A perplexing conundrum is maintenance or even increase in excess death rates after circulating COVID variants (Omicron) are much less lethal than those before (Alpha). When over 2 million COVID infections were sequenced and followed through time, Delta variant wasn’t even half as lethal as Alpha variant.
And Omicron variant wasn’t even half as lethal as Delta variant.
If COVID is no longer even 25% as lethal as it was in December of 2020, then how come excess deaths are high? Even worse is the evidence in kids after vaccines had been made available to them. Let’s look at the child vaccine experience in 5 nations.
Estonia
Reported excess mortality in kids under age 15 in Estonia (blue) fluctuated a lot, so the percentage of excess death by week was divided by 10 in the graph above. The peak excess death at right, after vaccines had been made available to children, represents 900% excess death for that week.
France
Peak excess child death in France also occurred after vaccines had been made available, and at a point in time when COVID variants in circulation were 75% less lethal than variants before.
Israel
Excess child mortality in Israel definitely rose after COVID had become less-lethal, meaning we have to look beyond COVID to find out what is killing children there.
Because the first report of vaccination in kids began with over 34% of them already vaccinated, it suggests that Israel was vaccinating children prior to the time when they began collecting statistics about child vaccination.
To indicate this, a broad path of vaccine uptake was added in pink to the graph above.
Luxembourg
The reported excess child death rates (blue) in Luxembourg were also pretty volatile, so the percentages were again divided by 10, just as they were in Estonia above. The peak weekly death rate in the graph is alarmingly 23-fold higher than expected death for that week.
Spain
Spain also saw higher peak excess child death after vaccines rolled out. Officials who campaign to vaccinate children should be made to provide a risk:benefit analysis, because prima facie evidence indicates that vaccines are doing more harm than good.
A ballpark estimate is that a child is 50 times more likely to be killed by COVID vaccination than to be killed by COVID itself. Can officials who campaign to vaccinate children refute what the evidence suggests?
If they do not have the data which is required in order to rule out the estimate that vaccines kill at least 50 kids for every kid they save, then they have no business campaigning to vaccinate kids.
Sources:
[source for graphs] OWID data from: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations; and https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
[Table 3: In almost 700,000 cases confirmed by sequencing, Delta was less than half as fatal as Alpha]— UK Technical Briefing #25. Available general: 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 less than half as lethal as Delta (Omicron is safer than flu)]— 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. Available: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8926413/