Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf recently took to X to mourn the “catastrophic” decline in U.S. life expectancy.
But his post, which hit on smoking, diet, chronic illness and health care, ignored the obvious: People are dying in abnormally high numbers even now and long since COVID-19 waned. Yet public health agencies and medical societies are silent.
Life insurers have been consistently sounding the alarm over these unexpected or, “excess,” deaths, which claimed 158,000 more Americans in the first nine months of 2023 than in the same period in 2019. That exceeds America’s combined losses from every war since Vietnam. Congress should urgently work with insurance experts to investigate this troubling trend.
With the worst of COVID behind us, annual deaths for all causes should be back to pre-pandemic levels — or even lower because of the loss of so many sick and infirm Americans. Instead, the death toll remains “alarming,” “disturbing,” and deserving of “urgent attention,” according to insurance industry articles.
Actuarial reports — used by insurers to inform decisions — show deaths occurring disproportionately among young working-age people. Nonetheless, America’s chief health manager, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opted in September to archive its excess deaths webpage with a note stating, “these datasets will no longer be updated.”
Covid is over, so what could it be? 
So close to getting it...
This was a surprisingly irritating article for me, given the title.
As you bolded, they refer to COVID as being over a bunch of times but the wastewater data just doesn't support that
Congress should urgently work with insurance experts to investigate this troubling trend.
lol, not with doctors or epidemiologists, but with the insurance experts. I guess they are the only ones paying attention still from all the money they're losing?
Also the section about "what worked and what didn't" complaining about lockdowns, vaccines, and "government officials who sanctioned unprecedented censorship of dissent". Like, sure, that stuff didn't work, but they don't acknowledge the corporate interests that caused the efforts to be sabotaged. Of course this stuff doesn't work when they get 50% of the population ignoring them entirely
To some extent, we know what is killing the young, with an actuarial analysis of government data showing mortality increases in liver, kidney and cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes.
And yet, no mention of the fact that the risk for all of these diseases becomes significantly higher if you've had COVID. It's like they're saying
doesn't have a problem with gun violence, but we really need to look into why so many people are dying from internal trauma and blood loss!These shitheads don't know how vaccines work, it's frustrating
what is the intended purpose of that "year-over-year" graph from the wastewater data site? why does the year begin in march? just seems unintuitive to me
Feb/March 2020 is basically when covid was acknowledged and data collection began. Using the year over year graph we can look for and compare seasonal patterns to get an idea of what to expect as well as get an idea of how fucked we are. For example, notice how the low points for each year are getting higher and higher, strongly indicating that we are heading towards what is essentially an endless wave.
I guess they start it March so that they wouldn't have to split any of the peak periods and it's (arguably) easier to see each wave come and go. I like that graph because I find more compelling to show that COVID's not over when you can see the lines all stacked right on top of each other and not quite as squashed by the Jan 2022 peak.
But I guess not everyone sees it that way, there's a button for the running total graph above and to the left for anyone who would prefer to look at it that way.
Seems okay to start tracking things through the four seasons instead of the twelve calendar months.
even lower because of the loss of so many sick and infirm Americans
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Oh, covid, you mean the respiratory virus that leaves those who contract it with long term neurological, gastrointestinal, and metabolic illnesses? That covid?
It's a mystery!
by Pierre Kory and Mary Beth Pfeiffer
Pierre Kory:
During his testimony in December 2020, Kory erroneously claimed that the antiparasitic medication ivermectin was a "wonder drug" with "miraculous effectiveness" against COVID-19.
LMAO
the authors - not The Hill - are associated with this anti-vaxx org https://covid19criticalcare.com/tag/heres-a-thought/
I think we're all there on this man 🫡 you've gotta be pretty checked out to take this kind of journalism seriously. Try showing it to people outside the US they'll laugh at our Black Knight "just a flesh wound" bit
"We're believing the propaganda as hard as we can and yet reality refuses to conform! What gives?"
People are dying in abnormally high numbers even now and long since COVID-19 waned
We pretended that COVID ended but for some reason that didn't change material reality.
Lockdowns limited access to education, social interaction and health care with documented harm to childhood development, mental health and the economy.
Finally, government officials who sanctioned unprecedented censorship of dissent — enforcing pandemic measures through media pressure — must be called to account.
terminal american
, completely ill-suited to deal with crises like covidLove how they're pretending to care about education, social interaction, healthcare, mental health, and childhood development when they don't want to deal with lockdowns, but can't give two shits about how people fucking dying for pointless work is a-ok
The people nagging us to be more 'disciplined' and just self-righteously accept working for nothing but facing sky high rent as the same weak-willed hedonists who couldn't be bothered to interrupt their mindless consoomerism for a bloody pandemic that they wanted to ignore because they screeched "I CAN DO WHAT I WANT!" like petulant children.
We are surrounded by decadent gluttons.
