by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Here are the latest data from CDC.
Many billions of dollars spent. Not that much accomplished.
Despite massive use of COVID vaccines, COVID in 2021 was again the third leading cause of death in the US. COVID stayed the third leading cause of death for the second year in a row, according to provisional mortality data collected by CDC from death certificates.
Roughly 76,000 more people died from COVID in 2021 versus 2020. For deaths that listed COVID as the sole cause or a contributing cause, this number increased from 384,536 in 2020 to 460,513 in 2021. Nearly a 20% increase once mass vaccination was pushed on the public.
This disheartening truth says something significant about the ineffectiveness of mass vaccination in 2021 versus none in 2020. Clearly the total of 845,049 COVID deaths is less than the nearly one million reported in the mainstream media, indicating a lot of falsely reported COVID deaths by hospitals.
COVID deaths in 2021 trailed only heart disease, responsible for 693,000 deaths, and cancer, which took roughly 605,000 lives.
Overall, 65.2% of the COVID deaths in 2021 were among white individuals, 16.5% were among hispanic individuals, and 13.3% were among black individuals. In 2020 these proportions were 59.6%, 18.6%, and 16.1%, respectively. In other words, white and black Americans did worse in 2021, but not hispanics.
From 2020 to 2021, total deaths jumped from 3,383,729 to 3,458,697, an increase of nearly 75,000 or a 2.2% increase. Not exactly a great advertisement for the quality of health care in the US. Note that that increase is almost the same as the increase in COVID deaths. And this small increase is in sharp disagreement with reports from insurance companies of major death increases in 2021.
Behind the top three causes of death were unintentional injuries, stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and suicide. Unintentional injuries was a category largely driven by drug overdose deaths, which led to a disproportionate increase in the deaths among younger people. Clearly, there have been few effective actions to address illegal drug use, especially fentanyl coming into the country through the open Southern border.
Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Pandemic Blunder and many articles and podcasts on the pandemic, worked on health issues for decades, and his Pandemic Blunder Newsletter is on Substack. As a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he directed a medical research program between the colleges of engineering and medicine. As a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association, he directed major studies on health-related subjects; he testified at over 50 US Senate and House hearings and authored hundreds of articles and op-ed articles in major newspapers. He has served as an executive volunteer at a major hospital for more than 10 years. He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and America’s Frontline Doctors.