I wish this article had acknowledged that, while there’s good news about DEATH (hooray), COVID causes disability and secondary medical complications (stroke, heart attacks, cognitive impairments, diminished immune function, and diabetes) at much higher rates than flu does. It’s great that the death rate is down, but there’s a real danger that people will see that and stop thinking about the other post Covid issues.
Exactly! I am aware that there are secondary complications from many viruses, but it seems from what I continue to read, that Covid more frequently causes strokes / clotting, heart attacks, cognitive and immunological problems. Are there studies showing deaths beyond the initial infection that can be traced to the C19 infection?
I've seen several reports of recent studies of excess mortality - one done in February 2024 jointly by the University of Pennsylvania and the Boston University School of Public Health, for example - that demonstrate both a significant degree of underreporting of COVID deaths and a correlation between excess mortality in succeeding years (not meeting the "deaths from COVID" definitional criteria applied in a given jurisdiction) and prior COVID infection. Excess natural causes mortality and declines in life expectancy are almost certainly a more accurate metric for assessing the comparative lethality of COVID vs influenza - something that this article and others like it don't address. There is the appearance of improvement in the world's situation strictly focused on acute and near-acute hospitalization and death rates, but what we know of the persistent impacts of infection and especially repeated infections doesn't fit the desired narrative.
>Excess natural causes mortality and declines in life expectancy are almost certainly a more accurate metric for assessing the comparative lethality of COVID vs influenza - something that this article and others like it don't address. There is the appearance of improvement in the world's situation strictly focused on acute and near-acute hospitalization and death rates, but what we know of the persistent impacts of infection and especially repeated infections doesn't fit the desired narrative.
We saw a statistically significant decrease in every one of the top 10 causes of death, except for a tiny bump in kidney disease, from 2021 -> 2022. Additionally, life expectancy at birth increased by more than a full year.
>In 2022, life expectancy at birth was 77.5 years for the total U.S. population—an increase of 1.1 years from 76.4 years in 2021 (Figure 1). For males, life expectancy increased 1.3 years from 73.5 in 2021 to 74.8 in 2022. For females, life expectancy increased 0.9 year from 79.3 in 2021 to 80.2 in 2022.
>In 2022, life expectancy at age 65 for the total population was 18.9 years, an increase of 0.5 year from 2021. For males, life expectancy at age 65 increased 0.5 year from 17.0 in 2021 to 17.5 in 2022. For females, life expectancy at age 65 increased 0.5 year from 19.7 in 2021 to 20.2 in 2022. The difference in life expectancy at age 65 between females and males was 2.7 years in 2022, unchanged from 2021.
I think it’s pretty hard to prove causation in individuals. Because we’re talking about conditions that existed before Covid, it’s only possible to look at increased rates in the population as a whole, or in selected cases, fancy studies of involved tissues to look at persistence of virus in them. I’m not very up-to-date on that research, but it could be searched.
Excess mortality is the number of deaths expected from “normal”versus actual deaths. Not only are deaths underreported as you point out, but methods of calculating “normal” will impact the excess calculations as well. That “normal” is just a prediction of the future which incorporates the past. Too quickly incorporating Covid deaths raises the baseline far too fast. Famously quoted is “lies, damn lies and statistics”. Extrapolation is prediction and very debatable.
Came on here to say just that. Problem is, COVID can cause or increase the likelihood of pretty much ALL of the more common causes of death. And many hospitals aren't even testing for COVID, whether that be during hospital stays or in autopsies.
I agree with Nemo and Caryn, this is SoOoo much more than the flu and death rate is not the only way to measure COVID’s impacts. As a physician, I find frequently that these labs may be positive in patients post covid many months after the fact if not years-Fibrinogen activity, d dimer levels, IL6,TNF alpha, IL 17, IL2. We’ve had multiple patients where we suspect “fatigue” was long Covid tested and they had a negative baseline but then “really “ got Covid and are positive for one or all of these biomarkers. Plus with antibody testing we get a forensic history for the patient ( just to note if someone has not been exposed to covid for over 2 years esp if prior infection was mild there is a possibility that the nucleocapside Ab goes negative)Covid has a sustained effect on the immune system. I have seen this in both vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. If public health doesn’t start measuring all its ramifications we will miss its impacts entirely. I have also seen healthy children go into the hospital for “normal” strep infections and at the elementary school level we are suffering from chronic absences that are over prepandemic levels. Nobody bats an eye with school districts being over 20% chronically absent for the last 3 years nationally! Peds are seeing kids sick over and over again again at higher rates. https://www.caschooldashboard.org/
But, this implies that the research that UCSF with Dr Peluso et al are correct that their long covid patients have T cell exhaustion ( cd4/cd8 cells) and we have many undiagnosed with it already at this stage including children. One of the jobs of T cells is to fight cancer.
If we don’t follow correlation and timing to covid plus clotting disorders, autoimmune disease, infections, neurologic disease, cancers ( everything that covid affects through the immune system) we will miss its ramifications on society.
Unfortunately, not to be a doomsdayer but we now have to consider COVID’s implications on the animal population and whether we are going to wipe out animal species with us through immune dysfunction in their populations. So how will we manage this on a global level at this point… I’m not sure. https://share.newsbreak.com/85s0msco?s=i0
@Dr PR: while I’m a strong proponent of vaccines and nonpharmacologic methods for prevention, I remain deeply concerned About the lack of focus on credible, repurposed therapeutics. My Clinical colleague and collaborators in a world class science institute have been involved in promoting and identifying, credible therapeutic protocols. Long Covid clinics for Support and data-gathering are all well and good, but it’s too little, too late. I invite you and others to review some of the information available from our team of clinicians and basic science researchers from the last five years. The debacles with hydroxyChloroquine and ivermectin have poisoned the waters for consideration of other repurposed drugs, such as hydroxyUREA. This drug that has been approved and declared safe for over four decades. It is classed merely as an antimetabolite, and invariably linked to oncology and pure hematologic disorders, but it is much much more. HU has many pharmacodynamic mechanisms that are also beneficial relative to the multisystems biologic disorders in COVID-19, HU immunomodulatory effects appear to have great relevance for therapy for PASC/LC.
The Cellular biologists/immunologist have identified immunomodulatory functions, and proposed that hydroxyurea is a type of molecular chaperone or companion molecule in the context of a being a therapeutic. Their models are both in vitro and in vivo. To our knowledge, they are the first team to identify the transfer of immunoglobulins from S-protein immunized mice into healthy mice with resultant Brain dysfunctions and subsequent reversal, with the use of hydroxyurea or injections of choline. We believe these important scientific discoveries warrant intense scrutiny by our federal research labs yet despite repeated contacts and after several publications it remains unknown to clinical medicine in general. Our clinical experience treating nearly 2500 patients with acute COVID19 has generated nearly 500 case reports submitted to the consortium of federal agencies under the CURE ID website and a zoom conference with an FDA ID consultant without any response, nor any critiques. Hydroxyurea is safe and is declared a essential drug by the WHO under the category of sickle cell anemia preventative therapies. This pharmaceutical is dirt cheap, readily available, approved for children as young as nine months of age through a lifetime. A five day protocol of hydroxyurea for COVID-19 is consistently effective, and in our anecdotal series of the past five years with every variant. Finally, there have been no reports of long Covid or adverse reactions. Several references available if you or others are interested. I have regularly recorded them in other YLE and Topol’s Ground Truth, substacks. MD
You claim to be a Medical Doctor. As a licensed Medical Doctor in my state, I am not naturally inclined to believe you on the basis of that claimed title alone.
First, if you want me or other discerning readers to take you seriously, proof read your post rather than relying on what strikes me as a bargain basement chatbot.
Second, you and others of your ilk exploit the scientific and medical gullibility that Your Local Epidemiologist strives earnestly to enlighten.
Third, as someone with detailed experience in the convoluted dynamics of the pandemic, it is utterly preposterous that American industry would forego - (conspiratorially?) - to make trillions off of an effective anti-SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic.
Please, spare me. And, BTW, spare the readers of YLE.
Many of the top coronavirus experts including Ralph Baric, Ian Lipkin, and Marc Lipsitch have complained about the lack of funding exploring repurposed drugs to fight COVID 19 and blamed the early politicization of Ivermectin and HCQ for resistance to repurposing.
And it wouldn’t be a “trillion dollar industry” if it turned out a generic cheap drug was effective.
I have no idea if the drug Sullivan is recommending works. It’s really tough to measure efficacy when you have a 94-99.9 chance of getting better with a placebo.
But his claim that we dropped the ball on exploring repurposing drugs is shared among many of the experts in the field.
@ADWH: At the risk of sounding vague I’m not sure YLE et al would appreciate my “advertising” the very limited prescriber advocates for the HU protocol lest they be unfairly accused of enabling “unapproved COVID19 treatments”. That’s another serious barrier we have yet to overcome in the aftermath of the politicization of HCQ and ivermectin. Those repurposed drugs had a lot of exposure and many trials that clearly demonstrated lack of efficacy. We tried mightily to do the same but failed to achieve FDA attention. Another peak is underway so we remain hopeful our previous efforts and new Federal health representatives (hint hint) will respond. Feel free to email me as you wish: sullray <at> gmail
I am retired from clinical practice Mr Hellerstedt however my zeal and focus has been unwavering. I support my licensed and prescribing colleagues who have seen first hand the consistently positive outcomes for the past 5 yrs of their patient advocacy. I’m the unofficial research arm while they are the active practitioners. We are a team and our collaboration with the Biochemists, cell biologists and immunologists has been so very fruitful yet the information is buried in non-clinical publications that my medical peers decline to discover. We try to educate but so many don’t wish to hear what we have to say. I’ve dubbed our efforts The Semmelweis Curse.
I can do without a LOT of things in life, but animals—especially my own—would be devastating to the point of possible suicide on my part. The thought of no animals in my life is excruciatingly unimaginable. That might be the one single thing that would cause a good majority of the science naysayers to change their ways ‘coz there are a WHOLE lotta people out there that refuse to let ANYthing get between them and their animals.
Wow! Exactly! A physician who isn't avoiding what's really happening. I need to ask you, why don't physicians, in general, acknowledge this inconvenient truth??
I think it is also due to the fact that most physicians are so overburdened with current caseloads that even the most diligent find little time to keep up with much recent research and debate that isn't already "settled opinion" by the CDC and other authorities. I doubt very much that they can spare the time to read even just articles like this, and especially not the extremely good comments like yours which further educate.
In general I wish we could get back to the days when a doctor could actually afford to spend some time with his/her patients to make better diagnoses and offer more empathy as well as doing research of their own. I don't understand why this has happened. The corporatization of medicine doesn't seem like enough of an answer.
It really is mind boggling. My teen son and I masked when I took him to the ped for a sick visit. He had Flu B. Not a mask to be seen, even when the provider came back in to say his swab was positive. I do wonder if masks don’t work as well as I have been led or believe. Otherwise, I cannot imagine why providers would put themselves at risk all day.
Why do so many Drs & healthcare professionals not wear masks in health settings where people have the potential to infect each other with all sorts of airborne illness
Why do so many continue to minimise the use of them & also many of them minimise the impact of COVID
You know, we have asked ourselves that many many times, even in the face of patient’s dying after receiving “the best care available“. Literally, physicians have described our efforts as voodoo medicine, and in the same breath have refused to examine our strategy, the response to therapy and the outcomes After reluctant referrals and complete turnarounds in the clinical course. There is too often a complete absence of scientific curiosity and patient advocacy, followed by a strange lack of interest in pursuing better therapies on their own. Corporate medicine has routinely castigated our efforts, and yet our outcomes are far superior to anything that their employed physicians have provided. I am not a conspiracy advocate nor a nihilist, but I do have to admit that studies, utilizing a repurposed drug that is inexpensive, and ultimately would have no significant return on investment is a major barrier that we will never overcome. Taxpayers deserve better and pharmaceutical stockholders should accept that premise
Sometimes it feels that way but with initial vaccination/ no break through infections and only being in well ventilated spaces without masking I continue to be a Novid. ( I usually keep a CO2 monitor on me to keep me honest.) I continue to work in a hospital setting, out Pt setting, travel, and have kids so lots of potential exposure points. So it is possible. 😊
As far as I know, I am a novid. I use air purifiers in my classroom and a nasal prophylactic. I also mask in situations that seem risky. I had the first three Moderna.
I use covixyl and Xlear. I know the data is super limited, but at least I feel like I am doing something. Dr. McCormick shared a study on neomycin as a nasal prophylactic (NOT for longterm use), by a very reputable Covid researcher. Understanding, that these might be shots in the dark, they are also more palatable than vaccines for many of us.
Yes, I used neosporin on occasion too just to try from an airline stewardess recommendation of how she avoided respiratory illness prior to covid pandemic. Do you mask at all? What level do you teach- elementary, high school or college? Ie what conditions are you in?
Doesn't covid have far more multisystemic knock on effects than flu. Because I've had long covid and was fully vaccinated beforehand, plus research has negligible difference for use of paxlovid to prevent long covid - what are people like me supposed to do? It's clear society is just ignoring those that are more adversely affected. Surely, if we care about helping everyone then shouldn't resources primarily focus on stopping occurrence or recurrence of long covid?
I've had friends move out of my city during the pandemic because they're afraid of being killed by a gun. Gun deaths in my county run about 14 per year. They go to crowded indoor venues without masks and don't vaccinate against COVID, which has killed 34 people so far this year.
People have "pandemic fatigue" but I've been avoiding drunk driving for 20 years and you all would think I'm a monster (I'd agree) if I said I had "sober driving fatigue" and started driving wasted. Annual drunk driving deaths in my county? Also around 14.
I'm not saying we should do EVERYTHING to stop COVID. I too am tired of mitigation. But doing NOTHING is also silly.
Consider the fact the less we did, the better things got. That’s a difficult fact I think for a lot of us to accept (SNL did a great sketch on this 2 years ago).
Excess deaths globally returned to pre-pandemic levels for most countries during 2023. (A few outliers like South Korea still have high excess deaths). So far that trend continues with the data we have in 2024.
This is despite the warnings about what would happen if we sent kids back to school (nothing), stopped masking (also nothing), or didn’t reach high booster rates of the latest variant (finally, nothing).
It would seem tough to make an argument that someone should do, essentially a “rain dance”, when they are having the same (or often better) outcomes than those still doing the rain dance.
A major reason excess deaths declined was due to changes that health authorities made in calculating the “base rate”. They raised that “normal” level to include the recent deaths from COVID and Covid related deaths. That brought the baseline to a much “higher bar” to clear. There is frequent debate about how to calculate “estimated normals” to not let “blips” distort the measurement process. The CDC et al took much too quick a time period for this “blip” to become a part of the baseline. It isn’t a “blip” and was too quickly “folded into the projected norm. That recalculation undermines the whole purpose of measuring “excess”.
Outstanding comment and observation. Unfortunately, much as we would like to attribute such irrational behavior to the current virus and political climate, human responses to prior epidemics and pandemics have been remarkably consistently irrational and reactionary. We read a couple of books for example that examined the US response to cholera outbreaks over time - pretty much deja vu.
This article is well in line with the messaging from the CDC on these recently released data. However, in the context of the pandemic at large and the purpose of the YLE newsletter, I have some serious reservations.
1. TIming.
We are currently in the second highest surge of the pandemic, and as of the last data I saw, still climbing. That feels like more relevant and important health communication at this exact moment than last year's Covid death data. If you are going to fill my inbox, and claim some of my daily news consumption minutes, consider what the most important thing to communicate is.
2. Depth.
This reporting is very much in line with what CDC has put out. However, when I see YLE report a 70% drop in deaths for a leading cause of death, as a public health scientist but not a biostatistician, I am so excited to hear YLE's perspective on what mechanisms are at play here. "We've come a long way" isn't the next sentence. It should be "What mechansims are at work here?" In an article in YLE, I want to see a deeper dive that remains approachable but grapples with questions like:
- How much is this due to the particular variants of the 2023 season?
- Will this trend be stable over time? (fyi, the tone of this article makes it feel like yes, but that is not at all resolved by this data)
- What role does over a million deaths of vulnerable people since 2020 play in the changing death statistics? (That is actually a burning question for me - can YLE have a biostatistician dive into this sometime?)
- Was there any major system change in COVID data collecton and reporting in 2023?
- Knowing what we do about COVID's effects on organ systems, how are trends of CVD, stroke, and dementia looking compared to pre-pandemic levels?
- What trends do we see in various age categories?
3. Tone.
There is cognitive dissonance in using phrases like "we have come a long way," when each year our government and health leadership do less and less to mitigate against COVID spread, including among high-risk populations; enable access to vaccination (and other prevention), testing and treatment; conduct robust data on COVID; or take seriosuly the threat of long COVID.
4. Framing
The framing of COVID vs flu was inapporpriate (as it has been throughout the pandemic). Prior to COVID, public health pushed hard to get the public to take the threat of flu seriously and to get vaccinated. I imagine there is a relic of this in the data showing half of people got flu vaccine compared with 1 in 4 for covid. And even if the general public was not convinced, their doctors were by the deluge of health messaging they received (sidenote: another great question - where/how/when do doctors get information about COVID?). Further, COVID is novel, we know so very little about COVID compared to flu, and most people do not contract the flu once a year. Comparisons between the two are absolutely misleading to a "lay" reader. So, in a public health context, the initial framing and additional phrases such as the section title "flu isn't necessarily something to brush off" manages to minimize both flu and covid simulaneously, very disappointing.
5. Omission
Any article talking about "progress" against COVID that does not discuss how little we understand about the chronic effects of a covid infection is irresponsible health communication.
TLDR: As a health communication resource, YLE's topics and tone are influential on reader behavior. Thus, sharing data on current COVID spread, how to prevent infection and access testing and treatment, and why/when/how to get an updated vaccination are more appropriate at this time.
Note to Andrea: Thank you for stepping into this absolutley necessary field. We certainly need smart people with fresh eyes to take a new look at health reporting. My list above is not at all meant to discourage you - you are clearly an excellent writer! - but I hope to inspire you. As a health journalist, there are SO many excellent ways to question the establishment about COVID. You have a bounty of potential articles arrayed before you, ready for your hard questions and curious reporting. I cannot wait to see what you bring!
Note to YLE: Please note of which of the comments below are getting the most likes...I notice I am not alone here.
I find all of your comments to be very insightful and well expressed. I share all your concerns and wish the public health authorities would take note and be more responsive in trying to collect more reliable data. The death counts today of Covid deaths today are so lagged that they are basically useless in judging the risk level at a given point in time. And I continue to see stories that cite "recent" deaths from Covid as running at only 300 to 400 a week. That figure is clearly not reasonable and is probably based on reliance on the recent (very much lagged) reports. It creates a false overconfidence in the current state of affairs which will justify less societal concern and attempts to improve mitigation, better vaccines and more and better post infection treatments.
I completely agree with everything you've said here. In particular, the point of "Was there any major system change in COVID data collection and reporting in 2023?" feels like a huge omission to me, and I felt pretty disappointed to see YLE gloss over it.
Superb summary of the lack of transparency and clarity in SARS-CoV2 reporting! Platitudes to calm the general public are far too common & punish the more vulnerable because they are less protected every time "risk" is displayed as "reduced"!
Statistics have not been adequately provided about long- term risk also.
And the elephant in the room is lack of modern ventilation to keep ambient CO2 levels low.
I could not agree more about indoor air! I feel like it is the next sanitation revolution, so much opportunity for education and innovation and better health outcomes! Why is public health so slow to adopt? If YLE got serious about promoting clean indoor air, I would be ecstatic.
Could you provide a source for your claim that this is the “second highest surge of the pandemic”? This seems outrageous. About half way down this page is the WHO chart for COVID cases since the beginning of the pandemic. The current bump doesn’t even show up. https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/cases
I think there is a lot of underreporting, but going by waste water levels, the hosts of This Week In Virology said this is the second highest surge. My assumption is that is that hat YLE is going by as well, but I am willing to be wrong.
Hmm. That is interesting. At the same time, you can use this site to show COVID hospitalizations, and they appear to be as low as they have ever been. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-hospitalizations
That decoupling is a great thing! But, even mild cases can cause issues, and who wants to be sick? Hopefully the peak happens soon and we get a break before the next variant.
PS in my other reply to your comment I think I understated how very well organized and well written your critique of current practices in measuring COVID’s real and icontinuing impact really is. Thank you very much again for so valuable an analysis.
Part of why people are more hesitant to get the Covid vaccine versus the flu vaccine is that for many, the Covid vaccine makes them feel terrible while the flu vaccine causes no side effects. This is a huge element that you have not mentioned. It is not common to feel so terrible after a vaccine (other than the second shingrix vaccine, and that one is not a vaccine that you are told to get every year).
Do you yet know which vaccine you'll get this fall, weighing the benefits of Novavax vs. the mRNAs being more updated to the newer variants (at least that's my understanding)? Thanks.
Take this with a grain of salt, I’m not an expert: I’ve been reading that the mRNA vaccines this fall are specific for a variant that is no longer dominant, and the Novavax vaccine targets the “parent” of the variant that the mRNA vaccines target. And data from Novavax indicates broader immunity esp wrt current dominant strain(s) (which could change again by the time the vaccines roll out). But, I also read one interpretation of the data that the % effectiveness imo wasn’t great … so really looking forward to expert interpretation we get here. A not-great effectiveness for immunocompetent means even poorer effectiveness for the immunocompromised.
I felt pretty crummy after my Novavax jab. I had the same aches, tiredness, and low-grade fever. ymmv. I also caught covid about 6 months later, and it wasn't horrible. (A day of high fever, a week respiratory symptoms and testing positive, and a month of feeling tired all the time. And I'm over 60 and have a history of having trouble throwing off respiratory bugs.) There's no way to know which vaccine did what, but I didn't feel shortchanged by my vaccines.
I had no side effects from Novavax and got a month long case of COVID. (my first) 6 weeks later. I’m skeptical of its effectiveness compared to Moderna which I’d always gotten previously.
I got covid a few weeks after getting Moderna. Since none of the vaccines are 100% effective, this will happen to some people after getting any of the vaccines. Doesn't mean they aren't effective.
Getting sick several weeks after a vaccine isn’t a selling point. I understand the point is to prevent hospitalization and death, but lots of people don’t. And having short lived/little protection form actual illness turns some people off.
4+ years of Moderna every 6months and never got COVID including during extensive air travel
to and around Europe. First Novavax and I got my very first case of COVID 6+ weeks later (plenty of time to develop immunity) which ruined my long-planned vacation and sidelined me for a month. While anecdote isn’t data, I’ll be getting Moderna in the Fall. YMMV.
Exactly! Moderna 2 and 3 were so terrible for me that I wondered if I was dying. I have never been so sick in my life. And I had weird neuro issues for several weeks. It is very scary for me to contemplate another vaccine, even Novavax, having never had anything more than a sore arm or a little malaise after any other vaccine.
I know people who get sick from the flu vaccine, too, and they are less likely to get vaccinated. I think it's true that on average, people feel worse after the covid vaccine than after the flu vaccine, and I'm sure that is relevant when people decide which vaccines to get.
I felt like crap after the one and only flu vaccine I got decades ago, which is why I never took one again, I think lots of other people don’t respond well to the flu vaccine either.
I wound up passing on COVID vaccines for same reason - about 1/3 of the people I knew who took it were laid out for a day or two (including my wife).
All the Covid vaccines whacked me out of commission for nearly a month each time, at least until we moved on to the boosters which seemed to have less of an effect on me. Despite all that, I still caught Covid January 3, 2022 as tested, which seemed it would surely kill me. From that infection (Omicron) I developed 'long haul' covid, symptoms / debilities of which I carry to this day. Then, presumably 'cuz I liked it so much, I caught covid again in August of 2022. This was different though; in the August 'issue' it attacked my G.I. tract, pancreas acutely inflamed. The January 'issue' was entirely upper respiratory. I'm still going to follow medical advice and take vaccines to come (anyone know ?) ; I mean what else are we to do ?
Why no recent newsletters about COVID surges in the U.S. and Europe including which states & countries are worse off? COVID impacted major sporting events like the Olympics and the Tour de France. Also when updated vaccines will be available.
Looking at disparate vaccination rates, I'm also wondering how much the late summer COVID waves that we have been getting have affected COVID vaccination rates. Last year, the new COVID vaccine wasn't available until September. By then, many people (including myself), had already been infected in the summer wave. While I still got my vaccine in November (after waiting 3 months from infection), others might have just assumed they no longer needed it. Whereas flu doesn't really pickup until the winter, so more people might have wanted the vaccine since they hadn't caught it yet.
This is a good point. I got Covid a year ago and did not get the fall booster last year for that reason. And I did not get it after 3 months since many immunologists recommend waiting at least six months (and some say to wait a year to get the full effect of the hybrid immunity).
I noticed stroke deaths are up. I wonder how many are sequelae of Covid19 infections? Also, how is it determined that Covid19 caused death? My mom was clear cut-she got Covid, had respiratory complications and died in 10 days. But they could have said she died of respiratory failure without mentioning Covid? Dad had a different track. He got Covid and developed pneumonia which was treated with antibiotics but he never recovered at age 97, always coughing up mucus and short of breath, was placed in hospice care with oxygen and morphine and died of “cardiac arrest” 90 days after his Covid diagnosis. I say he died from Covid but that’s not the official record
Has the disease become less severe or is it just that the population at large has become more immune due to prior infection and vaccination? For a high-risk person who has never had COVID and isn't up-to-date on their vaccines, is the risk of death still just as high as it ever was? As someone who loves someone in that category, I am still kept awake at night.
There was a fairly careful study of the original omicron wave that found it was just as deadly in unexposed people as prior variants, and that its population "mildness" was due to widespread immunity to original-strain covid. I don't think there are enough unexposed people to do more studies along those lines. I'd be worried, too, but at some point you need to accept other people's choices about their own health.
Oh, but "not up to date" is very different from "immunologically naive". If your loved one had three vaccine doses, they should should have substantial immunity. Unless they are severely immune compromised, in which case additional vaccine doses may not do anything anyway.
I believe part of the low vaccine-uptake problem is the lack of Covid vaccines durability and the lack of vaccine administering choice. When Covid is, so far, on a twice a year cycle, vaccines that last just 2-4 months isn't going to cut it for most people. Nasal-spray vaccine is also key to coverage success in the near term. In addition, chasing variants is tiring and only partially effective. In the long term, pan-Coronavirus vaccine such as Walter Reed's SpFN could lead to a much better coverage.
Doesn't Long Covid & "regular" Covid cause many of the top items in the causes of death list? And are we tracking the contribution of Covid to those deaths?
I am 73, and I always get a flu shot and have never had the flu. I have gotten all of the Covid vaccines, and have now had Covid 3 times. I know quite a few folks who have had the Covid vaccines, but still got Covid more than once. During my lifetime, I have been lucky that I never seemed to get the stuff that ran through my household, so having Covid 3 times is unusual for me.
In addition to the info Andrea has provided, the best news I’m taking away from this post is that we have young people who are interested in science and communication. We need the Andrea’s of the world now more than ever, thank you so much!
Why would you call him a trumper? Trump made the vax and still brags about. All Biden did was mandate it. Seems like an incorrect slur at best... Trump created it. Biden forced it. Attributing millions of deaths to covid is highly questionable. Take a look at all cause mortality peaks for 2020-2023, then look at societal changes preceding those peaks and let me know what you come up with. Thanks
Not bragging any more. Trump got booed at a rally when he mentioned operation warp speed and the vaccine and lauded his role. Don’t believe he’s mentioned it since.
You are aware that most countries saw all cause mortality increase after the vaccine rolled out, right?
South Korea went from 310k deaths a year to 370k in 2022 (2nd largest year over year increase in mortality of any country, last 100 years).
Canada, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Taiwan, Japan, New Zealand are other countries which had significant mortality increase despite having 90%+ vaccinated populations.
The rest didn’t see much change at all. Portugal, Israel, US, Germany, Austria come to mind off the top of my head.
I don’t agree with Max - I don’t think the Covid vaccine is why South Korea and Taiwan had massive deaths following vaccinations, I think instead it was due to disruption - but it’s incorrect to make the claim that there was “huge death” before the vaccine.
The disruption of lockdowns which had a cascading effect through healthcare and supply chain. It also triggered increases in obesity, alcohol abuse, anxiety, etc.
There was zero excess deaths globally leading up to the lockdowns, then suddenly, in many countries, deaths immediately soared.
A novel deadly virus sweeping through populations unchecked for months should have caused a slow but steady rise of excess deaths leading up to when we acted by responding to lockdowns. But the data doesn't reflect this.
Even in countries like Italy where we later learned Covid was spreading months earlier than we realized have no signal in mortality until immediately after panic set in and lockdowns rolled out.
That's what I mean by disruption - we essentially yelled "fire" in a crowded movie theater and then were bewildered why so many more people died than usual, and why all of our rain dances didn't make any difference - the only cure was returning to normal and ending the hysteria.
That's what I think the data shows. South Korea is puzzling though.
The deaths before the clot shot were due to killer hospital protocols—CDC mandated remdesivir that destroyed the kidneys and hideous ventilators!! This was a crime of the millennium!!!
I wish this article had acknowledged that, while there’s good news about DEATH (hooray), COVID causes disability and secondary medical complications (stroke, heart attacks, cognitive impairments, diminished immune function, and diabetes) at much higher rates than flu does. It’s great that the death rate is down, but there’s a real danger that people will see that and stop thinking about the other post Covid issues.
Exactly! I am aware that there are secondary complications from many viruses, but it seems from what I continue to read, that Covid more frequently causes strokes / clotting, heart attacks, cognitive and immunological problems. Are there studies showing deaths beyond the initial infection that can be traced to the C19 infection?
I've seen several reports of recent studies of excess mortality - one done in February 2024 jointly by the University of Pennsylvania and the Boston University School of Public Health, for example - that demonstrate both a significant degree of underreporting of COVID deaths and a correlation between excess mortality in succeeding years (not meeting the "deaths from COVID" definitional criteria applied in a given jurisdiction) and prior COVID infection. Excess natural causes mortality and declines in life expectancy are almost certainly a more accurate metric for assessing the comparative lethality of COVID vs influenza - something that this article and others like it don't address. There is the appearance of improvement in the world's situation strictly focused on acute and near-acute hospitalization and death rates, but what we know of the persistent impacts of infection and especially repeated infections doesn't fit the desired narrative.
>Excess natural causes mortality and declines in life expectancy are almost certainly a more accurate metric for assessing the comparative lethality of COVID vs influenza - something that this article and others like it don't address. There is the appearance of improvement in the world's situation strictly focused on acute and near-acute hospitalization and death rates, but what we know of the persistent impacts of infection and especially repeated infections doesn't fit the desired narrative.
We saw a statistically significant decrease in every one of the top 10 causes of death, except for a tiny bump in kidney disease, from 2021 -> 2022. Additionally, life expectancy at birth increased by more than a full year.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db492.htm
>In 2022, life expectancy at birth was 77.5 years for the total U.S. population—an increase of 1.1 years from 76.4 years in 2021 (Figure 1). For males, life expectancy increased 1.3 years from 73.5 in 2021 to 74.8 in 2022. For females, life expectancy increased 0.9 year from 79.3 in 2021 to 80.2 in 2022.
>In 2022, life expectancy at age 65 for the total population was 18.9 years, an increase of 0.5 year from 2021. For males, life expectancy at age 65 increased 0.5 year from 17.0 in 2021 to 17.5 in 2022. For females, life expectancy at age 65 increased 0.5 year from 19.7 in 2021 to 20.2 in 2022. The difference in life expectancy at age 65 between females and males was 2.7 years in 2022, unchanged from 2021.
I think it’s pretty hard to prove causation in individuals. Because we’re talking about conditions that existed before Covid, it’s only possible to look at increased rates in the population as a whole, or in selected cases, fancy studies of involved tissues to look at persistence of virus in them. I’m not very up-to-date on that research, but it could be searched.
Excess mortality is the number of deaths expected from “normal”versus actual deaths. Not only are deaths underreported as you point out, but methods of calculating “normal” will impact the excess calculations as well. That “normal” is just a prediction of the future which incorporates the past. Too quickly incorporating Covid deaths raises the baseline far too fast. Famously quoted is “lies, damn lies and statistics”. Extrapolation is prediction and very debatable.
There is now a nationally agreed upon definition of "long COVID." That is a step forward.
Will everyone in the blog-o-sphere understand or adhere to it? Not likely.
Came on here to say just that. Problem is, COVID can cause or increase the likelihood of pretty much ALL of the more common causes of death. And many hospitals aren't even testing for COVID, whether that be during hospital stays or in autopsies.
>Came on here to say just that. Problem is, COVID can cause or increase the likelihood of pretty much ALL of the more common causes of death.
Almost all of which are showing YoY DECREASES.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db492.htm
I agree with Nemo and Caryn, this is SoOoo much more than the flu and death rate is not the only way to measure COVID’s impacts. As a physician, I find frequently that these labs may be positive in patients post covid many months after the fact if not years-Fibrinogen activity, d dimer levels, IL6,TNF alpha, IL 17, IL2. We’ve had multiple patients where we suspect “fatigue” was long Covid tested and they had a negative baseline but then “really “ got Covid and are positive for one or all of these biomarkers. Plus with antibody testing we get a forensic history for the patient ( just to note if someone has not been exposed to covid for over 2 years esp if prior infection was mild there is a possibility that the nucleocapside Ab goes negative)Covid has a sustained effect on the immune system. I have seen this in both vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. If public health doesn’t start measuring all its ramifications we will miss its impacts entirely. I have also seen healthy children go into the hospital for “normal” strep infections and at the elementary school level we are suffering from chronic absences that are over prepandemic levels. Nobody bats an eye with school districts being over 20% chronically absent for the last 3 years nationally! Peds are seeing kids sick over and over again again at higher rates. https://www.caschooldashboard.org/
https://www.ppic.org/blog/chronic-absenteeism-in-k-12-schools-remains-troublingly-high/
Children and young persons are also having higher rates of cancer which I know can be multi factorial.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pediatrics/articles/10.3389/fped.2024.1357093/full
https://www.cancer.org/research/acs-research-news/facts-and-figures-2024.html
https://www.who.int/news/item/01-02-2024-global-cancer-burden-growing--amidst-mounting-need-for-services
https://gco.iarc.fr/today/en
But, this implies that the research that UCSF with Dr Peluso et al are correct that their long covid patients have T cell exhaustion ( cd4/cd8 cells) and we have many undiagnosed with it already at this stage including children. One of the jobs of T cells is to fight cancer.
https://youtu.be/rMt6ZV-hHSE?si=kkdZtrSfBVRAPonf
If we don’t follow correlation and timing to covid plus clotting disorders, autoimmune disease, infections, neurologic disease, cancers ( everything that covid affects through the immune system) we will miss its ramifications on society.
https://www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/long-covid-aotearoa-nz-risk-assessment-and-preventive-action-urgently-needed
Unfortunately, not to be a doomsdayer but we now have to consider COVID’s implications on the animal population and whether we are going to wipe out animal species with us through immune dysfunction in their populations. So how will we manage this on a global level at this point… I’m not sure. https://share.newsbreak.com/85s0msco?s=i0
@Dr PR: while I’m a strong proponent of vaccines and nonpharmacologic methods for prevention, I remain deeply concerned About the lack of focus on credible, repurposed therapeutics. My Clinical colleague and collaborators in a world class science institute have been involved in promoting and identifying, credible therapeutic protocols. Long Covid clinics for Support and data-gathering are all well and good, but it’s too little, too late. I invite you and others to review some of the information available from our team of clinicians and basic science researchers from the last five years. The debacles with hydroxyChloroquine and ivermectin have poisoned the waters for consideration of other repurposed drugs, such as hydroxyUREA. This drug that has been approved and declared safe for over four decades. It is classed merely as an antimetabolite, and invariably linked to oncology and pure hematologic disorders, but it is much much more. HU has many pharmacodynamic mechanisms that are also beneficial relative to the multisystems biologic disorders in COVID-19, HU immunomodulatory effects appear to have great relevance for therapy for PASC/LC.
The Cellular biologists/immunologist have identified immunomodulatory functions, and proposed that hydroxyurea is a type of molecular chaperone or companion molecule in the context of a being a therapeutic. Their models are both in vitro and in vivo. To our knowledge, they are the first team to identify the transfer of immunoglobulins from S-protein immunized mice into healthy mice with resultant Brain dysfunctions and subsequent reversal, with the use of hydroxyurea or injections of choline. We believe these important scientific discoveries warrant intense scrutiny by our federal research labs yet despite repeated contacts and after several publications it remains unknown to clinical medicine in general. Our clinical experience treating nearly 2500 patients with acute COVID19 has generated nearly 500 case reports submitted to the consortium of federal agencies under the CURE ID website and a zoom conference with an FDA ID consultant without any response, nor any critiques. Hydroxyurea is safe and is declared a essential drug by the WHO under the category of sickle cell anemia preventative therapies. This pharmaceutical is dirt cheap, readily available, approved for children as young as nine months of age through a lifetime. A five day protocol of hydroxyurea for COVID-19 is consistently effective, and in our anecdotal series of the past five years with every variant. Finally, there have been no reports of long Covid or adverse reactions. Several references available if you or others are interested. I have regularly recorded them in other YLE and Topol’s Ground Truth, substacks. MD
Doctor Sullivan,
You claim to be a Medical Doctor. As a licensed Medical Doctor in my state, I am not naturally inclined to believe you on the basis of that claimed title alone.
First, if you want me or other discerning readers to take you seriously, proof read your post rather than relying on what strikes me as a bargain basement chatbot.
Second, you and others of your ilk exploit the scientific and medical gullibility that Your Local Epidemiologist strives earnestly to enlighten.
Third, as someone with detailed experience in the convoluted dynamics of the pandemic, it is utterly preposterous that American industry would forego - (conspiratorially?) - to make trillions off of an effective anti-SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic.
Please, spare me. And, BTW, spare the readers of YLE.
Many of the top coronavirus experts including Ralph Baric, Ian Lipkin, and Marc Lipsitch have complained about the lack of funding exploring repurposed drugs to fight COVID 19 and blamed the early politicization of Ivermectin and HCQ for resistance to repurposing.
And it wouldn’t be a “trillion dollar industry” if it turned out a generic cheap drug was effective.
I have no idea if the drug Sullivan is recommending works. It’s really tough to measure efficacy when you have a 94-99.9 chance of getting better with a placebo.
But his claim that we dropped the ball on exploring repurposing drugs is shared among many of the experts in the field.
Absolutely!
Dr. Sullivan, how could one find a doctor that offers this treatment?
@ADWH: At the risk of sounding vague I’m not sure YLE et al would appreciate my “advertising” the very limited prescriber advocates for the HU protocol lest they be unfairly accused of enabling “unapproved COVID19 treatments”. That’s another serious barrier we have yet to overcome in the aftermath of the politicization of HCQ and ivermectin. Those repurposed drugs had a lot of exposure and many trials that clearly demonstrated lack of efficacy. We tried mightily to do the same but failed to achieve FDA attention. Another peak is underway so we remain hopeful our previous efforts and new Federal health representatives (hint hint) will respond. Feel free to email me as you wish: sullray <at> gmail
What state are you licensed in, Dr. Sullivan?
Provide details so we can verify your credentials.
I am retired from clinical practice Mr Hellerstedt however my zeal and focus has been unwavering. I support my licensed and prescribing colleagues who have seen first hand the consistently positive outcomes for the past 5 yrs of their patient advocacy. I’m the unofficial research arm while they are the active practitioners. We are a team and our collaboration with the Biochemists, cell biologists and immunologists has been so very fruitful yet the information is buried in non-clinical publications that my medical peers decline to discover. We try to educate but so many don’t wish to hear what we have to say. I’ve dubbed our efforts The Semmelweis Curse.
I can do without a LOT of things in life, but animals—especially my own—would be devastating to the point of possible suicide on my part. The thought of no animals in my life is excruciatingly unimaginable. That might be the one single thing that would cause a good majority of the science naysayers to change their ways ‘coz there are a WHOLE lotta people out there that refuse to let ANYthing get between them and their animals.
Wow! Exactly! A physician who isn't avoiding what's really happening. I need to ask you, why don't physicians, in general, acknowledge this inconvenient truth??
I think it is also due to the fact that most physicians are so overburdened with current caseloads that even the most diligent find little time to keep up with much recent research and debate that isn't already "settled opinion" by the CDC and other authorities. I doubt very much that they can spare the time to read even just articles like this, and especially not the extremely good comments like yours which further educate.
In general I wish we could get back to the days when a doctor could actually afford to spend some time with his/her patients to make better diagnoses and offer more empathy as well as doing research of their own. I don't understand why this has happened. The corporatization of medicine doesn't seem like enough of an answer.
And why don’t they mask???
Culture wars.
It really is mind boggling. My teen son and I masked when I took him to the ped for a sick visit. He had Flu B. Not a mask to be seen, even when the provider came back in to say his swab was positive. I do wonder if masks don’t work as well as I have been led or believe. Otherwise, I cannot imagine why providers would put themselves at risk all day.
This is a question that needs answering
Why do so many Drs & healthcare professionals not wear masks in health settings where people have the potential to infect each other with all sorts of airborne illness
Why do so many continue to minimise the use of them & also many of them minimise the impact of COVID
You know, we have asked ourselves that many many times, even in the face of patient’s dying after receiving “the best care available“. Literally, physicians have described our efforts as voodoo medicine, and in the same breath have refused to examine our strategy, the response to therapy and the outcomes After reluctant referrals and complete turnarounds in the clinical course. There is too often a complete absence of scientific curiosity and patient advocacy, followed by a strange lack of interest in pursuing better therapies on their own. Corporate medicine has routinely castigated our efforts, and yet our outcomes are far superior to anything that their employed physicians have provided. I am not a conspiracy advocate nor a nihilist, but I do have to admit that studies, utilizing a repurposed drug that is inexpensive, and ultimately would have no significant return on investment is a major barrier that we will never overcome. Taxpayers deserve better and pharmaceutical stockholders should accept that premise
I think it is lack of education and requirements that everyone learn about the current research concerning long Covid/ covid.
Perhaps it’s the Semmelweis effect. Drs are especially prone.
I'm sorry--COVID-19 caused an increase in cancer rates in kids between the years of 1975 and 2018? What?
PR, it seems we are all doomed. Truly. Short of never leaving your home, you cannot avoid the virus.
Sometimes it feels that way but with initial vaccination/ no break through infections and only being in well ventilated spaces without masking I continue to be a Novid. ( I usually keep a CO2 monitor on me to keep me honest.) I continue to work in a hospital setting, out Pt setting, travel, and have kids so lots of potential exposure points. So it is possible. 😊
As far as I know, I am a novid. I use air purifiers in my classroom and a nasal prophylactic. I also mask in situations that seem risky. I had the first three Moderna.
Yes I forgot about those! What do you use?
I use covixyl and Xlear. I know the data is super limited, but at least I feel like I am doing something. Dr. McCormick shared a study on neomycin as a nasal prophylactic (NOT for longterm use), by a very reputable Covid researcher. Understanding, that these might be shots in the dark, they are also more palatable than vaccines for many of us.
Yes, I used neosporin on occasion too just to try from an airline stewardess recommendation of how she avoided respiratory illness prior to covid pandemic. Do you mask at all? What level do you teach- elementary, high school or college? Ie what conditions are you in?
Doesn't covid have far more multisystemic knock on effects than flu. Because I've had long covid and was fully vaccinated beforehand, plus research has negligible difference for use of paxlovid to prevent long covid - what are people like me supposed to do? It's clear society is just ignoring those that are more adversely affected. Surely, if we care about helping everyone then shouldn't resources primarily focus on stopping occurrence or recurrence of long covid?
We don’t, in fact, care about everyone. We care about the rich, but that’s about it. That’s the terrible truth.
Humans are weird.
I've had friends move out of my city during the pandemic because they're afraid of being killed by a gun. Gun deaths in my county run about 14 per year. They go to crowded indoor venues without masks and don't vaccinate against COVID, which has killed 34 people so far this year.
People have "pandemic fatigue" but I've been avoiding drunk driving for 20 years and you all would think I'm a monster (I'd agree) if I said I had "sober driving fatigue" and started driving wasted. Annual drunk driving deaths in my county? Also around 14.
I'm not saying we should do EVERYTHING to stop COVID. I too am tired of mitigation. But doing NOTHING is also silly.
Consider the fact the less we did, the better things got. That’s a difficult fact I think for a lot of us to accept (SNL did a great sketch on this 2 years ago).
Excess deaths globally returned to pre-pandemic levels for most countries during 2023. (A few outliers like South Korea still have high excess deaths). So far that trend continues with the data we have in 2024.
This is despite the warnings about what would happen if we sent kids back to school (nothing), stopped masking (also nothing), or didn’t reach high booster rates of the latest variant (finally, nothing).
It would seem tough to make an argument that someone should do, essentially a “rain dance”, when they are having the same (or often better) outcomes than those still doing the rain dance.
A major reason excess deaths declined was due to changes that health authorities made in calculating the “base rate”. They raised that “normal” level to include the recent deaths from COVID and Covid related deaths. That brought the baseline to a much “higher bar” to clear. There is frequent debate about how to calculate “estimated normals” to not let “blips” distort the measurement process. The CDC et al took much too quick a time period for this “blip” to become a part of the baseline. It isn’t a “blip” and was too quickly “folded into the projected norm. That recalculation undermines the whole purpose of measuring “excess”.
Outstanding comment and observation. Unfortunately, much as we would like to attribute such irrational behavior to the current virus and political climate, human responses to prior epidemics and pandemics have been remarkably consistently irrational and reactionary. We read a couple of books for example that examined the US response to cholera outbreaks over time - pretty much deja vu.
Right there with you. Very illogical. I like the comparatives you list.
Kudos to Andrea. That was an excellent piece. I especially want to praise the use of graphics with narrative context. Cheers!
Agreed, the graphics are really well done! I love the ease of use of the "pyramid" graphic!
I also love the 'pyramid' graphic: more intuitive than a simple stacked bar. Well done.
Second this!
This article is well in line with the messaging from the CDC on these recently released data. However, in the context of the pandemic at large and the purpose of the YLE newsletter, I have some serious reservations.
1. TIming.
We are currently in the second highest surge of the pandemic, and as of the last data I saw, still climbing. That feels like more relevant and important health communication at this exact moment than last year's Covid death data. If you are going to fill my inbox, and claim some of my daily news consumption minutes, consider what the most important thing to communicate is.
2. Depth.
This reporting is very much in line with what CDC has put out. However, when I see YLE report a 70% drop in deaths for a leading cause of death, as a public health scientist but not a biostatistician, I am so excited to hear YLE's perspective on what mechanisms are at play here. "We've come a long way" isn't the next sentence. It should be "What mechansims are at work here?" In an article in YLE, I want to see a deeper dive that remains approachable but grapples with questions like:
- How much is this due to the particular variants of the 2023 season?
- Will this trend be stable over time? (fyi, the tone of this article makes it feel like yes, but that is not at all resolved by this data)
- What role does over a million deaths of vulnerable people since 2020 play in the changing death statistics? (That is actually a burning question for me - can YLE have a biostatistician dive into this sometime?)
- Was there any major system change in COVID data collecton and reporting in 2023?
- Knowing what we do about COVID's effects on organ systems, how are trends of CVD, stroke, and dementia looking compared to pre-pandemic levels?
- What trends do we see in various age categories?
3. Tone.
There is cognitive dissonance in using phrases like "we have come a long way," when each year our government and health leadership do less and less to mitigate against COVID spread, including among high-risk populations; enable access to vaccination (and other prevention), testing and treatment; conduct robust data on COVID; or take seriosuly the threat of long COVID.
4. Framing
The framing of COVID vs flu was inapporpriate (as it has been throughout the pandemic). Prior to COVID, public health pushed hard to get the public to take the threat of flu seriously and to get vaccinated. I imagine there is a relic of this in the data showing half of people got flu vaccine compared with 1 in 4 for covid. And even if the general public was not convinced, their doctors were by the deluge of health messaging they received (sidenote: another great question - where/how/when do doctors get information about COVID?). Further, COVID is novel, we know so very little about COVID compared to flu, and most people do not contract the flu once a year. Comparisons between the two are absolutely misleading to a "lay" reader. So, in a public health context, the initial framing and additional phrases such as the section title "flu isn't necessarily something to brush off" manages to minimize both flu and covid simulaneously, very disappointing.
5. Omission
Any article talking about "progress" against COVID that does not discuss how little we understand about the chronic effects of a covid infection is irresponsible health communication.
TLDR: As a health communication resource, YLE's topics and tone are influential on reader behavior. Thus, sharing data on current COVID spread, how to prevent infection and access testing and treatment, and why/when/how to get an updated vaccination are more appropriate at this time.
Note to Andrea: Thank you for stepping into this absolutley necessary field. We certainly need smart people with fresh eyes to take a new look at health reporting. My list above is not at all meant to discourage you - you are clearly an excellent writer! - but I hope to inspire you. As a health journalist, there are SO many excellent ways to question the establishment about COVID. You have a bounty of potential articles arrayed before you, ready for your hard questions and curious reporting. I cannot wait to see what you bring!
Note to YLE: Please note of which of the comments below are getting the most likes...I notice I am not alone here.
I find all of your comments to be very insightful and well expressed. I share all your concerns and wish the public health authorities would take note and be more responsive in trying to collect more reliable data. The death counts today of Covid deaths today are so lagged that they are basically useless in judging the risk level at a given point in time. And I continue to see stories that cite "recent" deaths from Covid as running at only 300 to 400 a week. That figure is clearly not reasonable and is probably based on reliance on the recent (very much lagged) reports. It creates a false overconfidence in the current state of affairs which will justify less societal concern and attempts to improve mitigation, better vaccines and more and better post infection treatments.
I completely agree with everything you've said here. In particular, the point of "Was there any major system change in COVID data collection and reporting in 2023?" feels like a huge omission to me, and I felt pretty disappointed to see YLE gloss over it.
Superb summary of the lack of transparency and clarity in SARS-CoV2 reporting! Platitudes to calm the general public are far too common & punish the more vulnerable because they are less protected every time "risk" is displayed as "reduced"!
Statistics have not been adequately provided about long- term risk also.
And the elephant in the room is lack of modern ventilation to keep ambient CO2 levels low.
I could not agree more about indoor air! I feel like it is the next sanitation revolution, so much opportunity for education and innovation and better health outcomes! Why is public health so slow to adopt? If YLE got serious about promoting clean indoor air, I would be ecstatic.
Could you provide a source for your claim that this is the “second highest surge of the pandemic”? This seems outrageous. About half way down this page is the WHO chart for COVID cases since the beginning of the pandemic. The current bump doesn’t even show up. https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/cases
I think there is a lot of underreporting, but going by waste water levels, the hosts of This Week In Virology said this is the second highest surge. My assumption is that is that hat YLE is going by as well, but I am willing to be wrong.
Hmm. That is interesting. At the same time, you can use this site to show COVID hospitalizations, and they appear to be as low as they have ever been. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-hospitalizations
That decoupling is a great thing! But, even mild cases can cause issues, and who wants to be sick? Hopefully the peak happens soon and we get a break before the next variant.
PS in my other reply to your comment I think I understated how very well organized and well written your critique of current practices in measuring COVID’s real and icontinuing impact really is. Thank you very much again for so valuable an analysis.
Part of why people are more hesitant to get the Covid vaccine versus the flu vaccine is that for many, the Covid vaccine makes them feel terrible while the flu vaccine causes no side effects. This is a huge element that you have not mentioned. It is not common to feel so terrible after a vaccine (other than the second shingrix vaccine, and that one is not a vaccine that you are told to get every year).
Ah good one!! I’m in this camp, until I got Novavax.
Do you yet know which vaccine you'll get this fall, weighing the benefits of Novavax vs. the mRNAs being more updated to the newer variants (at least that's my understanding)? Thanks.
Take this with a grain of salt, I’m not an expert: I’ve been reading that the mRNA vaccines this fall are specific for a variant that is no longer dominant, and the Novavax vaccine targets the “parent” of the variant that the mRNA vaccines target. And data from Novavax indicates broader immunity esp wrt current dominant strain(s) (which could change again by the time the vaccines roll out). But, I also read one interpretation of the data that the % effectiveness imo wasn’t great … so really looking forward to expert interpretation we get here. A not-great effectiveness for immunocompetent means even poorer effectiveness for the immunocompromised.
I found I had zero side effects with Novavax. Moderna and Pfizer both laid me out for a full day. If you can get Novavax try it.
I felt pretty crummy after my Novavax jab. I had the same aches, tiredness, and low-grade fever. ymmv. I also caught covid about 6 months later, and it wasn't horrible. (A day of high fever, a week respiratory symptoms and testing positive, and a month of feeling tired all the time. And I'm over 60 and have a history of having trouble throwing off respiratory bugs.) There's no way to know which vaccine did what, but I didn't feel shortchanged by my vaccines.
I had no side effects from Novavax and got a month long case of COVID. (my first) 6 weeks later. I’m skeptical of its effectiveness compared to Moderna which I’d always gotten previously.
I got covid a few weeks after getting Moderna. Since none of the vaccines are 100% effective, this will happen to some people after getting any of the vaccines. Doesn't mean they aren't effective.
Getting sick several weeks after a vaccine isn’t a selling point. I understand the point is to prevent hospitalization and death, but lots of people don’t. And having short lived/little protection form actual illness turns some people off.
4+ years of Moderna every 6months and never got COVID including during extensive air travel
to and around Europe. First Novavax and I got my very first case of COVID 6+ weeks later (plenty of time to develop immunity) which ruined my long-planned vacation and sidelined me for a month. While anecdote isn’t data, I’ll be getting Moderna in the Fall. YMMV.
Exactly! Moderna 2 and 3 were so terrible for me that I wondered if I was dying. I have never been so sick in my life. And I had weird neuro issues for several weeks. It is very scary for me to contemplate another vaccine, even Novavax, having never had anything more than a sore arm or a little malaise after any other vaccine.
I feel terrible after every flu vaccine and know others who do occasionally or every time as well.
Nothing from Novavax though.
I know people who get sick from the flu vaccine, too, and they are less likely to get vaccinated. I think it's true that on average, people feel worse after the covid vaccine than after the flu vaccine, and I'm sure that is relevant when people decide which vaccines to get.
I felt like crap after the one and only flu vaccine I got decades ago, which is why I never took one again, I think lots of other people don’t respond well to the flu vaccine either.
I wound up passing on COVID vaccines for same reason - about 1/3 of the people I knew who took it were laid out for a day or two (including my wife).
All the Covid vaccines whacked me out of commission for nearly a month each time, at least until we moved on to the boosters which seemed to have less of an effect on me. Despite all that, I still caught Covid January 3, 2022 as tested, which seemed it would surely kill me. From that infection (Omicron) I developed 'long haul' covid, symptoms / debilities of which I carry to this day. Then, presumably 'cuz I liked it so much, I caught covid again in August of 2022. This was different though; in the August 'issue' it attacked my G.I. tract, pancreas acutely inflamed. The January 'issue' was entirely upper respiratory. I'm still going to follow medical advice and take vaccines to come (anyone know ?) ; I mean what else are we to do ?
Why no recent newsletters about COVID surges in the U.S. and Europe including which states & countries are worse off? COVID impacted major sporting events like the Olympics and the Tour de France. Also when updated vaccines will be available.
We’ve done one every other week. Next one is coming Tuesday!
Looking at disparate vaccination rates, I'm also wondering how much the late summer COVID waves that we have been getting have affected COVID vaccination rates. Last year, the new COVID vaccine wasn't available until September. By then, many people (including myself), had already been infected in the summer wave. While I still got my vaccine in November (after waiting 3 months from infection), others might have just assumed they no longer needed it. Whereas flu doesn't really pickup until the winter, so more people might have wanted the vaccine since they hadn't caught it yet.
This is a good point. I got Covid a year ago and did not get the fall booster last year for that reason. And I did not get it after 3 months since many immunologists recommend waiting at least six months (and some say to wait a year to get the full effect of the hybrid immunity).
I noticed stroke deaths are up. I wonder how many are sequelae of Covid19 infections? Also, how is it determined that Covid19 caused death? My mom was clear cut-she got Covid, had respiratory complications and died in 10 days. But they could have said she died of respiratory failure without mentioning Covid? Dad had a different track. He got Covid and developed pneumonia which was treated with antibiotics but he never recovered at age 97, always coughing up mucus and short of breath, was placed in hospice care with oxygen and morphine and died of “cardiac arrest” 90 days after his Covid diagnosis. I say he died from Covid but that’s not the official record
>I noticed stroke deaths are up.
Where did you notice this? This is not what the CDC reports:
>The death rate for stroke decreased from 41.1 per 100,000 in 2021 to 39.5 per 100,000 in 2022.
The page is from May 15, 2024.
https://www.cdc.gov/stroke/data-research/facts-stats/index.html
Has the disease become less severe or is it just that the population at large has become more immune due to prior infection and vaccination? For a high-risk person who has never had COVID and isn't up-to-date on their vaccines, is the risk of death still just as high as it ever was? As someone who loves someone in that category, I am still kept awake at night.
There was a fairly careful study of the original omicron wave that found it was just as deadly in unexposed people as prior variants, and that its population "mildness" was due to widespread immunity to original-strain covid. I don't think there are enough unexposed people to do more studies along those lines. I'd be worried, too, but at some point you need to accept other people's choices about their own health.
Oh, but "not up to date" is very different from "immunologically naive". If your loved one had three vaccine doses, they should should have substantial immunity. Unless they are severely immune compromised, in which case additional vaccine doses may not do anything anyway.
Countries which had low vaccination rates also returned to baseline mortality in 2022-2023, so that’s encouraging for your loved one.
I believe part of the low vaccine-uptake problem is the lack of Covid vaccines durability and the lack of vaccine administering choice. When Covid is, so far, on a twice a year cycle, vaccines that last just 2-4 months isn't going to cut it for most people. Nasal-spray vaccine is also key to coverage success in the near term. In addition, chasing variants is tiring and only partially effective. In the long term, pan-Coronavirus vaccine such as Walter Reed's SpFN could lead to a much better coverage.
Doesn't Long Covid & "regular" Covid cause many of the top items in the causes of death list? And are we tracking the contribution of Covid to those deaths?
I am 73, and I always get a flu shot and have never had the flu. I have gotten all of the Covid vaccines, and have now had Covid 3 times. I know quite a few folks who have had the Covid vaccines, but still got Covid more than once. During my lifetime, I have been lucky that I never seemed to get the stuff that ran through my household, so having Covid 3 times is unusual for me.
You have probably had the flu, but not noticed it--because you get your vaccine every year, like you should!
In addition to the info Andrea has provided, the best news I’m taking away from this post is that we have young people who are interested in science and communication. We need the Andrea’s of the world now more than ever, thank you so much!
Covid was Not the Killer—it was the Covid vaccines
People like you are responsible for millions of deaths. Hush, Trumper!
Why would you call him a trumper? Trump made the vax and still brags about. All Biden did was mandate it. Seems like an incorrect slur at best... Trump created it. Biden forced it. Attributing millions of deaths to covid is highly questionable. Take a look at all cause mortality peaks for 2020-2023, then look at societal changes preceding those peaks and let me know what you come up with. Thanks
Not bragging any more. Trump got booed at a rally when he mentioned operation warp speed and the vaccine and lauded his role. Don’t believe he’s mentioned it since.
When was that? His campaign posted about it yesterday. And since you obviously did not look into peaks of acm during those years, here is a great place to start- https://esmed.org/MRA/mra/article/view/5485/99193548109
Excuse me?? There was a huge number of deaths BEFORE the vaccine was introduced. It’s not helpful to anyone to rewrite history.
You are aware that most countries saw all cause mortality increase after the vaccine rolled out, right?
South Korea went from 310k deaths a year to 370k in 2022 (2nd largest year over year increase in mortality of any country, last 100 years).
Canada, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Taiwan, Japan, New Zealand are other countries which had significant mortality increase despite having 90%+ vaccinated populations.
The rest didn’t see much change at all. Portugal, Israel, US, Germany, Austria come to mind off the top of my head.
I don’t agree with Max - I don’t think the Covid vaccine is why South Korea and Taiwan had massive deaths following vaccinations, I think instead it was due to disruption - but it’s incorrect to make the claim that there was “huge death” before the vaccine.
What do you mean by disruption.
The disruption of lockdowns which had a cascading effect through healthcare and supply chain. It also triggered increases in obesity, alcohol abuse, anxiety, etc.
There was zero excess deaths globally leading up to the lockdowns, then suddenly, in many countries, deaths immediately soared.
A novel deadly virus sweeping through populations unchecked for months should have caused a slow but steady rise of excess deaths leading up to when we acted by responding to lockdowns. But the data doesn't reflect this.
Even in countries like Italy where we later learned Covid was spreading months earlier than we realized have no signal in mortality until immediately after panic set in and lockdowns rolled out.
That's what I mean by disruption - we essentially yelled "fire" in a crowded movie theater and then were bewildered why so many more people died than usual, and why all of our rain dances didn't make any difference - the only cure was returning to normal and ending the hysteria.
That's what I think the data shows. South Korea is puzzling though.
The deaths before the clot shot were due to killer hospital protocols—CDC mandated remdesivir that destroyed the kidneys and hideous ventilators!! This was a crime of the millennium!!!