But one thing is very clear: the powers that be are extremely uninterested in talking about the problem, which in aggregate is behind a similar number of deaths as the COVID-19 virus itself. 

An excellent article by @toby00green in @PerspectiveMags provides a balanced discussion of an under-acknowledged catastrophe -- continuing & catastrophic excess deaths among young people since the pandemic's end. But not in Sweden or Mexico.https://t.co/jMASPfmRqK

— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) February 22, 2024

There are lots of theories about what is behind the dramatic excess death numbers, but not one of them is alone capable of explaining the massive numbers we are seeing by itself. Either there is some other factor we haven't thought of, or some combination of the main culprits we have identified is necessary to explain what is happening.

Before I get into the theories and why none is THE answer to the mystery, let's talk about the biggest mystery: the rise in excess deaths is exactly where you would NOT expect it to be. Younger people are keeling over unexpectedly, not the older and infirm. Older people are doing just fine in the post-COVID world, although some of that is because a large number of people who would be dying now already did during the pandemic. 

While every early death is tragic, the number of "life-years" being lost in the post-pandemic excess deaths is much higher than during the actual COVID emergency. Somebody dying at 85 is unfortunate; somebody dying at 22 is an order of magnitude worse. 

Ever since the World Health Organisation declared the Covid-19 pandemic over in May last year, the world has moved on. Yet people continue to die in much higher numbers than before 2020. And while covid mortality mainly impacted older people, it is younger people who are now dying disproportionately. The news cycle hasn’t said much about this, even though, of course, these unexpected deaths are no less tragic than those of the pandemic.

Why the silence? One factor may be that, historically, pandemic planning factored in excess deaths as part of the pandemic phase. That they would continue for several years wasn’t part of official plans, although according to Lucy Easthope – visiting professor at the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath, and author of the bestselling book on disaster recovery When the Dust Settles – it was predictable. As she put it in an interview in September 2020: “For every Covid-19 death, we would estimate another four deaths over two to five years… you see extra deaths for domestic violence and obstetrics, delayed or missed oncology diagnoses, no admission to A&E, sepsis, suicide.”

If it saves one life...That was the reasoning behind so many things we did during the pandemic, completely ignoring the secondary effects of our choices. Or, should I say, choices made by people in power? Few of us had any say in it, and the people who did now admit that they never considered the secondary consequences of their decisions. 

Francis Collins, former director of NIH, who played a key role in endorsing US lockdown policy, admits far too late that he disregarded collateral harms of pandemic policy. That approach was inexcusable & many experts warned against it from early 2020.

pic.twitter.com/sbSRIDnkAO

— David Thunder (@davidjthunder) December 28, 2023

Clearly, many of the excess deaths that have occurred since the pandemic was declared over come from the exceptionally shortsighted decisions made in Washington. Many of those decisions were made with good intentions, and many with really bad intentions (censorship of dissenting opinions, especially on the lab leak theory is just one example of an unforgivable act). But in public health one of the first things taught is that you have to weigh the consequences of your actions, and they failed to even try. 

Study finds up to 134,395 cancer cases went undetected during COVID restrictionshttps://t.co/As53q7KkKP pic.twitter.com/2DPMGU4q6f

— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) February 22, 2024

But not all excess deaths can be explained by all the non-pharmacological interventions like lockdowns, limiting hospitals and doctors to emergency care, closing schools, etc. Lots can be, but not all. 

Sick societies produce death, and the mass fatalities associated with a pandemic were always liable to produce subsequent waves of ill health. In an interview for this article, Easthope told me: “We’d stopped seeing death in younger people because good health intervention stopped it. Now that health services are overstretched, those deaths aren’t being prevented.” And with so many people experiencing private grief, the increase in deaths is no longer “news”.

In the digital era, however, this phenomenon has taken on a life of its own. In the face of public silence, thickets of information and misinformation abound on the internet. So it’s best to start with the most unvarnished facts of all: the numbers of deaths. Mortality is far higher than used to be normal. In October, the BBC reported that Scotland’s winter death toll in 2022-23 was the highest for 30 years. And things are not improving.

Covid on its own cannot explain the current situation

According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics’ data (rounded to the nearest thousand), in 2023 581,000 people died in the UK. This was 4.5 per cent below the figure for 2020, the first year of the pandemic, when 607,000 people passed away, and only 2,000 fewer than died in 2021 (the year of the second wave and Omicron). In 2019, for comparison, 517,000 people died. This data is stark: even accounting for demographic changes and population growth, the number of deaths in 2023 in the UK was similar to 2020, virtually the same as in 2021, and 12.5 per cent above 2019 levels.

Think about that. The number of deaths in the UK are running at the same level as during the COVID pandemic, year after year after year, and the deaths are no longer being caused by COVID. 

Remember those running death totals during the pandemic? If you did the same for excess deaths today, the numbers would be similar...but repeating each year, so far. 

Yet there is silence now. Nobody in power seems to care, and they sure as hell aren't talking about why it's happening. 

Beyond the overall mortality figures, excess mortality estimates produced by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are alarming. Canada saw two weeks in the middle of 2023 where the excess death rate was measured at over 30 per cent. France and the Netherlands have each seen weeks with excess deaths of over 50 per cent. Meanwhile, European Union data for October 2023 shows that excess deaths in Cyprus, Finland, the Netherlands, and Ireland were all over 15 per cent: Finland’s was 19.8 per cent, while all four countries had also seen rates over ten per cent in the previous month. Mortality thus remains a problem almost as severe as it was during the pandemic.

One industry which has taken note of this trend is insurance. With premiums and payouts linked to mortality trends, insurance executives need to be up to date. The industry magazine Insurance News reported last October that mortality has increased by about seven per cent since before covid. In contrast to the covid era, the figures are much higher in younger than in older people. A report from the American Society of Actuaries Research Institute from November 2023 showed that in the second quarter of 2023, excess deaths in the US were running at 26 per cent in the 35-44 age bracket, and at 15-26 per cent for all ages up to 55. However, mortality was more or less as expected in older age brackets.

This is nothing short of a crisis. 

Now, before you point your finger at the jab--and I am convinced that it is one of the factors involved--you need to confront the fact that excess deaths are not evenly distributed in a way that easily correlates with the percentage of the population who took it. There are anomalies, in particular Sweden, which doesn't have massive increases in deaths post-pandemic. It is an outlier in Western Europe, and its outcomes were inferior to those in some Eastern European countries. 

The pattern is weird. 

First, it’s important to assess the causes of these premature deaths. Cardiovascular issues are significant. In June last year, the British Heart Foundation said that since 2020 there had been 100,000 excess deaths in England from cardiac issues. In December, the Daily Mail reported a notable increase in deaths from heart attacks among young people. In July, meanwhile, doctors from Los Angeles reported a 29% jump in heart attacks among those aged 25-44 from 2020 to 2021.

Another crucial element is that there are wide regional variations. European Union data shows that while there were significant excess deaths in western Europe late in 2023, the opposite holds true in eastern Europe: countries such as Bulgaria, Lithuania and Romania are seeing between four and ten per cent fewer deaths than expected. Meanwhile, deaths in Mexico returned to their pre-pandemic levels in 2022.

All this indicates that a wide range of factors must be considered. However, polarised approaches to the pandemic are often reproduced in online debate. Those who have systematically focused on the harms caused by the covid virus tend to attribute the continuing high mortality to virus impacts on the cardiovascular system. Research published in February 2023 suggested that covid appreciably increased risks of cardiovascular disease, and scientists at Johns Hopkins University have also claimed that infection from covid can damage the heart.

The disease itself can't be the explanation because most countries where the numbers exist saw similar rates of infection yet have dramatically different post-pandemic death rates. If the virus was the cause, the numbers would be consistent. Unless you think there is a massive ethnic or regional variation in how the disease impacts health, which seems implausible. 

Not just seems. It is implausible. After all, can you explain why Sweden and Norway have very different rates of excess deaths by referring to ethnicity or regional variations? I can't. 

There is also data coming out that the attribution of increased cardiovascular disease to the virus is overblown. And given what we know about the incidence of cardiac problems caused by the jab, it is likely that many cases of cardiac problems are linked to that, not COVID itself. 

So what about the jab itself? That is an obvious culprit, and I believe it explains a fair amount of the problems, especially given the increasing amount of evidence that it really does cause all sorts of awful diseases. I wrote about one study this week that proved it beyond much doubt. 

Well, there is a problem: Sweden. It is always Sweden, isn't it?

Nevertheless, Sweden’s low excess death rates are a strong argument against the vaccine hypothesis, as it has one of Europe’s highest covid vaccination rates. Yet, while debates continue to rage as to whether more athletes than normal are suffering cardiac arrests – a claim often made by those who blame the vaccine for the mortality rates – the starkest fact is clear: significant numbers of younger people are dying much earlier than they should be, in many countries, whether athletes or not.

Sweden has been a fly in the ointment for those of us who believe that the jab is the major culprit. If Sweden, which is very highly vaccinated, isn't seeing a wave of excess deaths, then could the vaccine explain this rise? 

Sweden is one of the best examples for why the lockdowns were a disaster, and also one of the best pieces of evidence that the vaccines have been less damaging than many of us suppose. 

In short: I want to know more about Sweden, and I definitely want a lot more honest scientists looking into this problem. 

Still, no more vaccines for me!