Perspective is a requirement for any sound policy, and benefits must always be compared to harms, to guarantee that actions being taken are good actions to take, given prevailing circumstances.
In this SubStack, a provisional estimate of the 10 leading causes of death in 2021 will be given, but the purpose of making a guess — without methodological rigor — is to get a perspective out.
It isn’t important, for instance, if a death count listed below is off by 5% in one direction, while another death count is off by 5% in the other direction. What is important is to note whether one kind of death is expected to be much higher than the other.
Death counts without an asterisk (*) were simply pulled straight from the CDC Deaths and Mortality page.
Deaths with an asterisk (*) are estimates which require explanation. Notes at right in purple explain how the estimates were created, but a more elaborate explanation is below.
Vaccine Deaths estimate
To get an estimate of how many were killed by COVID vaccines in 2021, I used the rate of VAERS death reports for every million vaccine doses delivered (22 death reports in VAERS for every million doses).
Then I developed an underreporting factor of 24 from a now-withdrawn study by Kostoff et. al., where it was argued that the best-case capture rate for deaths in the VAERS system is that it is effectively capturing about 4.25% of the underlying deaths.
Assuming an average of two yearly doses for all 313 million Americans over age 4, and using the kill rate of 528 deaths per million doses delivered from the above, you get 330,528 deaths directly from the vaccine.
Death by Medical Error estimate
The quarter-million annual deaths estimate that is due to medical errors comes directly from a BMJ article published in 2016, which looked at the situation of 2013, finding that there were a quarter-million deaths due to medical errors, making medical errors the third leading cause of death in the US.
That figure was from 9 years ago, and it is likely that the true number of deaths due to medical errors is now higher than a quarter-million per year.
COVID Deaths estimate
The estimated COVID deaths for 2021 begin with the 350,831 COVID deaths reported by CDC for 2020 — when the circulating variants of COVID were fully lethal. Applying a correction factor of 1.336 (1336 COVID deaths “reported” for every 1000 actual COVID deaths which occurred) brings that value down to 262,598.
The correction factor comes from the experience in Alameda County, California, where scrupulous review revealed that there had been 1336 deaths reported from COVID for every actual 1000 COVID deaths — overreporting by 33.6%.
Deborah Birx had complained early on that the CDC was overreporting COVID deaths by 25%, making it likely that the experience in Alameda County can be generalized to the entire nation.
The average monthly COVID death count which results after correcting for overreporting is 21,883 COVID deaths per month when COVID was fully lethal. This monthly rate was applied to the first 6 months of 2021, before Delta variant replaced the more lethal variant of COVID which had plagued the nation for just over a year.
The estimate that Delta was only 42% as lethal (extensive UK data) was then applied for the next 5 months, revealing 9191 COVID deaths per month for 5 months.
The last month of the year of 2021 was reduced even further to 3768 COVID deaths in December of 2021 — due to very extensive data (over 1.5 million tracked infections) showing Omicron being only 17% as lethal as the wild-type COVID and Alpha variant COVID, which had plagued the nation for just over a year.
The upshot of this analysis is that it is highly likely COVID vaccines kill almost twice as many people as COVID, itself, does. Even medical errors likely kill more people than COVID does.
It’s not a disease of the unvaccinated so much as it is a disease of the medically-treated. Medical “treatments” in the US are likely causing over a half-million (580,000) deaths per year — 10 times more than the 58,000 American soldiers who died in the Vietnam War.
Who wants to maintain a medical system responsible for yearly deaths which each are the equivalent of 10 wars?
Reference
[quarter-million killed by medical errors each year] —Johns Hopkins Medicine. Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us
[Template for provisional leading causes] — CDC. Deaths and Mortality. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
[Alameda County counted each 1000 COVID deaths as if they were 1336 COVID deaths] — Western Journal. We Were Right: Experts Confirm COVID Deaths Massively Inflated, Actual Numbers Dramatically Lower Than Official Count. https://www.westernjournal.com/right-experts-confirm-covid-deaths-massively-inflated-actual-numbers-dramatically-lower-official-count/
[22 deaths reported in VAERS for every million doses] — Children’s Health Defense. The Defender. VAERS Data Show New Deaths, Injuries After COVID Vaccines, As CDC Signs Off on 3rd Shot for Kids 5-11. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/injuries-covid-vaccine-vaers-cdc/
[best-case capture rate of underlying deaths for VAERS is 4.23% of the actual deaths which occur] — Kostoff RN, Calina D, Kanduc D, Briggs MB, Vlachoyiannopoulos P, Svistunov AA, Tsatsakis A. Why are we vaccinating children against COVID-19? Toxicol Rep. 2021;8:1665-1684. doi: 10.1016/j.toxrep.2021.08.010. Epub 2021 Sep 14. Retraction in: Toxicol Rep. 2022 May 06;9:1065. Erratum in: Toxicol Rep. 2021;8:1981. PMID: 34540594; PMCID: PMC8437699. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8437699/
[In almost 700,000 cases confirmed by sequencing, Delta was only 42% as lethal as Alpha (IFR=0.08%)] — UK Technical Briefing #25. General page: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-sars-cov-2-variants-technical-briefings
Available specific page: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1025827/Technical_Briefing_25.pdf
[From 1.5 million confirmed cases, Omicron is (at most) 41% as lethal as Delta (IFR = 0.034%)] — Nyberg T, Ferguson NM, Nash SG, Webster HH, Flaxman S, Andrews N, Hinsley W, Bernal JL, Kall M, Bhatt S, Blomquist P, Zaidi A, Volz E, Aziz NA, Harman K, Funk S, Abbott S; COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium, Hope R, Charlett A, Chand M, Ghani AC, Seaman SR, Dabrera G, De Angelis D, Presanis AM, Thelwall S. Comparative analysis of the risks of hospitalisation and death associated with SARS-CoV-2 omicron (B.1.1.529) and delta (B.1.617.2) variants in England: a cohort study. Lancet. 2022 Mar 16:S0140-6736(22)00462-7. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00462-7. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35305296; PMCID: PMC8926413. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8926413/