I haven’t looked into Brian Mowrey’s argument at depth, but my bias is that a lot can be discerned by looking at simple trends and correlations while being aware of the usual data-shenanigans that obscure the view. When it comes to the excess mortality data there are a few trends that are imo real and tangible and give important clues about what’s going on.
- the first pattern is that countries that had a high or low excess mortality from the virus, kept having that relatively high or low excess mortality during the first year of the vax. Only since Spring 2022 things have switched and countries that have low vax rates are now having the lowest excess mortality. With google translate you can read this article from Herman Steigstra who published a few days ago an article about this with a comparison of most European countries and who made a few nice and clear graphs to go with it: https://www.maurice.nl/2023/01/07/oversterfte-in-34-landen-falende-vaccins/
- the second pattern is that in the past excess mortality was highest in the eldest people and is now highest in the youngest age groups (in %). I mentioned it last month https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/210995.html?thread=37602867#cmt37602867 (Dutch data; Ed Dowd noted something similar in the USA).
The first two patterns suggest that the positive effect of the vax was very limited, if any, and that we are now in negative effectiveness territory. Pull-forward could be part of the explanation of the current low excess mortality in low-vaxxed countries, but doesn’t explain why the vax didn’t have much effect on the relative level of excess mortality per country in the first year after the start of the vax rollout. It seems to me that factors like state of the healthcare system and general health of the population were more important determinants of excess mortality in March 2020-April 2022 while currently we have entered negative effectiveness territory with some pull-forward effect added.
- the third pattern in the data is that at certain periods (Delta late 2021 and Omicron since September 2022) there is a pretty strong positive correlation between the amount of virus going around and excess mortality, but that C19 deaths do not come close to the amount of excess death. I mentioned this last week (https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/215249.html?thread=38183121#cmt38183121). I haven't seen any convincing explanation for this pattern although there is a lot of speculation.
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branchandroot
Re: death rates
Date: 2023-01-11 12:51 pm (UTC)- the first pattern is that countries that had a high or low excess mortality from the virus, kept having that relatively high or low excess mortality during the first year of the vax. Only since Spring 2022 things have switched and countries that have low vax rates are now having the lowest excess mortality. With google translate you can read this article from Herman Steigstra who published a few days ago an article about this with a comparison of most European countries and who made a few nice and clear graphs to go with it: https://www.maurice.nl/2023/01/07/oversterfte-in-34-landen-falende-vaccins/
- the second pattern is that in the past excess mortality was highest in the eldest people and is now highest in the youngest age groups (in %). I mentioned it last month https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/210995.html?thread=37602867#cmt37602867 (Dutch data; Ed Dowd noted something similar in the USA).
The first two patterns suggest that the positive effect of the vax was very limited, if any, and that we are now in negative effectiveness territory. Pull-forward could be part of the explanation of the current low excess mortality in low-vaxxed countries, but doesn’t explain why the vax didn’t have much effect on the relative level of excess mortality per country in the first year after the start of the vax rollout. It seems to me that factors like state of the healthcare system and general health of the population were more important determinants of excess mortality in March 2020-April 2022 while currently we have entered negative effectiveness territory with some pull-forward effect added.
- the third pattern in the data is that at certain periods (Delta late 2021 and Omicron since September 2022) there is a pretty strong positive correlation between the amount of virus going around and excess mortality, but that C19 deaths do not come close to the amount of excess death. I mentioned this last week (https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/215249.html?thread=38183121#cmt38183121). I haven't seen any convincing explanation for this pattern although there is a lot of speculation.