Elizabeth Hanson M. Ed. May 19, 2023
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
- Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
There has been a substantial increase in the number of people who have died in all age groups since March 2020. In this article we will review the increase in deaths in the 25 to 44 age group.
The Covid era ended formally on May 11th 2023. Many of us felt relief to put the Covid era behind us. Now is the time for reflection. Major endings in life, like death, divorce, loss of a business or the ending of good health, call on us to reflect. We should look back at the Covid era (2020-2023) and think about what occurred: the increases in death, health problems, poverty, depression, crime, censorship and divisiveness, and we should look for the root causes. We need to fix what has been broken. We need to learn from what has happened.
African journalist Chris Waldburger agrees. He published this article on May 18th 2023 as I was putting the finishing touches on this one:
“Bodies keep piling up around the world as current excess death rates easily surpass Covid”
He cites a Norwegian study (my underlining):
“… (a) correlation between vaccination levels and excess mortality has also been confirmed by Norwegian scientists, who published their findings in the Asian Pacific Journal of Health Sciences:
Analyses of 31 countries weighted by population size show that all-cause mortality during the first 9 months of 2022 increased more the higher the 2021 vaccination uptake… Despite a possible preventive effect in 2021, we cannot rule out that COVID-19 vaccination uptake in Europe has led to increasing 2022 all-cause mortality between January and September.
Oops.
Perhaps even more alarming than the deaths, however, is the complete lack of interest or curiosity on the part of the majority.”
I hope you have curiosity.
Since April 2020, I’ve read many things that doctors, scientists and researchers have written about the increasing mortality in 2020-2023. For example, here is a cumulative record (a running total) of the total number of US deaths related to Covid (per million) from Our World in Data. (I put in the dates to show the slope of the line after mass vaccination):
It has been grim, puzzling and at times very sad to look at death. My purpose in writing this article is to look at excess mortality in the 25-44 age group to find out how many deaths can be attributed to Covid-19 (as recorded at the CDC) and how many can’t.
I chose the 25-44 year old population because there has been so much excess mortality in that age group, in a population we generally don’t expect to die. That age group had comprised less than 3% of all Covid deaths in the first few weeks of Covid in 2020. I also chose the 25-44 age group because it is one of the several age groups whose deaths are tracked on US Mortality.
To write this article, I got numbers from the CDC (CDC.gov), US Mortality (usmortality.org), Mortality Watch (mortality.watch) and Our World in Data (Ourworldindata.org). I invite you to look at these sites.
Let’s start by defining the term excess mortality:
Excess mortality means the number of deaths above the number of deaths expected. Various government agencies and insurance companies predict the number of people who will die in a future week, month and/or year. If a life insurance company predicts 1,000 deaths in a particular month, and then 1,250 people die that month, the 250 “extra” deaths are excess mortality and represent a 25% excess mortality rate. Predictions are commonly made by looking at the number of deaths over the previous 4 years.
We expect a certain number of people to die in every age group. However, when there are high rates of excess mortality, we want to be able to account for those deaths. We want to know why people are dying because we want to have a healthy population.
Excess deaths age 25-44 (2020-May 2023)
The following chart from US Mortality shows the percentage of excess deaths from 2019 to early 2023 in the 25-44 age group.
Key to interpreting the chart
*The bold line is the number of deaths from any cause.
*The shaded area on the x-axis indicates the range of deaths expected.
*The dotted area indicates a substantial increase in deaths.
*I put in vertical lines to show the years, the percentages on the y-axis for readability and a question mark (wondering why so many people died).
In April 2020 the excess mortality rate exceeded 20% and remained near 20% all year except for in July 2020 when it neared 40%.
2021 told a different story. The excess mortality rate reached 40% in January, and then remained near or above 20% until July. In July the number of excess deaths increased sharply and reached a peak of 70% in September (where I put the question mark). In October 2021 the excess death rate returned to roughly 35% and remained at that level or higher through January 2022- months of high levels of excess death in a population we don’t expect to die.
In 2023 the rate of excess deaths has been between 4.5-19%.
Here is a table showing the total number of deaths and the number of excess deaths by year in the 25-44 age group:
In 2020 there were fewer total deaths than in 2021 and 2022.
In 2021 there was a huge increase in total deaths. Many would assume that the increase was due to Covid-19.
Vaccine proponent Washington Post Reporter Taylor Lorenz has noticed and is alarmed by the increase in deaths too (Twitter, Feb 2023):
Indeed, it is sad. I think Taylor should investigate these deaths. What did the people she know die from? Did their deaths occur suddenly, or were they due to a progressive illness or disease? Were the people vaccinated or not? Those would be good questions to ask.
2020: the first few weeks of Covid infections and related deaths
Here is the age breakdown of all of the Covid infections and deaths recorded in March 2020. Less than 5% of all deaths occurred in people under the age of 50. People age 65+ comprised nearly 80% of all deaths:
(AARP (AARP.org); April 1st 2020; 95 Percent of Americans Killed by COVID-19 Were 50 or Older)
Notice how many more younger people got Covid infections than older people. For example, nearly 24% of all Covid infections were in the 18-29 age group compared to less than 15% in people over the age of 65.
By April 2020 in the age groups 18-29, 30-39 and 40-49 we saw the following percentages out of all cases and deaths:
Covid vaccination rates (CDC)
In 2021 we were told repeatedly that Covid vaccines would protect us from infection:
However, they didn’t. The Washington State Department of Health publishes a report on the increasing number of breakthrough deaths (Covid-related deaths despite vaccination):
The chart they published below shows us both the number of fully vaccinated and boosted people who had breakthrough deaths between January 17th 2021 and April 1st 2023:
There were 4,582 breakthrough deaths from January 17th to April 1st 2022. In the same time frame there were fewer than 11,000 Covid-related deaths (CDC numbers from May 18th 2023):
That means over 42% of all deaths related to Covid occurred in the fully vaccinated (and sometimes boosted) in Washington state, not too effective. Let’s turn to the vaccination rates.
Here are the percentage of people age 18+ who were fully vaccinated in 2021 (CDC):
By June 24th 2021:
By September 15th 2021:
(Notice how many people refused to take a second vaccine dose.)
What has been the results of the mass vaccination campaign?
According to Physicians for informed consent, “CDC data shows mass vaccination with the Covid-19 vaccine has had no measurable impact on the Covid-19 mortality rate in the US”.
- Covid-19 vaccine risk statement ( physiciansforinformedconsent.org)
Accounting for the excess deaths: Were they Covid-related?
The CDC keeps track of the number of deaths involving Covid-19 by age groups, which we can easily access. Let’s find out how many of the excess deaths in the 25-44 age group can be attributed to Covid. First, here are the numbers of excess deaths each year. (We will focus on 2020-2022):
Unfortunately, the CDC and US Mortality use different age groupings, so to find the number of Covid-related death in people age 25-44, we have to span 3 CDC age groups: 18-29, 30-39 and 40-49.
To align the CDC age groups with the US Mortality 25-44 age group, I multiplied the 18-29 age group by 0.42 to capture the 25-29 age group. I included all of the 30-39 age group and I divided the 40-49 age group by 2 to capture the 40-44 age group.
The numbers of the total deaths and the deaths involving Covid won’t be exact, but they will be in the ball park.
Here is a screenshot from the CDC showing the number of people age 18-49 who died each year (2020-2022) from all causes and involving Covid:
Subtracting the number of deaths involving Covid (CDC) from the number of excess deaths (US Mortality), we get the number of excess deaths that did not involve Covid. Knowing those two numbers we can account for the excess deaths:
The lowest number of excess deaths occurred in 2020 when we had Covid for 9 months and the 25-44 age group wasn’t getting vaccinated. Many states also locked down and schools were closed for many months. Lockdowns were likely factors in some deaths.
2021 had over 96% more excess deaths than 2020 and 82% more than 2022.
2021 had the highest number of Covid-related deaths. Even after subtracting 25% of the 2021 deaths to order to compare 9 months of 2021 to the 9 months of 2020, there were 87% more Covid-related deaths in 2021 than in 2020 (19,754 vs 10,587) .
There were more deaths from other causes in 2021 than there were deaths involving Covid adding together 2020 and 2022.
When accounting for the excess deaths in 2021, there were more deaths from non-Covid causes than deaths related to Covid (53% vs 47%).
2022 had 26% more deaths from other causes than 2020.
All together, there were 114,844 excess deaths from 2020-2022. Covid-19 infections reportedly accounted for 45,009 of those deaths (39.2%). The remaining 69,835 deaths were reported as non-Covid deaths (60.8%).
What caused those deaths? Even suggesting that Covid vaccines could be a factor in any death is a taboo subject, one not to be brought up in polite conversation and sure to get a person cancel-cultured and labeled a conspiracy theorist.
However, when it hits close to home, many people can’t help but speak out. Here is a February 22, 2023 tweet- a man sharing the sudden death of his 31 year old niece:
In the journal Scientific American we see this stunning headline, which seems to applaud the increasing number of deaths (May 4th 2023):
It is unbelievable that this esteemed publication is highlighting the benefits of population decline “a future with fewer people offers increased opportunity...” and connects the increasing deaths to global warming. I don’t think the non-Covid excess deaths from 2020 to 2023 were related to global warming.
In October 2022, the Ceders Sinai hospital addressed one of the causes of the increasing deaths- heart attacks in people age 25-44. The article “Covid-19 Surges Link to Spike in Heart Attacks” was written by Cara Martinez, a lead Communications Specialist:
We read: “The spikes in heart attack deaths have tracked with surges of COVID-19 infection—even during the presumed less-severe Omicron phase of the pandemic. Furthermore, the data showed the increase was most significant among individuals ages 25-44, who are not usually considered at high risk for heart attack.”
Ms. Martinez is connecting the huge increase in heart attack deaths to Covid infections, which could account for some deaths in the age group 25-44. In fact, we learned in August 2020 that a Covid-19 infection can lead to cardiovascular problems:
“Nearly a quarter (23%) of people hospitalized for COVID-19 have experienced serious cardiovascular complications. Studies have shown 8% to 12% of all COVID-19 patients have acute cardiac injury. There are also case studies that indicate COVID-19 may lead to heart attacks, acute coronary syndromes, stroke, blood pressure abnormalities, clotting issues, diffuse myocarditis (heart muscle inflammation) and fatal arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats).”
-Severe COVID-19 associated with heart issues; much yet to discover (Newroom.heart.org) August 14th 2020
I think some of the 69,835 non-Covid deaths (2020-2022) were related to increased heart problems. In addition to Covid infections, the mRNA vaccines are well-known to cause heart problems as well. Certainly, one variable in 2021 and 2022 that didn’t exist in 2020 is vaccination.
Which TV news channel would tell us if Covid vaccines have led to death in people? It turns out that many scientists, doctors and researchers have written about the risks of Covid vaccination and the causes of excess death on Substack, a writing platform. Among the many writers on Substack, here are several who I have followed:
* Igor Chudov, Mathematician
*James Lyons-Weiler, Scientist
* Dr. Meryl Nass
* eugyppius, scientist
* Jordan Schachtel, investigative journalist
* Josh Guetzkow, University academic
* Dr. Peter McCullough
* Mathew Crawford, Statistician
*Dr Malhotra
*Naomi Wolf PhD, writer, researcher
*Chris Waldburger, researcher
*Steven Kirsch, researcher
*Dr Vinay Prasad
*Dr Robert Malone
*Sasha Latypova, scientist
*Edward Dowd, finance, and author of this book:
These highly credentialed people have been called anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, pushed aside and demonized.
The problem is that the vaccines don’t work as promised. The problem is that a lot of people have died unexpectedly. The problem is that dissent hasn’t been allowed in the US. These are all very large problem regardless of your opinion of Covid vaccines.
About the author:
Elizabeth Hanson is a former college professor. She had a bad experience with pharmaceuticals as a child which resulted in her skepticism toward pharmaceuticals in general and the Covid-19 vaccines in particular. She strives to live healthily and lives in Washington state with her husband and three dogs.