Are the vaccines responsible for 300,000+ deaths?
Interesting & simple analysis suggests it is likely
[Update: ES just posted this amazing animation of this data. It couldn’t be more clear that the deaths increase after the rollout of the vaccine… AND are more frequent in the high-vaccination rate counties.]
The Ethical Skeptic (ES) is worth following on Twitter.1 Many times, his data are hard to parse - and he appears to pride himself on not spoon feeding his results. (To me, this usually feels more like not explaining it all, but that is likely just my own ignorance and stupidity.) I will admit that there have been many occasions when his tweets have felt important, but I really didn’t understand them well enough to describe the results to someone else (and that is my gold standard for really understanding something).
This time though, ES made a chart (below) simple enough that even I could understand - and the implications could be staggering.
Like many, ES is trying to get a handle on the all-cause mortality of vaccinated versus unvaccinated. Because the CDC (who definitely has this data) and the NHS in the UK (who also definitely has this data) will not supply it - we are left with inferences and associational data.
What he did was simple: he compared compared non-COVID excess mortality to the vaccination rate.
He did this county-by-county for every area that reported the data (what he could find accounts for more than 96% of the US population - and deaths).
Note that he uses per capita rates to control for different sizes/populations.
He not only examined the 32 weeks following the rollout of the mRNA shots, he also examined the 32 weeks before the shots (as a control - something the CDC studies rarely do).
Here is his chart.
The higher, diagonal line shows a clear correlation between increasing percent population vaccinated (X-axis) and excess non-COVID deaths per 100,000 people (Y-axis).
In fact this correlation has a ridiculously small p value (p = 0.000000000000000034) and describes over 75% of all of these excess deaths.
The tiny p value means that it is very (very, very) unlikely that this association between vaccination rate and deaths is random or a statistical anomaly. It is very likely that this line it accurately summarizes the data
In addition, ES has calculated the total excess non-COVID deaths for these 32 weeks at over 400,000 people! This is not a small number.
One way to try to approach what this data means is to consider all the ways that the pandemic may kill someone.
ES has already accounted for COVID deaths (which as we all know are likely inflated due to the ‘with’ vs ‘from’ definition) - so these are deaths above and beyond those who died directly from the disease.
So what is left? Lots of things.
For example, increased deaths from undiagnosed cancers and other diseases that were too advanced to respond to treatment when people finally got in to a doctor’s office after the lockdowns. It could be long-term issues with COVID itself - like damage to the heart or lungs that eventually caused someone’s death, but not attributable to an active c19 infection. It could be the consequence of poor habits formed during the lockdowns.
Or, it could be a result of the poorly tested mRNA shots that were given to millions of Americans.
Again, this data strongly suggests that 77% of all of these extra deaths are correlated to taking the shot.
Not lockdowns.
Not delayed care.
Not long COVID.
Strengthening this argument is his second line: an identical analysis looking at the 32 weeks before vaccine rollout.
This time look at the (faint) horizontal line near the bottom of the graph. The fact that it is horizontal means that there was no difference in non-COVID excess deaths before the mRNA shots made their appearance.
There is some excess death shown in these ‘before’ weeks - likely caused by some of the possibilities I listed earlier: delayed care, COVID sequelae, etc. However, there is absolutely zero correlation between those ‘before rollout’ deaths and vaccination rates later.
While not perfect, this indicates strongly that it is not just some artifact of these populations (e.g., certain counties just had more unhealthy people).
The only ‘perfect’ comparison would be to look at individuals with and without the vaccine and compare their excess death rates (remember that is the data the CDC will not release).
Summary:
A comparison of deaths and vaccination rates strongly suggests that the mRNA shots may be responsible for the early deaths of 308,000 Americans in the 8 months following vaccine rollout.
Who knows how many more since then?
Associations and correlations are ok, but…
We need the real data.
Release the data CDC!
I have referenced ES several times in my posts before. Perhaps most memorably in my Biosolids post (which posited that COVID might be spread in liquid fertilizer containing human waste).
Nice! ES just added an animation of this graph showing the relationship over time. You can see the excess death line jump upwards right after the vaccine starts its rollout: https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/1593045492644327424
The Pfizer RCT says 24%+ deaths in the vaccine arm. Is it really such a shock that increases in all-cause mortality in countries and counties with the highest vaccine uptake are around 20-30%?