COVID-19, Not Vaccines, Behind 40% Rise in US Working-Age Deaths

 Adam Larson/Caustic Logic

February 15, 2022

small edits 2/16, adds 2/21

Note 2/21: I'm adding a graphic below and some other notes via comments.

Sorry, but after a month plus of no posts at all, and no addition even to valuable discussions/monologues that continue in comments under my "recent" posts (sorry Andrew, anyone else - I did DO have things to say but still haven't) ... with stories I follow still developing some and ones I could follow brewing (notably some false-flag or maybe false-false-flag massacre-plan marketing in the former Ukraine) ... here instead is one more on COVID-19 massacre anti-marketing. People keep not getting it and that keeps driving me.  

The CEO of the OneAmerica insurance company, Mr. Scott Davidson, recently disclosed that in Indiana at least, mortality in the broad 18-64 age group was 40 percent higher during the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2021 than during pre-pandemic levels and the whole nation sees a similar problem. And - as told - these deaths are not and cannot be attributed to COVID-19 and the SARS-COV2 virus that causes it. The logical guess was the vaccines used to fight the virus were to blame. Anti-vaxxers and virus apologists knew that all along and heralded this proof. Some examples:

David Rufful at Analyzing America was unsurprised by "Bombshell Report: Deaths Are Up 40% For People Aged 18 to 64 – And It’s Not From Covid." 

The ever-confident "Tyler Durden" at Zero Hedge spread the news that "Ex-Blackrock Fund Manager Discovers Disturbing Trends In Mortality" As he put it, "younger, working-age people began dying in greater numbers as vaccine mandates hit" - "Davison noted that the majority of deaths are not classified as due to Covid-19." - "The spike in younger deaths peaked in Q3 2021 when Covid deaths were extremely low (but rising into the end of September)" - 

Another "free thinker and oracle" - Edward Dowd, who was heavily cited by "Tyler Durden" - assured his readers "it’s clear as day what changed in second half of 2021. Variants less virulent than original but we had mandates & boosters hitting. This is a total shit show to behold." 

Here's one person saying these extra deaths came "w/ out any mention of Covid on death certificate." A "Daily Expose" even extrapolated that "OneAmerica Life Insurance data confirms Covid-19 Vaccinated 18 to 64-year-olds are 50% more likely to die than Unvaccinated people." Didn't check how they pretended to prove that. 

As we approach the marks of one million confirmed covid deaths in the US (that being an undercount on balance), these issues matter enough to really figure out. I had a try. Mainly I looked at an explanation of this issue by Gilbert G. Berdine, M.D with source links and charts - https://www.citizensjournal.us/all-cause-mortality-in-the-united-states-during-2021/

Dr. Berdine read Davidson as saying "most" of these excess deaths "were not attributed to Covid," and he cites some reasoning to support that, including how the vaccine might explain elevated cardiac deaths, how few respiratory deaths there are to be explained by COVID, and how the age groups seem inconsistent with that. He's careful not to declare the vaccine is to blame, but clearly suspects it and leads his readers - most of them, I'd bet - to firmly believe it.

"Clearly there is a very significant above average number of deaths across the US that cannot be attributed to Covid," Berdine writes. But as I'll show, they CAN be and mainly ARE attributed to covid! The virus apologists got it wrong, as usual. What they've always known has always been wrong, and all their proof they keep getting handed is always faulty. 

As I'll show, these elevated deaths were probably caused almost entirely by the virus, and like the experts say, the vaccine served mainly to limit the deaths. It does also add to the deaths, as well as causing other problems, but on a relatively small scale. I'm not well-versed here, but someone recently tried to shock me with VAERS figures suggesting 39,000 deaths to date OF/WITH/following on vaccination. That sounds scary, but it's a global number, and compared to 4.8 BILLION people vaccinated, most of them more than once ... it means about 0.03% of vaccine recipients (3 in every 10,000) report an adverse event. That probably overstates and understates the true scale, and I've no idea which one it does more of on balance. But by this, some 0.0008% of vaccine recipients have died perhaps from one or another of their vaccinations. That percent sign has the correct number of zeros between it and the decimal point. That's 8 in every one million people. A million is a bigger number than you think, by the way. 

If the same rate is applied to 252 million people vaccinated in the US, we'd expect about 2,000 vaccine deaths to date, IF that alarming data was correct. Even if those were all aged 18-64, 2,000 extra deaths spread out over half a year could hardly be read as a 40% increase over the usual, especially after wrongly excluding covid from the picture, when it seems to be pretty much the whole picture.

Source material: Cited by Dr. Berdine: https://insurance-forums.com/life-insurance/oneamerica-ceo-says-death-rates-among-working-age-people-up-40/ relating a Dec. 30, 2021 virtual news conference sponsored by the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce and the Indiana Hospital Association, and a video of that sub-glamorous event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AOHrZHG5L0. The participants in this virtual conference speak of recent crisis in their hospitals from rampant covid infections, saying 90% of these problematic patients are unvaccinated. Delayed care is also an increasing problem. These delays plus exhaustion and strain across the medical community are mainly blamed on the covid-glutted hospitals. They all urge wider vaccination to save lives, knowing they will have heard contrary views around.

But what about the juicy bit where one reveals the vaccines themselves were killing the most people? 

OneAmerica CEO Scott Davidson appears at 23:47, like the others, agreeing with the rest on the direness of the situation and the need for widespread vaccination. Indeed, he says age18-64 deaths are up 40% among cases they're involved with, and a similar situation prevailed everywhere. As accurately reported at insurance forums, he said: 

"What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be covid on the death certificate but deaths are up in just huge, huge numbers." 

Emphasis mine to make the point what he actually said. He blames "the pandemic" which includes a virus and countermeasures, so that's vague. The Insurance forum piece didn't interpret his wording, whereas Berdine and the others actively misread it. WFYI got Davidson's message right: "He said the data shows COVID deaths are greatly understated among working age Americans." He said the official covid numbers "understate" the problem. They do state the problem because the problem is covid, and they measure it, just not completely. The rest of the problem, by inference, is more of the same - a lot of uncounted covid deaths. To infer they're mainly from vaccines is unfounded to start, and ludicrous in light of the details I'll relate below. 

And it seems his message was correct too. This happening in the US, UK, elsewhere and globally is a common theme in my covid posts here. It'll come up again below.

Side-note: Anti-vaxxers cite Davidson's claim that a 10% increase in age 18-64 deaths would be a 1 in 200 year catastrophe, and the vaccine, they guess, is killing on some amazing, epic scale 4x that, so like once in a millennium or something. That sounds like nonsense, FWIW.  We see 4x worse now and saw worse yet just 100 years ago with the 1918 "Spanish flu." Is that anomalous? How many 200-year cycles is he drawing on here? Just drop it, folks. Don't dress up your misreading with fake drama. Just correct the misreading.

Some quick math here, citing CDC data: weekly provisional count by cause, as I usually cite, for 2020-2022: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Provisional-Counts-of-Deaths-by-State-and-S/muzy-jte6/data

and for 2014-2019: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Counts-of-Deaths-by-State-and-Select-Causes/3yf8-kanr/data

By-age data available here, but I didn't try crunching these more complex numbers relative to other numbers I'd have to look up, except to compare 2021's week 35 to the same in 2018 and 2019 (see below).  https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Counts-of-Deaths-by-Jurisdiction-and-Age/y5bj-9g5w

Pre-pandemic levels: checking the second half of 2018 and 2019 (since the latter's q4 included some early covid deaths that distorted the numbers):  average natural causes deaths per week, 2018: ~49,000 (range: ~46-51,000), 2019: ~50,000 (range 47-52,000 - actually past 53,000 but minus some early covid deaths and mimicking 2018's pattern). Pop. 327.1m in 2018 and 329.7m in 2019 = per capita weekly natural cause deaths: 14.98 and 15.17 per100k or 15.07/100k on average.  

2021 saw a total of 1,593,152 natural cause deaths between weeks 27 and 52, of which 232,378 were listed as COVID-19 (U071, Multiple Cause of Death).  Range: ~51-64,000. Weekly average: 61,275.1 n.c. deaths, 8,937.6 confirmed covid (14.6% of all).  Pop: 332.9m (3329 100ks) = weekly per capita n.c. deaths: 18.41/100k = 22.2% up from before, on average of all ages, over 26 weeks. The effect on ages 18-64 will be worse, because covid hits people mainly aged 35 and up and the younger half still don't all realize this. 22% in general for all ages may be twice that high in the 18-64 category. 

When? At the start, week 27 (to July 10), people had been vaccinating like mad for about 5 months, and the week saw: 50,781 n.c. deaths - pretty seasonable, like it had been for months. 1,639 of those deaths - only 3% - were from covid. That's non-glutted. The Delta strain had been spreading a while, and was  just starting to rack up the serious deaths. 

But that seems to be an issue of contention we need to pause over. Dr. Berdine noted elevated deaths even before this: "For the 25-44 age group, total deaths for Weeks 10-24 averaged 38,955 during 2015-2019, but were 54,789 (40.6 percent higher) during 2021." That's mid-March to early July. It's pretty much rhetorical when he asks "What was responsible for these deaths?" He thinks "One cannot plausibly attribute the above average deaths for the 25-44 age group during this time period to Covid" even though we can see what must be that earlier in the red and orange curves in the graphs he cited (precedent - see graphs below). After all, it happened "prior to the Delta surge" which otherwise ... might explain it? Like these non-covid deaths got worst right when covid was worst like at w35 that could mean something? He does grasp that idea? 

And just when was that surge? Delta had been in the US since Feb. 23 at least, it was more contagious (faster-spreading) than other strains, outpacing the others to be the dominant strain in the US by July 3 at least. US deaths from it by July 12 were unclear but not zero. Recall that deaths tend to lag infections by around 2 weeks. The UK was smaller but further along in their outbreak - but also higher vaccinated than most of the US - and had at least 73 deaths and rising by June 14 (BBC). And cases here kept rising. A terrible summer and fall were simply in the cards, due just to this.  

An "oracle" had said "variants less virulent than original" were spreading in Q3 and 4 of 2021. Well, Delta was not less virulent. An early study from Scotland "found the Delta variant was associated with about double the risk of hospitalization compared with the Alpha variant," while other studies would find about the same. AND it was found to be about 2x as transmissible. It was spreading at uncertain levels increasingly over quarters 1, 2, 3 and 4. Younger people tend to pick up and pass on the virus quicker than others, and to report it less. Expect higher cases than known, especially there, and some murky deaths ahead of the known rumble, some of them among heart, age 25-44 and mostly I bet age 35-44. 

Delta was dominant from July forward, and this is when things got bad. A 5-week span from Aug. 22 to Sept. 25 (w34-38) witnessed more than 65,000 natural cause deaths per week. Naturally, the peak of these coincides with the peak of covid deaths in week 35, ending Sept. 4: 66,854 n.c. deaths, of which 15,396 (23%) were listed as covid. "Tyler Durden" had said deaths stayed "extremely low" at this time, only getting worse at the end of September. In some states they were, but nationwide, deaths were declining a bit by then. They worsened again at year's end, as the Indianapolis folks spoke, and more so into 2022 (and worse in low-vax states, and way worse in the low-vax segments of every state). But we can stay focused on Q3 like the virus apologists are. 

Peak elevation at w35 with 66,854 deaths. Expected (W35 2018/19 average, +1.37% pop growth over 18/19 av): 46,709. Deaths were about 43% above expected in this week, all ages, nationwide average. 

Again, ages 18-64 will do worse as things are. I can't check that exact bracket, as all below 25 are lumped together, but adding 25-44 and 45-64 I can get a similar number. W35 deaths age 25-64 combined, 2019: 12,561 (3.81/100k of whole pop.). Same in 2018: 12,486 (3.82/100k). Average: 12,523. There were 21,310 in the same week 2021 (6.4/100k) = a 70.2% increase by absolute numbers, 67.5% adjusted for overall population growth. That makes a 40% average for the 2 quarters sound quite plausible. 

Checking the two sub-groups: 45-64 years, 2018/19 w35 n.c. deaths: 8,911.5 on average. 2021: 16,304 = 83% increase by absolute numbers, a bit lower adjusting for population (and differently for changes in this age group ... not all handy so I'll skip it). I'd expect the younger half to fare better, but ... 25-44 years, 2018/19 av: 2,712. 2021: 5,006 = 84.6% increase. So 40% average for 26 weeks sounds likely enough, and now I'd bet the younger half of this younger half fared better, and - it's a guess but I'll bold it for educational purposes - under-vaccinated people aged 35-44 fared worst of all compared to normal, leading this mysterious mortality trend. 

Why 2 groups at 83 and 84% above normal average to 70% makes no sense. I messed up something in there - age-group deaths are all-cause, and I compared to natural cause only? but either way ... 

Holy crap! Working-aged people 25-64 witnessed, at the worst in week 35, at least 67% more deaths over pre-pandemic levels, and maybe like 70-80% more! And that cannot be linked to the virus, as we hear. But coincidentally, it only got that bad just as the virus was killing the most people. 

From above, all-ages natural cause deaths per capita, per week, rise over pre-pandemic levels: 18.41-15.07=3.34/100k or 22.2% overall increase across these 26 weeks. An average of 8,937.6 fatalities per week were listed as covid. In a population of 332.9m = 2.68/100k covid deaths. Included in that 3.34/100k overall rise, this means 80% of this elevation is from confirmed covid.  Dr. Berdine for one made it sound more like 0% of it was. 

There's a further 0.66/100k - about 20% of the total elevation - not so attributed. Davidson suggested that was all or mainly additional covid deaths, and he's probably right. Add 20% to the recorded 232,378 covid deaths in Q3&4, and we might have had 278-279,000 instead. About 240,000 of those will be under-vaccinated (a reported national average of 86% of covid deaths come from the unvaccinated minority, and similar proportions appear wherever one checks).

Same picture, state-by-state: Florida was below average in vaccinations, well above-average for covid cases in the summer, and it led the high-mortality trend, hitting a maximum 101% elevation (2x the normal deaths) in week 34 (graphic I made based on CDC data), being hugely swollen for weeks before and after. 

Idaho matched them at 101% elevation, but not 'til week 38. Now if the vaccine killed so many just then, why did it kill so many in Idaho and far less in the more-vaccinated Washington next door? It never got worse than 37% elevation here (below national average of 43%). And why does the problem persist like that in Idaho? Is the deadly vaccine used over there, like, contagious or something? 

Arkansas had early twin peaks w31 & 34, but for one had a bit less elevation: only 60% above usual (but the usual death rate there seems abnormally high). Over 12 weeks of the Delta peak, they saw 1,564 confirmed COVID-19 deaths (as was then counted), and a further 882 or so "non-covid" excess deaths piled up at the same time and in similar proportion. 

Now why would the vaccine be killing more people in these same weeks? Logically, this shows some 50-56% more covid deaths than were counted, or they missed about one in three. 

Arkansas seems above average in this regard; a US average is more like one in four or five deaths get wrongly classified. In the 2020 first waves, it was around 1/3 on national average to week 39, getting listed as known covid comorbidities somehow on their own miniature killing sprees just then (text-heavy summary image below, from a series I may have never posted). That declined with better testing, etc. and above it seemed like ~20% or 1/5 are being missed in late 2021.

Florida in mid-2021 has enough scale to check "non-covid" excess deaths by cause of death and expect a pattern, which I showed in the image below (a bit earlier than the Florida plate above). Heart, diabetes, cerebrovascular, and Alzheimer are all up (the latter very slightly), and a lot were still unclassified and etc. (R00-R99). Once sorted these are usually a few etc. deaths and mostly a bunch more of the same suspect causes and late-confirmed covid (but I didn't check the revised numbers against my exact numbers then in some buried text file). This elevation is most acute at week 31 - probably including many early deaths among the elderly and frail some 3 weeks ahead of the peak of confirmed covid deaths in the general populace.

Now to the graphics Dr. Berdine used, based on CDC visualization I never bothered to figure out. They're shown quite small so the message isn't that clear, but I can pick it out. 

By select cause: Gray curves that are almost the same show weekly deaths for 2015-2019, while red shows the same for 2020 with its nasty covid outbreak killing a lot in weeks 10-15. What causes the red spikes in these other death causes before the vaccine and at the same time as covid's worst tolls? By timing, undiagnosed covid infection or related damage that kills quickly thereafter is the obvious and correct answer for the vast majority of that. Any such correlation in 2021 should mean about the same, and it would be seen around week 35 and after, maybe creeping up in the weeks before - in and near the black boxes I added. What does the orange line do there? 

Going left-to-right, "Respiratory diseases," red line: a lot of misdiagnosed covid from late 2019 into early-mid 2020 and better screening. From there this class stays roughly normal levels creeping lower, so that 2021 sees a winter peak and early levels well below average. All the social distancing and such has just kept this category persistently low, so that some strains of the flu may have been erased from the human pool (they aren't turning up). A vaccine for covid should have no effect either way, but we see something having an effect; deaths rise to normal around week 20 (mid-late May) and then to a small double-peak above even 2021 levels, and that is centered on w35. Why? Because only a very few covid deaths get wrongly listed here anymore?

"Circulatory diseases" is the giant of this category, and it shows the early 2020 covid peak quite well, and again at year's end and early 2021 - entirely and largely pre-vaccine. These deaths decline after vaccine mandates come online in January - which is also after the winter peak of transmission - and remain low as vaccinations soar over the next months, although it does inch up between weeks 10 and 30 (March 8 to July 31). The numbers hold steady, but that's a rise compared to the normal decline usually seen in the spring and summer. This is when Delta was spreading widely, and after week 30, these "non-covid" deaths rose again to mimic 2020's summer elevation, with a sharp little peak even higher right at week 35. 

Alzheimer's also reflects covid well in 2020, and again at year's end, starting 2021 elevated, but then it too declines as vaccination rises, and rises again roughly between weeks 20 and 30, to match 2020 levels from weeks 35 to 45. Is that a thing the vaccine even allegedly does?

Deaths due to malignant neoplasms (cancer) are barely affected. A few kinds like lung cancer can be covid comorbidities and witness mysterious rises alongside it, but on balance of all cancers, this rarely shows. That too is consistent. 

So the deaths "cannot be attributed to covid" but they happen mostly at times and scales that match covid deaths, and they happen among known comorbidities of that illness. 

But age group: to some, these are too young to be covid deaths. I mean, age 18 is included! We all "know" that's an old people disease, so anyone under 80 ... ok, like 65 or something ... hardly has to worry, or take precautions to avoid infection. And so many of us wind up learning the hard way as years of wisdom (usually 35+ of them) fail us. That plus some mix of having to work, deciding to party, and bad luck adds up when Delta and Omicron sneak around the vaccine and the lassitude. 

18 is included in the range, but the category including it and up to age 24 shows no real elevation in deaths, at least at this scale. Even the sub-category including 44 is generally on par with 2020's vaccine-free levels. When it goes higher, I bet it's mainly ages 35-44, and have look when it goes higher - the maybe-vaccine started killing them a lot more just as the more covidy-ages died in little peaks too - around week 35 and declining not much after that before winter hits. Is this even surprising? (note here sharp downturns at year's end - incomplete data at the time. Deaths went up enough to keep rivaling those red peaks to the end and the data's been revised to show that.)

Compare each group's red and orange bumps as I did in green; the difference shows roughly how well different age groups - on average - learn and avoid the dangers facing them. If what's killing these people is so mysterious or vax related, how did mostly-vaccinated older people learn to avoid it better since 2020? All we've been learning about and vaccinating against is this covid thing. Is that what it is?

Older sectors will die at lower rates than they did in 2021 now that they're vaccinated, and mostly remain careful to avoid covid anyway, realizing that's not 100%. Then, other illnesses get locked down by the same distancing measures. This will cause much fewer deaths from those illnesses, and also less follow-on deaths than usual; the flu does like covid all the time, causing extra heart attacks and such, just on a smaller scale. These deaths would mainly hit older people, who are being doubly spared now. 

And all that probably means a lower baseline for non-covid deaths even than what we used here - 2018/19 average, population adjusted. That would mean the covid and suspect-covid elevation we see is even higher than it appears.

In review: 

It's going quite well for mortality among the vaccinated of all ages, triply so for older folks, so that it even balances out the under-vaccinated minority among the older (and heavier, and just less healthy) segment - all of whom still die at a high rate. A lot of these and a few others have died, including a few from the vaccines. And the point Mr. Davidson makes is the remaining elevated deaths not listed as covid probably should be. In the end, few if any can be attributed to anything but the virus. But optional idiocy for one played an accomplice role. 

We were told with unsurprised alarm that "there is a very significant above average number of deaths across the US that cannot be attributed to Covid" (Berdine) and it happened just when the virus was pretty harmless but "we had mandates & boosters hitting." (Dowd)

There were wider vaccine mandates issued in August and September, reacting to this surging death toll. They helped to limit it, not to cause it. This was aimed at coercing vaccine holdouts, naturally with limited effect. The vast bulk of people had already vaccinated over the preceding months of lower deaths. If that's what killed them, why did it mainly wait until September and onward to do so amid the latest covid killing spree? 

Especially during the same weeks of peak COVID-19 deaths (of which these people seem totally unaware), an unusual number of people mainly aged 40+ died, mainly from confirmed COVID-19 but also from known comorbidities of it. The death toll from covid had been for some time shifting to the younger ages (but still mostly 40+), and the problem was worse in low-vaccination states. That should be mostly covid, and like with the confirmed ones, those will mostly be under-vaccinated people. 

So people too smart for the experts decide it was the vaccine killing people when it's more like the LACK of it in some quarters that's to blame. The virus is hitting somewhat younger people because they in particular don't learn as well. And people like this Dr. Berdine are helping foster that idiocy, SO FAR. But he has a chance to fix it. 

Dr. Berdine, please re-think this subject and issue any correction you see fit, to help repair the damage you've caused.

Add 2/21: