I can't guess how many hours you spent on the script and editing knowing the algorithm isn't going to do you any favors getting this out to more people. The mark of a real educator.
@@AnthonyKusterSo, Anthony Kuster, given this high amount of excess deaths, what is your interpretation? How do YOU explain the high number of excess deaths? Can they be accounted for by uncounted COVID deaths, making the COVID death count much greater than reported? Are they caused by collateral damage from the lockdown, or by some other factor? Does this high number of excess deaths, confirm that COVID really is as deadly as mainstream media would have us believe? Or, could the lockdown itself be responsible for these excess deaths?
Well, the answer to those questions would be really different depending on the country. The experience has been pretty different from country to country. As a general answer, unfortunately death is usually not a singular cause. This is why death certificates have primary causes and contributing causes. We like nice neat categorized data (working in epidemiology, we love that).. but reality is not so clean. So, without a doubt, we can say the excess deaths are “related to the pandemic.” The correlation (fact that they are seen in places and times where virus is widely prevalent) is too strong to be some kind of coincidence. Another point I would say is that the public has often focused on only the negative impacts policy responses have had on deaths, but there are also positive. Certain medical procedures that are risky have not been performed, road traffic injuries, air pollution as a few examples.. the way I think about it is that we have some number of causes for these deaths, let’s give each one a letter.. A, B, C, etc.. some are positive, some are negative.. when we add them all up.. we get excess deaths.. that equation will be different for every country.. for me to give any more detailed of answer would be pure speculation and opinion, which is just not what my channe does.. however, I’m confident some creative researchers will be able to postulate answers to these really important questions using hard data and sound research methodologies.. and when they do, I’ll have a video on it!
Very nicely done. However, I'm still highly skeptical of what I see as covid alarmism. (QUESTIONS AT BOTTOM) We've had numerous governments shut down virtually everything. Where I live, even the hospital was pretty much shut down -- the parking lot there is almost always entirely full, but during the lockdowns, it was almost entirely empty with only a very, very small number of vehicles there. All surgeries were canceled. But it wasn't just the hospitals shutting down. ALL walk-in clinics were shut entirely. Every regular general practitioner clinic drastically reduced service levels. Basically, health care was virtually shut off. Where I life isn't the only place to do that though. This was widespread. So while the excess mortality may be higher, I'm entirely skeptical that it was caused by SARS-CoV-2 Covid-19. We've never had a healthcare shut down like this before, so there's really nothing to measure it against. At the end of the day, we have Covid-19 AND denial of healthcare as 2 distinct variables during the exact same period, and either there is no way to measure it, or nobody with the relevant expertise has stepped up to do it, which would be entirely understandable because **IF** they found that the denial of healthcare was the primary driver of deaths, that would implicate a lot of powerful and influential people... it would be career suicide. Most people would simply say, "Screw it... I'm not throwing away my financial security and destroying my family for this," and that would be entirely reasonable. Given the way that this has been politicized, I simply can't swallow anything remotely supporting the politically correct narrative. My fears are about losing my freedoms, which is what this has been used for. That's most certainly very reasonable. You can lose a freedom with the stroke of a pen, but the only way we get that freedom back is either through years or decades of fighting... or shooting. It's better to not lose that freedom in the first place. So, I suppose my questions for you are: 1) Is there any research of the fallout casualty rates (fatalities/deaths) for the effects of the lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, etc.? 2) What is your risk tolerance for the possibilities of a) being infected by a respiratory illness, b) losing many of your fundamental freedoms, such as movement, freedom of association, etc.?
@@DJWeiWei Meanwhile, the states with the highest COVID numbers in per-capita terms are Democrat states, but yeah "right wing leaders" are the problem. Meanwhile, objectively, it's your leftist states that have dealt with COVID the worst. It's hilarious when you and other leftists make a generalizing comment about us right-wingers that not only ISN'T TRUE AT ALL, but is actually true of your political stripe, LMAO.
@@DJWeiWei I was watching a video on New Zealand's economy last night. The presentation was very positive but the comments were disheartening. So, as I understand and as is implied by your comment, welfare is big in NZ. Which goes totally against health shutting down during lockdown, so the absence of excess deaths in NZ during lockdown of course has no effect to the argument (as you seem to admit by beginning your next sentence with "on the other hand"). As to social freedoms, the fear associated with losing them has a lot to do with the part of the world one lives in, the trust in political leaders, in institutions and the people around you. People living in poorly managed and less trustworthy states tend to develop their awareness in such matters faster and deeper. As for the political drive for extended lockdowns, for instance, it is very hard to see it in a well managed society. But in places where welfare is gone or under attack, where small businesses are shutting down, it is easy to see a future of uprisings, that will of course need to be countered. When lockdowns are imposed by authority, with fines and police brutality and are defined as open for business but closed for any sort of social activity, we can see a picture emerge where extended lockdowns are the new norm. They may not be called lockdowns anymore, but the fact is that all social activity is deferred to the computer screen and your rights are basically limited to your work, if you have any. The political drive being to keep at the helm in a crashing system, for as long as they can manage.
@@gmann6781 given that "left" goes necessarily with anti-imperialist i.e. rules out bombing other people's countries to reap their markets and resources, it is also laughable to call Trump "the right" while calling democrats "the left", when based on the above, Trump is apparently to the left of the democrats. I'm not saying that American intervention stopped during the Trump administration, but it seems to have started with new and greater vigour by Biden.
@@gmann6781 oh yeah, let’s ignore the fact that much of the Northeast was initially hard hit with COVID cases and usually have high population densities, making it much harder for them to control covid. You have to remove the confounding factors before drawing conclusions.
How many people are dying from not going their doctors and hospitals and suicides are through the roof that would be excess death caused by scaring the American people to death.
300,000 suicides would probably be noticed. That said, excess mortality gives data on the entire pandemic, not just the medical stats. The human cost of the pandemic should and does include people who didn't get treatment for other illnesses. When you count war deaths, you also not just count the ones who died during battle, but also the starving population. Solutions are not only medical, like waiting for a vaccin or treatment (like Meadows suggests). Solutions should be way more comprehensive.
@@suzanne2 but does it make sense to say that the bad management of the crisis in some countries has led to this excess of deaths of other illnesses? For instance trying to cure people from the very beginning of their symptoms to avoid serious condition which leads to hospitalisation (I’m thinking of the French strategy asking people to stay at home and come to the hospital only when the symptômes where severe)
@@suzanne2 Under these 'pandemic' conditions, there are many variables that may lead to 'excess deaths by all causes'. Many did not know how to best treat patients early on, which will have led to some mishaps. What about those locations that sent covid-sick patients to facilities where they infected others, sometimes with a cap on resources? Then you have to contemplate examples like, eg. care workers in Italian l/t care facilities that abandoned their jobs, leaving the elderly and infirm to starve or suffer untimely death. Here in Canada, we are allowing people to choose Medical Assistance in Dying in these times. What about stress induced heart attacks (and hopelessness leading to suicides)? Stepping back, 1M deaths in 7B people is not a huge number.
@K D'Arcy Yes, this does seem possible, and I remember videos (that seemed to disappear almost as fast as they were loaded) regarding this. There are so many variables that would need to be factored in, but that there are is the reason that this becomes too big of an issue for most anyone to properly analyze it.
40 000 people die for every 1% reduction in employment in the US. Your average drop in employment is 5-6% since covid. This is enough to account for 200 000 extra deaths.
Great info. Important to note that "excess deaths" can never be attributed solely to COVID, as there were other anomalies going on in 2020, such as economic upset and government lockdowns, which also lead to illness, depression, substance abuse, and death. Too many variables in 2020 to ever attribute any excess deaths to any one cause.
That’s why doctors list patients as having covid so they can accurately attribute to the cause of death. If a motorist died in a car accident but had covid they list the patient as having covid but cause of death is unrelated to covid therefor does not go into covid death. Something that’s more ambiguous is cause of death by pneumonia and Possibly covid. If you look specifically at those two causes of death they are seeing an excess In mortality. I hope that’s answers your question about how they are not considering all Excess deaths as covid
@@GroundUpProduct00 They are allegedly seeing an excess in all-cause mortality. Not sure what pneumonia and COVID have to do with it. The figures are for all causes. And thus far, the all-cause mortality is not enough to be higher than those expected from excess suicides, drug overdoses, and so on. The unemployment figures alone would predict an increase in 200,000+ deaths. So far, you have not proven anything happened, except that very elderly people have died. In case you didn't notice, when you get old enough, you die. Lastly, do you know of even ONE PERSON who has died of Covid-19?
@@gmann6781 a 41 year old republican just died due to covid complications before taking office , I just highly doubt he would have died for any other reason if it wasn’t covid. I know of at least 5 people that died and know at least 10 that have gotten it. The excess mortality rate compared to other years and months have been in excess this year on a consistent basis so it’s safe to assume it’s covid. We won’t know until they have more data
@MrHalified I understand your concerns, we all have our own bias and you openly said you believe this is a scam there for you need to be convinced otherwise. For me personally, I haven already been convinced and there’s no confusing me otherwise . Have a good day
@MrHalified I’m not denying that deaths could be contributed to mal practice and improper use of ventilators. But at the end of the day what is your point? these people wouldn’t need to be in the hospital for them to have mal practice if they didn’t have Covid to begin with. Blaming malpractice for the unexplained excess death mortality rates that are caused by Covid is nonsensical and ultimately shifting the blame. Essentially what you’re saying is the medical field is responsible for these deaths that is just ridiculous to say the country needs to agree that Covid is the enemy and we need to do whatever to stop it. After almost a year of this pandemic people are still resistant to trying to getting over it and it just boggles my mind.
So here’s the million dollar question - when do people start talking about how to improve our population’s health rather than counting the bodies piling up?? So much of this death either directly from covid or indirectly from the costs of dealing/not dealing with covid are truly avoidable. Where is that discussion??
You would expect deaths to be in excess if you took away people's livelihoods, shattering their dreams, ordering them to isolate in fear, increasing suicides. Witholding life-saving treatments that have been on the market for decades. Not allowing the elderly to be close to their families, wasting away from neglect, oh and let's not forget the tragic deaths of, both young and old,stemming from the peaceful protest infernos of that year as well.
I live in Scotland and have downloaded all the data from the National Records of Scotland website. In Scotland there is no question that there are more excess deaths in 2020 based on the last 5 year average. However, go further back and you see a different picture. The bottom line is that at week 49, 2020 has the 7th highest number of total deaths since 1974. The epidemic peaked in weeks 14 - 21. However over a similar 7 week period over the winter of 1989/90 there were 2000 more deaths in Scotland. Furthermore, a large number of excess deaths in Scotland were not COVID 19 related but undoubtedly caused by the lockdown. I accept that there have been a large number of excess deaths caused by COVID 19 but excess deaths caused by a virus is not unique in our history. What is unique are the measures taken to control it, which I believe will be much more detrimental than the illness itself.
That’s a good analysis. One thing to be careful in that analysis is that demographics are changing every year. So the number of people and proportion of older people change. So just raw number of deaths is not an equal comparison unless those other factors are stable (which they never are). When computing excess deaths it is total deaths minus what is expected, which is modeled based on the demographics factors I mentioned. On your interpretation, I agree fully. Not all excess deaths are caused by covid-19. They can be caused by many, often interrelated, factors that may be directly or distant related to the pandemic conditions and not necessarily the disease.
Lockdown buckfast sales are up ... we all know what caused the excess deaths in Scotland! Joking aside this data is a complete mess and causing cognitive dissonance. Nobody knows what to believe. The ultimate goal of the abuser.
@@AnthonyKuster just to say I don’t mean your data is a mess, I mean the whole thing is a mess. I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t anymore in regard to the statistics on this virus.
Thanks, you’re right! I wasn’t trying to elaborate on historical excess deaths, but the data is in the figures. You can see around 2:50. You see 2018 had excess death levels (around 5000 excess deaths per week for the first 5-6 weeks of the year), which would be considered substantial by historical measures. 2020 is just a whole other level with 10-15,000 excess deaths per week continuously for 25+ weeks and counting.
@Mickey Mouse Thanks for sharing. I’m familiar with the stance of Prof. Sucharit and the work of Dr. Ioannidis. If the IFR reaches levels comparable to virulent seasonal flu strains, that would be fantastic! It is likely happening or will happen, either due to improved therapeutics or to mutations. It is the natural course of an endemic pathogen. It is worth noting that the median IFR quoted of 0.27% sounds small, but still does not compare to seasonal flu, which is 10x to 20x lower (see eg Wong’s meta analysis of the H1N1 strain doi.org/10.1097/EDE.0b013e3182a67448). It’s also worth noting that influenza outbreaks are also the most common cause of historical periods of excess mortality. In short, an IFR that is in the same ballpark as (but still higher than) influenza means that we should rationally expect to see excess mortality-especially in countries that are vulnerable due to health status and demographics. Nevertheless, both of these authors’ overall point that the strategies used to respond to the pandemic are inflicting harm is a point I agree with and is supported by this video. Overall, hopefully it is clear from this video, that while excess mortality is being observed, it is still impossible to distinguish the individual contributions of the many factors causing it, which include infection with SARS-CoV-2 but also interruptions to medical care, substance abuse (as well as positive factors like reduced road fatalities and air pollution). I’m looking forward to research coming out to better answer this question and to hopefully see some Western countries realize that their response no longer fits the reality of the situation. Stay well and cheers!
@@AnthonyKuster That's still low. You have proven that COVID is not the plague it was claimed to be. I'm curious, now that this evidence is available beyond a shadow of any doubt, how the mainstream media will play this in order to keep the masses scared. Thank you for proving that COVID, while apparently legitimate and real [and I can still BARELY say that], is hardly the giant plague that the mainstream media lied to us about it being.
@Mickey Mouse While I question the whole covid scare thing, the empty hospital stuff has been fact checked and proved to be false, check online under "empty hospitals" "fact check"
An incredibly difficult nuance to tease out is the fact that lockdowns may be driving the excess mortality in these countries. In addition, another driving factor is the relative prior year excess morality, the data of most countries reveals that the countries which have been "hit the hardest by covid" are in fact those who simply have had the lowest prior year mortalities, resulting in a 2020 population comprised of disproportionately larger number of susceptible individuals (aged, comorbid, immunocompromised, etc.). Another interesting context is the notion that many "covid deaths" are simply incorrectly counted, when individuals in hospitals and care homes have sadly passed due to other comorbidities, it is now well documented that many of these (both those who have had "positive PCR test" and those with negative test results) mortalities are reported as covid deaths, when they are not. In essence, there is 8months worth of incorrect reporting of cause of death, improper PCR test performance, lockdown induced mortality (suicide, delayed non communicable disease diagnosis & treatments, increased sedentary time indoors -> lower activity - vit D - immune status, etc.).
Thank you for catching that typo, I just fixed it. Have you seen the the recent report which declared Japan's deaths from suicide within the month of November has significantly exceeded historical trends, and even being higher than the Japan total running covid mortality? New Zealand is an excellent example of a warmer climate, likely better vit D status, more affluent population with greater baseline health. If you looked at the prior 2018, and 2019 winter burden deaths for NZ, i would not be surprised if they were relatively higher then the trendline which would mean they have carried fewer susceptible individuals at risk of worse outcome into the 2020 'pandemic'
@@DJWeiWei He said "the fact that lockdowns may in fact be driving the excess mortality in these countries." Meaning, this: The fact that "lockdowns may in fact be driving the excess mortality" Not sure why that was so complicated for you. [1] New Zealand is an island. [2] Yes, fewer people die initially during Marshall Law.
Interesting. Can conclude a few of things impacting excess deaths aside from true COVID deaths 1) Suicides are way up 2) people dying from lack of medical care they would otherwise have received 3) most elderly, vulnerable deaths accelerated into 2020 from 2021 or 2022 perhaps - think of the destruction that happened in nursing homes
I tested positive and as a result had to put off much needed surgery. Husband tested negative 3 days after my test. We are both completely symptom free. This whole thing is a crock. Now I can't work OR have surgery because of what I know is a false positive, or at least now I know my test must've had a super high Ct value. 😡 thanks for the info. Knowledge is power so I'll be asking for that Ct value should my next pre-op test be positive!!!
What is the meaning of: “Ct value? I know the PCR tests are not accurate, and that they are prone to false positive. And I know that they are being misused, because they are only supposed to use at limited number of “cycles,” and, because they weren’t even intended, according to their inventor, Kary Mullis, to be used for diagnosing illness, at all! Does the Ct value refer to the number of cycles?
My Mother died October last year they said covid-19 killed her, we fought it and death certificate was changed to final stage Vascular dementia. Take Northern Ireland - 5.7% of population have tested positive. 0.1% have died with the virus yet we are still locked down
or neglected medical treatment, or accelerated deaths from unhealthy lifestyles. Getting fresh air and exercise helps people stay healthy generally, so if someone with heart disease, diabetes, or whatever's applicable descends into an unhealthy lifestyle, they can die sooner and contribute to the excess deaths that way.
Great, excepting one problem: the biased countries' that are so high, like America, are as such because governmental mandating on big hosoital systems like in NYC caused initial panic and hospital mismanagement, catalyzing staff to place fearing, panicking average people next to those dying, causing 90 oercent more deaths, and more reported deaths, than ever were even necessary. Including young men who only needed enough oxygen to live, and no, these hospitals were NOT short on beds, rooms, or oxygen!!!! They were just in fullblown panic and mismanagement and panicking, dying, pstients resulted. WE HAVE TO START QUESTIONING EVERYTHING OUR GOVERNMENT ALLOWS TO BE REPORTED TO US THE PEOPLE, FOR OUR SOVEREIGN LIVES, OR IN TEN YEARS THEY WILL HAVE FULL CONTROL OVER OUR BODIES, AND OUR SOULS.
It's my belief that measures and hysteria around this virus have caused more death than the virus itself. The consequences of lockdown and economic hardship will result in blood on the hands of government and authorities. Death is a normal part of life. The more we focus on death toll the less we are able to be objective about these figures. Thank you for taking the time and effort to explain. Life must go on with liberty. We owe it to all those who fought and die in wars to win this liberty.
Nice sleight of hand with the stats. Bottom line is in the province where I live just over 200 people had died as of May 2020. As of today, there is still less than 300 total deaths, although it's been about 6 more months. The vast majority of the dead are individuals over 70 years old with severe illness or comorbidities. We have a casedemic occurring, and the death rates are not going back to what we observed during the actual pandemic. We are moving into respiratory season, and even if that meant the casedemic suddenly became associated with actual deaths, these deaths would likely steeply fall once the susceptible individuals currently very sick or in hospital are gone. Based on the most recent IFR data, the latest worst case models for America give something like 1-2 million dead even if every single person in America were infected with Covid. Given that it is ridiculous to suggest that anything like that number could be infected and given that all the scary models put out during the height of the pandemic vastly overpredicted the mortality we would see, the doomsday projections currently being pushed just don't make any sense.
The annual mortality rate in the USA hasn't changed in the past 20 years relative to population growth. And the US population growth increases largely every single year. 800k deaths would create an ENORMOUS surge in the mortality rate. So where is it?
You asked, so here it is: Here is US crude mortality rate, according to actual counts of death certificates by CDC (in deaths per 1000 population).. so comparable units and metric to what you posted: 2017 - 8.638 2018 - 8.678 (+0.4%) 2019 - 8.697 (+0.2%) 2020 - 10.27 (+18.1%) 2021 - ~10.3 (CDC still collecting data from states--provisional count usual published around end of March) Obviously the death total jumped from 2019 to 2020 and stayed elevated in 2021. Links to each year's data are provided at bottom of comment, so you can confirm the numbers. Here is the provisional report for 2020 mortality: www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm It says: "In 2020, approximately 3,358,814 deaths occurred in the United States (Table). The age-adjusted rate was 828.7 deaths per 100,000 population, an increase of 15.9% from 715.2 in 2019. The highest overall numbers of deaths occurred during the weeks ending April 11, 2020, (78,917) and December 26, 2020 (80,656)" **It's important to distinguish between age-adjusted mortality rate and the crude mortality rate. What you are using from Macrotrends is a crude mortality rate (so doesn't account for changes and aging in population), so I used those numbers so we compare apples to apples. (Also, note in my response to your other comment, that for 2020 onward your data in only a projection, not an actual count of deaths.. What I'm showing you in the CDC data is an actual tabulation of real death certificates.) Hope this clarifies your confusion. 2017: stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/79486 2018: stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/100479 2019: www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-08-508.pdf 2020: www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm 2021: www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm (then click "yearly")
Very well breakdown , I don’t know how comments are questioning this. You practically hit every point. The conclusion is: we need more time to analyze date, but from what they see now there’s an excess in mortality. Period.
He did not touch on population growth relative to mortality rate. In the USA, that makes all the difference. The annual mortality rate in the USA hasn't changed in the past 20 years relative to population growth. 800k deaths would create an ENORMOUS surge in the mortality rate. So where is it?
Question for anyone out there who can help, what is the average age of person who has died in the US from COVID where can I find the average age being 79 and the average person ding having 2.6 other comorbidities? I would appreciate the help.
It's gotten to the point where I'm sickened by the comment sections on covid related videos, these people are everywhere on the internet. Thank you for the video though
To make this really meaningful, we'd have to look at "life lost" and not just death stats. Looking only at death stats, we ignore the value of life and life expectancy. While a loss may feel equally painful whether we lost our grandparent or brother, but in terms of public policy and assessment of lethality of a pathogen, we absolutely have to look at "excess life years lost" rather than just simply excess mortality. As harsh as it may sound, there have always been and will always be times / years where the sick, old, and fragile are taken from us too early. But then again, all death always seems to come too early.
Hi thanks for your comment. What you’re talking about is called years of life lost, YLL, which is a metric for burden of disease. Another is disability adjusted life years, DALY. It’s an important way to characterize the impact of a disease (eg by capturing a disease that may be relatively rare but cause death in a young age). This requires combining death data with demographic data, so it isn’t yet widely available across all countries. There is work being done, and if you Google “covid burden of disease” you can read of some of the work.
@Anthony Kuster Great, thanks for clarifying and elaborating. Indeed, tbis is a more nuanced analysis, requiring additional data to be taken into consideration,. But it seems that from a public policy (or shall we say public policing wink) perspective, it is that burden or impact of disease which is much more relevant and meaningful than most of the other measures that are being used to justify decisions. Infection statistics by themselves give no indication of burden of disease (only burden / costs of what has become a testing obsession). And yet, these are the statistics that are being discussed and sensationalised daily.
It would’ve been nice if you would’ve spent more time talking about the excess deaths coming possibly not only from Covid but from excess suicides lack of proper treatment for other medical conditions etc.
Thanks. What I was trying to convey was that the excess mortality is the result of the pandemic (which doesn’t necessarily mean as a result of the disease known as covid-19). That can include directly as the result of infection but also indirect effects, namely things like you mention. It would be worth mentioning the pandemic would even have some reductions in mortality of certain causes, such as road traffic deaths and as a result of air pollution. Excess mortality represents the net of all those things combined . I didn’t want to spend much time interpreting the results, since not enough research has been done to explain it, and rather stick to presenting the observable phenomenon to date. Breaking down and trying to attribute the causes of the excess mortality will be an interesting follow up. Thanks for watching!
If there are extra deaths, I'd bet that it's because of hospital "protocals". Stay out of the hospitals, and do what you can to treat illness, like we always used to do, proactively and aggressively. Early treatment is key.
Any chance we can get an update on the current 2020 numbers? Based on the information in this video we should see it climbing as the death have rolled in.
Wouldn't a linear forecast be better to use than averaging the last five years. The reason being is by using the average method, expected deaths would be falsely lower.
Yes, folks, all of these things are done when expected deaths are computed. Each country and institution can have their own variation, so I don’t go into the details in order to keep it appropriate for a global audience. I generalized the concept to “average of past five years.” However, adjustments for changes in demographics and linear regression are widely used. For the US, you can see how total deaths in US jump dramatically, which is uncharacteristic of the long-term trend. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/23/us/covid-19-death-toll
You did not mention the fact there could be many other factors contributing to the death rate such as drug and alcohol suicide and many other effects this bombardment of stress that is being levied onto society
You just said they only tracked mortality data for 19% of the population. You then used a very rough round figure of 60 million deaths around the entire planet, and then used the 19% to workout all cause mortality for that 19% of the world... instead of using the actual all cause totals from the 19% used to workout the excess mortality for that 19%. Why did you bother dividing 60 million by 19% when you have the actual data at hand?
Because of the way the database was organized at the time, the expected number of deaths and total number of observed deaths were not easily summable across the countries in the database (adding up to 19% of worlds population). Instead, the difference between those two numbers (observed - expected, which is the excess) was easily summable. The purpose of the exercise was the gauge how “big” or significant that 1,000,000+ number of excess deaths (as of end of Sept) was. So, as a rough estimate, the exercise assumes that all deaths around the world in a given year (usually close to 60 million) occur equally across all countries and all time periods (obviously this is not true, but the spatial and temporal variations are smaller than the magnitude we’re working with here). So, we cover 75% of a year and 19% of world population, which is 14.25% of deaths, or 8.5 million. The point demonstrates that 1 million is reasonably outside the margin of error. At the country level, you can see this same point proven, where many countries have numbers of deaths that are 30, 40, 50 % higher than usual. Again, well outside the margin of error or annual variability.
Excess mortality is key. However, you have to look back beyond 2020. In uk anyways, 2019 was a low level vs average, reason being probably due to a particularly effective flu vaccination (70% vs normal of 30%). This means there were thousands of people who otherwise would have died the previous year now caught out by Covid. Currently though excess death rates are far closer to normal, some weeks negative. What does this mean for a true death rate. In my opinion we need at least 12 months to be able to work out a true death rate. We aren’t the yet but clearly it has gone down. Massively sine March.
Not a bad video. However, excess deaths in different places might still be attributed to causes other than COVID-19, e.g. political uprisings, natural disasters, war, poverty, other diseases, lack of care and poverty due to the lockdowns, so it's not sound logic to assume the cause of the excess deaths is all, or even primarily COVID-19. Like the video says, we need more data. In Japan, suicides spiked and the number of deaths outnumbered COVID-19. In BC Canada suicides and overdoses ( a number of which were also suicides ) outnumbered deaths by COVID-19, all due to the poverty and and disruption of the economy brought-on by lockdowns. That's why genuinely credentialed scientists created The Great Barrington Declaration, which has been largely ignored and/or misrepresented in the media. It has been signed by over 50,000 medical scientists and healthcare professionals. Are they all wrong?
Thanks for your compliment. I think what I tried to make clear in the video is that it is reasonable to conclude that the excess deaths are related to the pandemic conditions, which include all the causes you listed. To what degree each individual cause contributed is unclear. However, in the 3 months since the video, we have access to more information to shed light on it-like suicide data, as you mention. And, I also agree that the apportionment of blame, so to say, will differ from population to population, although I did not go into much detail on this topic in the video. I’m not familiar with all the details of the declaration, so I can’t say whether I fully endorse it, but the principle that a pragmatic approach that prioritizes protecting the vulnerable is one I support. In my current home of Thailand, I’ve see the policy shift away from the “lockdown” approach and we’ve seen really positive results. Our lives have been as normal as possible (at least what’s under our own control) yet we haven’t seen any excess deaths or any uncontrolled disease outbreaks.
@@AnthonyKuster Thanks immensely for not just deleting my comment. Often it seems that anything that bucks the lockdown strategy is deemed unworthy of serious consideration. This is a complex subject. But with so many lives on the line, we need thinkers like yourself to not only explain things as far as you did here, but also go to that next level to help determine whether the millions predicted to die as a consequence of lockdowns is a reasonable extrapolation. I started worrying right away when the lockdowns first started. I went to look at the deaths from poverty related causes prior to the lockdowns in the USA, was very alarmed, and common sense only said it was going to get worse. Many of these people will have had no exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus at all. It's one thing for a virus to kill a certain at-risk portion of the population, and another for government restrictions to lead to the deaths of otherwise perfectly healthy people. BTW: I gave your vid a like too. Another thinker did an interesting job similar to yours on some data in the UK. You might want to check it out: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4fo3kISZAmo.html
They argue on specific data on covid deaths. You start on how unhelpful general total deaths data but then proceed with it anyway. Not looking at the numbers but it is certain that you are INGENUINE
So the 98 present is recovery is not true as what most will take from this is that if you get covid-19 you are going to die is that true if not should you have put that on your video
With a real US infection count somewhere over 50,000,000, 300,000 deaths is 0.6 percent. It’s a real problem to be acknowledged but nobody should be panicking. Maybe he overestimated the intelligence of his viewers?
Worldwide mortality un, 2019 and countrymeters 2020. Now 2020, newly, world population review. In 2019 population 211,049,527 and 2020 213,396,772. Diference : 2,347,245 × 0,065 = 152,570,925 + 1,377,000 UN = 1,529,925. Let's wait for the official data!
Thanks. I agree. I don’t like to speculate, and in early October this was merely an observation without any empirical evidence to support a theory to explain it. Possible explanations for increased mortality include a pandemic of a novel virus, interruption to regular health services, and effects of interruptions to daily life and livelihoods (such as substance abuse and suicide). It’s likely a mixture of each, which will differ from population to population. Papers are coming out trying to differentiate the level to which each of those factors played a role, so more explanation could be given more in February which wasn’t possible in October. Thanks for watching and asking good questions. Cheers!
Any reason to not discuss the sigma and 2 sigma deviations so we can better understand whether we truly out of whack versus the 20 yr mean? Plus the year on year delta where the theory states that the previous year impacts the following year (been listening to Ivor Cummins)
Could those deaths have been contributed to cancers and other diseases that could have been caused from the lack of medical support for those people who needed to screened or needed treatment under normal circumstances 🤔
Yes, as noted, so proportion of excess mortality could be attributed to disruption in medical care. We cannot yet know what proportion that is. Is it 10% or excess deaths? 20%? When we have a more complete picture of the cause of death (not just number) then we can begin to answer that question.
@@AnthonyKuster you're right, you mentioned it at the very end of the video in the conclusion, I have a tenancy to comment before finishing the entire video, my bad... other than that I'm fully with you !
I noticed how you focused on the nominal numbers and not the percentage or even the standard deviation. Very misleading. The only % number you referred to over and over again was the 19% of worldwide data collected. Funny how back in 2017 you see a spike over 70K and for 2020 the spike is just under 90K. Not exactly a spread in numbers or outside the standards deviation multiple tines for the seasonality. VERY misleading the way this was put together.
There are other early signal sources of excess deaths like life insurance claims which have ski-rocketed after the period that vaccinations occured. The vast majority of claims are average healthy people in their working age not people who were over 65 and or people with co-morbidities. Also it seems that highly vaccinated countries show higher current excess deaths rates. Can you explain that? And please I am not an anti-vaxxer. I got vaccinated.
Thanks for your question. To your question, "why do highly vaccinated countries seem to have higher excess mortality?". A couple explanations. First, by definition having an accurate excess mortality count is primarily restricted to high income countries, which are also the same countries that have access to vaccinations and therefore higher vaccination rates. So, for one, it's an artifact of the data source (so, it's a form a data bias). Second, it could be some reverse causation. Higher death rates may motivate people to get vaccinated. Since most excess mortality occurred prior to available vaccines, that experience may have caused more people to seek vaccination.
@@AnthonyKuster It's my understand that in Western countries that excess deaths were below average during lockdowns leading up when vaccinations became available. It's after vaccination that especially after the second mRNA vaccine that there was a spike in elderly people who received the vaccine first but the overall excess deaths remained below average but started to increase to what is showing now well above average in younger people. I appreciate your interpretation of the data but that is the way I see it. Also there are advanced countries like Sweden that had a low vaccination rate which now show average excess deaths rates. Also comparing Israel to it's neighbouring countries showing the same phenomenon.
@@markbrzezinski8889 Maybe you can point me to the data you're looking at? As per the topic of this video (which is now 2 years old), this was excess mortality before vaccines even existed. Remember that vaccine rollout only first began in February 2021(ig.ft.com/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker/). This video was reviewing excess mortality that occurred from pandemic onset to October 2020 (so before vaccines existed). So, certainly, no excess mortality discussed in this video can be attributed to any vaccine-related factor. However, it seems you're interested in a topic that isn't addressed in this video, which is: "what is the association between excess mortality and vaccination status?" Well, first, we can observe that excess mortality continued to occur in many countries, even after vaccinations (ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid). So, people received vaccines in countries and excess mortality continued to occur in those countries. Could there be a correlation? Thing is, correlation doesn't mean causation. The typical example given in an introductory epidemiology class is: "ice cream sales and violent crimes both peak in the summer time. Does that mean ice cream causes violent crime?" The way to test for causation is with appropriate study design. Track people that are vaccinated and compare an equivalent group of people over the same time period that aren't vaccinated. Then, compare health outcomes (including death) between the groups. What a countless number of these studies published in medical journals have shown is that vaccines (even low-quality Chinese versions) reduce mortality. To get a sense of what I'm talking about, you can check out some of these videos that are more recent: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tN88uI2e9Tw.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eSH2MR2q3sc.html So, not totally sure what you're referring to, but hopefully this answered your question or at least sparked your interest to check out some of these other videos. Have a great day!
I know I’m late to the party, but I appreciate your effort. However, one key factor missing is, that for an accurate excess death count you must account fir population increase. No deaths, year after year, are ever the same. Some estimates are as high as 250k+ and as low as 150k above the previous years total unbiased death count. You’re not accounting for a huge factor. Not being mean, but wow, it’s kind of misinformation here. Good luck to you
Actually, any estimates of expected deaths used by any public health institute at a national level is accounting for changes in demographics. These trends do not abruptly change from year to year and are easily predicted with good accuracy.
There is also baby boom of 1947-1962 need to be take into account. Sadly the time has come for them to go. So excess of deaths should follow for the next 10-15 years up to 2030-2035 , as life expactancy shows
The facts you used do not support your position and your points were not supported by you in your report with any facts or unverified facts such as "data" that support your position, thereby making your claim just an opinions. Further You also did not address the matter that each year the number of deaths increases as each year as the data you did show supports a yearly increase in deaths. I would appreciate if you would not allege your opinions as facts and instead title this my opinion on excess mortality.
Thanks for your question. Could you specify which point were not supported by data? As for annual increases in deaths,. I didn’t go into the details in the video in order to keep it simple, but in fact the baseline “expected deaths” is not a simple mean. It’s age-adjusted based on demographics. So the expected deaths accounts for changes in the number and makeup of the population in a given country-basic epidemiology and demographics. For example, The average number of deaths increases about 25,000 per year in the US. But, as I mentioned, that trend is already included within the baseline and we are only measuring deviations from that trend. Thanks for your interest in the topic!
I took Canadian Statistics for the past 10 years and per month, all cause mortality. Jan-Nov. I averaged Dec from the past 10 months. Conclusion: excess mortality was marginal. Plop. Can provide the data or table if wanted.
Great to hear that Canada has had around 5% excess mortality in 2020. Sadly, many other countries have had worse fates with excess mortality as high as 15, 20, 25%, and more. www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/210310/dq210310c-eng.htm
Yes it should, and it is when the CDC or Euromomo report expected deaths. In summary, excess deaths is computed from expected deaths which is derived from historical averages adjusted for demographics. I did not go into the details of how that’s computed since I didn’t want to focus so much on the methodology and rather look at the outcome. Thanks for the question!
In some countries the mortality has been in quite a rise in past years. Just happened to check some stats from France. Mortality has been in so big climb past few years. That their excess mortality would have been high 2019. And Before that -18 and before that -17. Why? Then I found out that average age has gone up 2 years in past 10 years. So I am wondering how much in the aging west we actually have excess mortality.
@@AnthonyKuster oh formula has been improved. Well better formula has been there before, but not always used... and not always still. Hard to find right info about the actual calculations. But they indeed changed the way they calculate "expected" at some point. They did in the beginning calculate simply the previous average. Or some did, this is ourworldindata. "Previously we used a different expected deaths baseline: the average number of deaths over the years 2015-2019.8 We made this change because using the five-year average has an important limitation - it does not account for year-to-year trends in mortality and thus can misestimate excess mortality.9" And I did notice in news and many places the simple calculation of previous average. So it sometimes is real calculation of expected taken into count and sometimes just the previous average. So one has to check that every time there is excess death chart. Has it been factored in right or not. Probably difference of journalist (aka scientist in Covid age) or actual statistician making the calculation.
It takes a few weeks (3-4) for total deaths to be about 99% complete, per CDC data (that’s just the US). It takes months for the CDC to finalize cause of death data (that is, not just a count of deaths but also assigning them to categories of causes). For other countries, that delay may differ but it’s about the same. The data in this video, since it only relies on number of deaths, is based on data that was reported with about a 3-4 week delay at the time of the video, which was about 3 months ago. The data comes from each countries’ health ministry/agency responsible for reporting health data (such as CDC for US), which was then compiled by journalists into a single database (there is no international database of deaths, so it must be compiled by journalists or researchers).
So grateful I found your channel, I am sharing your PCR video with my family members. I have been trying to explain this stuff to them for months but you are much more eloquent! Thank you, really, for your efforts. The world needs more fair and balanced reporting, and less sensationalism/FUD.
Under these 'pandemic' conditions, there are many variables that may lead to 'excess deaths by all causes'. Many did not know how to best treat patients early on, which will have led to some mishaps. What about those locations that sent covid-sick patients to facilities where they infected others, sometimes with a cap on resources? Then you have to contemplate examples like, eg. care workers in Italian l/t care facilities that abandoned their jobs, leaving the elderly and infirm to starve or suffer untimely death. Here in Canada, we are allowing people to choose Medical Assistance in Dying in these times. What about hyper-tension leading to heart attacks, or even hopelessness leading to suicides? Stepping back, 1M deaths in 7B people is not a huge number.
Hi there! I agree with you completely that there are many variables contributing to the observed excess mortality. Malpractice, interruptions to medical care, substance abuse/mental health are just some of the issues. Dr Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford, wrote an article that provides a framework for some of these factors. Some factors are acute (and therefore reflected in current observations) while others are long-term and we will see effects for years or even decades (so not yet reflected in these observations). One note about how to evaluate 1 million deaths: the comparator should not be the world population, 7B, since that implies the baseline is human extinction. It would be a better comparison to look at it in comparison to the number of annual deaths worldwide, which is about 60 million. Global perspective of COVID‐19 epidemiology for a full‐cycle pandemic onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13423 ourworldindata.org/births-and-deaths
@@AnthonyKuster Thank you for the link/resources. One of the abstracts you linked brought to mind the "calculation of years‐of‐life‐lost", since we have been advised 98.4% of all covid deaths in Canada (about 11,000) have occurred in our long-term care facilities. The average age of death with covid is something like 85 yrs, while our average life expectancy is around 82.5. It would be especially difficult to calculate 'years of life lost' in that case. Thank you for your videos ... much appreciated!
Yes, the expected number of deaths accounted for changes in population demographics (changes in number, age, sex from year to year.. which aren’t too dramatic). You second part asks the question “what proportion of the observed excess mortality is due to effects of “lockdown” (eg suicide or substance abuse) rather than directly by virus-related disease?. This part, as I say, is not yet known and we cannot answer it without more data (so have to wait), but even then it’s never a black and elite answer. Deaths are usually a combination of causes. It’s some proportion, though. We can be sure that some increase in mortality is due to despair. Is it something like 10% of the increase or 25%? We can only estimate at this point
@@AnthonyKuster Thank you very much for your reply, I appreciate your time. I haven't seen any projections for anything other than the virus, it would seem beneficial to also project for overdoses, suicides, and hunger. I'm not at all thinking that this virus is fake or anything, just seems like they are pushing the vaccines pretty hard. Why not more focus on therapeutics? Do you think that there is an increase in the elderly population that contributes to increase. The baby boomer generation was expected to create strain on the system.
I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say "projections for the virus." Forecasts of future cases? The topic of this video is "excess mortality." Excess mortality is the number of deaths greater than expected (regardless of causes and adjusted for changes in demographics). So, what we objectively observe (no interpretation needed) is that in many parts of the world, the number of dead people is higher than it should be. Much higher. Not marginally or slightly. Undoubtedly and statistically significantly higher. What I (and everyone else) cannot tell you is why (in precise terms). We do know, though, those places with excess mortality are also exactly the same places that have identified a high number of COVID cases. Interpret it how you want, I guess. So, in generic terms, it's caused by the conditions of the pandemic, which is a blanket statement for the disease and the social/environmental conditions that exist in the presence of the disease and the related response. In terms of pushing the vaccine, I think the pharmaceutical, national pride, and profit interests have skewed it. Truth is, very easy, nearly free interventions (masks and limiting social contact) are extremely effective. But no one can profit off that. So, I hear you, on that one.
I appreciate the information on excess mortality; however, it only tells a small part of the story. While important, I believe what people would like to know is the age disbursement of those who died? Understanding all deaths above 65 is good to know but tells little of who is dying. Seeing statistics like 99%, which are bandied about gives the impression death rates are extremely low unless a person is above 75 and has other comorbidities. If one million more people have died in the 19%, we have data on, how to do deaths by age stack up. Is this in one of your videos? If the older population's is experiencing overwhelming deaths this would allow for more targeted treatment/remedies/actions. The question needing to be answered is age-related. It seems excess deaths are clearly in the 80 age range.
I believe the argument is that every year there's more humans so every year more people die. And that the average is an increase of 300,000 deaths consistently from year to year. But since the formula for excess death is an average of X amount of years. Excess death will always be up based on the later years of that average. Or at least that how I understand the explanation that we are not seeing an actual increase in excess death I could be wrong.
The way to compute excess deaths is not as simple as you described. I didn’t go into the details in the video in order to keep it simple, but in fact the baseline “expected deaths” is not a simple mean. It’s age-adjusted based on demographics. So the expected deaths accounts for changes in the number and makeup of the population in a given country-basic epidemiology and demographics. Also, you reference the number of excess deaths in the United States (you talked about 300,000) and say that each year the number of deaths in the US increases by 300,000. That’s not true. The average number of deaths increases about 25,000 per year. But, as I mentioned, that trend is already included within the baseline and we are only measuring deviations from that trend. Thanks for your interest in the topic!
@@johnparadise3134 "To own" is video game vernacular meaning to utterly defeat your opponent in a 1-sided victory. Easy to mistype P instead of the O so "pwn" ended up getting purposely typed ironically.
@@TheGroovyJones I’m familiar with the term “to own,” even outside of video game vernacular. It’s also used in sports, and in other endeavors. But I had no idea that you meant “own” in your comment. The only thing I could come up with was a “pawn.” Which I’m not saying he is a pawn, because he did a good job. Still leaving many things to be accounted for, that have yet to be figured out. But, I was thinking you were saying he was a pawn, possibly using science for a certain agenda.
First of all, you have started the work on a potentially good analysis, but I think you do not have enough information to support the conclusion you make at the end of the video. I have some suggestions to improve your analysis. First, you appear to take for granted the estimate of the expected number of deaths. I think more than half of this analysis should be on developing this number and I would not take for granted a number that you could not reproduce and validate on your own. Your video implies that the expected number of deaths should be roughly the same as the previous three years. I am not sure that is accurate. In fact, wouldn’t the normal number of deaths per year in the US increase each year (in the recent past and near term) due a) population increases and b) aging of the population? Additionally, I would not look at raw death counts. Instead I would look at death rates over time. I would also normalize the death rates for population attained age. I am not entirely convinced that the CDC should be developing the estimate of expected deaths in a normal year. I would have the Society of Actuaries (SOA) develop those numbers using data from publicly available sources including the census bureau and mortality studies that they have done. They do this for a living, and a committee of leading Life Insurance actuaries from the SOA should have the necessary experience and skill set to develop a useful, transparent, and supported estimate. I would also like to see your math for completing the number of deaths. You bring up a good point about the death counts having a reporting delay. Why not look at prior years reporting lags of deaths and develop completion factors? One straight forward way to do this is to simply look at YTD deaths through the reporting date and compare that to the ultimate number of deaths for the year. As you mentioned, the ultimate number takes a year or more to be known, so look at ten years of these figures starting in 2009 through 2018. You might want to throw out the high and low ratios and then take an average of the remaining eight years. Also look to see if there is a “trend” in reporting speed and maybe adjust for that. Share your work (Microsoft Excel works well for a peer review). Good job, but keep going.
So thanks for your comments. I can tell you a few things. First, the number of expected deaths is not that difficult or complicated. The number of deaths from year to year does not change dramatically. The expected number of deaths has already been computed by adjusting for the factors you say: changes in population and adjustment for changes in demographics. You can see the number of deaths from year to year (in the US) increasing due to the increase in population and the overall aging of the population. However, those changes don’t take dramatic and unexpected turns. (The number of deaths will only change 1-2% per year because of aging and demographics. Just go to ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count You’d have to have something extreme happen like a mass migration of millions of elderly people into the country to cause dramatic changes to the population demographics and last I checked there weren’t giant boats full of geriatric immigrants arriving in the Us). The estimate is reliable and reproducible. I’m sure others have done it and there is no reason to question the CDC estimate (again just look at the data from previous years-it’s self explanatory). I would fully support the use of independently prepared estimates. About knowing “how complete” the current data is, I’ve done exactly as you said. The number of deaths reported (no math, just raw numbers) is directly reported openly on the CDC site. You can see how “complete” it is by comparing the weekly deaths to an estimate of what it will be for In terms of the number of deaths (not cause) it only take a few weeks to be 99.8% complete. So there’s no math, just looking directly at the number of deaths. Hope this assuages your concerns. I appreciate your questions and can assure you I’ve included your prints already as part of the discussion. Cheers!
I didn’t see any link. I wonder if you are looking at an estimate or prediction/projection of deaths for 2020? Can you provide a source for actual number of deaths recorded in Brazil in 2020? You have claimed that the data reported about Brazil is wrong. You have said that the total number of deaths in Brazil recorded in 2020 was equal to the number in 2019. I have only seen data that suggests the number of deaths in 2020 were higher. Here are some of the reports suggesting this (below). Can you suggest a source of raw data on total deaths in Brazil? www.vitalstrategies.org/resources/excess-mortality-in-brazil-a-detailed-description-of-trends-in-mortality-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/ www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1413-81232020000903345&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938
Well is this is bull crap. Your little graph did not show Sweden and there death rates. Your little script does not account for the higher deaths caused by lock downs. Your peace does not show how when it first hit everyone listen to the WHO and put patience on ventilates.
Unfortunately in a discussion of the global excess mortality it is not possible to go through every country individually, however, the graphs and tabular data for Sweden can be seen in the video at 4:32 4:42 and 6:10. You may also access the data yourself for Sweden and all other countries at: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html Or at www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ As for the causes of death, which you mention two possibilities: adverse effects from interruption to life caused by lockdowns and ineffective medical treatment, you’re right, I don’t speculate on the causes, but mention that they are likely contributing. That’s exactly the point of excess death-identify and quantify the magnitude of the issue using objective and comparable measure (which deaths attributed to covid cannot do) and then use additional epidemiological tools to go back and estimation the contribution to each of those causes. Agreeably, unintended consequences and indirect causes are mixed in with direct causes, as is stated in this video. Thanks for watching!
Greetings Mr. Kuster and all of those on this forum! I would like to bring one thing to light that your excellent report, as usual, I might add, left out one significant issue. That being, what about all of the lives lost due to the world economic shutdown. How many of those deaths would be excess deaths? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S., more people are dying due to the shutdown than are dying from covid-19. Perhaps you should factor that statistic into the overall mortality rate and see what you come up with. Anyway, I do hope everyone on this forum has a very nice remaining day! Adios for now.
Thanks for your kind words. By definition, excess mortality doesn’t distinguish between cause of death, so those deaths caused by disruption and socioeconomic hardship are included in here!
@@AnthonyKuster I see. So you just give us the data and then we extrapolate that the excess deaths are not all due to deaths by covid-19? That means to me that more than half the number of excess deaths you gave in your report is quite possibly due to deaths caused by socioeconomic hardship. That would also mean that the numbers of deaths being given to us as caused by covid-19 are highly exaggerated. Would you concur with what I am gathering from your explanation to my first comments?
Well, first I don’t know which country you’re talking about, because, like I said, the situation differs substantially among countries. Secondly, I’d be happy to agree with you if you can substantiate your claim with observations and data. Sorry, but I’m a scientist and a researcher, so I don’t accept feelings, anecdotes, or conjecture.
No, there’s been virtually no flu activity all year as a result of all the travel restrictions and masks and what not. Personally, I’ve been healthier than ever here in Thailand! www.who.int/influenza/surveillance_monitoring/updates/latest_update_GIP_surveillance/en/
