Tag Archive for: COVID

Excess Deaths in America Are Still Excessive

Trying to accurately track COVID deaths in the United States over the past 30 months has been a fool’s errand. Even if you were to dismiss allegations that hospitals had financial incentives to overemphasize COVID deaths, you still would have to navigate the subjective territory of co-morbidities and where the line is drawn between a death truly attributable to a COVID infection, vs a death that would have happened anyway from some other terminal cause.

Thanks to these ambiguities, leavened by an assortment of institutions including the media, the government, and the medical community, that have lost almost all their credibility with countless millions of Americans, skeptics abound. Just how bad was COVID? How bad is it? Some people still think the entire epidemic was a hoax.

Through the fog of data, so it goes, deaths from pneumonia and the flu fell during the COVID era, getting moved instead to be classified as COVID deaths. According to the hoax theory, the actual danger posed by COVID was greatly overstated, because deaths caused by COVID were overstated. But there is one thing that cannot be as easily obscured via errors in classification, and that is total deaths, from all causes.

Referred to by statisticians and epidemiologists as “excess deaths,” this is a far less controversial data point. After all, it has an unambiguous essence: you are dead, or you are not dead. What may ail you, or how you died, is irrelevant. Since the COVID era began in 2020, using weekly reports issued by the CDC, I’ve been tracking total deaths in the United States. Using these same CDC reports, which go back to 2013, I’ve been comparing total deaths over the past 2.5 years to the averages based on the six years preceding 2020. The chart “Excess U.S. Deaths During the COVID Era,” below, clearly shows that something terrible has been happening, and that it may not be over.

The purpose of this report is not to speculate over what role COVID played in the excess deaths that have plagued Americans for over two years, nor to speculate as to the causes of the COVID pandemic, its timing, its impact, or the response. Instead, this report will rely on one assumption, which some readers may believe to be a stretch, but which I believe is reasonable: The CDC is not cooking the data when it comes to deaths from all causes. That is to say, everything presented here is relying on the CDC accurately reporting how many people die each week in the United States.

If you accept that assumption, the data is unsettling. On the chart, six tightly bunched lines show deaths by week in the most recent six pre-COVID years. They are plotted according to how the CDC tracks flu seasons, i.e., from October 1 through September 31. These lines repeat in order to show the 12 month cycle of average weekly deaths. Hence the lines all rise upwards to reflect higher than average deaths during peak flu season in January, and descend to low points in July when cases of the flu are far less prevalent.

The important thing to notice in these six plots of pre-COVID deaths is how close together they are. During peak flu season in January, typically, around 58,000 Americans die each week. During July and August, by contrast, only around 50,000 Americans die each week. There was an unusually severe flu season in 2017, represented by the blue line that rises above the pack at around 68,000 deaths in the first week of January 2017, but by and large, how many Americans die each week is predictable and stable from year to year.

Until COVID came along.

On the chart, the single line that soars well above the other rows of data does not repeat in 12 month illustrative cycles, but rather is a linear plot of deaths by week in the U.S. from October 2019 through the middle of June 2022. Because the CDC requires at least 8 weeks to collect and compile data from all causes, it is not possible to provide an accurate count for any weeks more recent than mid-June of this year. That’s why the line falls off precipitously after mid-June. As data comes in, the true numbers will be known for more recent weeks.

Viewing this chart makes it quite obvious that total deaths, from all causes, have been way over the normal average ever since COVID began. The first peak in April of 2020 was one of the worst. During the week of April 14, 2020, 78,946 Americans died, when a normal tally that time of year should have been only around 53,000. Then there was the surge in the summer of 2020, culminating in a peak of 64,121 on the week of August 4, 2020, when at that time in a normal year deaths would have been troughed at around 50,000. But when it comes to excess deaths in America, 2020 was just the beginning.

As can be seen, January 2021 was the worst peak for excess deaths, with 87,233 Americans dying during the week of January 19 when normally there should have been only around 58,000 total deaths. That was followed by yet another surge in September 2021, with 75,564 people dying on the week of September 14, more than 20,000 over the normal average. And then in January 2022 another awful surge, peaking at 85,290 deaths on the week of January 25, more than 25,000 over normal.

If you compare how many people died in America during the COVID era to how many people would normally have died based on six years of prior year CDC data on deaths from all causes, the excess deaths are 25 percent over normal. Twenty five percent. With the sole exception of the Spanish Flu pandemic a century ago, there has never been a die-off in this country at this scale.

Putting that percent into numbers yields sobering totals. During the 12 month period from April 2020 through March of 2021, a total of 3,527,041 Americans died. During the next 12 months, from April 2021 through March of 2022, a total of 3,455,176 Americans died. On average, adjusting for population growth, during those same 12 month periods over the previous six years, only 2,789,994 Americans died.

Is it over? From the chart, it can be seen that the decline in total deaths in the spring of 2022 looks remarkably similar to the decline in the spring of 2021. The last data point on which we can rely, in mid-June, is actually tipping slightly upward from the previous week’s total.

By any standard, what has happened has been catastrophic for this country. We may never know how many of these excess deaths were from COVID, from deferred treatment for other ailments, from elevated numbers of people committing suicide, or from adverse reactions to the vaccines. But one thing must be understood unequivocally, and it ought to go without saying. This has been a tragedy on an epic scale and one from which we have hopefully learned a great deal.

For starters, and while avoiding socialist overreaction, we may begin keeping a closer eye on the pharmaceuticals industry. The accomplishments of this industry must be acknowledged. Precision medicine is coming, and the days of many dread diseases are numbered. But that day will come sooner if Americans can root the corruption out of this industry, as well as out of its supposed overseers.

It is important to recognize that not all players in the pharmaceutical industry are guilty of corruption, but some of the biggest have a sordid record indeed. They have hooked half the nation on anti-anxiety type drugs, they’ve pushed medication onto millions of children, they’ve pushed opiates out to masses of people, they’ve arguably oversold vaccines of all kinds, and they exercised far too much influence over the COVID response – including the shameful suppression of any experimental treatments or therapies they couldn’t control. Now some of them are pushing “gender confirmation” drugs, which transsexuals have to take for the rest of their lives. If that’s not enough, as we learned over the past few years, American pharmaceutical manufacturers have offshored production of many of our most essential drugs to China.

Meanwhile, it’s necessary to continue to investigate what has caused millions of excess deaths. But what is indisputable is this: In just over two years, over 1.5 million people are dead in America who in normal times would have been alive today. Even now, based on the most recent data available, deaths from all causes in America are still not quite 15 percent above normal. A mass die off is still happening in America and reportedly around the world as well, and we have no idea what’s coming next.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

With 700,000 “Excess Deaths,” What’s Next for America?

There has been a lot of speculation, much of it backed up by evidence, that over the past year, America’s “cause of death” statistics have been skewed. For reasons alleged to be both political and financial, people who did not have a fatal case of COVID were reported as dying from the disease. The classic example is the young man who died in a horrific motorcycle accident, who tested positive for COVID in the post-mortem and was listed as a COVID victim.

Less likely, however, is the possibility that “deaths from all causes” have been misrepresented. Assuming these are CDC statistics that we can rely on, the data tells a grim story. During the 12 month period between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021, the number of people dying in the United States exceeded the recent historical average for that same April through March period by 701,680. If anything, this number is understated, because CDC data can take up to eight weeks to fill in completely and our dataset is only updated through May 12.

This is an astonishing increase, representing a 25 percent increase over total deaths in previous years, even when adjusting for population growth. The average deaths for the same 12 month period over the last six years, prior to the most recent twelve months, were 2,845,200. That compares to 3,546,880 in the twelve month period through March 31, 2021. COVID may have mostly targeted the old and the weak, but target them it did. Based on reporting trends observed over the past year, it may be that so-called “excess deaths” in the U.S. for April 2021 may have finally fallen back to normal. The graph depicted below shows the shape of these excess deaths.

On the above graph, the horizontal axis starts at the first week of October, which is typically the beginning of flu season. As can be seen on this 18 month continuum, the flu season starts again around two-thirds of the way across, as October repeats. The cluster of tightly packed lines show total deaths rising starting in October, peaking in January, then falling sharply until the end of March. After that there is a shallow valley, as total deaths reach minimums in August before slowly rising again. The only outlier, apart from the COVID line in dark blue, is the light blue line signifying the particularly bad 2017-18 flu season. But even in that bad year, total deaths did not exceed 70,000 in any given week, and the counts dropped sharply back into the cluster by the end of March. This year of COVID, however, was completely different.

As can be seen on the dark blue line on the graph, total deaths rose almost vertically in April 2020, peaking at 78,937 for the week of April 15. Total deaths then dropped significantly, but never came near the averages for previous years. The first trough was on the week of June 24 when “only” 57,878 people died; this was still 14 percent over normal for that month. And then came the second wave in July, an increase that didn’t rise as high as the one in April, but was spread out over more weeks. But the most remarkable wave was yet to come.

It’s worth wondering why the third wave, by far the deadliest, didn’t get as much media hype. To be fair, anyone who watched television news reports in December and January where they dramatized what it would be like to take your last breath in an ICU, bright lights and a breathing tube descending, would not accuse the networks of inaction. But neither did the hype match the panic of April, or the “second wave” crisis of July. For whatever reason, the third wave, by far the biggest, came and went. At it’s peak during the week ending January 6, 85,684 Americans died, nearly sixty percent more than average for that time of year.

The COVID Wave Recedes in America, For Now

The only thing anyone trying to make sense out of what’s happened can be certain of is that America’s legacy media, the online communication monopolies, and the medical establishment cannot be trusted. Their betrayal is proven by the censorship and suppression of early stage therapies, the ongoing emphasis on vaccines instead of treatment, and the inability for any dissenting voices to be heard and debated. This betrayal is particularly gruesome because COVID is not a hoax. It is a deadly killer, possibly set to get worse.

When vaccine specialist Geert Vanden Bossche, or virologist Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, can still be found in podcast backwaters that have escaped the censors, their testimony cannot be refuted. They are denied the light of day, and so their arguments – that the vaccines being deployed will breed more potent variants of COVID at the same time as they compromise human immune systems – gain credibility. Lies, like mold and fungus, grow and fester in the dark, but only truth can survive the light of day. Sunshine is the disinfectant, open debate is the cure. But we’ll never know if these men are prophets or charlatans, because their words are suppressed.

As the more pessimistically inclined among us confront the specter of vaccine passports, mandatory booster shots every year to cope with an endless procession of increasingly virulent strains of COVID, likely medical history implants, travel restrictions, contact tracing, and everything else associated with “the great reset” including supply chain disruptions, rationing, riots, and a supermajority of voters utterly dependent on government, they must wonder: Who runs the world? You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to ask that question, only if you think you know the answer. But it’s an intriguing question. Is the world merely a chaotic ecosystem of individual egos, tribal communities, and fitfully coexisting nations? Or is something else happening?

A fascinating video, suppressed repeatedly by the major platforms, but surviving on the obscure website EarthHeroesTV.com, is an interview with Catherine Austin Fitts. About halfway through the 48 minute segment, Fitts asks the question: “Who runs the world?” Wisely, she doesn’t try to answer it. But she does quite a dance around the theme. Fitts, a former high ranking official with HUD, then a financial entrepreneur, leads off by explaining that the world is moving into a new era of economic totalitarianism. She observes that the wealth of the world is becoming more and more concentrated into nations with advanced technology, and within those nations, disproportionately to a small elite. She claims the COVID pandemic is providing an excuse to institute controls necessary to convert the planet from democratic processes to technocracy.

Fitts says the COVID virus is being used as the means to compel mass vaccine injections that will eventually make it possible to digitally identify and track every person. These biometric markers will then be used to connect people to a new cyber currency, allowing complete control. She believes there are five sectors working in tandem to create this new world order:

(1) Technology industry building clouds.

(2) Military doing space development.

(3) Big pharma developing injections to modify human DNA.

(4) Media providing propaganda.

(5) Central bankers engineering a new crypto system of global currency.

Fitts is describing is a dark version of futurism. Her perspective is negative, but lucid. Technology makes it much easier for a small group of people to get together and become very powerful. But why? Fitts offers a logical answer:

“If technology can make it possible for people to live 150 years, and it isn’t possible to keep this a secret, then why not downsize the population, integrate robots, and you can have a very wealthy and luxurious life without the management headaches?” In one particularly chilling quote, Fitts says “I was having a conversation with a venture capitalist, billionaire type, and he looked at me with these amazingly dead eyes and said ‘I can take every company and completely automate it with software and robotics and fire all the humans. We don’t need them any more.'”

Who runs the world? What if 700,000 dead Americans is just a preamble, and wave after wave of COVID variants rages across the nation in the years to come? Could it really get that bad? What is behind the doomsday cult that informs dialog in America today? It isn’t just a deadly virus. It’s racism, suddenly amped up to represent an existential threat to civilization. It’s the “climate emergency.” And all of this panic is curated and rained down upon us in an unending deluge of propaganda designed to render us terrified.

Is it too late to promote optimism? Was the truth about the world as expressed by Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg too potent, a bright and hopeful truth, that “air and water are getting cleaner, endangered species and forests are holding their own, and the risks associated with global warming are exaggerated.” He contends that “more people than ever before, living in all parts of the globe, are becoming healthier, richer, and better educated; that the human race is living longer and more peaceably; that we’re considerably freer to pursue our happiness.”

Were things working out? Was peace and prosperity busting out all over? And if so, why did COVID have to kill that momentum? How can that positive momentum be recovered? Why does the “great reset” have to involve perennial disease, mass control, rationing, and repression? Who is right? The optimists or the pessimists? Are we on the verge of the great cull, or the long boom? Don’t ask Joe Biden. Another certainty in these times of great uncertainty is this: Joe Biden doesn’t run anything, much less the world.

The sad truth is we can no longer rely on any of our institutions to provide answers to these questions. The events of 2020 and 2021, from a presidential election that was purchased by technology billionaires to a virus that has been mismanaged from day one, nothing should surprise us anymore. Who knows? Maybe those recently publicized green triangles that operate in restricted airspace, go 13,000 miles per hour, execute 700 G turns, travel in air, water, and probably space, have no visible means of propulsion, and defy gravity, are the emissaries of those who truly run the world.

We may hope that COVID has ran its course, and we may mourn our 700,000 dead. On the other hand, strange and terrifying times may have just begun.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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