There was an unexpected 40% increase in ‘all cause deaths’ in 2021 | Hacker News Reader

There was an unexpected 40% increase in ‘all cause deaths’ in 2021

kusi.com

48 pointsJohnWhigham55 comments

Could this just be that people didn't generally go to doctors in 2020 so this is really 2020 and 2021?

Funny how everything but the obvious big change is a conspiracy theory.

It is all but obvious. This data doesn’t prove anything, so why should it be accepted that it’s the vaccines?

That was predicted to happen back in 2020, when hospitals had to postpone cancer surgeries and the likes.

Unfortunately, the "whistleblowers" make no attempts at understanding statistics, much less explaining them, and just want to blame it all on vaccines. Please donate to their cause, because their livelihoods depend on finding a secret hidden scoop in publicly available data, and to everyone's surprise they did! What a coincidence.

I was in the process of recovering from some serious medical issues when I lost access to my doctors from covid. It was a scary set of months. Thankfully the last attempt at medication, after 3 years of failures, actually helped with out extreme side effects. If covid had been a month earlier I would have died. As it is I had to start replacing prescription blood thinners medications with OTC meds. Since appointments were so hard to get.

Actual covid was scary and upped my clotting and stroke problems for a good six months.

How much of these deaths are caused by COVID and how much are caused by anti-COVID measures (economical and emotional stress, isolation, depression)?

The reality is both. We have largely focused on mitigating COVID deaths but we need to address the devastation caused from anti-COVID measures because despite it being largely underreported and understated, the impact is there and we all feel and see it.

We can look at the effect of anti-COVID measures by examining regions with small amounts of COVID but large amounts of anti-COVID measures like Australia and New Zealand. You can even compare between Australian states like Victoria that had 6 lockdowns and WA that had virtually none.

The result is that all cause mortality went down, largely due to elimination of respiratory viruses but also due to a slight decrease in car accidents. Suicide rates actually went down, not up and there was a uptick in self-reported mental illness and distress but that uptick was far smaller than the later uptick when COVID became widespread. The economy took a hit but a far smaller hit than countries that that let COVID rip.

The effects of lockdowns are real and measurable and they are bad but far, far less bad than COVID itself.

I don’t think that can be generalized and taken as a sample. Australia, in terms of density of population and culture, might as well be another planet in comparison with say, Italy, or Spain. The truth is, all this conclusions can only be assumptions, because the amount of variables polluting any stat we’re trying to use are too large to properly control and account for.

why is this low quality article with no sources from a news station with a VERY clear slant being considered? At least post the actual report they are referring to.

The 2021 data was taken offline.

so they are making very strong statements that they can't even back up? Seems like something that should be avoided by news outlets.

The whistleblowers reported on data that was real. After they blew the whistle the data was taken offline. Seems like worthy reporting to me.

This report raises so many red flags it looks like a Chinese Communist Party congress.

To begin with, they conflate two different reports. The interviewed doctor is using words as "bombshell report" to describe statistical uncorrelated analysis. They claim the report comes from unspecified military doctors.

Then I stopped watching. I'm all for researching anomalies like these, but boy, there's also no way to understand how many of the people in these stats were vaccinated or not!

I call BS, because if it wasn't there would be no reason to dress this up this way.

In the United States, excess deaths increased 22.9% between March 1, 2020, and Jan. 2, 2021, an increase that “far exceeds annual increases observed in recent years” of 2.5% or less, data in JAMA show. In other words, this trend pre-dates mass vaccination campaigns that barely got started mid December 2020.

https://www.healio.com/news/primary-care/20210402/allcause-m...

We know that:

1. A SARSCov2 infection can have all kinds of side effects affecting you even if you have a seemingly asymptotic infection, or post infection. Many of which have the chance to increase the chance of death through other causes.

2. An infection has the chance to weaken your immune system increasing your risk of death due to other reasons

3. People didn't took care (or couldn't) of other health issues as a side effect of the pandemic, fare and the pandemic measurements, increasing risk of death again by a small bit.

This is also not limited to medical death, for example non COVID specific: Sickness can cause you to have reduced reaction time or concentration which slightly increases you risk of dying by e.g. an car accident (if you drive).

...

So what I'm trying to say is, I would say a non-small "all cause deaths" increase is expected, even if we would have had side effect free vaccines.

I.e. it's not a factual good basis for creating a conspiracy theory on.

Which doesn't mean that some increase might not be from vaccines, noting is perfect.

But most of it should be due to implicit side effects from covid, the pandemic, fare, delayed operations/healthcare etc.

Most of these can be from Covid / any other virus. For instance Bell's Palsy. I know 2 people who I went to school with who got it after having Covid (they were vaccinated too). Doctors didn't seem surprised at all.

The interesting one is Miscarriages, Female infertility. That might/probably related to stress from pandemic in general / lockdowns / previous kids being at home trying to teach them and do your job too. Also some viral infections are associated with miscarriages

Neurologic abnormalities - I still have smell distortion(not loss but certain distorted smells). I went to ENT and he's seen so much of it just in my town, so probably related to Covid for most people.

Congenital malformations - This is a thing with the Flu so probably coronaviruses too.

How can you be sure it was from COVID and not the vaccine?

I can't. Just posting my thoughts

Probably, because it also affects non vaccinated people which had covid?

But I don't have any medical data in either direction.

Vaccines had / have controlled groups where an increase in mortality can be observed. We don't have anywhere near that ability to track long-term outcomes of COVID.

>Vaccines had / have controlled groups where an increase in mortality can be observed.

Sadly this was not the case. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/19/9691430...

Why would the vaccine have any side effect that COVID itself doesn't also have?

one of the few reasons I can think of is allergic reactions to the ingredients, but that is very rare and fairly avoidable.

and generally short term and as such fairly well observable

Vaccine ingredients which stay in the body for a long time could cause long term effects but as far as I know the current wide spread vaccines do not have that.

Here is an alternative perspective:

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/antivaxxers-misuse-the-defe...

One good tidbit from that site is that cancers take years to develop so it is hard to believe that there was a multi 100% uptick in cancer diagnoses last year.

I can’t believe there is going to be a serious conversation that this is vaccine caused vs. virus caused when we know the virus attacks many of these systems and were getting data back now that 12 month post infection has caused massive cardiac problems for unvaccinated.

By all means, prove it out…but it’s a complete delusion to start with the shot vs. the virus.

Welcome to the 21st century. It’s a lot like the 19th.

It is unlikely to be the vaccine. This is probably some combination of hospital overload with a small dose of the lock-downs, business closures and mass firing of workers.

When you say "unlikely," do you mean according to your Bayesian priors or according to an analysis you'd like to share with us?

(not original commenter) according to all the best data we have on the safety profiles of the vaccines, and the data we have on covid, it would make much more sense for it to be covid. This is on the front page right now:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00403-0

You will never convince the people that want it to be the vaccine. Do I know that the vaccine could possibly have side effects? sure, maybe, highly unlikely though. These articles on questionable sites like most of the right wing pundit machine, I just have lots of experience with, and they are quick to insight fear and slow to correct their information as new information comes out.

I'm skeptical that there's such a thing as "best data" when clinical trials were intentionally rushed.

Don't misunderstand me, I supported and continue to support Operation Warp Speed and I'm glad we got a vaccine quickly. But let's not now pretend that we have the same kind of data fidelity we normally get with more carefully vetted vaccines.

nothing about the trials were "rushed" in a way that compromised quality. Please stop parroting that talking point.

https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/were-the-covid-19-vaccines...

I'm not parroting a talking point, and personal attacks are inappropriate.

None of the assertions on the propaganda page you linked changes the simple and indisputable fact that it's impossible to know what effects something will have in a longer timeline unless your study covers a longer timeline.

Science has no room for claims of being psychic.

EDIT: To be clear, the page is propaganda because it (a) is intended to influence public opinion and (b) is clearly dishonest, in that the concern is about the abbreviated clinical trials, but none of the explanations address the length of clinical trials.

from one parroted talking point to another... not surprising considering your use of the word "propaganda".

No vaccine has ever had adverse reactions that don't show up for over a year. There isn't even a mechanism through which that is possible as the components of the vaccines are all broken down and eliminated by the body in weeks.

At what timeline would be be satisfied that there are no long term effects and what would that be based on?

Let me know when you can engage without making personal attacks. I'm interested in discussing the science and policy, not having a flamewar.

> No vaccine has ever had adverse reactions that don't show up for over a year.

The OP is about adverse events in a timeline less than a year from the availability of the vaccines. Whether there's any link is an open question.

> There isn't even a mechanism through which that is possible

That is patently false. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1116914/

> That is patently false. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1116914/

are you serious? your evidence is an article from 1999 written by an anti-vaxxer[1] that references a study he funded? Just reading that article you can tell by the language that the guy clearly has a narrative he is pushing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Bart_Classen

> "Whether there's any link is an open question."

The link has to be shown to be causal and we have a lot of data (more than any other vaccines in history) that is showing the vaccines to be very safe. If all you have is narratives spun around raw data that was never meant to show causality, then you don't have an argument. Provide high quality, peer reviewed research.

> "That is patently false."

Describe the mechanism

>nothing about the trials were "rushed" in a way that compromised quality.

Wouldn't most people say eliminating the control group in a study is bad for analysis? https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/19/9691430...

Can you share a study showing where Covid is responsible for such rises in this particular age bracket? As far as I understand, 18-49 yr olds are not a high risk group for covid, so is it not worth properly investigating the vaccines and other stress factors (lockdowns etc)?

It is only delusional to start with something outside Covid if the data on Covid reflects the 40% clearly already.

> As far as I understand, 18-49 yr olds are not a high risk group for covid

When people say things like "not a high risk group for covid" it's shorthand for "not at immediate risk of serious respiratory covid symptoms should they contract the virus." It doesn't say anything about longer-term impacts (nor, confusingly for some people I guess, transmission); for that you need, well, studies like this. (But without the antivax scam noise around it.)

It's an interesting thing though that I often see these two views provided simultaneously:

> Long Covid symptoms are most likely caused by Covid (even if barely symptomatic from the initial infection! - example: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/health/long-covid-asympto...).

> Vaccine side effects are most likely not the vaccine, but stress, hospital restrictions, lockdowns, prior infections, less exercise, bad diet, etc.

Not really a consistent baseline or set of controls there.

> "Vaccine side effects are most likely not the vaccine"

Nobody says this. Vaccine side effects are of course the vaccine, by definition. Stop obfuscating what you really mean, which is "an enormously broad range of symptoms present in people who took the vaccine, and also many who did not, which no serious medical professional will attribute completely to a vaccination."

But even if I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you mean that: It's perfectly consistent if you believe that COVID is poorly-understood and mutating, and the vaccines are well-understood and consistent over time. Which are both true.

The control part is an interesting problem. If everyone gets vaccinated we have no control group. Which would be helpful for long term comparisons on outcomes.

Correct, we don’t know long term effects of Covid, but conversely we don’t know the long term effects of the vaccines either.

Odd that no matter what side of that coin people argue, they forget it applies equally to the other side too.

"Risk" has been almost exclusively defined in terms of hospitalization / death throughout the pandemic. Long term effects are poorly understood and not considered in risk calculations.

This. I cannot believe how myopic we have been. A lot of people are going to carry a lot of damage didn’t see fit to include it as a metric.

I don’t have under 65 evidence, but this study released recently for 65+ should make everyone question what it looks like to live with this virus going forward.

https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj-2021-068414

We know statistically that covid scare off a lot of pepole and delayed lots of treatments of others. We know the medical numbers are going to be awful as they come in because preventive care is import and saves lives, and lots of people didn't get that during the pandemic. But increases of 300% or 400% in bunches of areas? Does not pass the smell test, increases that large would have been obvious even during the epidemic. This article was just fear mongering.

Some addition sources:

[0] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/31/instagram-...

[1] https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/covid-pa...

[2] https://rumble.com/vt62y6-covid-19-a-second-opinion.html

[3] https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-whistleblowers-share...

[4] https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-the-pentagons-respon...

[5] https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13987

Either there was an unusual underreporting error for 5 years that went unnoticed and is yet to be explained or the spike is legitimate and is being covered up because it's inconvenient.

Either way, very suspect.

The database has been taken down to adjust the data.

wow some really low quality and biased sources to back up a low quality and biased source...

This is literally just a rehashing of VAERS fear-mongering

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/antivaxxers-misuse-the-defe...

I agree but I am not finding any coverage on mainstream corporate media. 15 years ago I would use that as evidence against the story. In today's media climate not so much.

could it be because drawing conclusions from low quality, raw data like VAERS and the DoD database is not good journalism? Assuming correlations is not something quality news outlets should be doing

How is reporting on an "unexpected 40% increase in ‘all cause deaths’ in 2021" from an actual government dataset NOT journalism?

The DoD at the very least admitted there is a data corruption issue that went unnoticed for 5 years!

Is your position that the citizenry should not expect a standard of quality for government medical data?

Had nobody reported on it would the error have persisted if that is indeed the case?

Without coverage there is no way of even asking these questions let alone answering them.

I don't think it's accurate to say that the OP or your sources are just "reporting on an "unexpected 40% increase in ‘all cause deaths’ in 2021" from an actual government dataset". All the links are clearly coming to specific conclusions (which align with the bias of the source) that could not be reasonably made considering the data they are referring to. This is on top of the highly charged language and providing no link to the source they are making their claims based on.

I am all for reporting on possible errors in data, but what is going on here is much more than that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com