There is still confusion about what happened during the Pandemic. The public health response was innovative, defying historic precedent. Was it effective? One reason it is hard to know is that the health records are administered by the same agency (CDC) that managed the pandemic. Death certificates are subjective, and the listed cause of death is prone to error and outright manipulation. Death counts are often reliable, even when cause of death is debatable.
The CDC has recently released death counts from 2021, and they are even higher than 2020. In addition to the deaths attributed to COVID, there were 155,000 excess deaths in 2020-21 among younger Americans. It is a reasonable conjecture that these deaths were related to the circumstances of the pandemic. Below, I lay out the numbers and explore some interpretations.
The CDC keeps track of how many people die each year, their ages, the place, and the cause of death. Data is released to the public 18 months after year end through a searchable resource at https://wonder.cdc.gov/. All-cause mortality data for 2021 was recently released, Unexplained high death rates in 2020 continued and accelerated in 2021. On top of the death burden of COVID, there were 155,000 deaths in people under 65. (I focus on people age 15-64, because COVID deaths are relatively rare. Only about one fifth of COVID deaths were under 65.)
Deaths in this younger age group were up 19% in 2020 compared to the average of the previous five years. In 2021, deaths were even higher, up 30% compared to the same baseline. Most of this is not accounted by COVID. Excluding COVID deaths, there is an excess of 17% in 2020 and 23% in 2021. That’s 155,000 unexplained deaths. COVID deaths in this age group were 220,000 over two years, so the unexplained deaths are two thirds of the official COVID death count. Excluding the oldest group (55-64 years), the unexplained deaths are actually greater than the COVID deaths.
Word on the Hill is that official counts of COVID deaths were overstated, so the difference becomes more dramatic and the cause more mysterious. These numbers are far outside year-to-year fluctuations (~20,000) or statistical uncertainties. 155,000 Americans is almost three Vietnam Wars. The last time younger Americans were dying at the 2021-22 rate was World War II.
Proportionally, the excess deaths were concentrated in the 25-44 age group. But the highest absolute numbers were in the oldest age group (55-64), as is almost always the case. Excess deaths among males and females were skewed 64:36, but this is actually normal; in this age range, men are dying at a much higher rate than women.
The biggest wave of excess deaths occurred in August through October of 2021. This was not a period of heavy vaccination and it is off-season for respiratory infections. The second biggest wave was December, 2020 through February, 2021. This was a time when COVID was reaching its second wave, but remember that COVID deaths are excluded in this tabulation. A speculation is that the initial release of the Pfizer vaccine was so toxic that the formula was changed within a few weeks. This hypothesis is supported by VAERS data, which were surging during these same months.
What caused 155,000 excess deaths?
This count is in addition to deaths coded COVID-19. The increase began before the vaccine rollout, so at least the 2020 portion cannot be blamed on vaccine deaths. An obvious place to look is in unintended consequences of the closures and lockdowns ordered by Federal health officials as an emergency response.
CDC categorizes deaths by cause, (but then doesn’t break this down by age or month). The top ten causes of death from 2019-21 were, in order,
- Heart disease
- Cancer
- COVID-19
- Accidents
- Strokes
- Lung diseases including emphysema and COPD
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Diabetes
- Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
- Kidney failure
Some of these categories increased significantly in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2019 as a baseline. There were 75,000 excess heart attack deaths over the two years. Some of this may be attributed to heart attack patients forgoing emergency care because they feared COVID in the hospitals. Deaths classed as “accident” were up by 28,000 in 2020 and a striking 52,000 in 2021. Deaths listed as “suicide” seem to be intentionally undercounted, but (surprisingly) they did not increase in 2020 or 2021.
Drug overdose deaths might be expected to increase during lockdowns. Drug overdose deaths are not listed as a separate category by CDC, but from this CDC announcement it is possible to estimate 15,000 extra deaths per year in 2020 and 2021. According to CDC policy, some of these may have been listed as “accidents”.
| 2020 XS | 2021 XS | |
| 1. Heart disease | 37,921 | 36,506 |
| 2. Cancer | – | – |
| 3. COVID-19 | – | – |
| 4. Accidents | 27,915 | 51,895 |
| 5. Strokes | 10,259 | 12,885 |
| 6. Lung diseases | – | – |
| 7. Alzheimer disease | 12,743 | – |
| 8. Diabetes | 14,541 | 15,647 |
| 9. Liver disease | 7,284 | 12,227 |
| 10. Kidney failure | – | – |
| Total accounted for | 110,663 | 129,160 |
Excess deaths in the above table are differences compared to a 2019 baseline. Empty cells connote counts that were negative or not significantly positive.
Interpretation
A classical public health response to a pandemic was advocated by Dr David Katz, by Dr John Ioannidis, by Dr Harvey Risch, by the Great Barrington coalition, and several other prominent epidemiologists in the spring of 2020. Their proposal would have been to isolate and protect the most vulnerable, while allowing the virus to spread among young, healthy people who would almost certainly survive the disease, and would earn the herd immunity needed to end spread of the virus.
Instead, US public health agencies tried a radically new approach, constricting commerce, shuttering churches, concert halls, restaurants, and cultural institutions, encouraging millions of people to stay in their homes, masking the healthy as well as the sick, discouraging experimentation with early treatments that seemed promising while rushing vaccines through testing into mass distribution.
We cannot know what events might have unfolded had these mainstream public health experts prevailed, but the results do not reflect well on choices made by our CDC and NIH and the White House task force. COVID deaths were high in 2020 despite the restrictions, and twice as high in 2021 despite the vaccines. Consequences of the lockdowns and closures were not limited to the huge economic loss ($14 trillion according to this USC study), but included indirect deaths that were higher in young people than deaths from COVID itself.
Let us encourage our public health officials to learn from these mistakes.
After writing this, I was referred by a reader to the work of Denis Rancourt, a Canadian researcher. In this video he does a much more thorough job that I have done, starting with US all-cause mortality data but digging deeper by locale and interpreting through a perspective he has gained from international data.
Data tables
Discover more from Josh Mitteldorf
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Lancet removed a pre-print paper from its website within 24 hrs last week titled “Covid Vaccine Implicated in Most of the Deaths”. I’m guessing Fauci called them screaming. https://www.bitchute.com/video/kCCveS9O6ssc/
Could the peak plasma aging proteins at age 34 somehow be related to every non-covid Z score for the 35-44 age group achieving significance for both 2020 and 2021?
Everyone who has been mRNA “vaccinated” has had a heart attack.
A mRNA covid “vaccine” causes the production of antibodies against the Covid virus. This happens when the ACE2 receptors of heart cells take up the Covid virus spike protein produced by the “vaccine”. The infected cell are subsequently killed by the Killer-T cells of the immune system. The antibodies are produced in this process.
Thus your heart has been attacked. Mostly, as a result of this, you will just feel unwell. But sometimes this process will cause a genuine heart attack.
Who would take the risk? 95% of Australians it would seem.
With boosters, people are being “vaccinated” multiple times. i.e. they are having multiple heart attacks. Worse, no one knows what boosters contain.
Worse still, the vaccine has been genetically engineered to continue to produce spike proteins into the future. How long, no one knows.
Finally, ACE2 receptors are present in many organs. If something goes wrong with the “vaccine” process, serious illness can occur. Long COVID is likely in part a result of this.
The mind boggles (if it still can).
The vaccine is not “genetically engineered to continue to produce spike proteins into the future”. You should consider learning a bit about the subject, before you post comments.
I know heaps about COVID. The following link is to one of my posts on Naked Scientists re my simulation of SARS-COV-2. https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=75960.msg640534;topicseen#msg640534
I always post stuff I have a reference for.
Your link does not contain any evidence for your false claim that “the vaccine has been genetically engineered to continue to produce spike proteins into the future”.
Nether does your comment that my claim is invalid!
The article was one of thousands in the Melbourne Age that I have commented on. Unfortunately, it would take me a while to search for it and it is not that important.
During peak periods of the pandemic medical care services were extremely busy dealing with Covid patients and other types of medical care, particularly preventative care, suffered as a result. People infected with Covid are more prone to a number of conditions, for example heart attacks and strokes, in the months following their nominal recovery from the infection. These two facts seem to me to be plausible reasons for the “excess deaths” and they mean that the official Covid death number is probably an under-count, not an over-count. You have not presented any evidence that the official counts were “manipulated”.
Keep on believing the narrative if you so choose. Me? I’ll trust my health to me and no one else. My lifestyle: discipline to fitness, nutrition, mindset, and sleep will maintain my immune system better than any mRNA poke. Yes, I had COVID. As a 65-year-old, I had a bad ear ache for 36 hours and that was about it.
My faith and trust in government, NIA, WHO, CDC, any president, Fauci, Gates is non-existent. Big pharma, with its blanket immunity, are the last people I would entrust anything to do with my health.
COVID was a manmade calamity brought us in a treacherous way. We abandoned those most in need of help and obliterated the rights of the rest of us. To think, as a Canadian, it was just a short 10 weeks ago I have been allowed to travel to the US to see some of our closest friends. Good thing the higher ups in US government protected you from the likes of me for so long.
This is by far the most likely accurate interpretation.
That vaccine should have never been approved and if it was it should have came with a warning for only the elderly with certain health conditions to risk taking it. Introducing the spike protein into the human body in that manner was just asking for trouble and I have a feeling many people that took those vaccines will have a higher rate of immunity and heart related issues than the people who didn’t for years to come. And to think many people who took it only did so because they were going to be fired from their job if they didn’t because their business and the govt wanted to virtue signal on this while lying to the public about how effective the vaccine actually was.
And governments around the world flew the “95% compliance” flag, not mentioning a high percentage of those jabbed did so out of desperation for keeping a job, being able to visit sick family, or the shear terror instilled by our biased and spoon-fed media.
Not so sure you are right suggesting those who took the vaccine “will have a higher rate of immunity”. If they did, why the need for an infinite number of boosters? Guessing those who “survived” COVID will have natural immunity that is superior to anything offered by a jab.
“Higher rate of immunity and heart related issues”. I meant more medical issues related to a compromised immune system from the vaccine.
It was especially a disgrace the mandate they put on the military here in the US. There was no excuse for the US Supreme Court not to step in and slap down all these mandates as they knew there was no valid data justifying them to protect others. That they only stopped a very limited amount of the mandates was a disgrace imo.
Nassim Nicolas Taleb posted about vaccine side effects. When 1 billion people take a treatment any dude effects show up quickly because of the huge data set. Even delayed side effects show up quickly in a data set that large because there will be outlier early onset of side effects. But the side effects are just not there. The side effects from having COVID are however showing up prominently in the data.
Nonsense imo. Thay are trying to cover up what the vaccine has done by blaming most of it on Covid itself now.Lies just like all their lies about what the vaccine could do back in 2021. The money behind these claims are the same money that planted fake stories about people being hospitalized and dying from Ivermectin. Big media actually ran those fake stories without vetting them at all because that money controls them also.
So true Mike. It is like the stats that governments/big Pharma trot out in an attempt to prove that the excess deaths are not caused by the COVID “vaccines”. Nowhere do we find stats for unvaccinated people who have never had COVID. You can bet your sweet bippy these people will be underrepresented in the excess deaths. Ditto for long COVID stats.
HELLO JOSH AND THE REST OF BLOGGERS,
I HAVE JUST SEEN THIS ANNOUNCEMENT before the first page of an Elsevier paper. I include it just in case you do not know and could perhaps be usefull to your covid-vaccine history in this blog:
Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with
free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-
19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the
company’s public news and information website.
Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related
research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre – including this
research content – immediately available in PubMed Central and other
publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights
for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means
with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are
granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre
remains active.
Hi Chris:
You wrote: [“The side effects from having COVID are however showing up prominently in the data.”]
Chris: Many people still got COVID-19 even after getting the mRNA shot and boosters.
Is the Data you mention nuanced enough to separate those who had the shot and then got Covid from those who had Covid, but no shot?
I was infected with COVID-19 early in the first year, before the lockdowns. It was so mild, I was still able to work. My only symptom was a persistent dry cough that lingered longer than normal for me.
The only reason I knew I had Covid was I tested positive for antibodies.
I have not suffered any side effects from my bout with Covid.
I never allowed any doctor to inject me with a “vaccine” or a booster. It was quite the battle sometimes, but I persisted. I also avoided doctors as much as possible to avoid their dire warnings regarding my refusal to take the vaccine. That is a travesty, IMO.
I have not gotten sick since my early bout with COVID-19. Not even a cold or flu.
A frighteningly high proportion of acquaintances, mostly between 20 to 80s, who did get the shot and faithfully followed up with boosters, have either died suddenly from undiagnosed heart issues, clots, or have suffered strokes. Some have liver and kidney issues.
Some of the younger recipients appear to have visibly aged ten years, shortly after the vaccine.
Some of these people, also caught Covid several times, despite being supposedly protected by the so named vaccine and boosters.
One extremely healthy acquaintance died suddenly of a blood clot at 28. He was fully vaccinated and boosted.
I also have a friend in France that took the shot, and now has long Covid. Her worst symptom is a brain fog that makes it appear as if she has dementia, coupled with muscular weakness and debilitating fatigue she never before experienced.
Before the vaccine she was active, working out daily, running her business and mentally sharp.
I am glad I was stubborn enough to refuse to take the “vaccine,” despite the societal fearmongering and bullying.
The vaccine was simply not tested long enough to be known to be safe, and there were no statistics yet available to back up the safety claims.
I do feel sad for all those who were forced to take the shot in order to keep their jobs.
I realize my information is empirical. Still, as more information emerges, I feel justified in thinking that my observations are more than mere coincidence.
I agree.
I never took the vaccine. Instead I took 4.000 IU (a few micrograms!) of VITD3 per day but I allwas ingested itJUST AFTER MY BIGGEST MEAL PLATE HAVING SOME FAT ON IT. That is essenrial to have bile salts and liposiluble vitamins (A,D,E, and K) to be absorbed to llinfatics through the intstine walls. THAT IS AN ESSENTIAL PRECAUTION THAT NOBODY WARNS NOT EVEN FEJJ BOWLES (likely because he never studied Physiology). Otherwise you loos most of the ingested vitaminD theough the anus!
I maintained this regime during the first year. When I and my wife got Covid-19 she had a very bad time for one month but survived (she did not take vitD by then. I had only less than 38oC fe er for 3 days and lack of tasye for two months (that was disgusting to me a Galician who loves good and fress food. But nothing else. I anyllzed my blood vitD levels I was 57 ng of vitD/ml. It has been demonstraye in huge clinical essays from half a million Covid-19 patients from around 10 countries that at 50ng of vitD/ml Covid-19 deaths ate statistically zero (Borchman et al. Nutrients, 2020).
The second year I decreased my dayly vitD dose to 2,000 IU per day, did not cought any more illness neither Covid nor colds, flue etc nothing. My blood analysis showed that I have now 51 ng VitD/ml.
I must add that I took 350 mg og Mg++ succinate per day the first year and 160 mg og Mg+ succinate the second year plus some (RDA) vitK2 and Zinc.
(HIgh vitD ingestion consumes both body Mg++ and VitK2 levels. In addition 80^ of western population is Mg++ deficient die to overexplotation of soils. Such deficiency, like that of vitD (present in more than 50% of Spanish people older than 65 years of aging causes more than 70 illnesses includi g immunodepression, can er, osteoporosis, eye catarates, ateial fibrilation heart arritmias etc.
I warned Angela Merckel, Ursula von der Layen (heads of EU) and Pedro Sanchez (President of Spain) through mail or their web pages about Borchman et al. study metaanalysis but they did nod replied me. I also warned Fernando Simon (the official “covid-19 virus man” on TV from our Spanish Ministry of Health (that i stitution knows well and even supports the studies on vitD deficiency but never did anythi g to correct it). Fernando is married with my cousin Maria Romay Barja de Quiroga but the just did not want to hear my warnings.
I know well all this homicide in mass by omission on the part of our Spanish or UE authorities is due to their sub.ission under the big power of Big Pharma.
Shoul old people have taken vitD at right levels we would have had 90 000 less deaths due to the pandemy
And all this is more disturbing taking into account that vitD intake is absolutely compatible with taking the (dirty) vaccine.
We are under the rule of Monsters cravi g for money. A large part of the blame of Ukra ian war is due to the .ilitary-Industrial Complex the bussines No 1 in the world. The bussines No 2 is the Pharmaceutical Industry.
This is not democracy at all to kill hundred of thousands or millions of people just to get big bussiness. They deny them what they lost by mutation during evokution: the absolutely necessary vitamkns. And they deny them all the minerals they also need due to destruction of soils by overexploition. They are killers at large “by omission” at least….
Excellent advice, regarding the need for Vitamin D3 supplementation, Gustavo.
As I am sure you know, older folks do not convert UV rays to Vitamin D 3 as easily as younger people. And, even some younger people need D3 supplementation.
I am glad to hear your sense of taste returned.
During exposure to sunlight, 7-dehydrocholesterol in the skin absorbs UV B radiation and is converted to previtamin D3 which in turn isomerizes into vitamin D3.
That is, in part, why locking people inside their homes, was not healthy.
Thanks Heather.
No. I did not know that old people get less vitD3 from bathing in the sun. I will tell my wife.
I was no expert on vitD. I directed two PhD thesis in the 1990’s about vitaminC and Vitamin E (because they are both antioxidants) and found some very interesting things. The most important one was that the vitC level (we studied 3 dietary doses) in Guinea pigs (which like humans do not synthesize ascorbate,; in H.s.the gene for ascorbate exhists but it is not expressed; xor most mammals ascorbate is NOT a vitamin, it is that also in bats; curious because both humans and bats live much longer than expected for their body size and metabolic rate).
But the main point is that we found that in guinea pigs treated with LPS (toxic mimic of bacterial infection), among the 3 groups with different vitC levels those with low dose died soon whereas no animal died or showed signs of illness in the group with higher vitC. So, in the presence of LPS, vitC levels were the difference between life and death!
Concerning vitD I learned a lot from Jeff Bowles and got interested because of the Covid-19 pandemy. Now we know that at 50ng of vitD in blood mortality in human patients is statistically zero (Borche et al. Nutrients (2020), a metaanalisis published by independent german researchers based on data from around half a million Covid-19 patients from around 10 countries. Every body should read this most important paper.
I warned about the huge power of vitD to protect against SARS-Cov-2 to 1) Angela Merkel, by post 13 pages long letter and heavy envelop to her Bundestag Bundesrsth address at Berllin, the next year to Ursula Von der Laiden through her web page for EU citizens, I included Borchman et al. citation on her small rectangle to hear EU cotizen comments, to the direct email after due registering with my data to Moncloa Palace of Pedro Sanchez President of my Country, Spain, and personally to the here famous Fernando Simón the “virus man” appearing on Spanish TV every day during the 3 years of pandemy and works at the Spanish Ministry of Health, who, by chance, happens to be married with my cousin Maria Romay Barja xe Quiroga (2nd last name equal to mine). I received no answer from any of them in spite of the full compatibility of the vaccine with vitD supplementation including the old ones.
This did not happenned in the past in Spain during democracy (1980’s, 90’s). I know for sure because my first wife, Adoración Nuñez, worked at the Moncloa Palace under the Secretary of State of relationships with the Congress
Many presudents passed from both right and left psrties during her many years of working there as a state secretary (non-political one) taking and passung calls and typewriting for the Big Officcer there. She told me that at that time all letters directed to the President of Spain by common citizens (either brushing the streets or Proffesors, Medical doctors, bus drivers any socisl condition that did not matter, all the citizen’s lettered were answered, obviously not by the President himself but by a team of officials at the Presudential Palace dedicated to this…
So, it is another sign that our democracy is decadent. I think the west in heneral is a decaying empire now. Lets see what happens next step in wár against China. But it is not clear to me who is the isolated one…Perhaps it is us, the western NATO Countries who are becoming more isolated as the multipolar advances to replace this less fais unipolar one.
Heather, where does the 7-dehydrocholesterol come from? Is cholesterol a precursor? I believe cholesterol has been unfairly maligned, and that’s a bit of a pet peeve for me. I’d be interested to know if it plays that beneficial role. I’ve always been curious about the mechanism of vitamin D “photosynthesis” as well.
Evolution and survival of the fittest are equivalent. The fittest when it comes to humans may be goodies where those with the most love survive or baddies where those with the most money survive. This, amazingly, seems to ensure an even spread of goodies and baddies.
The same likely applies to viruses. With COVID, there was likely a balance of good and bad viruses that was initially disrupted by a genetically engineered virus and subsequently by mRNA “vaccines” that tried to get rid of the “bad” engineered viruses created.
The mess thus created may have caused the waves of excess deaths unveiled by the statistics presented here.
We can only cross our fingers and hope our bodies have the capability to sort the mess out. i.e. restore the COVID virus to balance.
Josh,
Taking into account your excellent report based on data (as always you are a good mathematician) I am not sure what caused such huge excess of extra deaths in your country in 2021.
In Spain I fought hard sending direct letters by post mail or through the boxes designed for citizen´s questions at the Web sites of our President the Social-democrat Pedro Sanchez, to Angela Merkel (I sent her a 13 pages long letter by urgent post mail explaining in detail…) and the next year to her substitute Ursula von der Leyen through her web page. concerning vitamin D which could have saved perhaps 80% of Spanish or UE deaths. I sent them the paper by the German people showing in their metanalisis from COVID-19 and vitamin D in around 10 Countries and up to 500.000 people that getting 50ng/ml of vitaminD in blood the statistical death rate in SARS-Cov-2 patients is zero! (Borsche Lorenz et al – 2 out of 3 independent researchers – Nutrients Oct 14;13(10):3596. doi:10.3390/nu13103596.PMID: 34684596 PMCID: PMC8541492 DOI: 10.3390/nu13103596. Free PMC article-
Direct link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34684596/
Just look at Figure 5 in t6he article.
Amazingly, I did not receive any response from any of them. although I suggested taking vitamin D plus the vaccine (fully compatible) and I am a internationally respected researcher on aging Full Professor of Physiology.
If their teams do not answer their citizen’s letters, why do they have web pages with boxes or direct email addresses to Moncloa Spanish President’s Palace at Madrid? Is it just there to hypocritically presume their alleged “openness and democratic” character?
I think Western democracies are becoming less and less democratic these days (my case is just one example). It happens that my first wife, Adoración Nuñez Villuendas, who passed away in 2011 and worked as administrative (non political) personal secretary of the Secretary of State at Moncloa Palace during decades, even at the end of Franco dictatorship! and under all the Democratic Spain’ s Presidents since 1976, Adolfo Suarez, Felipe Gonzalez, José María Aznar, Virgilio Zapatero, and Mariano Rajoy (heads of the two main moderate left or right parties PP and PSOE) always told me that those days (between 1975 and 2005) the Presidents “Gabinete” (“President ́s team”) always answered all letters politely directed to the President by ANY Spanish citizen, no matter if he/she was a Powerful man, a Univ. Researcher and Professor, or a street sweeper, etc. They personally and directly answered their letters even when their citizen letter’s content concerned only the citizen’s own interests.
But now they do not answer even when a well documented researcher suggests a (demonstrated) way of trying to save 40- 80.000 deaths in Spain and hundreds of thousands in the EU concerning the biggest problem we had in decades. Here half of the population older than 65 years of age is vitamin D deficient and this is well known by studies performed or financially supported by the Spanish Minister of Health!, but they never did anything to correct that (Big Pharma is really in Power instead of these Ministers and Presidents?: vitamins ans minerals, natural substances, can not be patented by Pharmaceutical Companies like the vaccines; and vitD3 is fully compatible with vaccination!).
It happens, also by chance, that my cousin Maria Barja, is married to a man who appeared on Spanish TV daily for 2 years to report about the pandemic at the TV news. He was known by everybody as the “virus-man”. He was then a Spain wide famous leader of SARS-Cov 2 pandemics team at the Ministry of Health (his name is Fernando Simon, the equivalent of Fauci at USA?).
I personally discussed the issue with Fernando at the tanatorium profiting the situation when my aunt died and all my family including Mari and Fernando went there, and I offered him from my cell phone the Borsche et al, Nutrients (2021) German study article CITED ABOVE finally demonstrating that Vitamin D3 taken at right levels in already infected humans totally avoided SARS-COV-2 – induced deaths (please especially see Fig. 5 on it). This cost me breaking relationships with that part of my family (this was nothing compared to the prospect of saving thousands of deaths) and the Ministry of Health of course continued to do nothing about correcting at least vitamin D deficiency in old Spanish people who was dying massively at poorly managed Spanish geriatric residencies without a single medical Dr. attending them….Only nurses in the best cases…
Incredibly, Madrid Community President, Isabel Diaz Ayuso even issued an order that these old infected people were not transported to Hospitals! And they massively died at Madrid´s residencies (like a Nazi concentration camps) without proper medical treatment. Denouncement of this to the judges by the political opposition did not got any punishment against Ayuso President-who is a extreme right leader heavily supported by Madrid population, shes is a Donald Trump´s follower including a very strong bad fame for her horrible public declarations and sentences-, full of HATE including e.g., despising the poor people suffering famine here and standing in line waiting for food donation to them (she called them “lazy losers”). She was re-elected last May as Madrid’s President in office for the next four years…
Is this real democracy?
Gustavo Barja
Interesting Josh you put your experience and skills to try and understand this. Loved your “Let us encourage our public health officials to learn from these mistakes.” but I am skeptic. In science and politics what should matter is the error-correction module built into the system. Do we have a good module?
I guess In EU we are not better off in understanding when you read:
“The European mortality is at an expected level after 3 years of the COVID-19 pandemic and data from spring 2023 and onwards will from now on be included in the estimations of the expected mortality”
BUT
“Therefore, to avoid biasing the estimations of the expected mortality, data from the pandemic years (2020-2022) were excluded from the estimations of the expected mortality.”
https://www.euromomo.eu/