Checking back on US cardiac deaths

Sky still not falling, but persistently off-kilter

Post version: Beta. Spreadsheets and graphs will be updated if any errors found.

In October, one of twitter’s horde of (planted or self-appointed) Narrative Defenders™ produced a provocative graph using the CDC’s records of deaths attributed to “diseases of the circulatory system” via standard codes for younger adults. Presumably, epidemics of “dying suddenly” would create a signal here due to imputed causes of stroke and cardiac disease. The only strong, apparent signal was for the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 in its various forms.

Although the twitter-er’s graph had the wrong values for given age groups, I was able to reproduce the result.¹ Five months (and some improvements in my spreadsheet competence) later, has anything changed?

Excess circulatory deaths still high, still seem mostly virus-related

For this update, I have jury-rigged a way of looking at raw “circulatory system disease” deaths for both younger and older adults in somewhat consistent resolution. Note that these are absolute counts of events, not rates. As in my previous outing, there is a clear distinction between the pre-“pandemic” and inter-“pandemic” average of monthly deaths attributed to “blood stuff.” This version also highlights a smaller increase in average if considering the eras before and after the Covid vaccines:

Source data at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jEfjfdog4Izfp-6_ZEKubjoCuL6vnz_Gt5qKvhynE2I/edit?usp=sharing, though I haven’t added notes

As in my other posts on the theme of “excess deaths do not yet reflect Covid vaccine harms,” I feel a naturalistic interpretation favors the virus and/or our reaction to and mistreatment of it driving the bulk of “deathiness.” It would seem that our various age groups are experiencing 1,600 to a handful of extra deaths attributed to circulatory diseases every month since the arrival of the “pandemic.” Whether these deaths reflect coagulatory and cardiac harms from infection, or harms from mistreatment of infection, or from delayed care due to fear of infection, or from reduction of accuracy for other diagnosis due to the same, they precede the Covid vaccines.

The question then shifts to what to make of the era after the Covid vaccines. I have only ventured to pin a month for gains in first injection uptake (estimated as when one state reports over 60% of an age group having one shot) for four of our age bands. I do not think there is any value to using the month of the Emergency Authorizations, as distribution was sluggish in most states until spring. Age 75-84 was further excluded because choice of a transition month would drastically change the result, so that band is a choose-your-own-adventure book. The youngest were excluded as the entire band seems even.

Circulatory deaths increased because of vaccine harms?

Perhaps. However, it is unclear why the youngest would not show a signal here; this group should have the most notable effect as baseline deaths were so low. Unless this data is being overtly fabricated, it remains the case that there is no apparent signal in the data for the youngest. As always, the caveat applies that just because something is not showing up in statistics, does not mean I am arguing it isn’t real. Statistics are not real life.

Vaccine failure? Or “efficacy by delay” again?

This is perhaps the stronger take; and has even been suggested by others such as myself who primarily credit excess deaths to the virus (and mistreatment of). How can the vaccines be preventing severe outcomes, if just as many people are dying?

As before, I would argue that this is consistent with tolerance exacerbating organ damage from the virus.

Tolerance (Maims and) Kills - Potential Examples

However, it is likely that normalizing excess circulatory deaths to how many people are getting infected would still show a “discount” in the wake of the vaccines, as with excess deaths in the UK (see last week’s post).

Problem sustained in 2022? (Yes)

Deaths attributed to circulatory disease are clearly still over-high in 2022:

This is despite a creep toward moderate levels of seroconversion during the BA.1 wave,² which should mean that some daily deaths should no longer be occurring due to the killing-off of would-be-die-ers back in 2020 and 2021 (i.e., we should be seeing “pull forward effect”).

Also notable here is that a small bump corresponding to the summer “BA.5 wave," which seems to represent the beginning of the boosted “catching up” with first-time infections.³ Does this argue for or against my IgG4 tolerance theory of post-viral deaths (since the ultra-boosted can reasonably be expected to have the most IgG4 at this point)? The bump is certainly higher relative to attributed “Covid-19” deaths (grey line) than those that followed the five preceding waves. However, this may be more related to reduced incentives for coding deaths as “Covid-19.” Overall, I would call it a weak signal.

What next?

We have confirmed that the problem of excess circulatory deaths, whatever the cause, persisted toward the end of 2022. Now that winter has marked the virus’s apparent last hurrah, will deaths still be elevated in 2023, or recede? And what would the former mean — a slow-killing virus, a slow-killing virus and vaccine, or a transition to purely vaccine-caused deaths that the virus may have rendered impossible to prove?

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1. See “Notes on sudden cardiac deaths.”

2. Originally described as high, until a revisit of

Clarke, K. et al. “Seroprevalence of Infection-Induced SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies — United States, September 2021–February 2022.”

In which N antibodies among the over-65s are low 30%’s in February, 2022.

3. See “It Will Always Be Catch-Up Effect.”