The variants of COVID which circulated before Delta variant were worse than seasonal flu, but from Delta variant and beyond, circulating COVID variants were safer than flu.
Disturbingly, however, the huge drop in COVID lethality didn’t coincide with a huge drop in the accumulation of excess mortality worldwide, as shown in this graph:
Prior to predominance of Delta variant, COVID lethality was approximately an IFR of 0.2%, which is worse than what is seen with seasonal flu. By June of 2021 however, Delta variant predominated over Alpha variant.
Alpha variant had an IFR of 0.2%, as discovered in the UK (Technical Briefing #5) when approximately 52,000 Alpha variant (SGTF) cases were followed through time, and 104 of them died.
But later UK data revealed that Alpha variant was 3.8 times more lethal than Delta variant. If it took 500 infections with Alpha variant to produce one death, then it took 1900 infections with Delta to do the same.
If COVID was to Blame
If COVID was to blame for 100% of these excess deaths, then to get up to the first green arrow at left in the graph, at 500 infections per death (pre-Delta COVID IFR), would require a sum total of 5 billion COVID infections.
To get from the first green arrow at left to the one on the right, at 1900 infections per death, would require 14.7 billion COVID infections.
To get from the second green arrow up to 6 Mar 2022 — when Omicron variant predominated — would require yet another ~ 4.5 billion COVID infections, using 2000 Omicron infections required to produce one death.
That’s a sum total of 24.2 billion COVID infections to produce 20 million excess deaths. Because there are less than 8 billion people on Earth, it means an average of over 3 COVID infections per earthling.
The estimate on Omicron lethality comes from the upper bound of a 95% confidence interval from an Ontario study, where 37,296 Omicron infections were followed through time, resulting in just 12 deaths.
If COVID has been safer than flu ever since June of 2021, then what killed those 10 million people who were not expected to die (excess deaths) from early June 2021 to early March 2022?
Did COVID vaccines cause those 10 million unexpected (excess) deaths?
Reference
[Alpha variant infections are 3.8 times more deadly than Delta variant infections (evidence from tracking 1 million total infections)] — UK Technical Briefing #25. Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-sars-cov-2-variants-technical-briefings
[OWID hub page for online graphics] — From: https://OurWorldInData.org/coronavirus
[Alpha (SGTF) variant: 104 recorded deaths from about 52,000 COVID-positives] — UK Technical Briefing #5. From: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/959426/Variant_of_Concern_VOC_202012_01_Technical_Briefing_5.pdf
[Just 12 deaths from over 37,000 Omicron infections] — Ulloa AC, Buchan SA, Daneman N, Brown KA. Estimates of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant Severity in Ontario, Canada. JAMA. Published online February 17, 2022. doi:10.1001/jama.2022.2274 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2789408