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: 

U.S. Mortality in the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Dangers of Amateur Epidemiology

Adam Larson (aka Caustic Logic)

January 22, 2021 (rough, incomplete)

edits Jan. 24/28

Genevieve Briand, favoring reporter Yani Gu, the woman in the cited video, are most welcome to contact me or dispute my reading - supporters of theirs can also try - I will go ahead and read and rip on this my own way in the field, as its fans have done - THEN I'll ask for any response from the ones I can name and contact. (maybe not today though). If they can clarify much by e-mail. I'll have to wonder why they couldn't do so before that.

---

A video I happened to see shows one brave American woman "starting to push back against the Orwellian covid restrictions" by refusing to mask up inside a store. When pressed, she cited the supposed impossibility of her infecting anyone else due to not feeling any symptoms (false - it's not the norm but totally exists and "experts say asymptomatic spread clearly is contributing to fall spikes of COVID-19"). And it's no big danger anyway, in her mind; she asks the women talking to her "do you know there have been fewer deaths overall, in 2019, than there were in 2018 [sic]. Look it up. fewer deaths - all they've done is recategorized all the deaths. This is not what they're telling us it is. It's a lie. I'm telling you. ... they feed us thus lie and we comply with it, and I'm done..." Refusing an offered mask almost as if in terror, she insists "I'm a healthy person. No. I'm not crazy. This is like psychosis. For everyone to put stuff on their face when they're healthy is insane." https://twitter.com/tbs_viral/status/1344241143555502080

She's not exactly crazy or sick, but she's a moron and a public menace, like so many others. And they have these amazing "facts" to back them up, usually issued by some expert they trust. 

In this case, she probably refers to Genevieve Briand at Johns Hopkins University. She's an Asst. program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program - not a medical expert, despite the JHU's school of medicine being its most famous part. Their COVID-19 tracker is a great resource. Their school of economics ... well it just took one credibility hit I know of. It's Briand who, in a school-related educational video presentation, compared weekly mortality levels in the US over time to declare fewer deaths than reported or even than normal. That in turn suggests to many - who already suspected as much - that there is no deadly pandemic in the United States to take precautions over. 

At the center of it is a supposed paucity of other natural causes deaths suggesting they had been re-branded as covid ones, helping to exaggerate that danger. In her video presentation of November 13, Briand spends a long time proving there were other deaths besides COVID-19 and, shockingly, there were EVEN MORE of those deaths. She suggests we should feel bad for nor remembering all those other deaths and/or focusing on this one class that caused less than half the deaths in 2020.  She seems like a truly fired-up non-expert who already suspected what she found. She seems amazed by every pattern she sees along the way, and sloppily mines it for possible discrepancies - makes a big deal of basing her findings on the actual data, ignoring the central role played by confused and prejudiced misreading OF that data. 

Of most relevance here: 

Weekly Counts of Deaths by State and Select Causes, 2014-2018 | Data | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc.gov)

https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Counts-of-Deaths-by-State-and-Select-Causes/muzy-jte6

seems in line with other data I do know and have made better sense of. Note: recently change for the New Year - 2019 is added to the archive, and the the current set compares 2020 and 2021.

Mrs. Briand's presentation and derivative materials have been eagerly cited by adoring fans as a hard truth sussed out by a JHU professor (and that's an esteemed school re:medical issues). But of course, in their view, it was retracted under political pressure, squashed by the elites to protect their big hoax. It's the most likely basis for any recent claims the US has witnessed no excess deaths - though both notions have been raised previously by others. 

The American Institute for Economic Research has long favorable to any argument opposing lockdown and business restrictions, because they love freedom and they think they understand medicine well enough to meddle in public health debates, sponsoring a "Great Barrington declaration" favoring vaccine-free herd immunity as soon as possible, recklessly submitted to moron president Trump with his moron adviser Scott Atlas. (I say moron in lieu of evil). Ethan Yang wrote for them, summarizing the message he got from Briand's findings: 

New Study Highlights Alleged Accounting Error Regarding Covid Deaths – AIER

"Deaths have remained relatively constant, yet reported deaths due to deadly conditions such as heart disease have fallen while reported Covid deaths have risen. This suggests that the current Covid death count is in some capacity relabeled deaths due to other ailments. ... The hysteria over Covid-19 has likely led to the alleged accounting error noted in Briand’s study, the reclassification of expected deaths from all causes into Covid deaths. That accounting error has likely led to a number of policy decisions that have drastically crippled our ability to support the general welfare of society, economically, socially, and spiritually. Going forward these findings should give us pause and reconsideration over the threat Covid-19 actually poses and realize how much avoidable damage we have done to ourselves as a result."

Matt Margolis, PJ Media, Nov. 27 UPDATED: Johns Hopkins Retracts Article Saying COVID-19 Has 'Relatively No Effect on Deaths' in U.S.

"Briand concludes that the COVID-19 death toll in the United States is misleading and that deaths from other diseases are being categorized as COVID-19 deaths. There have been reports of inflated COVID-19 deaths numbers for months...." 

So far it seems none of these impressed fans is able to verify or add much to an argument that seems to confuse them. I put off untangling what seemed like a maddeningly dense tangle of confusion and error. But I finally sat through most of the video presentation that started the noise, and identified five claims I hope I understand, and my explanation why each is horribly wrong. 

* Steady age breakdown

* Normal seasonal pattern

* Missing heart attacks

* Natural causes swap-out

* Normal death numbers

Reference material:

Original video presentation "Covid-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data" - published by JHU Advanced Academic Programs, November 13, 2020  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TKJN61aflI

Some later q&a with Briand: https://twitter.com/HricSchink/status/1332920820079857665 

Review article in the JHU newsletter By Yanni Gu, November 27, 2020- since pulled - archive.org copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20201126163323/https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19 - or compare with the copy shared by the newsletter itself as a PDF to cool accusations it was trying to silence or erase the article. 

JHU rebuttals: 

Quick explanation in place of the pulled article https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19

Explanatory editorial: https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/12/on-the-retraction-of-a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-and-our-coverage-of-covid-19

A fuller explanation WHY Briand is wrong, citing several and more relevant JHU experts. https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/12/public-health-experts-and-biostatisticians-weigh-in-on-covid-19-deaths-a-look-at-u-s-data-webinar

From the first editorial: "The leadership of The News-Letter takes responsibility for this situation. The article shouldn’t have been published without the additional information needed to put Briand’s research into perspective." They're too polite. The proper perspective for this is in the toilet. It should never have been published. OR else its retarded ass needs to be babysat and explained for at every turn. Otherwise ... I'm for free speech in general, but consider what this says, from a "JHU expert," and now it was cited so eagerly. It will become easy fuel for hordes of dangerous idiots who will keep causing deaths, allowing the virus to breed like mad, and spawn deadly variants that much faster. 

The follow-up with experts is also too polite, but hey, that's good form. I'll be citing this as I take the chance to play bad cop to their good cop.  The total failure of Briand's analysis does need explained, maybe better than it has been. I'll now show how I babysit this thing on a long walk to the outhouse, where I leave it. 

Steady Age Breakdown

First, let's consider how Briand addressed weekly deaths by age group  in her popular figure 1 (see 12min in the video). This shows a breakdown for weekly all-causes deaths to week 32, broken down by color-coded age groups. She decides the percentage doesn't change over the weeks shown here when it should, as the elder-slaying Covid-19 entered the scene in March - ... "I would expect that percentage to go up during the weeks of peak covid-19 deaths, which are weeks 11-13 and we don't have that." the "chunks pretty much stay the same." 

She'll agree COVID-19 mainly kills older people and suggest this shows there weren't very many covid deaths. Rather, as she argues, there were many deaths from heart attacks and such that were mis-categorized. And she'd also agree these mainly happen to older people, so ... the best reading of what she means is the year's deaths are pretty well the same types and numbers as always

Actually weeks 15,16 and 17 are the spring peak of covid deaths, as Briand realizes at other points. So it it's not even clear why she was looking in a span 4 weeks earlier. But as it happens, this is the spot where her reading is the most wrong; just the time she claimed  to see no rise - during the upswing to the peak, from w10-12, deaths of 85+ rise from about 30% to 33% before dipping back to 30 and then about 28% (the image below makes this more clear). And conversely, there's a slight decline in the percentage of younger people dying - under 54 drops about 2-3% in weeks 11-13 before rising a bit into the spring and summer. At week 11, 11% of deaths were aged 54 and under, and at w19 it peaked at 15%, then holds steady around 13%. 

My addition: figure 1 flipped upside down to clarify what's a rise here, cropped on the 85+ bracket, and vertically stretched a bit to clarify the minor differences. Compared to curve of covid deaths lined up below it, the relevance seems clear to me. No change to reflect any major outbreak - really? 

Four points emerge:

1) Age proportion was never the main issue. It was the scale of deaths, actual and possible, that scared people, not the incredible oldness of them. But still, covid does have that age issue. It should appear, and apparently does. To the extent it's not as clear as it should be (?) ...

2) There were covid deaths from year's start and it seems even in late 2019, back to week 47 at least. So the age breakdown may be covid-distorted from the start, and a comparison with prior years' breakdowns might have been more useful to make her point. 

3) If the age breakdown remains this steady, even as it applies to the enormous deaths of weeks 11-22,  to the extent she's right and age proportions remain steady, she helps weaken the myth that covid only kills people in their 80s and up and thus isn't much of a danger to society. It means COVID-19 has always killed a wider age range than Briand was "told." She might find it surprising how many in their 30s and 40s and even 20s and younger have died from/with it. 

Justin Lessler, an associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the JHU's School of Public Health (not economics) pointed out for the JHU newsletter:

“I see that the proportion [in Figure One] has not changed as evidence that we should not be seeing COVID-19 as a disease of just the very old because, in terms of relative risk of death, it is impacting all ages (or at least all adults) fairly equally... just what that raw number is, is quite different for each age,” he wrote. “If anything, I think [Figure One] is just a stark illustration that COVID-19 raises mortality risk in all age groups.”

Normal Seasonal Pattern

Around 20 minutes into the video, Briand shows the yearly seasonal variance of deaths between 2014 and 2020. She seems amazed to realize there's a yearly pattern with regular ups and downs, rising each winter to a peak between 60,000 and 70,000 deaths per week, usually in the second week of January, falling to about 50,000 over the summer, then rising again over the fall. She also learned some details of these winter spikes, including: 

* it's mainly older people who die each time, 

* they die from a mix of  flu and pneumonia and resp. illness deaths and elevated deaths from heart disease, alzheimer disease and other causes 

She doesn't seem to understand when or why this happens, but 2020 also has a rise and then a fall, is only so much higher than the next highest peak, and thus maybe just the normal thing.

Briand somehow choses 2017-18 as the best comparison year, rather than the prior season (2018/19), the one most likely to have a direct bearing on 2020's mortality situation. The year she picked does have the highest peak of deaths (around 68,000), and thus the best chance to call 2020 normal in comparison, or maybe even low in some useful way ... which she does.

The JHU News-Letter cited Emily Gurley, an associate scientist in the Department of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health (not economics), who "noted that the assessment in the webinar did not compare the same months in 2018 and 2020, leading to a flawed interpretation." 

"Comparing winter months (Figure Three) to spring months (Figure Four), Gurley explained, does not account for seasonal variations; for instance, mortality due to most causes, including heart disease, declines in the spring. “She compares specific cause of death data from 2018 to 2020, but instead of comparing the same months in 2018 to 2020, she compares the time period where total mortality peaked each year,” she wrote. “In doing so, the presenter neglects the fact that COVID-19 deaths peaked in the spring, even though the usual seasonal patterns for other causes of death did not change.”

Lessler added that 2018 was a year with excess mortality, as echoed by the CDC, and noted flaws in focusing on only the peak in mortality of that year. 

“2018 was a bad flu year, so she is comparing with a year that we already had some excess mortality. 2020 peaks in deaths are far higher than pretty much every other year,” he wrote. “Also, she makes a logical error in focusing only on the [2018 peak]. If you look at the CDC site you will notice [deaths in] 2018 exceeds the seasonally adjusted average for only 6 weeks, but [deaths in] 2020 exceeds the seasonal average for every week since March 28, 2020.”

Another Briand image with corrections added; we can see now steady the seasonal pattern is, always the same time to worst seasonal peak - underlining the centrality of week-to-same-week comparison, which Briand finds to be optional. She compares a seasonal peak that's the highest available to an off-pattern, post-peak super peak in 2020 that rises to some 23,000 deaths above the equivalent week in even in the high-mortality 2018.

Scott Zeger, a professor whose primary affiliation is with the Biostatistics Department at the JHU School of Public Health  (not economics) 

“Dr. Briand correctly points out the winter peaks in most causes of mortality. These are associated with respiratory infections that exacerbate many chronic conditions,” he wrote. “In the winter of 2019-2020, there is clear evidence of the expected seasonal peak that was then swamped by the COVID rise in the spring. 

Fact Check: Johns Hopkins Lecturer Did NOT Prove There Are No Excess 2020 Deaths Due To COVID | Lead Stories

Robert Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch of the National Center for Health Statistics, also disputes Briand’s analysis. According to Anderson, Briand didn’t account for seasonal changes in deaths. “In the spring of 2020, during a period where we normally should be seeing declining mortality, deaths continued to increase and were at unusually high levels through the spring,” he told Lead Stories. “So, the comparison of the most lethal weeks in 2018 with the most lethal weeks of 2020 is not appropriate.” 

“In 2018, deaths followed the normal pattern (although at a higher level than normal). In 2020, deaths did not follow the normal pattern…they should have been declining in the spring, but instead increased substantially,” Anderson added.

Indeed, the standard is to compare same-week levels in different (usually adjacent) years, or better yet in average, or well-adjusted model. Skipping the differences in yearly mortality and comparing 2018 to 2020 using comparable weeks - the same graph Briand made shows week 15 peak is not 11,292 above the same week in 2018, but rather a bit over twice that - ~22,800 above expected by the usual pattern. or some 142% of the expected deaths around ~55,000 in week 15, 2018

Missing Heart Attack Deaths/Natural Causes Swap-Out

So Briand mistook the covid peak for the seasonal all-causes death peak, where all causes combine and, as she noticed, heart disease is usually in a solid lead. Even in 2020, it still led among non-covid causes, but Briand was stuck on the strange data suggesting Covid-19, at its peak, killed more than heart disease, for the first year in history. In fact, four weeks in a row it did this. She knows it usually kills way less - zero, in fact, because it never existed. Why should this year be so much different unless there's some deception afoot? 

29:30 in the video: "those lines over there look weird to me." The parabolic curves of very large numbers gradually brought under control look strangely "smooth" compared to low-level wigglings of usual deaths - as if she's never encountered such an effect in her study of economics, or can't see a bit of it in every spike to the left in her same image? 

But never mind just how "lumpy" the curves are, one of them is just way too big. "It looks as if the peak of covid deaths is HIGHER than the peak of heart attack deaths." She finds this amazing; as if she had video of Elvis' ghost, she implores the audience "you see that?" 

Gu article: "COVID-19-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart disease. This was highly unusual since heart disease has always prevailed as the leading cause of deaths," Apparently she thinks it must always be the leading killer, no matter how lethal the competition.  Like, if COVID-19 tried to kill more, even for one single week, heart attacks would by definition have to go on a real rampage to keep their pre-defined permanent leading role. 

Of course that makes no sense. Covid is simply deadlier than heart disease, even when it's curtailed as it has been. It's even visible in a highly average view; the US totals include hard-hit areas and ones barely affected. Covid killed more than heart disease for 4 weeks straight at the spring peak. In the winter surge, it's killed more since week 47 (to Nov. 21), or at least six weeks in a row to week 52 (incomplete data after that). 

When I was tracking Texas briefly in the summer, covid surpassed heart attack at least 6 weeks straight, peaking at near twice as many deaths. Note how h.d. itself and other causes - all known covid co-morbidities - were also seen rising at odd times. Spring, summer, winter of 2020 - all natural, seasonal spikes of all-cause deaths with missing heart attacks?

New York City, week 15: of 7,860 total deaths, at least 4,564 were caused by COVID-19. That's 58% - more than the 42% killed by all other causes combined. At the spring peak, covid surpassed heart for nine weeks straight, even with heart deaths seeing a strange surge just then (see compiled table). (CDC source, for this and much else in this article)

In parts of Italy, weekly deaths from COVID-19 were far more than heart disease and all other causes combined. I recall hearing Bergamo (IIRC) suffered up to 800% the normal mortality before the virus was reigned in. If so, that suggests the virus (and/or lockdown, etc. - something new) briefly killed 7x as many as all other causes combined. Don't quote me on that part, but it definitely can kill more than heart disease if allowed. (and some bonus questions: do we see NYC's share of missing heart deaths here? How many more were there supposed to be in those weeks, and why?)

Add 1/31: the 800% mortality I mentioned for Italy also happened in New York City. In the same week 15 when over half the deaths were from covid (confirmed/probable), that number was 780% of normal. Almost exactly 1,000 deaths expected that week occurred, plus covid killing 485% that many on top of it, PLUS 1,930 unexplained excess deaths that include a massive spike of h.a., other covid replacements and co-morbidities, New analysis considers possible lockdown deaths too. See timing of most deaths. Delayed treatment? Not much for cancer in that peak span, and not much room later for any other natural-cause excess. External causes like suicide? It's probably quite incomplete, but by the CDC's data as of now, there's a possible slight elevation at first that gives way to unusually low deaths from week 32 on.

But even a fraction of that known killing power seen in a U.S. average makes no sense to Briand. 31:30 "Hm? It doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense at all."  She has to ask "what's going on?" and "where have all the heart attacks gone?"  

Comparing to the 2017-18 peak, she finds 367 fewer deaths than "expected" for the 2020 peak 2.25 years later. She marks this (narrow band) as "expected not seen," and then marks a much bigger gap between that and something up past 18,000, labeled +???. I guess she sees a natural spike just like 2018's but bigger for who knows why, and thinks HA should have led at super-peak levels, just naturally there in April. As I measure it, this shows some 3,090 more heart attacks that she (maybe ???) expected to see for that week. Her image with my notes added in mostly red, and explained below.

We'll keep considering this point, but as it tangle with a couple others and all need some space,  header for a related but separate issue. 

Natural Causes Swap-Out

Briefly, the rest of her case for a lot of "missing" deaths before we come back to the details: Around 34min a slide showing "change in deaths over previous week"  for weeks 15-16-17 (and NOT weeks 13 and 14), which make up the downslope of the supposedly low peak she identified above. She notes heart disease declines massively here, as do most other conditions, aside from barely-affected cancers (the lung one has seen suspect increases, the rest mostly not). Briand presumes weeks 15 and 16 should have same or even higher heart deaths, since overall deaths were still increasing, and that's what always happens during death spikes. So she sees the decrease - or at least the size of it - as suspicious. 

Finally, after mistaking the covid peak for the seasonal all-causes death peak, it seems she mistook the following seasonal decline (see above, added aqua-green matching curves) for a continued suspicious decrease into the summer. Prof. Scott Zeger: "The trough in non-COVID causes that Dr. Briand notes that spring is not a mis-attribution of non-COVID deaths to COVID. It is the natural spring abatement of the winter mortality rise that happens every year.” That may not be what she meant, but if so, he's right. I'll add the decline started from the elevated levels many have noted, was steepened by lockdowns and others measures that would limit the spread of all contagions that, as Zeger noted, cause the extra few deaths adding up to the winter spike. Also, that effect in turn is offset some by false covid inclusions that continue - especially into the summer, when "non-covid" excess deaths rise again contrary to usual trends. 

But all these "missing" deaths, not just from heart attack, opened a big fake mystery. And it's not hard to solve - deaths don't disappear, once they're "expected." They simply must be in disguise, hidden in another category. 48min "[the published numbers] are somewhat misleading or some of them are going to be misleading, in that - the data show the number of heart attacks decreased during the peak of total deaths that we experienced, and heart attack is the leading cause of death in the United States. If [the numbers] were not misleading at all, what we should have observed is an increased number of heart attacks and also the increased COVID-19 numbers. But a decreased number of heart attacks - and all the other death causes - doesn’t give us a choice but to point to some re-classification. Not all of them" she hastened to add, just "some" unspecified portion of them. 

She won't call the COVID-19 death toll entirely fake or even fake on purpose, but of course her readers, especially second-hand ones,  just know that can't be an accident, and they're sure the portion of fakery is major or even total. The woman cited at the start understood it: "all they've done is recategorized all the deaths. This is not what they're telling us it is. It's a lie." 

But there is no overall decline. Rather, 2020 saw a large excess of natural causes deaths.  All those expected and more - at least 88,634 NON-COVID natural causes deaths above 2019 levels over a similar span to what Briand studied (to week 36, or 39, incomplete). This is on top of a bit over 200,000 confirmed covid deaths in the same span, all by definition above 2019 levels that were zero. See here for my graphs. Not that I've checked, but the same probably happened with the fall and winter spikes of covid deaths. 

Briand and I have different expectations for 2020 partly because the best available comparison is not 2018 but 2019, with its smooth, low curve that can be seen flowing easily into 2020 (again, see aqua curves in the image above -  they match each other AND the years quite well), but with some early covid-esque spikes. The real mortality baseline for 2020 aside from the virus, and lockdown etc. will be its own story, and things change - as this pandemic shows. But otherwise the change might have been small, so 2019 might be as good a comparison as a well-adjusted 5-year average, or even better. 

The 2019-2020 flu season starts almost a copy of the last, by many signs even a bit lower in fatality aside from covid (not that it's easy to tell). Clearly above the baseline, there are some early bumps of possible relevance at week 39 and 47 of 2019, and a big and clear surge of definite covid deaths just after new year's, just a handful of which managed to be confirmed. Then there was a mild dip and a rise to the massive spike of mortality in the spring most of us have heard about, then another fat, low surge in summer, and we know bigger yet has followed since, growing from mid-autumn to the present (recent 7-day average 3,300 covid deaths per day in the U.S.). Officially, it's near 420,000 now confirmed killed.

Including mis-classified deaths behind those other n.c. excesses, the real toll so far might be some 40-50% higher. Wherever we can see, including all U.S. states, the "non-covid" excess deaths seem to mainly be yet more covid ones. The timing and scale, the similar age bracket, and the elevated causes (mostly known covid co-morbidities) all point to that. From there, lockdown etc. causes a decline in all transmissions - SARS-CoV2, influenza, other - and thus reduces external triggers for heart attacks, etc. which fall to low, seasonal levels, before rising again with the summer covid spike. (Scott Zeger: "the winter peaks ... are associated with respiratory infections that exacerbate many chronic conditions." And note COVID-19 is one of these). And as the JHU News-Letter explained "those with those underlying conditions are statistically more likely to be severely affected and die from the virus" Some of those who would have died of HA etc. died of covid instead, or the two combined. And as they probably realize, some will do that and have the covid part missed, explaining the strange increases. See US. flu-pneumonia deaths - spiking oddly after flu transmission had fallen - it'll be the pneumonia catoegory risen, and guess what they tend to call undiagnosed covid suffocation deaths?

Consider that in late 2019 and early 2020, zero percent of covid deaths were diagnosed properly, even though we now realize they were happening. That doesn't change entirely, not overnight or probably ever. In the first weeks, deaths from solo co-morbidities (heart, alzheimer, cerebrovascular, etc.) and undefined pneumonia were super-elevated. That's probably due to slim diagnosis of covid deaths, both direct and indirect (illness survived, but with exacerbated conditions leading to a swift death afterwards). But identification improved a good bit, and then mis-classified deaths fall (while remaining high) just as covid rises a bit more sharply. And the actual deaths also decline as the cause of them decreases.

Now back to the w15-17 decline: it seems there was a change in classification around early April, besides a peak of deaths in most places. In the United Kingdom, their Office of National Statistics issued a report that mentioned but also soft-pedaled the notion of missed covid deaths and a higher, hidden death toll. This report suggested it was unlikely for influenza-pneumonia (if not other causes) "since Week 14 (week ending 3 April 2020)," at which point they diagnosed more covid deaths and lone co-morbidity deaths (especially this one) declined proportionally. See plate showing the five leading causes of death, with week 14 marked. i/p at bottom falls clearly after that. Others fall or rise less sharply, then increase again, as covid deaths (probably including these) were still accelerating. Mainly, the lesson to draw from this is the change didn't affect most causes that much - they kept on being super-elevated with no real explanation. (it's not lockdown, or denied medical care - see link below)

https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2020/10/covid-19s-evil-twin-lumpin-20.html

It seems a similar thing happened in the US too, just a bit later (see below). The very peak of natural causes deaths was week 15 ending April 11 (US system is offset a day from UK) with only a slight decline in week 16 - nc overall fall a bit as the major covid portion increases a bit. As shown below, the purple area shrinks. This is what that plate above showed in numerical form and missing key context; the fairly insane weeks before, when nc deaths were about 45% above normal. "the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19," as Briand said, at the decline between weeks 15 and 16,  and perhaps for some other spot by coincidence, but NOT as an overall pattern. This is what Briand notices, and it proves what? Levels that insane couldn't last, especially with distancing and lockdowns reducing infection rates all over.

Does Mrs. Briand think there SHOULD have been ~23,000 n.c. deaths above 2019 levels in mid-April, for no reason that can make sense - and since there aren't, 16,000 being rebranded as COVID-19 - or whatever portion of them she means (+3,090???)?  In fact it was a suspicious presence of elevated deaths, seen being reduced but not eliminated in weeks 15-17. And she never asks where that elevation came from, taking it as natural, due to that clear seasonal pattern, comparable numbers, steady age breakdown, etc. 

Here's your missing hart attack deaths - actually over-abundant all year long, compared to same-week levels in the best example year of 2019. “If [the COVID-19 death toll] was not misleading at all, what we should have observed is an increased number of heart attacks and increased COVID-19 numbers." She doesn't even get why that's true, but it happens to be. And it is observed, so what's the deal? She somehow didn't observe.

I've boxed in red the span where program director Briand notes the suspicious decline in weeks 15-17. If you ask yourself WHY these weeks each see a decline from the previous week, instead of rising higher yet to stay ahead of the ongoing covid rise ... the answer is because that only makes sense. How they ever got to that week 15 high is the real mystery Briand ignores, pretending THAT was the normal part of a seasonal death spike that's only 13 weeks late. 

And this is why she decided on missing heart attack deaths. The fact that she claims to have found them somewhere else when they were never missing just adds to the embarrassment.

"Normal Death Numbers" & Conclusion

Briand and company found "no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary." They didn't find this, or found it wrong. If the latter, and the circular nonsense provided so far IS the explanation, well... that was a big fail. (updated from initial tweet - she was referring only to the span including the first two waves) https://twitter.com/CL4Syr/status/1338522626973523968 

Matt Margolis seemingly noted this disconnect: "So, if COVID-19 has actually had no significant impact on U.S. deaths, why does it not appear that way? To answer that question, Briand shifted her focus..." to the kinds of details addressed above, and simply left the disconnect unexplained. That seems to have worked for a lot of people. But the main problem they SHOULD be stumbling over more is the death toll is clearly NOT low, or normal, or even close. Briand either doesn't realize this, or has issued a very poor challenge to the agreed fact; she disputes the official numbers provided by state governments, as tallied by the CDC, but so far gives no good reason. This, even as she relies on misreading OF those numbers AS valid, to find factual "data" to question their ultimate validity - and thus any work like her own based on it. 

Video, 40:46 "We also found evidence that COVID death numbers were misleading. We found evidence that some deaths caused by diseases of the heart, chronic lower respiratory disease, flu and pneumonia and more were simply reclassified as COVID-19 deaths."

Lead Stories cited this, and rebutted "Briand makes that claim with no reference to specific deaths, doctors or death certificates in which she has evidence a death attributed to COVID was actually caused by something else." It seems this is not further evidence they found, but a reference to all the death causes that appeared low to her. That's the "evidence" that left her "no choice" but to strongly suspect they had been swapped out. 

Lead Stories also cited "Ronald Fricker, Jr., the former head of the statistics department at Virginia Tech, who studies statistical models used in disease surveillance, said Briand hasn't done enough work to make the claims she makes ... He pointed to an October, 2020, editorial and research letter from the Journal of the American Medical Association, concluding that 67% of the excess deaths from March through July "were attributable directly to COVID-19." Regardless, it is clear that the total number of deaths in the United States has increased this year by at least 10% and likely will be 13% or more by the end of December."

Emily Gurley told the JHU News-Letter "that because Briand’s presentation does not specifically examine excess deaths, her conclusions are flawed. “Researchers (from both within the CDC and outside) have already analyzed data on vital statistics to show that >300,000 deaths have occurred in 2020 than occurred during the same time in other recent years (after accounting for changes in the size and age of the population),” Gurley wrote."

And Sourya Shrestha, a research associate in the Department of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health (again, not economics), "elaborated on the standard method used to calculate excess deaths. He asserted that comparing death counts week-to-week as Briand did fails to account for two important considerations: random fluctuations and seasonal trends. “A more robust way [to calculate excess deaths] is to construct a baseline of expected deaths using trends from past data and compare that to the observed deaths,” he said in an interview with The News-Letter." He describes the method used by the CDC ...

"The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, published on Oct. 23, reported that 299,028 excess deaths occurred from Jan. 26 to Oct. 3. About two-thirds of those deaths were attributed to COVID-19. Other peer-reviewed papers have reported similar findings." (and I'll add at least a majority of the other 1/3 are suspect)

Gurley noted that the data presented in the webinar failed to address these statistics and did not demonstrate that officially reported numbers were wrong. “There are no data in this presentation that show that previous reports on the magnitude of deaths from COVID-19 are incorrect,” Gurley wrote.

And finally, a point no lockdown critics consider well, and Briand seems to ignore entirely - how many deaths MIGHT we have seen if the measures of March and April hadn't been taken? Infections were artificially limited, all-cause deaths fell soon after that, and they complain that shouldn't have happened - the vulnerable should have been put in magical bubbles and everyone else turned loose to develop herd immunity with no vaccine safety net needed - if their advice had been followed, my God what a massacre.

---

bonus: From the twitter Q&A, Briand arguing that 2020 deaths were not just normal but a bit low. Agaian, she picks absurd expectations, and dashes them with the help of some bad math, so she can make another case for mass fakery. 

Briand's 2019 deaths: 2,852,609 vs. my tally from possibly revised numbers: 2,791,887

Briand 2020: 

* expected by year's end: 2,894,771  vs. 3,349,566 incomplete final tally when I looked (from here, careful tally of weeks)

* expected by 9/31 (week 39/40): 2,880,717  vs. 2,436,055/2,494,251 as logged now 

** vs. seen then 2,402,953 (even more "less than expected!") 

**  vs. 2019 through w39, ending 9/28: 2,123,698 (a decent basis NOT to expect 2.88 million as normal for the following year)

* expected w41-52 (to year's end minus to 9/31): 14,054.  This is about one week's deaths, not three months' worth. vs. 855,315 actually logged, still a bit incomplete. 

* Why less deaths? She doesn't know. Maybe less traffic accidents? No. That's a tiny class of deaths - not sure, maybe 1-2% of the total, cut by maybe 1/3 on average. Suicides are a bigger class yet, and alcohol/drug OD bigger yet, and both of these were elevated in 2020 (some of those "lockdown deaths" that do exist). Those would more than offset any such decline in deaths from external (un-natural) causes. Exact numbers aside, even these are small compared to any leading natural cause, tiny compared to what COVID-19 has done, and miniscule compared to what it could have done if left un-checked.