Another Look At California Births
So the other day I took a look at the California Birth Data and was somewhat surprised not to see a significant drop like in other countries.
https://data.chhs.ca.gov/dataset/test-cdph-statewide-live-birth-profiles
Seeing as all the folks with big audiences have been looking at birth data closely, I was wondering why they ignored California. After all its a rather large population, bigger than Australia, Sweden and Taiwan and not much smaller UK or Germany.
The reason probably is that it doesn’t fit the narrative, there is no significant decline over 2021. So lets ignore that. Or something like that.
Some have commented it could be that increased immigration and pregnant immigrants are masking the decline in the vaxxed residence population. While there may be some of that , illegal immigrants arriving in 2021/2022 cant be laying so many eggs as to significantly affect a 40 million populations birth percentages , and although those 2.4 million illegal immigrants in California who arrived in prior years and their now legal offspring are a factor in a significant percentage of births, many of them are vaxxed due to their assimilation in the population, and besides, they were already present in 2021 so they shouldn’t affect 2022 births more than 2021.
Another commenter suggested it may be due to less hot lots sent to California because it was a blue state. However, if that was the case California should have fewer excess deaths in 2021 and 2022, but they don’t. They are slightly above the national average in 2021 and within 1% overall for 2022 although they are running a bit high in July-September (16-19% vs national avg of 12-15%).
Readers will also recall a report of an increase in demise (still births) in one California hospital system in August and September. Could this be related to the increase in excess deaths in July-September? Perhaps.
Because California is such an outlier in 2022 births, I decided to take a more detailed look.
Here is the monthly data
2022 data only goes up to October
Here is another look
And a yoy percentage breakdown (January-October)
And by Month yoy
Three things jump out at me.
Why were birth in such decline in the first 5 months of 2020? Lockdowns Didnt start till the end of March and once a pregnancy in its 7th month its pretty much a done deal. Most of those who left California did so after the Lockdowns (except for the billionaires). California was pretty much spared the worst of COVID in the first wave too.
The second is the decline in births relative to 2021 in August (-4.4%) and September (-6.6%). Whats going on there? It will be interesting to see what Novembers numbers look like. What happened in December and January that could affect births in August and September? Omicron?
I don’t mean to suggest Omicron alone is responsible (assuming its not a blip and the trend continues), but if you imagine the vaccine as laying the explosives and Omicron lighting the fuse, you get the idea. Omicron was a self-spreading booster for the vaxxed. No jab needed. If that hypothesis is correct the unvaxxed might be fine but we don’t have that data
And lastly, why wasn’t there a bounce back in births in 2022 to 2019 levels (adjusted for an expected decline of 1.2% per year). We are 4.4% short on births after adjustment. Thats significant in and of itself. Since 2010 there has been no annual decline greater than 3.5% except for 2020 . BTW, 1.2% is the average decline from 2010-2019 (excluding 2020 as a Lockdown + Mystery X Outlier)
So until Novembers numbers come in, thats all I got.
Here is my Taiwan series for anyone interested.
Deaths+ Births-July
Deaths-July
Deaths-August
Births-August
Deaths-September
Deaths-October
Deaths-November
I havent done a post on Taiwan Births since the August post. Here is Taiwans YOY declines each month
% YOY Decline
Oct. -7.0
Sep. -9.3
Aug. -5.5
July. -7.3
June. -27.6
May. -23.2
April. -8.5
March. -7.5
Feb -16.4
Jan. +36.8
Normally Taiwan had about 4% fewer births each year before COVID. For some reason it was spared COVID Craziness until May 2021 which coincided with the vaccine roll out in April. A soft Lockdown from May-August. High Vaccine uptake (over 93% have at least 1 dose, I am one of the lucky 7%). Boosters started end of December(over 60 % uptake) 2nd Booster Started in May which coincided with Taiwans most Deadliest COVID outbreak thats responsible for over 90% of their COVID deaths (last data I saw was uptake over 30%), Third Booster (bivalent) began late September which coincided with a mini-3rd COVID WAVE in the wake of the waning of the 2nd Wave in August (have seen no data on uptake, I think some people are starting to wise up). The 3rd Wave has now petered out, and Outdoor Mask Mandates ended December 1 but 95% still mask outdoors.
Is this the end or will a new variant come? For some reason May is COVIDS favorite month in Taiwan after hibernating over the winter. Cant spoil the Lunar New Year Festivities, can we. How considerate, a Culturally Respectful Virus.