No Excess Death Expected after 1 Dec 2021
Rough Analysis reveals too many people had acquired immunity by then
Estimating epidemiological numbers requires accounting for potential errors, because numbers are so large that even being 1% wrong might make a difference. The “sniff test” is a good exercise with epidemiological data, because you benefit by knowing how things might look in the simplest of cases.
Sometimes, the exact science doesn’t pass the “sniff test” because it requires unjustifiable presumptions. A “quick-and-easy” depiction of the Big Picture will necessarily involve errors but if done well, you will successfully make the errors offset each other.
This post is an attempt of that.
For instance, in the early days of COVID jabs, you could presume that the advertised “vaccine efficacy” is the honest-to-God truth of the matter. Then you build from there, adding in viable estimates of total number of people naturally exposed to COVID.
Using simplified presumptions which offset each other, here are two paths to a herd immunity threshhold in the USA:
The orange dots represent the presumption that the true infection prevalence is 4.8 times the number of positive COVID tests, as was reported to be the case in July of 2020.
The true trajectory of herd (population) immunity, or the realistic scenario, is expected to be between orange dots (optimistic scenario) and blue dots (pessimistic scenario).
The blue dots cut the multiplication factor in half to 2.4, which seems like too much of a reduction, except for the fact that 100% efficacy of both natural infection and double-doses is presumed.
Not only do the jabs start off without 100%, but they lose efficacy over time — though natural infection provides protection against COVID for more than 18 months.
And some of the very same people getting the jab were those who had had COVID.
Because 100% efficacy errs on the high side of reality, the multiplier of 2.4 is deliberately on the low side. Here is the same graph showing the herd immunity threshold (H.I.T) in percentage terms that would be required to eradicate transmission:
As you can see, even in the model where the known errors offset each other, full immunity to COVID was present in the USA by 1 Dec 2021. This means that expected excess death after 1 Dec 2021 would be approximately zero.
But The Economist estimates that 369,000 excess deaths have been seen in the USA since 1 Dec 2021. Here are the notes:
[click to enlarge]
From a 20,000-foot view, those 369,000 excess deaths were completely unnecessary.
Because a minimum of 35% of America had natural exposure to COVID by 1 Dec 2021 (cell U25 in the Excel spreadsheet above) — and 61% of America was double-dosed by then (cell W25) — the only way to explain “continued COVID” after 1 Dec 2021 is by postulating that the COVID jabs actually give it to you.
If COVID jabs had been only between 80% and 90% effective against Delta, continued spread after 1 Dec 2021 would still be impossible. “Continued COVID” doesn’t pass the sniff test, and the most likely explanation for continued COVID is the COVID jabs.
Reference
[originally, COVID’s basic reproduction number was 2.68] — Wu JT, Leung K, Leung GM. Nowcasting and forecasting the potential domestic and international spread of the 2019-nCoV outbreak originating in Wuhan, China: a modelling study. Lancet. 2020 Feb 29;395(10225):689-697. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30260-9. Epub 2020 Jan 31. Erratum in: Lancet. 2020 Feb 4;: PMID: 32014114; PMCID: PMC7159271. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7159271/
[Alpha variant began to predominate on 12 Apr 2021; Delta variant began to predominate on 5 Jul 2021] — OWID. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases
[Alpha was 60% more transmissible than original Wuhan-1 strain; Delta was 60% more transmissible than Alpha] — Burki TK. Lifting of COVID-19 restrictions in the UK and the Delta variant. Lancet Respir Med. 2021 Aug;9(8):e85. doi: 10.1016/S2213-2600(21)00328-3. Epub 2021 Jul 12. PMID: 34265238; PMCID: PMC8275031. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8275031/
[in July 2020, the actual prevalence rate of infection was 4.8 times the number of positive cases confirmed] — Undiagnosed SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Science Translational Medicine. 22 Jun 2021. Vol 13, Issue 601. DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abh3826 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abh3826
[only 1 in 500 who had naturally-acquired infection got re-infected (effectiveness = 99.8%); naturally-acquired infection provides protection on multiple fronts for over 18 months] — Diani S, Leonardi E, Cavezzi A, Ferrari S, Iacono O, Limoli A, Bouslenko Z, Natalini D, Conti S, Mantovani M, Tramonte S, Donzelli A, Serravalle E. SARS-CoV-2-The Role of Natural Immunity: A Narrative Review. J Clin Med. 2022 Oct 25;11(21):6272. doi: 10.3390/jcm11216272. PMID: 36362500; PMCID: PMC9655392. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9655392/
[Estimated Cumulative Excess Deaths during COVID] — The Economist. OWID. https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid