A BIG Media subscriber emailed me this morning, asking what he should say to someone who still believes that COVID was one of the top causes of death over the last few years, and that government and medical interventions were effective in reducing harm.
After sending the email, I thought that there are probably many people wondering the same thing, so I decided to publish the email verbatim here …
Hey Buddy,
Here is a summary looking at the Alberta data, keeping in mind that Alberta is a decent population sample of roughly 4.4 million and that data loses integrity when you compare to other jurisdictions that collect data differently. Alberta had just one health region at the time the data was compiled, which is beneficial in terms of accuracy.
An important fact that few understand but is critical in order to have accurate analysis: As was the case with nearly every region, “confirmed cases” of COVID had only two results – dead or recovered – so those dashboards tracking COVID hospitalizations and deaths that had so many people freaking out were flawed in that they did not break out the large number of cases in which a person was about to die from something other than COVID but tested positive before passing.
In Alberta, there were two databases with very different COVID death tallies. As reported by Laurie Weston in February 2022 (A look back at causes of death in the first year of COVID-19), the Alberta Health Database that almost everyone in the province was tracking cited 1,535 COVID deaths in 2020, but the Alberta Death Database, which eliminated those who tested positive for COVID but a medical examiner determined a different cause of death, showed 1,112 COVID-19 deaths.
So just 72.4% of the deaths originally reported were actually caused by COVID, according to Alberta medical records.
Skye Thompson and Laurie in March of 2021 documented (COVID context – how concerned should we be about dying from this virus?) how the vast majority of COVID deaths were among elderly people with multiple comorbidities. Statistically speaking, those who died from COVID-19 had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Of course, there were exceptions – but not nearly as many as medical officials and mainstream media would have us believe.
I feel sorry for anyone who lost a loved one earlier than expected because of COVID, but another fact that only a logical numbers guy like me would ever discuss is that a lot of COVID deaths would have been among people who no longer wanted to live. I have spent considerable time visiting people in long-term-care homes, and many of the residents are ready to move on. My lovely grandma was ready to go several years before her heart mercifully stopped beating after years in a care home. People who cannot go to the bathroom on their own often lose the will to live.
Yes, COVID was a nasty virus, but severe outcomes were almost exclusively among very unhealthy people, and context like that provided by Laurie, Lee Hunt, and epidemiologist Dr. David Vickers is critical in helping us learn from mistakes.
In her incredibly detailed and responsible analysis of excess deaths (Detailed analysis of 2021 death data reveals disturbing trends), Laurie does not say specifically that COVID interventions resulted in more deaths of young people than they ever would have saved unhealthy people … but that is certainly how I interpret the fact that the majority of excess deaths during the pandemic were among people aged 20-59.
A telling quote from Laurie’s article: “(Among) men age 35–39, there were 195 additional deaths in the four AHSU categories in 2021, relative to 2019 (pre COVID), which is 1,625% higher than the 12 COVID deaths over the same period. That should have made headlines.”
So, while we were being told to lock down and vaccinate in order to help save our parents and grandparents, we were in effect killing our siblings and children by dramatically altering their lives and exposing them to side effects of new drugs.
Of course, incompetent and/or agenda-driven news coverage of the pandemic played a key role in fanning the flames of hysteria. While the Biden administration and other governments were pressuring social media companies to delete accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccine effectiveness (mostly lack thereof), most news organizations bought heavily into the fear mongering, which brought them larger audiences and increased revenue.
Laurie wrote an excellent article explaining how a typical piece of COVID journalism fell short – COVID clarification – a tale of two tales .
They say that hindsight is 20/20; well, I have been saying since early 2020 that we should be telling people to stay active, enjoy the beauty of human connection, and avoid breathing on people, particularly the very vulnerable.
And to those who say, “Imagine how it would have been had we not locked down and vaccinated,” I say, “I imagine a lot more young people would be alive and breathing.”
Thanks for spreading the word!
