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Comment by yojo | Hacker News Reader

Excess deaths are widely considered to be “from Covid” right now. It is possible there’s something else going on, but as the parent said, the numbers you should care about when making a vaccine decision are the mortality rate of the vaccinated vs the unvaccinated.

Unvaccinated people are dying at a much higher rate. If your biggest concern is not dying, you should be vaccinated.

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Most of the excess deaths are not covid but attributed from effects of lockdown (drug use, untreated cancers).

Then we cannot attribute them to the vaccine, which was the original point.

And, likewise, you cannot NOT attribute them to the vaccine. Inconclusive data is not to be either used as a calibrated measure nor to be simply ignored.

The excess deaths are quite possibly attributable to both the virus and the vaccines if, as one plausible but very unproven example, they're due to inflammation and/or micro-clotting caused by the spike protein. But in an environment where everyone will be exposed to the actual virus eventually, with uncontrolled initial exposures, it comes down to whether the benefit of getting vaccinated is worth the risk. The data I've seen says that it is.

I micro clot. From before Covid. Factor 5. Will have stroke symptoms in 2 days of missing a blood thinner dose.

When I got Covid. I had to double blood thinner dosage for six month to not have symptoms.

Amazing how similar long Covid and my micro clotting from Factor 5 are.

I've not heard this, it is interesting. Do you have information on source/methods/study groups etc?

I was going through serious medical issues when I lost access to my doctors from Covid.

I got lucky in that the 20th medication they tried just before lockdown ended up working. Would most likely probably be dead if things had shut down a month earlier.

Tons of people in support forums were in a panic over lost access. Needed testing / procedure.

Not fun when brain is swelling and doctors say they can’t see you.

I have loved ones that suffered similarly. I do not doubt there were excess morbidity/mortality from restrictions. I'm not doubting, but there is a ton of nuance in epidemiological data like this and I'm wondering about things like demographic cuts and magnitudes of numbers which are necessary to understand the statement.

Exactly I assumed everybody knew this. A lot of important surgery .. got postponed by hospitals because of lock-down.

But it's a valid concern to know if the vaccinated are dying at a higher rate than pre-2020, and if so, is that attributable to the vaccine.

There's no brushing off this concern, it's vitally important to get this information.

There are the CDC stats attached to a sibling comment.

There are large crowds that took 2 doses in pandemic period (getting vaccinated properly back at the time) but not receiving boosters.

It would be easy to track:

- 2 dose, no other booster

- all boosters

- no vaccine

and readjust results considering age and other bias etc.

If all booster people have excess deaths, than "not from Covid" ? If 2 dose people excess deaths < all boosted people, than something about vaccine? No vaccine could be control.

The unvaccinated have been receiving lower quality of care. The symptomatic have Been diagnosed without PCR accuracy. The data being collected is bad. Let's not treat it as good data, and see assumptions such as this for what they are, which falls in the "not good data" category.

> Excess deaths are widely considered to be “from Covid”

Considered by whom? The funny thing is that there was no non-covid excess mortality in 2020, that stated on 2021, which is the same time the v{censored} started.

> Unvaccinated people are dying at a much higher rate.

Again, where did you see that?

There are definitely excess deaths reported starting in 2020. Started in March. See the chart at the bottom of this page: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

And here’s the total death rate by vaccination status: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-co...

I assume you’ll switch to some CDC conspiracy nonsense at this point, in which case we are done here.

Do you mean “Weekly number of deaths (from all causes)?” If so that is such a junk chart I don’t see how it supports either claim. The X axis label is absolute garbage. It’s completely unclear where the new year begins. A naive reading (counting back from 2022) has the excess deaths starting in 2019!

You're conflating total excess deaths for _all_ vax statuses (in your first link) against COVID death rates by vax status (with your second link).

Neither is what the GP is talking about.

Insurance companies have already begun publishing reports indicating that excess mortality rates are inversely related to vaccine adoption (i.e. higher excess mortality in states with lower vaccination rates).

Source?

Apologies, as it's a PDF. I don't have another version of it available.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22275411-group-life-...

Thanks. Very noisy data, so I'd say far from conclusive, particularly given the confounding variables that differ between states. Still, the best attempt I've seen to actually look into this issue.

Countries like the UK have national vaccination databases. They could easily put this issue to rest with a study of excess deaths by vaccination status, controlling for age/health/etc., except they conspicuously have chosen not to.

It's definitely not a scientific study of the data, but those will follow in years to come by respective national and international bodies I assume.

Starts on page 33, for any one else curious at looking. Quite interesting to see what appears to be their hazard ratio relative to the state population: their members have a much higher excess death rate, and their members show minimal correlation to the vaccine rate of the state they are in—presumably reflecting that older, sicker, or more health-conscious people opt in more often to buying health care plans?

> Again, where did you see that?

https://doh.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2022-02/421-010-Cases...

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