Mainstream, corporate media go out of their way to discuss heart troubles, increased excess deaths etc without even mentioning the vaccines as potentially causal.
Here we go again. Another outlet wants to discuss ALL/ANY cause of excess deaths EXCEPT the single most obvious one. THE VACCINES.
BEGINS - More people than expected are dying in Canada in 2023 for reasons that are not yet clear
WENCY LEUNGHEALTH REPORTER
COVID-19 case counts are down dramatically from a year ago, according to federal data. Hospitalizations are higher than during the first two pandemic summers, but are hovering around their lowest point since December, 2021. And there are now fewer than 30 COVID-19 deaths reported across the country per week.
But owing to limited testing and COVID-19 deaths that are undetected or not yet reported, the real toll COVID-19 continues to take on Canadians is not yet known.
By a different measure, one that is trickier to interpret, more people than expected are dying in Canada for reasons that are not yet clear. Excess mortality, also known as excess deaths, is a calculation of how many more deaths occur than are predicted based on demographic factors, including the growth and aging of the country’s population.
Estimated excess mortality dipped in January and February, but the latest 2023 figures indicate it is about 15 per cent to 20 per cent higher than it was in 2020 and 2021, according to Tara Moriarty, an infectious-disease researcher and co-founder of the grassroots group COVID-19 Resources Canada. That’s considerably lower than in 2022, “which was a horrific, really, really bad year in Canada, but it’s still higher than the first few years of the pandemic,” she said.
What excess mortality says about the current state of the pandemic is uncertain, in part because of a slow, patchwork system of reporting deaths in Canada. Yet it shouldn’t be ignored, said Dr. Moriarty, who is also an associate professor at the University of Toronto.
“We absolutely need to know why we have historically high levels of death,” she said.
A summer spike reminds us the pandemic isn’t over
Since the start of the pandemic until June, her group estimates there have been nearly 90,500 excess deaths in Canada, which is about double the number of Canadian deaths in the Second World War. That number is adjusted to subtract deaths from drug poisonings, suicides, mass homicide and a heat wave in B.C.
The total number of COVID-19 deaths that have been recorded since the start of the pandemic, however, stands at 53,216, according to Public Health Agency of Canada data.
In other countries such as Britain and France, which have timely death-reporting systems, almost all excess mortality can be explained by COVID-19 deaths, Dr. Moriarty said. The two numbers match up fairly closely to each other.
But in Canada, provinces lag in their reporting to the official Canadian Vital Statistics Database, which collects information, including cause of death, for all deaths in the country.
That reporting is not yet complete for the first year of the pandemic, Dr. Moriarty said. But so far, she said, most of the COVID-19 deaths that have been reported to the database for 2020 indicate about 90 per cent of excess deaths that year can probably be attributed to COVID-19.
In addition to those that are not yet reported, there are potentially many deaths caused by COVID-19 that are not detected or not officially attributed to the disease, she added. For example, if someone developed a serious health condition from an infection and died more than 28 days after testing positive, their death may not be considered a COVID-19 death in some jurisdictions.
Kim McGrail, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, said she thinks of excess mortality as “an indication that there’s something happening that’s worth investigating,” but it doesn’t indicate what is actually happening or what to do about it.
Similarly, in an e-mailed statement, Statistics Canada said unusual excess deaths don’t necessarily speak to COVID-19′s impact on Canada. Rather, they signal a need for deeper analysis.
Statistics Canada explained it uses a statistical model to estimate weekly expected deaths based on mortality trends from 2015-19 while considering changes in age, sex and total population.
Part of the problem, Dr. McGrail said, is there are many factors influencing mortality now that are different from before the pandemic. One wouldn’t try to predict deaths in 2023 based on looking at an average five-year period in the 1970s, for example, she said. To a similar but lesser extent, comparing mortality today with a model based on what it was before the pandemic is complicated by numerous factors, including the toxic drug crisis and other public-health crises, she said.
Beyond deaths directly caused by COVID-19, people can die from indirect or long-term effects of infection, or from the mental-health effects of the pandemic or because they had delays in getting medical treatment or surgeries for other kinds of illnesses, Dr. McGrail said.
But even if it turns out excess mortality is not being driven by COVID-19, Dr. Moriarty said the country still needs to address COVID-19, since it is not showing any signs it is going away, and will continue to limit people’s lifespans, put pressure on the health care system, potentially have long-term consequences for population health, including long COVID, and hurt economic productivity.
She added that Canada also needs to improve its death-reporting system to inform speedier responses to whatever crises may arise, whether it’s future pandemics or the effects of climate change.
Moreover, whatever is causing it, excess mortality is something the country should pay attention to, she said. “Because clearly there are a lot of people dying that wouldn’t normally have.” - ENDS
This is by leading proponents of the vaccines-are-dangerous/deadly narrative & they appear to have succeeded in getting this mainstream published by basically avoiding the magic V word.
BEGINS - More young Americans are dying – and it's not COVID. Why aren't we searching for answers?
Without a thorough and collaborative exploration, we can't know what's killing us – or how to stop it.
Dr. Pierre Kory and Mary Beth Pfeiffer Opinion contributors
Life insurance actuaries are reporting that many more people are dying – still – than in the years before the pandemic. And while deaths during COVID-19 had largely occurred among the old and infirm, this new wave is hitting prime-of-life people hard.
No one knows precisely what is driving the phenomenon, but there is an inexplicable lack of urgency to find out. A concerted investigation is in order.
Deaths among young Americans documented in employee life insurance claims should alone set off alarms. Among working people 35 to 44 years old, a stunning 34% more died than expected in the last quarter of 2022, with above-average rates in other working-age groups, too.
“COVID-19 claims do not fully explain the increase,” a Society of Actuaries report says.
Among working people ages 35-44, 34% more died than expected in the last quarter of 2022, with above-average rates in other working-age groups, too, according to a Society of
Actuaries Research Institute report.
From 2020 through 2022, there were more excess deaths proportionally among white-collar than blue-collar workers: 19% versus 14% above normal. The disparity nearly doubled among top-echelon workers in the fourth quarter of 2022, U.S. actuaries reported.
And there was an extreme and sudden increase in worker mortality in the fall of 2021 even as the nation saw a precipitous drop in COVID-19 deaths from a previous wave. In the third quarter of 2021, deaths among workers ages 35-44 reached a pandemic peak of 101% above – or double – the three-year pre-COVID baseline. In two other prime working-age groups, mortality was 79% above expected.
Excess deaths are a global phenomenon
This isn’t only happening in the United States. The United Kingdom also saw “more excess deaths in the second half of 2022 than in the second half of any year since 2010,” according to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.
In the first quarter of 2023, deaths among people 20 to 44 years old were akin to “the same period in 2021, the worst pandemic year for that age group,” U.K. actuaries reported. Younger-age death rates were “particularly high” when compared with the average mortality for 2013 to 2020.
In Australia, 12% more people died than expected in 2022, according to that nation’s Actuaries Institute. A third of the excess was non-COVID deaths, a figure the institute called “extraordinarily high.”
Death rates are lower, of course, than in 2020 and 2021. [not sure about that, me...] But they are far from normal.
In the year ending April 30, 2023 – 14 months after the last of several pandemic waves in the United States – at least 104,000 more Americans died than expected, according to Our World in Data. In the U.K., 52,427 excess deaths were reported in that period; in Germany, 81,028; France, 17,731; Netherlands, 10,418; and Ireland, 2,640.
What explains this wave of excess deaths? Week in, week out, this unnatural loss of life is on the scale of a war or terrorist event.
The actuarial reports can only speculate on the factors causing these deaths, including oft-cited delayed health care, drug overdoses and even weather patterns. But the question remains: What explains this ongoing wave of excess deaths?
Life insurance data suggests something happened in the fall of 2021 in workplaces, especially among white-collar workers. These are people whose education, income level and access to health care would predict better outcomes.
The executive of a large Indiana life insurance company was clearly troubled by what he said was a 40% increase in the third quarter of 2021 in those ages 18-64.
“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference in January 2022. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”
Governments and regulatory agencies should cooperate with life insurers to investigate this trend at the national and multinational level.
Without a thorough and collaborative exploration, we can’t know what’s killing us – or how to stop it.
Dr. Pierre Kory, M.D., is president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an investigative reporter and author of two books. - ENDS
BEGINS - Iana dos Reis Nunes was 43 when she told her husband that she could feel something like a bubble in her abdomen when she lay on her side.
An ultrasound scan found spots on her liver, which led to blood tests and a colonoscopy.
“There was a tumor the size of your fist, and she had no pain and no problems with bowel movements or anything like that,” recalled Brendan Higgins, her husband, who works as an artist in New York City.
By the time doctors found it, dos Reis Nunes’ colon cancer had spread. It was stage 4, meaning it had reached other parts of her body.
The family was blindsided.
“She had had a baby 15 months prior to her diagnosis, so she’d had a million blood tests, you know, care from doctors and sonograms … and there was no indication of anything, nothing whatsoever.”
When cancer strikes an adult under the age of 50, doctors call it an early-onset case. These cancers at younger ages are becoming more common.
A new review of cancer registry records from 44 countries found that the incidence of early-onset cancers is rising rapidly for colorectal and 13 other types of cancers, many of which affect the digestive system, and this increase is happening across many middle- and high-income nations.
The review’s authors say the upswing in younger adults in happening in part because of more sensitive testing for some cancer types, such as thyroid cancer. But testing doesn’t completely account for the trend, says co-author Shuji Ogino, a professor of pathology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Ogino says the spike is due to an unhealthy stew of risk factors that are probably working together, some which are known and others that need to be investigated.
He notes that many of these risks have established links to cancer like obesity, inactivity, diabetes, alcohol, smoking, environmental pollution and Western diets high in red meat and added sugars, not to mention shift work and lack of sleep.
colon cancer vls
A colonoscopy study has some wondering if they should have the procedure. What you should know
“And there are many unknown risk factors as well, like a pollutant or like food additives. Nobody knows,” he said.
Ogino thinks the fact that so many of these cancers – eight out of 14 studied – involve the digestive system points to a big role for diet and the bacteria that live in our gut, called the microbiome.
“I think this actually is an important piece because what it’s pointing to is changing exposure prevalences at early ages, that are producing earlier-onset cancers,” says Dr. Elizabeth Platz, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who also edits the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, who was not involved in the review.
Take obesity. Once, it was rare. Not only has it become more common to have a dangerously high body mass index, but people are becoming obese earlier in life, even in childhood, so these cancer risks are building decades earlier than they did for previous generations.
An explosion of colorectal cancer in younger adults
The surge in early-onset colorectal cancer – the cancer dos Reis Nunes had – has been particularly steep.
US task force lowers recommended age to start colorectal cancer screening to 45
Ogino’s review found that across the years of the study, the average yearly climb in colorectal cancer in young adults was about 2% in the US, Australia, Canada, France and Japan. In the UK, it’s almost 3% per year in England, Scotland and Wales. In Korea and Ecuador, it is roughly 5% per year.
“It doesn’t seem big, but you can think about inflation: If it’s 2% every year, it’s going to be a big change in 10 years or 20 years, you know?” Ogino said. “It’s not trivial.”
Between 1988 and 2015, those yearly upticks pushed the rates of early colorectal cancers from nearly 8 per every 100,000 people to almost 13 per 100,000 – a 63% increase, according to another recent review published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Studies show that about 1 in 10 colorectal cancers in the US is diagnosed in someone who is between the ages of 20 and 50.
The younger you are, the higher the risk
Ogino’s review found something called a cohort effect, meaning the risk of an early-onset cancer has increased for each successive group of people born at a later time. Those born the 1990s have a higher risk of developing an early-onset cancer in their lifetime than those born in the 1980s, for example.
Other malignancies going up in younger Americans include those in the breast, endometrium, gall bladder and bile duct, kidney, pancreas, thyroid, stomach and plasma cells in the blood – a cancer called myeloma.
Dr. Karen Knudsen, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, calls the review “a call to arms.”
Cancer is a serious diagnosis at any age, but when it shows up in younger adults, the tumors are typically more aggressive, and they often go undetected for longer because routine cancer screening isn’t recommended for some of the most common cancer types, such as breast and prostate, until age 50.
“Not only were these early-onset type of cancers more likely to be diagnosed when the tumor is at a more advanced stage, it was also in some of the reports that were tabulated here associated with worse survival outcome,” Knudsen said.
‘Not an old person’s disease anymore’
Dos Reis Nunes started treatment in 2017 at Sloan Kettering and Mount Sinai cancer centers in New York.
Her husband remembers the doctors explaining that she was one of a growing number of younger patients they were seeing.
“I recall it being a point of discussion in both hospitals that people getting colon cancer were getting younger and younger, more and more, and they couldn’t explain it,” Higgins said.
Higgins says he spent a lot of time in online support groups, looking for answers and comfort.
“And there were a lot of young people in those groups,” he said. “It wasn’t populated by people in their 50s and 60s. It’s like 30s, 40s, 50s. So I was very conscious that this wasn’t an old person’s disease anymore,” he said.
In fact, routine screening – with colonoscopies and tests that check for blood in stool – has driven down cases of colorectal cancer and made it less fatal in older adults, even as cases have soared in those under 50.
Knudsen says three things should happen in the wake of large, definitive reviews like this one.
“One is a call for research so that we truly do understand some of the specific trends that we are seeing,” she says.
Second, she wants to see more awareness of the risks, which will hopefully help people modify their behavior to control what risks they can.
Third, she says, groups that make recommendations for cancer screenings should re-evaluate when those screenings should start. It could be that some should start at younger ages.
In fact, that’s already happening.
Last year, the rising incidence of colon cancer in younger adults prompted the US Preventive Services Task Force to lower the age at which it recommends doctors start screening people for colon cancer to 45.
“If you’re heading to 45, you should really be thinking about this and not waiting until 50 or 55,” Higgins said.
Higgins said his wife’s first 12 months of cancer treatment were almost miraculous, “like remarkable reactions to the chemo.”
“And then – I read about this actually – it can unravel really quickly,” he said. “And once it started unraveling, it just went downhill extremely quickly.”
His wife died in 2019, leaving behind their daughter, Maeve, who had not yet turned 4, an 11-year-old and a 20-year-old.
“We had a great love story,” he said. “I’m still bitter. Still angry.
“Life is OK. Everybody is fine. But I’m like, deep down, I’m seething that it happened to her. She was a really good person.” - ENDS
ANY discussion of massive, worrying excess deaths that REFUSES to mention the single most likely cause of them, the novel interventions, & seeks to discuss all & any other consideration for them, is obfuscation & propaganda & not a thing less.
BEGINS - Heart deaths surge by more than 500 a week since pandemic
Heart deaths have risen by more than 500 a week, major research has shown, with experts saying “extreme disruption” to the NHS caused by the pandemic may have fuelled the crisis.
The study of government data revealed almost 100,000 extra deaths among people with cardiovascular disease (CVD) since spring 2020.
Experts said NHS disruption to heart care and increasing ambulance delays for heart attack and stroke victims had left Britain “in the grip of a heart and stroke care emergency”.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) analysis of data from the Government’s Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) revealed an extra 96,540 deaths of patients with heart conditions since February 2020.
While excess cardiovascular deaths in the first year of the pandemic were linked to coronavirus infections, heart deaths have remained high since Covid deaths fell.
Cardiac experts said “severe ongoing disruption to NHS heart care” was among the factors driving the continued increase, with record delays for ambulances in recent months.
In December, average waits for ambulances for 999 calls involving heart attack patients breached 90 minutes, against a target of 18 minutes. Response times have been consistently above 30 minutes since the start of 2022.
Meanwhile, care of patients with conditions such as high blood pressure – which increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes – has deteriorated.
NHS figures show two million fewer people had their blood pressure under control in 2021 compared with the year before.
The BHF also raised concern about a potential rise in heart problems linked to Covid, with separate research showing those who caught the infection before the vaccine rollout were five times more likely to die in the 18 months after infection.
The figures from March 2020 to March 2023 show 839,467 deaths in England involving CVD – 13 per cent more than the 742,927 expected.
Dr Charmaine Griffiths, chief executive at the BHF, said: “It is deeply troubling that so many more people with cardiovascular disease have lost their lives over the last three years.
“My heart goes out to every family who has endured the pain of losing a loved one, all too often in distressing circumstances.
(AN - Two years. There was no huge rise in heart issues in 2020, it ALL started in 2021 & of course, we know what that coincided with, don't we?
“For years now, it has been clear that we are firmly in the grip of a heart and stroke care emergency. If little changes, we could continue to see a sustained rise in death rates from cardiovascular conditions that undoes decades of scientific progress to reduce the number of people who die of a heart attack or stroke.
“There is no time to waste – Government must take control of this crisis to give heart patients and their loved ones hope of a better and healthier future.
“It can do this by prioritising NHS heart care, better preventing heart disease and stroke, and powering science to unlock future treatments and cures.”
Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, a consultant cardiologist, said: “Covid-19 no longer fully explains the significant numbers of excess deaths involving cardiovascular disease. Other major factors are likely contributing, including the extreme and unrelenting pressure on the NHS over the last few years.”
The associate medical director at the BHF said: “Long waits for heart care are dangerous – they put someone at increased risk of avoidable hospital admission, disability due to heart failure and premature death. Yet people are struggling to get potentially life-saving heart treatment when they need it due to a lack of NHS staff and space, despite cardiovascular disease affecting record numbers of people.”
Last year research revealed more than 30,000 excess deaths involving coronary heart disease since the pandemic began, according to OHID data.
OHID now includes the broader disease category of “cardiovascular disease or CVD” which reveals for the first time how many excess deaths there have been involving all heart and circulatory conditions since the onset of the pandemic, with data taking account of an ageing and growing population.
Professor John Greenwood, president of the British Cardiovascular Society, said the findings were “worrying” with Covid not only causing direct effects in increasing heart risks, but with the pandemic having a knock-on effect on NHS treatment and prevention of heart problems.
A Government spokesman said: “We are cutting waiting lists, ambulance response times are falling, staff increasing and we are improving access to blood pressure and health checks.
“We know there is more to do which is why we are consulting on a Major Conditions Strategy to tackle cardiovascular disease - including strokes and diabetes – and we have opened 108 community diagnostic centres that have delivered over 4 million tests, scans and checks including for those with cardiovascular disease.
“The government is also working with NHS England to combat some of the causes of cardiovascular disease, with schemes to support increased physical activity, reduce obesity rates and encourage people to stop smoking.” - ENDS
Three weeks ago, Portugal Resident, an outlet AN likes because it's anti-McCann, reported that Portugal's excess deaths rate was highest in Europe, but without mentioning the high vaccination rate or mentioning the vaccines at all. It's all about the crowded hospitals & the flu season.
No paywall - https://archive.is/URx0k
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-excess-deaths-covid-canada
Here we go again. Another outlet wants to discuss ALL/ANY cause of excess deaths EXCEPT the single most obvious one. THE VACCINES.
BEGINS - More people than expected are dying in Canada in 2023 for reasons that are not yet clear
WENCY LEUNGHEALTH REPORTER
COVID-19 case counts are down dramatically from a year ago, according to federal data. Hospitalizations are higher than during the first two pandemic summers, but are hovering around their lowest point since December, 2021. And there are now fewer than 30 COVID-19 deaths reported across the country per week.
But owing to limited testing and COVID-19 deaths that are undetected or not yet reported, the real toll COVID-19 continues to take on Canadians is not yet known.
By a different measure, one that is trickier to interpret, more people than expected are dying in Canada for reasons that are not yet clear. Excess mortality, also known as excess deaths, is a calculation of how many more deaths occur than are predicted based on demographic factors, including the growth and aging of the country’s population.
Estimated excess mortality dipped in January and February, but the latest 2023 figures indicate it is about 15 per cent to 20 per cent higher than it was in 2020 and 2021, according to Tara Moriarty, an infectious-disease researcher and co-founder of the grassroots group COVID-19 Resources Canada. That’s considerably lower than in 2022, “which was a horrific, really, really bad year in Canada, but it’s still higher than the first few years of the pandemic,” she said.
What excess mortality says about the current state of the pandemic is uncertain, in part because of a slow, patchwork system of reporting deaths in Canada. Yet it shouldn’t be ignored, said Dr. Moriarty, who is also an associate professor at the University of Toronto.
“We absolutely need to know why we have historically high levels of death,” she said.
A summer spike reminds us the pandemic isn’t over
Since the start of the pandemic until June, her group estimates there have been nearly 90,500 excess deaths in Canada, which is about double the number of Canadian deaths in the Second World War. That number is adjusted to subtract deaths from drug poisonings, suicides, mass homicide and a heat wave in B.C.
The total number of COVID-19 deaths that have been recorded since the start of the pandemic, however, stands at 53,216, according to Public Health Agency of Canada data.
In other countries such as Britain and France, which have timely death-reporting systems, almost all excess mortality can be explained by COVID-19 deaths, Dr. Moriarty said. The two numbers match up fairly closely to each other.
But in Canada, provinces lag in their reporting to the official Canadian Vital Statistics Database, which collects information, including cause of death, for all deaths in the country.
That reporting is not yet complete for the first year of the pandemic, Dr. Moriarty said. But so far, she said, most of the COVID-19 deaths that have been reported to the database for 2020 indicate about 90 per cent of excess deaths that year can probably be attributed to COVID-19.
In addition to those that are not yet reported, there are potentially many deaths caused by COVID-19 that are not detected or not officially attributed to the disease, she added. For example, if someone developed a serious health condition from an infection and died more than 28 days after testing positive, their death may not be considered a COVID-19 death in some jurisdictions.
Kim McGrail, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, said she thinks of excess mortality as “an indication that there’s something happening that’s worth investigating,” but it doesn’t indicate what is actually happening or what to do about it.
Similarly, in an e-mailed statement, Statistics Canada said unusual excess deaths don’t necessarily speak to COVID-19′s impact on Canada. Rather, they signal a need for deeper analysis.
Statistics Canada explained it uses a statistical model to estimate weekly expected deaths based on mortality trends from 2015-19 while considering changes in age, sex and total population.
Part of the problem, Dr. McGrail said, is there are many factors influencing mortality now that are different from before the pandemic. One wouldn’t try to predict deaths in 2023 based on looking at an average five-year period in the 1970s, for example, she said. To a similar but lesser extent, comparing mortality today with a model based on what it was before the pandemic is complicated by numerous factors, including the toxic drug crisis and other public-health crises, she said.
Beyond deaths directly caused by COVID-19, people can die from indirect or long-term effects of infection, or from the mental-health effects of the pandemic or because they had delays in getting medical treatment or surgeries for other kinds of illnesses, Dr. McGrail said.
But even if it turns out excess mortality is not being driven by COVID-19, Dr. Moriarty said the country still needs to address COVID-19, since it is not showing any signs it is going away, and will continue to limit people’s lifespans, put pressure on the health care system, potentially have long-term consequences for population health, including long COVID, and hurt economic productivity.
She added that Canada also needs to improve its death-reporting system to inform speedier responses to whatever crises may arise, whether it’s future pandemics or the effects of climate change.
Moreover, whatever is causing it, excess mortality is something the country should pay attention to, she said. “Because clearly there are a lot of people dying that wouldn’t normally have.” - ENDS
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/08/11/more-americans-dying-than-before-pandemic-covid-deaths/70542423007/
This is by leading proponents of the vaccines-are-dangerous/deadly narrative & they appear to have succeeded in getting this mainstream published by basically avoiding the magic V word.
BEGINS - More young Americans are dying – and it's not COVID. Why aren't we searching for answers?
Without a thorough and collaborative exploration, we can't know what's killing us – or how to stop it.
Dr. Pierre Kory and Mary Beth Pfeiffer Opinion contributors
Life insurance actuaries are reporting that many more people are dying – still – than in the years before the pandemic. And while deaths during COVID-19 had largely occurred among the old and infirm, this new wave is hitting prime-of-life people hard.
No one knows precisely what is driving the phenomenon, but there is an inexplicable lack of urgency to find out. A concerted investigation is in order.
Deaths among young Americans documented in employee life insurance claims should alone set off alarms. Among working people 35 to 44 years old, a stunning 34% more died than expected in the last quarter of 2022, with above-average rates in other working-age groups, too.
“COVID-19 claims do not fully explain the increase,” a Society of Actuaries report says.
Among working people ages 35-44, 34% more died than expected in the last quarter of 2022, with above-average rates in other working-age groups, too, according to a Society of
Actuaries Research Institute report.
From 2020 through 2022, there were more excess deaths proportionally among white-collar than blue-collar workers: 19% versus 14% above normal. The disparity nearly doubled among top-echelon workers in the fourth quarter of 2022, U.S. actuaries reported.
And there was an extreme and sudden increase in worker mortality in the fall of 2021 even as the nation saw a precipitous drop in COVID-19 deaths from a previous wave. In the third quarter of 2021, deaths among workers ages 35-44 reached a pandemic peak of 101% above – or double – the three-year pre-COVID baseline. In two other prime working-age groups, mortality was 79% above expected.
Excess deaths are a global phenomenon
This isn’t only happening in the United States. The United Kingdom also saw “more excess deaths in the second half of 2022 than in the second half of any year since 2010,” according to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.
In the first quarter of 2023, deaths among people 20 to 44 years old were akin to “the same period in 2021, the worst pandemic year for that age group,” U.K. actuaries reported. Younger-age death rates were “particularly high” when compared with the average mortality for 2013 to 2020.
In Australia, 12% more people died than expected in 2022, according to that nation’s Actuaries Institute. A third of the excess was non-COVID deaths, a figure the institute called “extraordinarily high.”
Death rates are lower, of course, than in 2020 and 2021. [not sure about that, me...] But they are far from normal.
In the year ending April 30, 2023 – 14 months after the last of several pandemic waves in the United States – at least 104,000 more Americans died than expected, according to Our World in Data. In the U.K., 52,427 excess deaths were reported in that period; in Germany, 81,028; France, 17,731; Netherlands, 10,418; and Ireland, 2,640.
What explains this wave of excess deaths? Week in, week out, this unnatural loss of life is on the scale of a war or terrorist event.
The actuarial reports can only speculate on the factors causing these deaths, including oft-cited delayed health care, drug overdoses and even weather patterns. But the question remains: What explains this ongoing wave of excess deaths?
Life insurance data suggests something happened in the fall of 2021 in workplaces, especially among white-collar workers. These are people whose education, income level and access to health care would predict better outcomes.
The executive of a large Indiana life insurance company was clearly troubled by what he said was a 40% increase in the third quarter of 2021 in those ages 18-64.
“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference in January 2022. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”
Governments and regulatory agencies should cooperate with life insurers to investigate this trend at the national and multinational level.
Without a thorough and collaborative exploration, we can’t know what’s killing us – or how to stop it.
Dr. Pierre Kory, M.D., is president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an investigative reporter and author of two books. - ENDS
Another one to add to the mix... The V word does not appear.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/14/health/early-onset-cancer-increase/index.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
BEGINS - Iana dos Reis Nunes was 43 when she told her husband that she could feel something like a bubble in her abdomen when she lay on her side.
An ultrasound scan found spots on her liver, which led to blood tests and a colonoscopy.
“There was a tumor the size of your fist, and she had no pain and no problems with bowel movements or anything like that,” recalled Brendan Higgins, her husband, who works as an artist in New York City.
By the time doctors found it, dos Reis Nunes’ colon cancer had spread. It was stage 4, meaning it had reached other parts of her body.
The family was blindsided.
“She had had a baby 15 months prior to her diagnosis, so she’d had a million blood tests, you know, care from doctors and sonograms … and there was no indication of anything, nothing whatsoever.”
When cancer strikes an adult under the age of 50, doctors call it an early-onset case. These cancers at younger ages are becoming more common.
A new review of cancer registry records from 44 countries found that the incidence of early-onset cancers is rising rapidly for colorectal and 13 other types of cancers, many of which affect the digestive system, and this increase is happening across many middle- and high-income nations.
The review’s authors say the upswing in younger adults in happening in part because of more sensitive testing for some cancer types, such as thyroid cancer. But testing doesn’t completely account for the trend, says co-author Shuji Ogino, a professor of pathology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Ogino says the spike is due to an unhealthy stew of risk factors that are probably working together, some which are known and others that need to be investigated.
He notes that many of these risks have established links to cancer like obesity, inactivity, diabetes, alcohol, smoking, environmental pollution and Western diets high in red meat and added sugars, not to mention shift work and lack of sleep.
colon cancer vls
A colonoscopy study has some wondering if they should have the procedure. What you should know
“And there are many unknown risk factors as well, like a pollutant or like food additives. Nobody knows,” he said.
Ogino thinks the fact that so many of these cancers – eight out of 14 studied – involve the digestive system points to a big role for diet and the bacteria that live in our gut, called the microbiome.
“I think this actually is an important piece because what it’s pointing to is changing exposure prevalences at early ages, that are producing earlier-onset cancers,” says Dr. Elizabeth Platz, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who also edits the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, who was not involved in the review.
Take obesity. Once, it was rare. Not only has it become more common to have a dangerously high body mass index, but people are becoming obese earlier in life, even in childhood, so these cancer risks are building decades earlier than they did for previous generations.
An explosion of colorectal cancer in younger adults
The surge in early-onset colorectal cancer – the cancer dos Reis Nunes had – has been particularly steep.
US task force lowers recommended age to start colorectal cancer screening to 45
Ogino’s review found that across the years of the study, the average yearly climb in colorectal cancer in young adults was about 2% in the US, Australia, Canada, France and Japan. In the UK, it’s almost 3% per year in England, Scotland and Wales. In Korea and Ecuador, it is roughly 5% per year.
“It doesn’t seem big, but you can think about inflation: If it’s 2% every year, it’s going to be a big change in 10 years or 20 years, you know?” Ogino said. “It’s not trivial.”
Between 1988 and 2015, those yearly upticks pushed the rates of early colorectal cancers from nearly 8 per every 100,000 people to almost 13 per 100,000 – a 63% increase, according to another recent review published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Studies show that about 1 in 10 colorectal cancers in the US is diagnosed in someone who is between the ages of 20 and 50.
The younger you are, the higher the risk
Ogino’s review found something called a cohort effect, meaning the risk of an early-onset cancer has increased for each successive group of people born at a later time. Those born the 1990s have a higher risk of developing an early-onset cancer in their lifetime than those born in the 1980s, for example.
Other malignancies going up in younger Americans include those in the breast, endometrium, gall bladder and bile duct, kidney, pancreas, thyroid, stomach and plasma cells in the blood – a cancer called myeloma.
Dr. Karen Knudsen, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, calls the review “a call to arms.”
Cancer is a serious diagnosis at any age, but when it shows up in younger adults, the tumors are typically more aggressive, and they often go undetected for longer because routine cancer screening isn’t recommended for some of the most common cancer types, such as breast and prostate, until age 50.
“Not only were these early-onset type of cancers more likely to be diagnosed when the tumor is at a more advanced stage, it was also in some of the reports that were tabulated here associated with worse survival outcome,” Knudsen said.
‘Not an old person’s disease anymore’
Dos Reis Nunes started treatment in 2017 at Sloan Kettering and Mount Sinai cancer centers in New York.
Her husband remembers the doctors explaining that she was one of a growing number of younger patients they were seeing.
“I recall it being a point of discussion in both hospitals that people getting colon cancer were getting younger and younger, more and more, and they couldn’t explain it,” Higgins said.
Higgins says he spent a lot of time in online support groups, looking for answers and comfort.
“And there were a lot of young people in those groups,” he said. “It wasn’t populated by people in their 50s and 60s. It’s like 30s, 40s, 50s. So I was very conscious that this wasn’t an old person’s disease anymore,” he said.
In fact, routine screening – with colonoscopies and tests that check for blood in stool – has driven down cases of colorectal cancer and made it less fatal in older adults, even as cases have soared in those under 50.
Knudsen says three things should happen in the wake of large, definitive reviews like this one.
“One is a call for research so that we truly do understand some of the specific trends that we are seeing,” she says.
Second, she wants to see more awareness of the risks, which will hopefully help people modify their behavior to control what risks they can.
Third, she says, groups that make recommendations for cancer screenings should re-evaluate when those screenings should start. It could be that some should start at younger ages.
In fact, that’s already happening.
Last year, the rising incidence of colon cancer in younger adults prompted the US Preventive Services Task Force to lower the age at which it recommends doctors start screening people for colon cancer to 45.
“If you’re heading to 45, you should really be thinking about this and not waiting until 50 or 55,” Higgins said.
Higgins said his wife’s first 12 months of cancer treatment were almost miraculous, “like remarkable reactions to the chemo.”
“And then – I read about this actually – it can unravel really quickly,” he said. “And once it started unraveling, it just went downhill extremely quickly.”
His wife died in 2019, leaving behind their daughter, Maeve, who had not yet turned 4, an 11-year-old and a 20-year-old.
“We had a great love story,” he said. “I’m still bitter. Still angry.
“Life is OK. Everybody is fine. But I’m like, deep down, I’m seething that it happened to her. She was a really good person.” - ENDS
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medical/heart-deaths-surge-by-more-than-500-a-week-since-pandemic/ar-AA1cSgsQ
Another one to add to the collection.
ANY discussion of massive, worrying excess deaths that REFUSES to mention the single most likely cause of them, the novel interventions, & seeks to discuss all & any other consideration for them, is obfuscation & propaganda & not a thing less.
BEGINS - Heart deaths surge by more than 500 a week since pandemic
Heart deaths have risen by more than 500 a week, major research has shown, with experts saying “extreme disruption” to the NHS caused by the pandemic may have fuelled the crisis.
The study of government data revealed almost 100,000 extra deaths among people with cardiovascular disease (CVD) since spring 2020.
Experts said NHS disruption to heart care and increasing ambulance delays for heart attack and stroke victims had left Britain “in the grip of a heart and stroke care emergency”.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) analysis of data from the Government’s Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) revealed an extra 96,540 deaths of patients with heart conditions since February 2020.
While excess cardiovascular deaths in the first year of the pandemic were linked to coronavirus infections, heart deaths have remained high since Covid deaths fell.
Cardiac experts said “severe ongoing disruption to NHS heart care” was among the factors driving the continued increase, with record delays for ambulances in recent months.
In December, average waits for ambulances for 999 calls involving heart attack patients breached 90 minutes, against a target of 18 minutes. Response times have been consistently above 30 minutes since the start of 2022.
Meanwhile, care of patients with conditions such as high blood pressure – which increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes – has deteriorated.
NHS figures show two million fewer people had their blood pressure under control in 2021 compared with the year before.
The BHF also raised concern about a potential rise in heart problems linked to Covid, with separate research showing those who caught the infection before the vaccine rollout were five times more likely to die in the 18 months after infection.
The figures from March 2020 to March 2023 show 839,467 deaths in England involving CVD – 13 per cent more than the 742,927 expected.
Dr Charmaine Griffiths, chief executive at the BHF, said: “It is deeply troubling that so many more people with cardiovascular disease have lost their lives over the last three years.
“My heart goes out to every family who has endured the pain of losing a loved one, all too often in distressing circumstances.
(AN - Two years. There was no huge rise in heart issues in 2020, it ALL started in 2021 & of course, we know what that coincided with, don't we?
“For years now, it has been clear that we are firmly in the grip of a heart and stroke care emergency. If little changes, we could continue to see a sustained rise in death rates from cardiovascular conditions that undoes decades of scientific progress to reduce the number of people who die of a heart attack or stroke.
“There is no time to waste – Government must take control of this crisis to give heart patients and their loved ones hope of a better and healthier future.
“It can do this by prioritising NHS heart care, better preventing heart disease and stroke, and powering science to unlock future treatments and cures.”
Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, a consultant cardiologist, said: “Covid-19 no longer fully explains the significant numbers of excess deaths involving cardiovascular disease. Other major factors are likely contributing, including the extreme and unrelenting pressure on the NHS over the last few years.”
The associate medical director at the BHF said: “Long waits for heart care are dangerous – they put someone at increased risk of avoidable hospital admission, disability due to heart failure and premature death. Yet people are struggling to get potentially life-saving heart treatment when they need it due to a lack of NHS staff and space, despite cardiovascular disease affecting record numbers of people.”
Last year research revealed more than 30,000 excess deaths involving coronary heart disease since the pandemic began, according to OHID data.
OHID now includes the broader disease category of “cardiovascular disease or CVD” which reveals for the first time how many excess deaths there have been involving all heart and circulatory conditions since the onset of the pandemic, with data taking account of an ageing and growing population.
Professor John Greenwood, president of the British Cardiovascular Society, said the findings were “worrying” with Covid not only causing direct effects in increasing heart risks, but with the pandemic having a knock-on effect on NHS treatment and prevention of heart problems.
A Government spokesman said: “We are cutting waiting lists, ambulance response times are falling, staff increasing and we are improving access to blood pressure and health checks.
“We know there is more to do which is why we are consulting on a Major Conditions Strategy to tackle cardiovascular disease - including strokes and diabetes – and we have opened 108 community diagnostic centres that have delivered over 4 million tests, scans and checks including for those with cardiovascular disease.
“The government is also working with NHS England to combat some of the causes of cardiovascular disease, with schemes to support increased physical activity, reduce obesity rates and encourage people to stop smoking.” - ENDS
Aaaaaand another. Don't mention the V word.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13097183/doctor-fever-virus-dead-sepsis-awareness-infection.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Yet another example as if any more were needed.
In 2021 NYT reported that Portugal had the widest vaccination uptake in Europe. "No-one left to vaccinate", apparently!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/world/europe/portugal-vaccination-rate.html
Three weeks ago, Portugal Resident, an outlet AN likes because it's anti-McCann, reported that Portugal's excess deaths rate was highest in Europe, but without mentioning the high vaccination rate or mentioning the vaccines at all. It's all about the crowded hospitals & the flu season.
https://www.portugalresident.com/portugal-registers-highest-level-of-excess-deaths-in-europe/