A comforting finding during COVID was that, for those under age 40, COVID was not any worse than the flu. Even so, when contrasting the age-specific death rates during 2021 with the average from 2018 and 2019, you find super-high death in young adults:
The peak death rate ratio (at both age 42 and age 43) was 1.5 times that of the average of 2018 and 2019, but even down into the thirties there are ratios above 1.4 — indicating age-specific death rates 40% higher than the 2018-2019 baseline.
Because super-high death rates in those below age 40 were not expected — because COVID is not worse than flu for those ages — then the prime suspect for the super-high death in younger adults in 2021 is the COVID shots.
Example page for 2021 from the CDC:
The death rate for those of age 33 of “214.6 per 100,000” (very bottom right) was a full 45% above the 2018-2019 baseline death rate for that age.
Worksheet showing how 2021 stacked up to the 2018-2019 baseline:
[click to enlarge]
The 2021 death rate for those of age 42 was “327.7 per 100,000” (row 46), but that was 50% higher than the 2018-2019 baseline death rate for that age.