How Deadly Were the Covid Lockdowns? For Americans under 45, there were more excess deaths without the virus in 2020-21 than with it; National Security Experts Criticize Media, Scientists Who Dismissed COVID-19 Lab Leak Theory in Open Letter, and other C-Virus related stories

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WSJ: How Deadly Were the Covid Lockdowns?

For Americans under 45, there were more excess deaths without the virus in 2020-21 than with it.

Covid-19 is deadly, but so were the draconian steps taken to mitigate it. During the first two years of the pandemic, “excess deaths”—the death toll above the historical trend—markedly exceeded the number of deaths attributed to Covid. In a paper we just published in Inquiry, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we found that “non-Covid excess deaths” totaled nearly 100,000 a year in 2020 and 2021.

Even these numbers likely overestimate deaths from Covid and underestimate those from other causes. Covid testing has become ubiquitous in hospitals, and the official count of “Covid deaths” includes people who tested positive but died of other causes. On the other side, some Covid deaths early in the pandemic weren’t diagnosed as such. We adjusted for the latter effect but not the former.

What are non-Covid excess deaths? During the pandemic, deaths from accidents, overdoses, alcoholism and homicide all soared, as did deaths from hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. From April 2020 through December 2021, deaths from Covid averaged 350,000 a year for Americans 65 and older, 100,000 a year for those 45 to 64, and 20,000 a year for those 18 to 44. That produced excess deaths for these age groups of 16%, 19% and 11% respectively. (The percentages reflect the lower base death rate for younger age groups as well as the raw numbers.)

Non-Covid excess deaths are distributed more evenly among these age groups, 35,000 among the elderly, 33,000 among the middle-aged and 29,000 among young adults. As a percentage, however, that’s a huge increase for young adults. While deaths from hypertension, heart disease and diabetes dominate non-Covid excess deaths for senior citizens, the other causes—accidents, overdoses, alcoholism and homicide—skew younger, poorer and with a disproportionate effect on minorities. It also bears mention that these young-adult deaths, running 27% above historical trends, take far more years of life than the excess deaths for older age cohorts. --->READ MORE HERE

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National Security Experts Criticize Media, Scientists Who Dismissed COVID-19 Lab Leak Theory in Open Letter:

A group of 43 national security experts published an open letter on Jan. 11 criticizing news organizations and scientific publications that dismissed the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic might have been the result of a lab leak.

The letter is addressed “To the editors, authors, and contributors to major scientific, medical, and journalistic publications worldwide.” The addressees include The Lancet, Nature Medicine, The New York Times, and TIME magazine.

The letter was coordinated by the Vandenberg Coalition, and included signatures from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), former U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, Former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger, and analysts from the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and other security and foreign policy analysts.

“Leading scientific journals censored dissenting voices; many science writers at major news outlets promoted narratives or asserted conclusions unsubstantiated by evidence; reporters failed to make even cursory attempts at surfacing potential conflicts of interest of their sources,” the letter states.

“This served to hamper national and international policy discussions about how to mitigate against future pandemics of any origin—natural, accidental, or deliberate.”

The letter faults editors and reporters at news organizations and scientific publications for stifling debate on the origins of the virus. --->READ MORE HERE

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