc and because a climate of panic and fear was never generated in the country, therefore they also haven't experienced so many of the unintented consequences of such pandemic measures that were commonplace elsewhere, including drug overdoses, alcoholism, suicides and worsening of other health/lifestyle indicators such as obesity...
This collapse in the quality of health care is contributing to an astonishing rise in “excess deaths”—those above what would be expected in a normal year. In many rich-world countries 2022 proved deadlier even than
2021, a year of several big waves of covid. Monthly deaths across Europe are currently about 10% higher than expected...
In this regard, while I certainly appreciate that you don't want to scoop yourself re your forthcoming paper in a medical journal, that issue does also seem germane,so I will be very curious to see what you will be publishing about this...
Finally, Dr Faust (if you were able to read this far; sorry for the longish comment), although I know you probably disagree with at least most of what I've written here, you also seem like a truly good, decent scientist and person, so if possible I would greatly appreciate it if you could forward my commentary to Dr Wen; thanks much!
I will be glad to forward your comment to Dr. Wen.
Suffice to say, I think it's pretty hard to conclude the most excess mortality is anything other than Covid for anyone age 50 or so. For younger adults, unintentional overdoses are indeed a significant contributor. I don't have the exact numbers on hand, but the quick-and-dirty would go like this: 80% of all cause excess deaths are in adults ages 50+. In that group, the vast lion's share of extra death is Covid in one way or another. The remaining 20% is ages 18-49 (with occasional 1% from kids, sadly). Of that 20%, it looks to me like 33% are due to increases in non-medical causes (accidental overdose, homicide, though not suicide, still). Around 42-47% are directly due to Covid and the last 20% are an assortment of medical deaths which, again, I have strong reason to believe are *also mainly Covid, but I won't go into that here (again, can't scoop myself).
The issue of how US compares to Europe I can't comment on because I have not studied Europe closely. Generally though, if you have an older population that's vaccinated, you'll have less excess mortality. Our rates here are pretty good, but not good enough. Plus our average older person might be sicker which could mean it's easier for SARS2 to tip them over than if they didn't have as many medical issues that make them tenuous (albeit, many are tenuous for 20 years, and live those years well--until something like a bad virus knocks them out).
Anyway thanks for the engagement. I'll fwd to Leana. -J
Dear Jeremy, this is very embarrassing, I'm still wiping the egg off my face, after realizing that you had in fact already responded to me!! Please accept my apologies for the other comment that I just posted. I'm still brand new to this thread/group, and when I saw your response to Michael's comment I somehow got the impression that you hadn't responded to me yet. But right after posting it, I noticed the "return to the thread" button and saw what had happened! Many apologies, and thanks much for your graceful reply, and also for passing along my earlier comment to Dr Wen. Warmly, Daniel
Brief comment: The past three years have been exhausting. The amount of misinformation and the anger behind it blinds many. The days of academic camaraderie and respectful dialogue seem long gone. I just read the interaction between Daniel and Jeremy and found it extremely refreshing. Hopefully we can show our younger doctors in training that there is hope and that having different academic perspectives should not be seen as a personal affront or as a barrier to further communication.
Daniel, fantastic comment. Been on the fence subscribing to Inside Medicine, but on the chance there can be interesting dialectics in the comment section, happy to add this to my list of paid subscriptions.
Agree with each of your points which I also arrived at by studying excess mortality the last 3 years.
Quick note to Dr. Faust - in the paper linked it's noted:
|"statistically significant excess mortality was not observed among children ages 0-17 during the |pandemic months of 2020 but was observed during the Delta wave (1,532 excess deaths, IR 2.1 |per 100,000 population, observed-to-expected ratio of 1.09) and 2021 overall (2,228, IR. 3.1 per |100,000 population, observed-to-expected ratio of 1.07) (Table 1, Table 3) for both males and |females. Most excess deaths among children occurred in the South."
And later
|“However, analysis of disease-specific causes of death, particularly in younger demographics, |may still be fruitful”
From what I see in Wonder, nearly all the excess death in younger age groups are attributed to the increase in accidents (including overdoses), suicides, and homicides.
I ran this for 10 age groups, so merged 15-24 year olds, but the data seems pretty clear that the roughly 15K excess deaths in the 0-25 age group is from the increase in accidents.
And a quick break by region appears to show for whatever reason the South did have higher increases, but I can't see how more accidents a result of their less stringent approach (not masking kids, going to school, etc) which I feel like you indicated:
|" However, other COVID-19 mitigation efforts, which varied by region may have contributed to |these findings.
And as noted in Daniels comment, Sweden and the rest of the Nordic countries all had the lowest excess deaths in the world, despite sending their kids back to school May of 2020, largely unmasked. That seems to falsify the hypothesis.
Quick comparison of Sweden and her neighbors using 4 year average for baseline (for 2022 I used fist 40 weeks of each year to compare to first 40 weeks of 2022) - Finland, Norway, and Denmark all started getting excess death signal in 2022 which allowed Sweden (possibly temporarily) jump back to lowest excess deaths. Going to rerun and see if it has changed, this was last done 12/1/2022.
Thanks for the comments. A paper digging in to the pediatric data is on my very, very long to-do list. One thing that people don't remember is that medical deaths in kids dropped during 2020 and early 2021, and started to come back to normal rates right around the time Delta showed up. So after fall of 2021, we start to see a combo of normal rates of pediatric medical deaths (and possibly increased, but I need to look) AND increased external deaths. So, with kids it is really complicated, and indeed the South had it worst. I'll try to get around to this topic soon, as people are always interested in it.
So grateful for this opinion. It seems ludicrous to me that anyone would skew COVID death data in the direction of an over count. As an immune compromised person, I did what many did, I stayed away from hospitals especially when there were no vaccines. I had another TIA on Jan. 6, 2020 (go figure) and refused ER for that reason. Finally went in and was kept overnight. (Later found out that 2 of my attending nurses opted not to get the first COVID vax even though they could have). Thereafter stayed away when cases were high. Many times people like myself are actually keeping our disease maintenance in some control but when we get COVID (or as I was warned about even flu pre-pandemic as you have referenced) it zooms in on our vulnerable systems. So we are still dying of COVID. And now patients are trying to catch up on their care, hospitals lost $$$ from less surgeries and procedures, docs overwhelmed, radiology depts overwhelmed and we have to wait 4 to 6 months for appts. Don't have to tell you, ER's already overwhelmed well before pandemic because so many forced to use them for "regular" healthcare because of an inadequate healthcare system. Thanks for your critical thinking and caring.
This is my experience from Aug. my 93 yr old father in law and his 87 yr old lady friend got Covid .My fil got Paxlovid ( getting a hold of that is another story!) and got better . His friend originally just had a mild cold and did not pursue Paxlovid despite my strong advice. She thought she was fine .She had a host of comorbidites which put her at risk She started coughing , constantly , and with it came a lot of pain- that was a preexisting problem . Ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. Was discharged after a few days but got worse again so was readmitted. I talked to her right before EMS came and she had severe conversational dyspnea. Not clear on all the details since I wasn’t family but I think she developed sepsis and a decision was made not to pursue aggressive treatment . So my father in law says the doctors said it wasn’t Covid that killed her. I know I am not a doctor ( retired critical care) but I strongly disagreed with that. She was chronically ill but in a steady state. Covid upset that balance. I would bet, as you allude to it Dr Faust ,that many deaths do not present the way they originally did in the year before vaccines . I think the medical community needs to admit that in certain cases if it wasn’t for Covid people would still be alive .
"Covid upset that balance." EXACTLY. Flu does this too. But Covid is just so, so, so much more prevalent, that we are seeing this much more than usual still. And this, in my view, is why we still have excess mortality.
Thank you—for the sound data analysis. I wonder if Dr. Wen changed her thinking.
She was responsive to my first email and I find her to be open-minded in our conversations. (She get's so much hate online, which I think is awful; we've had disagreements on the merits of a bunch of issues, but the way she gets attacked and threatened online is genuinely disturbing and toxic.) We'll see if the Post changes/walks back the headline.
I think every expert commentator on this subject gets a lot of hate mail. I don't think that excuses them -and her specifically - from receiving sharp criticism for misleading the public. She should be sharply called out. In her columns there has been a consistent bias toward underestimating the current threat of COVID. You have beautifully highlighted this recent one. Anecdotes are not data. Somebody with a prominent "pulpit" like a columnist for the Post should be held to a very high standard. There has been an unfortunate, I would say "coordinated" if that didn't sound too much like conspiracy spouting, prevalence of this kind of "oh well it's over, don't worry about it anymore" communications. It is found in the comments of "experts", CDC reporting (or lack thereof), politicians and media. In short all of the "thought leaders" of our society. It is a message that most people are very happy to hear - it's human nature to believe what we want to believe. That's why I am subscribing to your newsletter - you aren't interested in echoing popular claims, but rather on evaluating real data. Thanks and please keep it up.
I agree; the amount of threats and toxicity is exasperating but not unexpected. The times we live in!
Thank you and still so very sad that we are losing so many. It is like whiplash in the media and it is just exhausting trying to figure out we where are. Why is the White House Response Team not out front and center. I know we all have individual risks AND I feel like we need more reliable generalized guidelines. Sadly people have to be able and willing to subscribe to reliable sources, like yours. I am just trying how my family can live, be responsible and mindful of others all while not getting this awful virus. I have been way more cautious than most five shots, COVID twice. I am still only eating outside, test if I have symptoms, and need a break from the anxiety of it all. Wishing the virus would cooperate! Grateful to have you out there doing the hard work!
Thanks and glad it's useful. I just want people to feel like we are neither downplaying OR trying to scare anyone.
You do both! Now if I could have you on my medical team I would be less anxious!
Thanks Michael, and those are interesting points, yes.... I'm curious if Jeremy also has anything to say about my comments, particularly how to explain why excess mortality is even somewhat higher recently than it was during the (according to the CDC,WHO, etc) much deadlier Covid waves of 2021? And why would excess deaths now be higher in places (such as Massachusetts and other parts of New England, as well as in Spain, Italy and France, for example) where vaccination levels are considerably higher, than in various places with much lower vaccination levels that nevertheless have had lower levels of excess deaths, if in fact Covid continues to be the main driver of excess deaths?
I have a number of epidemiologist colleagues who are also clinicians at major university hospitals, such as the University of California, San Francisco , and nearly all of them say they haven't had a Covid patient in the ICU, let alone dying in the hospital, for up to a year now, so how to explain the apparently near invisible mountain of Covid deaths still happening out there?
It would be interesting to know what Dr Wen would make of these questions as well? Dr Faust has challenged her published article, but she evidently hasn't had the opportunity to respond, at least publicly?
Cheers, Daniel
It looks like I will, with all due respect, be taking a rather different stance than the other commentators so far. That said, I'm glad that Dr. Faust, who I do highly respect, has raised the issue of excess mortality, something I have also been thinking about for a rather long time. In my book on COVID-19 published in July 2020, for example, I pointed out that -- despite pervasive warnings by many experts and journalists that the country of Sweden was fast becoming, as a New York Times headline put it, "the cemetery of Europe" due to its distinctly non-alarmist approach to the pandemic -- in fact excess deaths data at the time showed it to have much lower levels than many other developed countries. (And a year later, it ranked 27th lowest out of 30 European In terms of excess mortality, according to WHO data.)
However, while I agree with Dr Faust's analysis that examining excess deaths was a useful methodology early in the pandemic, nearly 3 years later there are just way too many other complex factors (and potentially confounding variables) to continue simply assuming, as we did in 2020, that the bulk of excess deaths are due to the coronavirus. Just a few of those many other potential causes are the massive increase in fentanyl overdoses as well as increasing obesity directly and indirectly related to the pandemic (and particularly to our response to the virus).
By the way, as some readers may already know, a number of anti vaccine folks also like to talk about the current excess deaths situation, claiming the reason that excess mortality remains higher than normal almost everywhere (notice I said "almost") is because considerable numbers of people are dying from the vaccines.
In my view, and in that of many of my epidemiologist colleagues, it's not scientifically sound to automatically assume that any one factor, such as Covid 19, accounts for the above normal level of excess deaths. For starters, there is a major contradiction that would need to be explained: If one believes (unlike the vaccine skeptics) that the vaccines can prevent deaths to a considerable extent, then how to account for the fact that the continuing above-normal levels of excess deaths is occurring not only in almost all places, but those levels are about the same (and often considerably higher!) in countries with some of the highest vaccination levels in the world, compared to excess deaths levels in countries with much lower levels? How can this observation be explained, if indeed the disease is the main reason behind the excess deaths?
Furthermore, there's a perhaps interesting exception: one of the very few economically develped countries that continues to have a normal level of excess deaths is... Yes, Sweden. (The anti vaccine folks claim this is merely a "statistical anomaly," since Sweden is one of those countries with very high vaccination levels, and perhaps it is just a chance statistical outlier?) Yet personally I find it worth at least musing that it also happens to be almost the only country in the world that has pursued a very different approach to Covid, since the very beginning? The Swedish people I've asked about this, including several top notch epidemiologists, say that because schools were never closed, the economy wasn't shut down and thus people weren't thrown out of work, etc and because a climate of panic and fear was never generated in the country, therefore they also haven't experienced so many of the unintented consequences of such pandemic measures that were commonplace elsewhere, including drug overdoses, alcoholism, suicides and worsening of other health/lifestyle indicators such as obesity...
Moreover, and while I realize that Dr. Faust apparently disagrees, FYI I find a current article in The Economist (www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/01/15/why-health-care-services-are-in-chaos-everywhere) to offer a likely more compelling explanation for the current excess deaths situation, e.g.:
This collapse in the quality of health care is contributing to an astonishing rise in “excess deaths”—those above what would be expected in a normal year. In many rich-world countries 2022 proved deadlier even than
2021, a year of several big waves of covid. Monthly deaths across Europe are currently about 10% higher than expected...
In this regard, while I certainly appreciate that you don't want to scoop yourself re your forthcoming paper in a medical journal, that issue does also seem germane,so I will be very curious to see what you will be publishing about this...
Finally, Dr Faust (if you were able to read this far; sorry for the longish comment), although I know you probably disagree with at least most of what I've written here, you also seem like a truly good, decent scientist and person, so if possible I would greatly appreciate it if you could forward my commentary to Dr Wen; thanks much!
Warmly,
Daniel Halperin, PhD, Adjunct Full Professor in Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; danielhalperin.web.unc.edu ; https://www.amazon.com/Facing-COVID-Without-Panic-Epidemiologist-ebook/dp/B08D25GQX6
Hi Dr. Halperin,
I will be glad to forward your comment to Dr. Wen.
Suffice to say, I think it's pretty hard to conclude the most excess mortality is anything other than Covid for anyone age 50 or so. For younger adults, unintentional overdoses are indeed a significant contributor. I don't have the exact numbers on hand, but the quick-and-dirty would go like this: 80% of all cause excess deaths are in adults ages 50+. In that group, the vast lion's share of extra death is Covid in one way or another. The remaining 20% is ages 18-49 (with occasional 1% from kids, sadly). Of that 20%, it looks to me like 33% are due to increases in non-medical causes (accidental overdose, homicide, though not suicide, still). Around 42-47% are directly due to Covid and the last 20% are an assortment of medical deaths which, again, I have strong reason to believe are *also mainly Covid, but I won't go into that here (again, can't scoop myself).
The issue of how US compares to Europe I can't comment on because I have not studied Europe closely. Generally though, if you have an older population that's vaccinated, you'll have less excess mortality. Our rates here are pretty good, but not good enough. Plus our average older person might be sicker which could mean it's easier for SARS2 to tip them over than if they didn't have as many medical issues that make them tenuous (albeit, many are tenuous for 20 years, and live those years well--until something like a bad virus knocks them out).
Anyway thanks for the engagement. I'll fwd to Leana. -J
Dear Jeremy, this is very embarrassing, I'm still wiping the egg off my face, after realizing that you had in fact already responded to me!! Please accept my apologies for the other comment that I just posted. I'm still brand new to this thread/group, and when I saw your response to Michael's comment I somehow got the impression that you hadn't responded to me yet. But right after posting it, I noticed the "return to the thread" button and saw what had happened! Many apologies, and thanks much for your graceful reply, and also for passing along my earlier comment to Dr Wen. Warmly, Daniel
No worries. I have not yet seen the other comment, so if you want to delete it, that's cool. Or not!
Brief comment: The past three years have been exhausting. The amount of misinformation and the anger behind it blinds many. The days of academic camaraderie and respectful dialogue seem long gone. I just read the interaction between Daniel and Jeremy and found it extremely refreshing. Hopefully we can show our younger doctors in training that there is hope and that having different academic perspectives should not be seen as a personal affront or as a barrier to further communication.
Daniel, fantastic comment. Been on the fence subscribing to Inside Medicine, but on the chance there can be interesting dialectics in the comment section, happy to add this to my list of paid subscriptions.
Agree with each of your points which I also arrived at by studying excess mortality the last 3 years.
Quick note to Dr. Faust - in the paper linked it's noted:
|"statistically significant excess mortality was not observed among children ages 0-17 during the |pandemic months of 2020 but was observed during the Delta wave (1,532 excess deaths, IR 2.1 |per 100,000 population, observed-to-expected ratio of 1.09) and 2021 overall (2,228, IR. 3.1 per |100,000 population, observed-to-expected ratio of 1.07) (Table 1, Table 3) for both males and |females. Most excess deaths among children occurred in the South."
And later
|“However, analysis of disease-specific causes of death, particularly in younger demographics, |may still be fruitful”
From what I see in Wonder, nearly all the excess death in younger age groups are attributed to the increase in accidents (including overdoses), suicides, and homicides.
I ran this for 10 age groups, so merged 15-24 year olds, but the data seems pretty clear that the roughly 15K excess deaths in the 0-25 age group is from the increase in accidents.
https://imgur.com/a/7HxgHX8
And a quick break by region appears to show for whatever reason the South did have higher increases, but I can't see how more accidents a result of their less stringent approach (not masking kids, going to school, etc) which I feel like you indicated:
|" However, other COVID-19 mitigation efforts, which varied by region may have contributed to |these findings.
And as noted in Daniels comment, Sweden and the rest of the Nordic countries all had the lowest excess deaths in the world, despite sending their kids back to school May of 2020, largely unmasked. That seems to falsify the hypothesis.
Quick comparison of Sweden and her neighbors using 4 year average for baseline (for 2022 I used fist 40 weeks of each year to compare to first 40 weeks of 2022) - Finland, Norway, and Denmark all started getting excess death signal in 2022 which allowed Sweden (possibly temporarily) jump back to lowest excess deaths. Going to rerun and see if it has changed, this was last done 12/1/2022.
https://imgur.com/a/Scz0Ovk
May chime in more later, there's a lot to unpack between Wen's article and the pre-print.
(Picked up your book Daniel, finishing up Daniel Werb's "The Invisible Siege" and will start yours)
Regards,
Mike D'Ambrosio, retired engineer with too much free time on his hands
HI Mike,
Thanks for the comments. A paper digging in to the pediatric data is on my very, very long to-do list. One thing that people don't remember is that medical deaths in kids dropped during 2020 and early 2021, and started to come back to normal rates right around the time Delta showed up. So after fall of 2021, we start to see a combo of normal rates of pediatric medical deaths (and possibly increased, but I need to look) AND increased external deaths. So, with kids it is really complicated, and indeed the South had it worst. I'll try to get around to this topic soon, as people are always interested in it.
So grateful for this opinion. It seems ludicrous to me that anyone would skew COVID death data in the direction of an over count. As an immune compromised person, I did what many did, I stayed away from hospitals especially when there were no vaccines. I had another TIA on Jan. 6, 2020 (go figure) and refused ER for that reason. Finally went in and was kept overnight. (Later found out that 2 of my attending nurses opted not to get the first COVID vax even though they could have). Thereafter stayed away when cases were high. Many times people like myself are actually keeping our disease maintenance in some control but when we get COVID (or as I was warned about even flu pre-pandemic as you have referenced) it zooms in on our vulnerable systems. So we are still dying of COVID. And now patients are trying to catch up on their care, hospitals lost $$$ from less surgeries and procedures, docs overwhelmed, radiology depts overwhelmed and we have to wait 4 to 6 months for appts. Don't have to tell you, ER's already overwhelmed well before pandemic because so many forced to use them for "regular" healthcare because of an inadequate healthcare system. Thanks for your critical thinking and caring.