Almost everyone agrees that COVID impacts the mortality of the elderly more than younger age groups, but annual, age-specific death rates — in yearly deaths per 1,000 — from 2010-2021 in the five Nordic nations (Finland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden) do not reveal statistically-significant increases in elderly death, when a 7-year baseline is taken from 2012-2018:
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Columns D through J were used in order to establish an expected, age-specific death rate for narrow-band (5-year) age groups, and to establish the standard deviation (SD) in the expected rate.
The Z-score (# of standard deviations from mean) was computed for 2019, 2020, 2021 — along with combinations of 2019/20, 2020/21, and 2019/2021. Blue cells show death rates at least two standard deviations below expected. Green cells show death rates at least three standard deviations below expected.
In 2019 in Sweden, every age group was green or blue, indicating unusually low death.
While those in age group 90-94 in Sweden in 2020 (orange) reached a death rate that was 1.3 standard deviations above expected, only a “two-standard-deviation-increase” (or more) would be considered to be statistically-significant.
Notice how it is that that lone “spike” in elderly death in that narrow-band age group is sandwiched between two years with death rates which were 3 standard deviations below expected — muting the potential implications of it.
This is more evidence that safety protocols regarding “vaccine development” did not need to be bypassed during COVID — because the health threat from COVID was not so excessive that it would require cutting corners in a world-wide gamble. The more appropriate thing would have been to obtain years of safety data before a rollout.
Reference
[elderly death rates in 2020/21 in Nordic nations were not “excessive”] — Kepp KP, Björk J, Kontis V, Parks RM, Bæk KT, Emilsson L, Lallukka T. Estimates of excess mortality for the five Nordic countries during the COVID-19 pandemic 2020-2021. Int J Epidemiol. 2022 Dec 13;51(6):1722-1732. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyac204. PMID: 36331437; PMCID: PMC9960481. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9960481/