Joel S. Hirschhorn

In 2020 and 2021, about 12 million people globally probably died from causes other than COVID infection.  The public health establishment should be held accountable for these massive pandemic deaths.

The subject of excess deaths during the pandemic, meaning deaths more than prior years, has received much attention.  Now comes an analysis by medical establishment researchers, funded by Bill Gates and published in the premier establishment medical journal – The Lancet.  An establishment publication commented positively on the article.

Before explaining what was intentionally omitted, here are the key findings.

The study covered the initial two years of the COVID pandemic, 2020 and 2021.  It estimated excess mortality from the COVID-19 pandemic in 191 countries and territories, and 252 subnational units for selected countries.  Global deaths directly attributed to COVID-19 reached 5.9 million, yet estimates put excess deaths during this period at a staggering 18.2 million.

At the country level, the highest numbers of cumulative excess deaths due to the pandemic were estimated in India 4·07 million, the USA 1·13 million, Russia 1·07 million, Mexico 798 000, Brazil 792 000, Indonesia 736 000, and Pakistan 664 000.  Note that the figure for the USA was about 300,000 greater than the CDC official number of deaths related to COVID infection through 2021.

Among countries, the excess mortality rate was highest in Russia 374·6 deaths per 100 000 and Mexico 325·1 per 100 000, and was similar in Brazil 186·9 per 100 000 and the USA 179·3 per 100 000.  The highest estimated excess mortality rate from COVID infection was in Bolivia at 734.9 deaths per 100,000, followed by Bulgaria, Eswatini, North Macedonia, and Lesotho.  Iceland had the lowest excess mortality rate 47.8 per 100,000.  Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, and Taiwan had negative excess mortality rates, meaning fewer people died than in pre-pandemic years.

The study noted: “Our estimates of COVID-19 excess mortality suggest the mortality impact from the COVID-19 pandemic has been more devastating than the situation documented by official statistics.  Official statistics on reported COVID-19 deaths provide only a partial picture of the true burden of mortality.”  In other words, something other than the virus is to blame for millions of deaths.

An interesting finding was that studies from several countries including Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands, suggest COVID-19 infection was the direct cause of most excess deaths, most likely because these nations maintained a more open society than other countries.

The study did recognize that there was likely underreporting in some places of direct deaths due to COVID infection.

The key goal in excess death studies is explaining deaths not resulting from COVID infection, and this usually means collateral or indirect deaths from how the pandemic was managed or, more correctly, mismanaged.  So many people died from the many impacts of economic lockdowns, inability to get regular medical care, suicides and illegal drug use, for example.

Most interesting in this very detailed study was absolutely no consideration of deaths associated with COVID vaccines.  Data from the US, UK and European Union indicate at least several hundred thousand deaths.  Many more in other global locations could easily bring the total to several million, especially recognizing that millions of adverse health impacts from vaccines likely will keep explaining deaths for quite some time.  Moreover, in many nations data show that the majority of COVID deaths are for vaccinated people, often in the 80% to 90% range.

But the study had a very positive view of the benefits of COVID vaccines: “the development and deployment of SARS-COV-2 vaccines have considerably lowered mortality rates among people who contract the virus and among the general population.  As a result, we expect trends in excess mortality due to COVID-19 to change over time as the coverage of vaccination increases among populations and as new variants emerge.”  This, obviously, is an establishment view of the COVID vaccines despite a large medical literature with an opposite view.

Also interesting was the detailed analysis for states in India that totally ignored what is now widely known.  Namely, that a number of states, especially Uttar Pradesh, used ivermectin to successfully wipe out the pandemic.

Death numbers in a number of other nations were also surely reduced by wide use of ivermectin.  But this study had no interest in examining this.

US excess deaths

There are reasons to think that the excess death data for the US was an undercount.  Various insurance industry officials have spoken about very high death rates not due to COVID infection in working age people.  CDC data shows the Millennial generation suffered a “Vietnam War event,” with more than 61,000 excess deaths in that age group in the second half of 2021, according to an analysis by Edward Dowd a former Wall Street executive who made a career of crunching numbers to make big-dollar investment decisions.  The Millennials, about ages 25 to 40, experienced an 84% increase in excess mortality in the fall, he said, describing it as the “worst-ever excess mortality, I think, in history.”

Along this same line is this: According to the CEO of OneAmerica, a national life insurance corporation headquartered in Indiana, deaths are up 40% in the third quarter of 2021.  These deaths are primarily non-COVID deaths among workers aged 18 through 64.  “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said.  The data is consistent across every player in that business.  What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic.  It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.”

Conclusions

The massive number of all pandemic deaths shows how totally ineffective all actions by governments and public health groups, as well as the medical establishment, have been.  It has all been one gigantic pandemic blunder.

Even if there was some undercounting of COVID infection deaths, there probably was at least 10 million pandemic deaths in the two years covered in this study that can and should be blamed on a number of ineffective and unnecessary public health actions.  Where is the accountability for these non-infection deaths?

Considering the enormous number of COVID vaccine shots given globally there also should be no praise for them saving lives.  In some countries like the US with high rates of vaccination there were still high COVID deaths.  What must always be emphasized is that the use of ivermectin and various non-vaccine protocols could have prevented nearly all COVID infection deaths.

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.