The Preston Manning-led analysis of the Alberta Government`s 2020 to 2022 COVID response was published this week by Alberta`s Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel. While Manning's report is focused on governance and regulatory frameworks, it does not address remaining questions of a more science and health statistics nature, that needed to be asked about this our collective painful recent history. To be fair to Manning, these were almost certainly beyond the panel's terms of reference.Being a highly skeptical person who is obsessed with confirming the science-based claims of others, I started tracking Statistics Canada All Cause Mortality (ACM) rate data within the first week following the March 15, 2020, lockdown.Three and a half years later, I am finally commenting on data that I believe is being purposefully ignored by mainstream media, and by politicians of all parties. I will demonstrate that the March 2020 lockdown marks a step-change point in time, when younger, healthier Canadians suddenly began to:1) Die in greater numbers, and I argue 2) that this rise in overall mortality has nothing to do with a viral respiratory disease.In this first in a series of articles on the topic of Canadian national and provincial mortality rates in the context of the 2020 Lockdown, I will focus primarily on the two youngest age demographics. Shown in Figure 1 are Statistics Canada`s national average weekly all-cause mortality rates for the 0-44 and the 45-64 year age groups, for the six years from January 2017 to January 2023..To aid the eye, I have added stars at March 2020 lockdown, as well as start and end of the mandated mRNA inoculations. The surge in death rates for the 0-44 year old demographic, starts at the March 2020 lockdown. It is immediate and sustained, well into 2022. However, the weekly ACM rate for this demographic exhibits no visually apparent trend for the three years prior to the 2020 lockdown. (The weekly average ACM rate over the time frame of 2017 to 2020 is 267.)The same step change in weekly ACM rates is observed for the 45 to 64 year old demographics, though it is not as visually apparent as for the 0-44 year olds..To quantify the lack of a trend in ACM rates prior to March 2020 for both age demographics, I replotted the weekly rates as annual rates over the same time frame as shown in Figure 2. The vertical red dashed line is to aid the eye in delineating the six years into two periods.Note that three data points is the absolute minimum required to test for a linear trend and the closer the R2 value is to 1, the more confident one can be in claiming a linear trend exists between a set of data points.Further note that Figure 2 shows no linear trend existed for either age demographic prior to the 2020 Lockdown, as verified by the extremely low R2 (< 0.1) values embedded with the extrapolated dotted blue lines. Whereas we see a high R2 approaching 1 for the extrapolated dotted orange lines to the right of the vertical dashed red line.Therefore, we can say with confidence that a significant step change occurs abruptly between 2019 and 2020, where both younger age groups show a transition to a high R2 positive linear trendline from 2020 to 2022. Simply put, the death rate for these age groups jumped.If the weekly ACM averages of 267 and 808 over 2017 to 2019 from Figure 1 are used as the equivalent of an expected weekly ACM rate for both demographics, excess ACM values can be calculated over the 2020 to 2022 time frame.Excess mortality in epidemiology is an estimate of the number of deaths that occurred above that which was expected due to some external stressor or calamity.The table below shows the calculated excess ACMs for both age demographics, together with the percent increase for 2020, 2021 and 2022 relative to the 2017 to 2019 averages for each age group shown in Figure 1. This methodology suggests from 2020 to 2022, 8,516 excess deaths occurred in the age group of 0 to 44 years old and 10,332 excess deaths occurred in the age group of 45 to 64 years old (18,848 total.).Table 1 also highlights that whatever happened in 2020 to trigger a 14% rise in ACM rate relative to 2017 to 2019, both age demographics experienced a near further doubling in their annual ACM rates in 2021 and 2022 relative to 2020.Most of us will recall the rapidly declining virility of SARS-CoV-2 variants from early 2020 to late 2022, as well as the almost complete lack of COVID fatalities among young healthy Canadians. For most health young people, SARS-CoV-2 was nothing more than a cold or a mild flu.Clearly new societal stressors developed in 2020, were sustained in 2022 and were most likely not related to a SARS-CoV-2 respiratory infection.A deeper dive into possible causative factors is warranted and you can expect more from me on this topic going forward. Please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you have credible statistics on causation that you believe is worth considering.While I am not a pathologist or epidemiologist, I am a senior scientist with extensive experience in trend analysis. I am confident that my research here has highlighted some critical questions that I believe Canadians deserve answers to from their respective provincial governments, as well as from Statistics Canada and the federal government.Please take the time to share this evidence with your MLA and MP and demand answers.“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” — Richard Feynman
The Preston Manning-led analysis of the Alberta Government`s 2020 to 2022 COVID response was published this week by Alberta`s Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel. While Manning's report is focused on governance and regulatory frameworks, it does not address remaining questions of a more science and health statistics nature, that needed to be asked about this our collective painful recent history. To be fair to Manning, these were almost certainly beyond the panel's terms of reference.Being a highly skeptical person who is obsessed with confirming the science-based claims of others, I started tracking Statistics Canada All Cause Mortality (ACM) rate data within the first week following the March 15, 2020, lockdown.Three and a half years later, I am finally commenting on data that I believe is being purposefully ignored by mainstream media, and by politicians of all parties. I will demonstrate that the March 2020 lockdown marks a step-change point in time, when younger, healthier Canadians suddenly began to:1) Die in greater numbers, and I argue 2) that this rise in overall mortality has nothing to do with a viral respiratory disease.In this first in a series of articles on the topic of Canadian national and provincial mortality rates in the context of the 2020 Lockdown, I will focus primarily on the two youngest age demographics. Shown in Figure 1 are Statistics Canada`s national average weekly all-cause mortality rates for the 0-44 and the 45-64 year age groups, for the six years from January 2017 to January 2023..To aid the eye, I have added stars at March 2020 lockdown, as well as start and end of the mandated mRNA inoculations. The surge in death rates for the 0-44 year old demographic, starts at the March 2020 lockdown. It is immediate and sustained, well into 2022. However, the weekly ACM rate for this demographic exhibits no visually apparent trend for the three years prior to the 2020 lockdown. (The weekly average ACM rate over the time frame of 2017 to 2020 is 267.)The same step change in weekly ACM rates is observed for the 45 to 64 year old demographics, though it is not as visually apparent as for the 0-44 year olds..To quantify the lack of a trend in ACM rates prior to March 2020 for both age demographics, I replotted the weekly rates as annual rates over the same time frame as shown in Figure 2. The vertical red dashed line is to aid the eye in delineating the six years into two periods.Note that three data points is the absolute minimum required to test for a linear trend and the closer the R2 value is to 1, the more confident one can be in claiming a linear trend exists between a set of data points.Further note that Figure 2 shows no linear trend existed for either age demographic prior to the 2020 Lockdown, as verified by the extremely low R2 (< 0.1) values embedded with the extrapolated dotted blue lines. Whereas we see a high R2 approaching 1 for the extrapolated dotted orange lines to the right of the vertical dashed red line.Therefore, we can say with confidence that a significant step change occurs abruptly between 2019 and 2020, where both younger age groups show a transition to a high R2 positive linear trendline from 2020 to 2022. Simply put, the death rate for these age groups jumped.If the weekly ACM averages of 267 and 808 over 2017 to 2019 from Figure 1 are used as the equivalent of an expected weekly ACM rate for both demographics, excess ACM values can be calculated over the 2020 to 2022 time frame.Excess mortality in epidemiology is an estimate of the number of deaths that occurred above that which was expected due to some external stressor or calamity.The table below shows the calculated excess ACMs for both age demographics, together with the percent increase for 2020, 2021 and 2022 relative to the 2017 to 2019 averages for each age group shown in Figure 1. This methodology suggests from 2020 to 2022, 8,516 excess deaths occurred in the age group of 0 to 44 years old and 10,332 excess deaths occurred in the age group of 45 to 64 years old (18,848 total.).Table 1 also highlights that whatever happened in 2020 to trigger a 14% rise in ACM rate relative to 2017 to 2019, both age demographics experienced a near further doubling in their annual ACM rates in 2021 and 2022 relative to 2020.Most of us will recall the rapidly declining virility of SARS-CoV-2 variants from early 2020 to late 2022, as well as the almost complete lack of COVID fatalities among young healthy Canadians. For most health young people, SARS-CoV-2 was nothing more than a cold or a mild flu.Clearly new societal stressors developed in 2020, were sustained in 2022 and were most likely not related to a SARS-CoV-2 respiratory infection.A deeper dive into possible causative factors is warranted and you can expect more from me on this topic going forward. Please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you have credible statistics on causation that you believe is worth considering.While I am not a pathologist or epidemiologist, I am a senior scientist with extensive experience in trend analysis. I am confident that my research here has highlighted some critical questions that I believe Canadians deserve answers to from their respective provincial governments, as well as from Statistics Canada and the federal government.Please take the time to share this evidence with your MLA and MP and demand answers.“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” — Richard Feynman
