I’ve recently published several articles arguing that the national and international mortality statistics indicate that the widespread fears promoted by leading Covid anti-vaxxers seemed wildly exaggerated. Contrary to their claims, the data seemed to show little if any evidence that the mRNA vaccines had been responsible for any significant number of working-age deaths. Instead, most of the excess mortality across different countries was much more closely associated with health factors such as the national obesity rate.
- Vaxxing Deaths or Covid Deaths?
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • January 2, 2023 • 3,300 Words - Obesity and the End of the Vaxxing Debate?
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • January 9, 2023 • 2,800 Words - Vaxxing, Covid, and International Mortality Rates
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • January 23, 2023 • 4,500 Words
I was pleasantly surprised by the reaction to my articles from the more moderate and rational vaccine-skeptics. Podcaster Kevin Barrett suggested that I’d made a pretty strong case and a couple of Substack writers reacted rather favorably, while other individuals in that camp such as prominent libertarians Lew Rockwell and Tom Woods Tweeted out my pieces to their followers:
- American excess mortality does not reflect Covid vaccine harms (yet)
Partial endorsement of Ron Unz’s “decisive refuting” of a link between Covid vaccines and excess mortality
Brian Mowrey • Substack • January 10, 2023 • 2,200 Words - Looking for excess deaths among young-ish folks, inspired by Ron Unz
Spud Taters • Substack • January 12, 2023 • 100 Words
Vaxxing, Covid, and International Mortality Rates
By Ron Unzhttps://t.co/IZeukwK6oR— Lew Rockwell (@lewrockwell) January 24, 2023
Ron Unz reviews the evidence and concludes that the COVID shots couldn't have led to more than a trivial number of deaths. Where is his analysis wrong? https://t.co/5tPkRhUrla
— Tom Woods (@ThomasEWoods) January 9, 2023
Age is the overwhelming factor determining the severity of Covid infections, with individuals over 60 having perhaps 100x the death rate of those under 40. Different countries often have sharply different age distributions and their mortality totals would be drastically influenced by this. Therefore, I sought to minimize this distortion by restricting my analysis to the 15-64 working-age population.
Also, since Covid death rates are relatively low in that age range, this allowed me to detect the possible “signal” of vaxxing deaths without having these swamped by Covid deaths. I concluded that working-age deaths due to Covid vaccinations had probably been negligible.
Many anti-vaxxers have claimed that there was an ongoing epidemic of vaxxing deaths in this age range and books published on this subject such as “Cause Unknown” by Edward Dowd have attracted considerable attention. So my analysis directly refuted those widespread beliefs within the anti-vaxxer community.
However, some other prominent anti-vaxxers have taken a different position, with Alex Berenson focusing on elderly deaths due to vaxxing. He argued that by ignoring that age range my analysis was severely flawed.
A guy named Ron Unz has written a piece purporting to debunk the rise in all-cause mortality in the mRNA countries, focusing mainly on deaths of adults under 65 in France and a few other countries. The piece has gotten love from jab advocates, but it’s wrong. Here’s why. pic.twitter.com/eRigJ3uK91
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) January 25, 2023
Similarly, Steve Kirsch had contacted me just before my third article was released and we had spent an hour discussing my findings. He seemed very surprised by my mortality statistics both for the US and other countries, and said he would carefully digest the data and then consider producing a detailed response to my analysis. He hasn’t yet done so, but the day after my article appeared, a couple of his Tweets emphasized that the elderly were actually the greatest victims of vaxxing.
This is why it is impossible to find ANY success stories in retirement communities.
— Steve Kirsch (@stkirsch) January 26, 2023
These sorts of objections seemed perfectly valid. Major Covid outbreaks have often produced high mortality rates for the elderly, and this obviously makes it difficult to determine how many of the subsequent fatalities should be attributed to the lingering consequences of Covid infections and how many to the side-effects of the accompanying vaccination drives.
This is especially true with regard to cardiovascular problems such as fatal heart attacks and strokes since research studies have pointed to both Covid infections and mRNA vaccinations as possible culprits. The large rise in such American fatalities came in 2020, before the vaxxing began, but an unknown fraction of the later deaths in 2021 and 2022 might have actually been due to the vaccines.
Although it seems unlikely that any significant number of working-age deaths have been due to vaxxing, the overwhelming majority of excess mortality over the last three years has been concentrated among the elderly, and it would be helpful to get some sense of whether or not the vaccines have played a substantial negative role in that global calamity.
Complex and confusing datasets are sometime best explored by focusing on extreme cases. Japan’s age distribution is an considerable outlier among major countries, with an unusually large fraction of its population being elderly. According to the World Bank, a full 30% of all Japanese are 65 or older, compared to just 24% in second-ranking Italy or 17% in the US or South Korea. So despite Japan’s lack of obesity, we might expect it to have had one of the world’s highest excess mortality rates over the last three years.
I came across a recent article suggesting that a huge wave of recent Japanese deaths had probably been caused by the country’s exceptionally heavy mRNA vaccination program.
- Japan’s Experts Baffled by High ‘Covid’ Deaths From Heart Problems Despite High Vaccination Rate
Guy Gin • The Daily Sceptic • January 13, 2023 • 700 Words
That article had emphasized that Japan’s Covid vaccination campaign was one of the heaviest in the world, with its elderly population being “vaxxed-to-the-max” and this was hardly an exaggeration. According to one of the charts, the total per capita rate of Covid vaccine injections was nearly twice that of the very heavily vaxxed European countries, with the ratio being much higher compared to the relatively unvaxxed United States:
Thus, Japan seems an ideal test case for the hypothesis that Covid mRNA vaxxing is a deadly threat to the elderly: the country with the highest fraction of elderly also seems to have the world’s most extreme Covid vaxxing program.