New Taiwan Data Source and Debunking The New York Times Excess Death Article
I thought I should follow up my last post
https://pete843.substack.com/p/taiwan-update-and-proof-mrna-covid
Good news. Taiwan is still publishing death/birth statistics, just not where I used to find it
https://ws.moi.gov.tw/001/Upload/400/relfile/0/4413/4950fd32-36a4-4c99-af23-e6a046f2147f/m1-02.xls
The bad news is deaths are still high (June 2023 is 25.3% over 2020), and births cratered , at least compared to June 2021 (for the year Taiwan births are down 11.5% from 2021 and about the same as 2022. I am still skeptical the vaccine has much to do with births based on US birth data and pre-COVID Taiwan trends, But those are the numbers
Deaths
June 2020 - 13,893
June 2023 - 17,415. (25.3%),
3,522 Excess Deaths vs 2020
2023 Q2 Deaths
April. 15,572
May. 17,530
June. 17,415
50,517. 18.6% over 2020
2020 Q2 Deaths
April. 14,423
May. 13,272
June. 13,893
42,588
Births
June 2021- 15,128 babies
June 2022- 10,943
June 2023- 11,009 (-27.2% vs 2021), 0.6% over 2022
Jan-June Births (YOYchange)
2023- 66,028
2022- 66,149. -0.2%
2021- 74,609. -11.5
2020- 79,760. -17.3%
Now I thought I should say a little something about that NYT article that came out a couple of days ago that declared Excess Deaths over with in US
During Covid’s worst phases, the total number of Americans dying each day was more than 30 percent higher than normal, a shocking increase. For long stretches of the past three years, the excess was above 10 percent. But during the past few months, excess deaths have fallen almost to zero, according to three different measures.
The Human Mortality Database estimates that slightly fewer Americans than normal have died since March, while The Economist magazine and the C.D.C. both put the excess-death number below 1 percent. Here is the C.D.C. data:
The power of immunity
The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Hardly anyone is taking the poison now in US. In Taiwan almost 90% have taken 1 shot and they are having another COVID wave. Cant find data on their uptake now
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.
Those most susceptible to COVID have already died in great numbers. Pull Forward Effect must be applied and this would reduce expected deaths 8-10%. So their Excess Death% is understated by 8-10%
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
Taiwan hands Paxlovid out like candy and still has high Excess Deaths
That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.
Here is CDC latest data. Note June and July are not yet completed as it typically takes 4-6 weeks to go through and count all death certificates. Latest full month is May and Excess Death% is 7%. Add 8-10% for true excess deaths because this as they determine expected deaths from 2016-2019 average and we had almost 1.8 million Excess Deaths (most of them elderly) who died earlier than expected in 2020 -2022 and not available to die in 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/briefing/covid.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email