Will We Ever Know the Truth About Excess Mortality?

Photo by Michael Carruth on Unsplash

This wasn’t a post I intended to publish today, but something happened over the long 4^th of July weekend to occasion it.

I attended a gathering on the 4^th with friends and family.  Perfect weather, great food, patriotic songs playing in the background.  It was just as we all bowed our heads in thanksgiving for our country, that a prayer was offered for the family of young woman who had passed the day before.  After saying “Amen,” many of us asked what had happened to this young woman.  The answer:  She had died the day before of a heart attack at age 41.  A young mother of 2, in seemingly good health.

A tragedy, to be sure.  How could this be, some wondered aloud.  And then came an answer that sounded so self-assured:

“Well, this isn’t uncommon, you know.  People in their 40s do often have heart attacks.”

No one said anything in response to this blatant bit of “misinformation.”  Much to my shame, neither did I, my only excuse being that I was absolutely gob smacked.  I’ve known for some time that there was a narrative attempting to normalize the excess deaths we are seeing in our country and across the globe; but here it was, thrown right in front of me, and I said nothing, not even a gentle, “Gee, I’d love to know where you read that.”

And this, right after I’d just thanked the Almighty for the bravery of those who fought for our independence.  I’m still irritated with myself.

The party went on, the conversation drifted elsewhere, never returning to the young woman who had died suddenly the day before.  But the suffering of that woman’s family was in the back of my mind.

Later that evening, while scrolling through Substack Notes, I found this anonymous quote in a longer list from @Jimychanga, who writes

Smurfing the New Normal

.  It aptly describes what is happening in this country:

“Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.”

As to intelligence, I make no claim for myself other than average.  But I do observe, and I can read, and therefore I know that heart attacks in my age cohort are not common, at least they weren’t until the third quarter of 2021.  Before late 2021, working age people weren’t experiencing excess deaths on par with the death toll in the Vietnam War.  But that’s exactly what happened between 2021 and 2022.  We experienced the equivalent of a Vietnam War, but in one year.  It’s now 2024, and while excess deaths are decreasing, the insurance industry expects them to continue to be above pre-pandemic levels for the next few years.

Of course, it’s easy to confuse cowardice with tolerance when we find ourselves in these situations, especially with family and friends. In the case I described above, none of the people at the party are imbeciles, despite the provably false statement about heart attacks.  But tolerating the false narratives, rarely challenging them, censoring my own informed opinion --I’ve done all that for a long time.  During the covid years, I assiduously avoided the subjects of vaccines, masks, and social distancing--all in the name of family cohesion and unity.  However, this same compunction didn’t seem to occur to the pro vaccine, pro mask, pro shut everything down crowd.  They felt free to bring it up, to give advice, to solemnly regurgitate what they’d heard on the “news.”  But I’d seen enough families coming apart over these issues, even marriages, so I convinced myself that avoidance was the right course.  I’m now thinking that was a mistake.

For too long, those of us who knew the truth have allowed those who didn’t to demand it be suppressed.  Because the comfortable lie is easier than the hard truth.  The covid years were full of hard truths.  While the truth has been vindicated, some Americans still can’t summon the humility to face it.  In the confines of the lie, their own choices still make sense, their trust in our governing institutions intact.

I do not know the reason for these excess deaths.  I do not know what caused the heart attack of the 41-year-old woman I mentioned at the beginning.  I don’t know if there is more than one cause for her death or for any of the other excess deaths.

But I want to know.  We all need to know.  These people who died suddenly—they were our fellow Americans.  Don’t we owe them, as well as those who may be affected in the future, a rigorous search for an answer?

Nobody doubts the excess deaths.  The numbers are there for everyone to see, and the numbers don’t have an agenda.  What is in dispute is the cause, and while some of us would like to know what’s causing excess mortality, there are many who seem curiously disinterested.

A fellow substacker, Ben@

USMortality

, has some of the best, most easily understood information on this subject, and I urge you to check out his substack.  Here’s one of his graphs where you can easily see excess mortality by age group:

While we don’t yet know the answer definitively, there is one potential cause of excess mortality that is taboo:  the covid vaccine.  When this possibility is proffered, our ruling class and media react with near violent hostility and mockery, quickly followed by a “fact check,” and then censorship of the offending opinion. Given their less than stellar track record with the truth, their reaction alone tells us we may be on to something.

Ed Dowd, former BlackRock fund manager and founder of Phinance Technologies, was one of the first to notice excess deaths.  He wrote a book about it, which has just been updated to include data from 2023.  Dowd pulled together an enormous amount of data to examine the increase in deaths that coincided with the vaccine mandates of 2021.  He concluded that “it was detrimental to your health to be employed in 2021 and 2022,” since the mandates were aimed squarely at this population.  In order to keep their jobs, the employed had to get the shots, whether they wanted to or not.  He shows that excess deaths as well as disabilities were more pronounced for this group.  You can get the gist of what he’s saying in this clip here.  Unfortunately, the entire interview by Tucker Carlson is still paywalled.

I’ve read the reactions of the mainstream news and “fact checkers” to Ed Dowd’s thesis.  What they mostly do isn’t so much fact checking, but brainstorming other possible causes, like fentanyl overdoses and car wrecks.  One study suggests that excess deaths are uncounted covid deaths.

Fine, I’m concerned with those too.  But why stop at “fact checking” the vaccine skeptics? Why not do some follow-up journalism and dig further into these other potential causes?  And if it’s fentanyl, could we please tighten up the border already? 

As to whether any of these other possibilities is really the culprit, it’s worth noting that America isn’t the only country experiencing excess mortality.  So are England, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, and the Netherlands.  Denmark has banned the vaccine for people under 50.

Is everyone overdosing on fentanyl?

Did everyone across three continents suddenly forget how to drive?

According to USMortality, in the twenty most vaccinated countries, excess mortality nearly tripled.  And here’s John Campbell discussing the most recent data:

I hope Ed Dowd ends up wrong about the vaccines.  Why?  Because so many people I love took those shots.  And some of those people, believe it or not, continue to do so, per the guidance from the CDC.

Whatever the cause of excess mortality these last three years, we deserve to know what it is.  The suffering families of those who have “died suddenly” deserve the truth.

As for our fellow Americans blinded by propaganda, they need the truth too.  Our silence, our tolerance of their comfortable lies, only conceals the truth from them even further.