Did COVID-19 really cause more than 500,000 deaths in the United States in less than a year? Evidence says that is unlikely, but government data is so convoluted, it’s difficult to tell.
If the United States has indeed experienced a half million excess deaths because of COVID-19, data should make this plain, as governments have kept meticulous records of total deaths for decades and so we should see the country’s death rate substantially rise.
Data sourced from the United Nations — World Population Prospects does illustrate a continuous climb in U.S. mortality rates over the past several years, from 2019 (8.782) to 2020 (8.880) to 2021 (8.977), but there’s a catch. The United States has seen consistent increases in the overall mortality rate since 2012. Prior to that time, back to 1950, the country’s death rate either dropped or held fairly level, largely owing to large numbers of youths and increased hygiene. However, the country’s increasing population and large elderly cohort have combined to reverse that trend.
Another source, USA Facts, “a nonpartisan, not-for-profit civic initiative without a political agenda,” makes the half million number even more suspect. In a January 2021 report, the organization stated that “3,187,086 people died from all causes between January 1 and December 26, 2020.” In 2019, “2,852,609” people died, so that’s 334,477 additional deaths in 2020 possibly owing to coronavirus, a number that would increase by the tens of thousands in January-February 2021. Still that’s nowhere near a half million excess deaths.
And there’s a further problem, this study did not account for the increased 2020 U.S. population, which would have shown an estimated 0.59 percent growth, or roughly two million people, potentially skewing the number of 334,477 much lower.
Also making the COVID-19 death count problematic is that while COVID-19 deaths were increasing through the country, caused by a viral respiratory illness, the CDC would have us believe that flu deaths, also caused by a viral respiratory illness, virtually ceased to exist this year.
Note in the table below that only an estimated 135 people have died of the flu so far this year, while a whopping 55,082 have succumbed to fatalities involving the virus and pneumonia. In a typical flu season, between 30,000 and 60,000 Americans are believed to die from the flu. A WebMD article from 2005 entitled “What is a pandemic?” noted that in that year “flu reached epidemic levels in the U.S. for 10 weeks in a row during the 2004-2005 season. Records kept by the CDC show that during the week ending March 5, 2005, 8.9% of all deaths reported in 122 U.S. cities were due to influenza and pneumonia (a common complication of the flu).”
Are we really to believe that flu is nearly non-existent this year, or should we conclude that flu deaths are being added to COVID-19 deaths?
For insight into how these numbers came to be, this might be a good point to investigate how hospitals are expected to report coronavirus data.
There’s much reason to believe that the COVID-19 death count is greatly exaggerated, but one could hardly tell that by examining government data.
Attempts to navigate government data on the topic of excess deaths — i.e., “the number of deaths exceeding the normal average total of deaths in recent years” — unfortunately results in only skewed numbers and convoluted medical jargon cascading down page after page of the CDC website. Different definitions and varying estimates of both excess deaths and excess deaths related to COVID-19, presented side-by-side, make it nearly impossible to decipher an accurate correlation between overall year-by-year fatality rates and virus lethality cause and effect. Then there’s “predicted excess deaths,” for which information for years prior to 2020 remains a complete mystery. See the CDC graph below.
Another CDC graph of purported “excess deaths” shows that from February 2020 to July 2020, there were “areas [in the United States] experiencing statistically significantly higher than normal mortality,” yet the mortality data remains incomplete, with “completeness varying by jurisdiction” (e.g., “Data for New York excludes New York City”). Thus, the “bigger picture” of the statistics for increased overall U.S. deaths over time is, at this stage, unachievable.
Further down the CDC page is this incomprehensible explanation: “The estimates of excess deaths reported here [i.e., the graph above] may not be due to COVID-19, either directly or indirectly. The pandemic may have changed mortality patterns for other causes of death.” Yet the CDC only includes examples of “other causes” as “health care shortages due to COVID-19.” No mention of “other causes” owing to lockdowns, school closures, depression, fear of being alone in a hospital, etc.
Thirteen interactive “dashboards” with different graphics aim to provide answers to these changing patterns through reports of “predicted and reported” death counts, organized by categories such as race, age group, cause of death, and jurisdiction.
Is your mind reeling yet? It’s heady stuff. What does it all mean?
Yes, the virus is real, but again, there’s almost no chance that more than 500,000 Americans died from this illness. And the CDC and mainstream media are working very hard to keep information about excess deaths and deaths with comorbidities inaccessible, misleading, and confusing.
Once upon a time, science was trusted to prove or disprove hypotheses via critical thinking based on sound methodology. Yet today, as commentator Dennis Prager noted in his recent column, “We have learned that ‘follow the science’ and ‘follow the scientists’ are not the same thing. We have followed the latter off a cliff.”
Trying to pick up the pieces and survive, frightened Americans are thus willing to accept media site “death tickers” with no clear or truthful explanation for the incredible increase in “virus” fatalities. Concerned citizens can’t turn to government sources for the facts either. Big Tech and Big Government have joined forces in this misinformation campaign.
The biased/corrupt mainstream media and tech companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, champion experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, while dismissing trusted infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists who advocate alternative research into fatality rates.
Because of information suppression, most people haven’t even heard of resources such as the Great Barrington Declaration, which explains about the great harms that current COVID-19 procedures are causing, including much higher fatality rates. The declaration was signed by 340,000 doctors and other informed people, originally created by “three scientists who are not outliers or cranks, but professors at Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford,” to quote writer Toby Young.
That the CDC, mainstream media, and social media would make information surrounding the actual mortality count of the COVID-19 virus so confounding and deceptive is nothing short of a sinister assault on the American people.
