> With the worst of COVID behind us, annual deaths for all causes should be back to pre-pandemic levels — or even lower because of the loss of so many sick and infirm Americans.
Since we now know that Covid can lead to long-term suppression of the immune system and that a significant part of infected people have other lingering issues, this is obviously false.
If Covid immunosuppression is the problem, then why are young people (per the article) a disproportionate share of the excess deaths?
> Unlike in the pandemic’s early phase, these deaths are not primarily among the old. For people 65 and over, deaths in the second quarter of 2023 were 6 percent below the pre-pandemic norm, according to a new report from the Society of Actuaries. Mortality was 26 percent higher among insured 35-to-44-year-olds, and 19 percent higher for 25-to-34-year-olds, continuing a death spike that peaked in the third quarter of 2021 at a staggering 101 percent and 79 percent above normal, respectively.
Indeed, that suggests they are correct - unless you have a better explanation of why older people are doing better than pre-pandemic.
That doesn't mean they can't become less effective from Covid. The article mentions that deaths among the elderly are below pre-pandemic levels, which suggests that any such immune weakening is not the reason for excess deaths.
Proportionally. If you used up your naive T-Cells on your way to 60/70s there aren’t many left to lose. Whereas if you dumped them all on a few Covid infections in your 20s and 30s you’d see a proportional uptick in younger deaths alongside the life expectancy drops that we’re also seeing. As for the below pandemic death rate, folks can’t die twice and the aged were dry tinder for SARs
IS there some reason to believe you wouldn't have the exact same problem in a pre-Covid world where people are being regularly exposed to colds, flus, RSV, and every other respiratory virus on a constant basis in their 20s and 30s? Why would losing naive T-cells to Covid adaptions be a bigger issue than losing naive T-cells to the zillions of other infections?
There are a few viruses with this behavior. The ones you mentioned are not.
It's likely just a matter of being unlucky this time that a well spreading virus stumbled upon this way of avoiding immune system which breaks it.
A bad case of Ebstein-Barr virus (a herpesvirus, causing mononucleosis) can set you down for life, for example. Certain bacteria like ones causing Lyme disease can do it too. You don't hear it talked about because they do not spread as readily.
The article mentions overdoses. They don't explain the difference.
> To some extent, we know what is killing the young, with an actuarial analysis of government data showing mortality increases in liver, kidney and cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes. Drug overdoses also soared nationwide, but not primarily in the young working class.
The article claims that but I can't tell what evidence they have for that claim. One of their linked pdfs[0] is long but as far as I can tell involves working class insured folks, and the chart on p31 shows Drug Overdoses as the largest excess category by far for the 0-44 age group.. Also page 27 says "Note that recent period deaths may continue to shift from non-COVID to COVID as COD coding becomes more complete".
Edit: and the table on p43 seems to directly contradict their claim that the excess deaths are concentrated among the young "working" as opposed to non-working: Age 15-44 have almost the same percentages (18.9% vs 19.2%) for excess Q2 deaths; the insured cohort is the slightly lower one. "It's probably mostly drug overdoses and COVID" still seems like a reasonable null hypothesis to me.
Because young people have robust immune systems and old people don’t. This makes young people have dramatically worse outcomes to anything suppressing their immune systems. Old people’s immune systems are already compromised. Hence, the results of immunosuppression will be much worse for younger adults.
Some also took the vaccine and died. Those that took the mRNA treatment and died as well as those that didn't take the experimental drug and died both regret it.
If that is implied, it is verifiably false. In the EU we had higher Covid vaccine coverage, including coverage with all vaccines given in the U.S., plus one more which wasn't given in the U.S. and which is also the only one with known adverse effects - AstraZeneca's. And we don't have any excess mortality now. So it's certainly not vaccines.
That rate looks not-statistically significant in that study. And also not too “serious” (in layman’s terms, not medically speaking) as the baseline rate for the placebo was 18/10000 (the 1/1000 is a delta value above that)
It seems the article was going to say it was an increasing drug-use (opioid) and mental health epidemic in the US (which seems likely true). Then took a left turn and blamed the deaths of middle aged people on getting a Covid vaccine as a baby—citing a yale study on side-effects that showed people were more depressed and anxious post-vaccination than they expected as “evidence” that the vaccine was contributing to excess mortality
Certainly seems that way, and it's written by a guy who promoted ivermectin as a "wonder drug" and had his certification revoked by the American Board of Internal Medicine. WTF is this doing on HN?
It definitely implies so. It’s authored by Pierre Kory, one of the leaders of a small group called the “Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance”[1]. They promoted numerous non-solutions during the pandemic and seem to be generally discredited.
I’m really cautious about the conclusions in this article. It would be a big change for him to start making well reasoned, good faith arguments on this subject matter all of a sudden.
A little something about the author of the opinion piece.
During his testimony in December 2020, Kory erroneously claimed that the antiparasitic medication ivermectin was a "wonder drug" with "miraculous effectiveness" against COVID-19.
And? Ivermectin is a notable antiviral medication that many, many Americans took to limit the COVID viral spread in their body. The media's attack on it was purely from a Pharma profit motive.
You are right Ivermectin is an antiviral and also right many Americans (and not only) took it. The results however, according to Google at least, seem to be at most "meh". The first results page shows only one positive correlation: in hamsters. But I'd be happy to see some more positive studies.
Pfizer found out it was a protease inhibitor and made a new expensive patent drug based off this completely useless and dangerous right wing propaganda. This completely pointless and horrible unsafe ivermectin's effects were amplified to cure COVID.
I don't understand why people don't see the profit motive in "alternative" medicine.
There is profit motive everywhere in everything because we live in a market economy. Alternative medicine is a gigantic industry, as is "alternative" media etc. Everyone is making money and people tend to promote the things they are selling.
It's the typical populist thing of "I don't trust the establishment anymore, so now I am going to go mindlessly believe everything this random asshole on YouTube says..."
Which is a big reason why you don't often see these promoted as heavily as stuff like supplements and ivermectin was. I don't remember ever seeing those promoted in mainstream media, or even most 'alternative' media. Mostly just instragram influencers promoting their course.
Ivermectin is not part of what I'd call alternative medicine so it is quite irrelevant as to whether any promotion of such is based on a profit motive. What Ivermectin is - and what most likely caused it to be the black sheep to those who instigated its banishment - is dirt cheap. This makes it more likely that the actual profit motive did not lie in those promoting Ivermectin but in those who called for its banishment since there is hardly any profit to be made on something that cheap.
> In the United Kingdom, where post-pandemic excess deaths in similar demographics also persist, a government-funded independent inquiry is underway. “With each passing week of the COVID inquiry,” the BBC reported recently, “it is clear there were deep flaws in the way decisions were made and information provided during the pandemic.”
The linked BBC article has a lot to say about the mistakes that were made during the pandemic (e.g. waiting too long before the first lockdown in March 2020), but nothing about post-pandemic excess deaths. Throwing around quotes taken out of context again, are we?
Since when is COVID behind us? We are all living with a novel virus that is deadly in many mammals except bats. We are seeing people developing long covid with each new infection. We’re seeing vaccines cause similar syndrome for an unfortunate few where antibodies created causes autoimmune issues.
The science is not perfect. Vaccines aren’t sterilizing, current treatments aren’t effective enough to prevent disease progression, and we are only approaching the 5 year mortality mark.
When we develop more effective vaccines and treatments, perhaps we will see this start to settle alongside all the other challenges that continue to get worse.
The author makes a case against lockdowns which is hurtful to our mental health and suggests that vaccines are somewhat responsible for excessive deaths in the younger population.
The easier explaination is that those people were going to die of covid (vaccinated or not) didn't. They are sickened by either the virus, the vaccine or both. The robust cytokine storms that occurred in younger people might harm them more than older people.
49 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadSince we now know that Covid can lead to long-term suppression of the immune system and that a significant part of infected people have other lingering issues, this is obviously false.
> Unlike in the pandemic’s early phase, these deaths are not primarily among the old. For people 65 and over, deaths in the second quarter of 2023 were 6 percent below the pre-pandemic norm, according to a new report from the Society of Actuaries. Mortality was 26 percent higher among insured 35-to-44-year-olds, and 19 percent higher for 25-to-34-year-olds, continuing a death spike that peaked in the third quarter of 2021 at a staggering 101 percent and 79 percent above normal, respectively.
Indeed, that suggests they are correct - unless you have a better explanation of why older people are doing better than pre-pandemic.
It's likely just a matter of being unlucky this time that a well spreading virus stumbled upon this way of avoiding immune system which breaks it.
A bad case of Ebstein-Barr virus (a herpesvirus, causing mononucleosis) can set you down for life, for example. Certain bacteria like ones causing Lyme disease can do it too. You don't hear it talked about because they do not spread as readily.
> To some extent, we know what is killing the young, with an actuarial analysis of government data showing mortality increases in liver, kidney and cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes. Drug overdoses also soared nationwide, but not primarily in the young working class.
Edit: and the table on p43 seems to directly contradict their claim that the excess deaths are concentrated among the young "working" as opposed to non-working: Age 15-44 have almost the same percentages (18.9% vs 19.2%) for excess Q2 deaths; the insured cohort is the slightly lower one. "It's probably mostly drug overdoses and COVID" still seems like a reasonable null hypothesis to me.
[0] https://www.soa.org/4ac0fd/globalassets/assets/files/resourc...
All I can find is Europe experiencing excess death:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
And similarly, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have 1/1000 rate of serious adverse events:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36055877/
A pro-active study of Pfizer from Thailand observed 1 in 35 showing elevated bio markers of heart damage:
https://www.mdpi.com/2414-6366/7/8/196
> Dr. Pierre Kory, M.D., is president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance.
Just look him up.
I’m really cautious about the conclusions in this article. It would be a big change for him to start making well reasoned, good faith arguments on this subject matter all of a sudden.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_Line_COVID-19_Critical...
During his testimony in December 2020, Kory erroneously claimed that the antiparasitic medication ivermectin was a "wonder drug" with "miraculous effectiveness" against COVID-19.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Kory
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33278625/
So were there actual follow ups to this study where the sample size is not just 72?
There is profit motive everywhere in everything because we live in a market economy. Alternative medicine is a gigantic industry, as is "alternative" media etc. Everyone is making money and people tend to promote the things they are selling.
It's the typical populist thing of "I don't trust the establishment anymore, so now I am going to go mindlessly believe everything this random asshole on YouTube says..."
Very shallow junk article with no analysis.
The linked BBC article has a lot to say about the mistakes that were made during the pandemic (e.g. waiting too long before the first lockdown in March 2020), but nothing about post-pandemic excess deaths. Throwing around quotes taken out of context again, are we?
The science is not perfect. Vaccines aren’t sterilizing, current treatments aren’t effective enough to prevent disease progression, and we are only approaching the 5 year mortality mark.
When we develop more effective vaccines and treatments, perhaps we will see this start to settle alongside all the other challenges that continue to get worse.
The easier explaination is that those people were going to die of covid (vaccinated or not) didn't. They are sickened by either the virus, the vaccine or both. The robust cytokine storms that occurred in younger people might harm them more than older people.