Deaths and Excess Deaths.

Another topic that just won’t die, no pun intended.  Obviously in the early and prime period of the epidemic a lot of people died.  The great majority of these were older people, most not in good health, most with few years of life left.  Many were in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.  A good portion of these deaths were substitutive for flu deaths.  There were some middle-aged and young people who died, also generally in poor health.  A lot of supposed CV-19 deaths were at best ones in which the infection was a contributing cause, and it is unlikely the people would have died in the absence of other serious health conditions.  And then there were deaths related to the response to the epidemic–more overdoses from drugs and alcohol, and the impact of people failing to go to ERs with heart attack, stroke, high or low blood sugar symptoms and of people not getting screenings or going to routine care appointments.  And one thing is clear, there is absolutely zero evidence that any number of deaths are tied to getting CV-19 vaccinations.  That of course doesn’t stop the conspiracy nuts and the attention-seeking know-nothings who pretend they know something.

I should know better than to engage with some people on Twitter or other places, especially when they clearly have no understanding of the complexities of health care.  But I keep seeing people literally making up stuff about deaths caused by the vax and it is hard not to respond to the absolute inanity of what they say.  In particular, for some bizarre reason, the same people who want to believe, with no evidence, that the vax are killing millions, want to ignore the body of research demonstrating the lockdowns and missed care is responsible for many deaths.  This is particularly true of what is referred to as amulatory care-sensitive conditions, which are many chronic diseases that are easily kept in check with routine appointments and care and quickly escalate to serious consequences if that routine care isn’t adhered to.

These conditions include heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes–all very common and all leading causes of death.  And here is yet another study relating to the impact of delayed care, showing that in Switzerland and Hungary, among adults there was an increase in delayed melanoma diagnoses linked to missed screening.  Melanoma is a dangerous cancer with high rates of metastasis and mortality.  The researchers found a high economic and years of life lost burden from the delays in diagnosis.  (JAMA Article)

As I have noted many times, calculating excess deaths requires complex assumptions about pre-existing trends by age and by cause of death.  You are making a guess about what would have happened in the absence of multiple events, not just the epidemic, but what new drugs or other treatments became available, how bad would the flu season have been, and so on.  So making gross associations like “oh a lot of people got vaccinated and there were more deaths” is just stupid.  Almost all of those same people had at least one CV-19 infection, which would be far more likely to be associated with worsening health and deaths.  So please pay no attention to the vax safety nuts, who really just want their 15 seconds of fame, and shouldn’t be accorded even that.