Largest Study of Its Kind Finds Excess Deaths During Pandemic Caused by Public Health Response, Not Virus

A study released today of excess mortality in 125 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic found the major causes of death globally stemmed from public health establishment’s response, including mandates and lockdowns that caused severe stress, harmful medical interventions and the COVID-19 vaccines.

“We conclude that nothing special would have occurred in terms of mortality had a pandemic not been declared and had the declaration not been acted upon,” the authors of the study wrote.

Researchers from the Canadian nonprofit Correlation Research in the Public Interest and the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières analyzed excess all-cause mortality data prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, beginning with the March 11, 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic declaration and ending on May 5, 2023, when the WHO declared the pandemic over.

The results, presented in a detailed 521-page analysis, establish baseline all-cause mortality rates across 125 countries and use those to determine the variations in excess deaths during the pandemic.

The researchers also used the baseline rates to investigate how the individual country variations in excess death rates correlated to different pandemic-related interventions, including vaccination and booster campaigns.

Not all of the results on a country-by-country basis were the same. For example, in some countries, mortality spikes occurred before the vaccines were rolled out, while in other places, the mortality spikes tracked closely with vaccine or booster campaigns.

In some places, excess mortality rates returned to baseline or close to baseline in 2022, while in others, the rates persisted well into 2023. Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., lead author of the study, told The Defender the disparities result from the complex nature of pandemic measures — and the data — in different areas.

Once Rancourt’s team was able to establish the baseline and excess mortality data for each place, they clustered and examined the data through different filters to interpret it, and drew several conclusions.

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