by Douglas Collins
The pandemic timeline is starting to seem long and blurry. Looking back, can you try to remember answers to the following corona history trivia questions? Don’t think too hard: you can just make your best guesses. For your convenience, below is a recent covid death graph from the Washington Post, which might help you think of answers. But the answers might be surprising.
The trivia questions and answers appear farther below, with citations.
QUESTIONS
1. When did covid first begin in the US?
2. Try to remember: When did most people in the US start wearing masks?
3. A 10% vaccination rate by itself wouldn’t normally be very effective at controlling a pandemic, even if the vaccines were 100% effective. Around what date was 10% of the total US population “fully vaccinated” for covid? Just make a guess!
4. On the other hand, you’d probably start seeing a fair amount of “herd immunity” once half the population got an effective vaccine. Around what date in 2021 was 50% of the total US population fully vaccinated? Remember, many non-vaccinated would have already gotten natural immunity by that time, so there should be a “supermajority” of immune people by that time.
5. What were the two leading causes of death in the US in 2020 and 2021?
6. In which year did more people in the US die of covid: 2020 or 2021?
7. In which of these three calendar years did more people die of all causes in the US from January 1 through March 1: 2020, 2021, or 2022?
8. President Biden gave a speech saying that “We’ve reached a new moment in the fight against COVID-19, with severe cases down to a level not seen since last July [of 2021].” Around what date did Biden make this comment?
9. What age groups have had a higher percentage of extra deaths of all causes (not just covid) in 2020 and 2021: kids, young adults, middle-aged adults, or elderly?
10. What age groups are far more likely to die of covid: kids, young adults, middle-aged, or elderly?
11. According to the CDC the estimated age-adjusted death rate in the US in 2020 was 828.7 deaths per 100,000 population. What was the age-adjusted death rate in, say, 2003? Much higher? Much lower?
12. The CDC in the US is not releasing a lot of its covid statistics to the public. The UK, however, has been until recently releasing data on covid deaths among vaccinated and unvaccinated. Which category, vaccinated or unvaccinated, is having a higher death rate from covid?
13. According to the data from the Pfizer clinical trials, how many people needed to be covid-vaccinated for the vaccine to save one person from dying with covid?
14. In the Pfizer trials, which group experienced more death, the unvaccinated placebo group, or the vaccinated group?
15. Did the CDC ever find any hard evidence that the vaccines weren’t producing good immunity?
16. Which education-level demographic has been most “hesitant” about getting the covid vaccine: people with less education (like a high school diploma), medium education (a bachelors or masters), or high education (a PhD)?
17. Pfizer is currently applying for authorization to have its covid vaccine on the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule. In the Pfizer trials for kids age 5-11, what percent of kids had systemic reactions to the vaccine? (Just make a guess.) What percent missed school just after the vaccine? What percent were hospitalized?
18. Make a guess: what percent of kids under age 18 already had superior natural immunity to covid from natural exposure by January 2022, according to the CDC?
19. What hard evidence exists that the covid vaccines could increase heart-disease risk?
20. Following an open-documents request, the FDA wanted how much time to release all its Pfizer covid-vaccine licensure documents?
21. What could anyone possibly do to stop the pharma companies from getting authorization to take this vaccine to small children under five years of age?
ANSWERS
1. The death graph makes it look like it started in late February 2020, but infections in the US were present in December 2019, and possibly even earlier, according to this study of blood bank samples. That means it’s possible that there was a larger peak earlier than April 2020. Remember, the lines in the death graph are mostly based on testing, and testing wasn’t common till after tests were being mass-produced. This means that my December 2019 “strange bad flu” was very possibly covid.
2. According to this graph, May 2020 was the month that masks became very common, weeks after the peak of deaths in early/mid April. So what was responsible for the decline in deaths before masks became common? If you suspect that masks had a reducing effect on covid cases, you might want to read this analysis (see especially the comparative graphs of masked vs unmasked areas).
3. Around Mar 11, 2021, a small portion of the entire population, about 10%, was fully vaccinated. However, by that date, covid deaths had already fallen most of the way down from their January peak. See the USAfacts Vaccine Tracker. Perhaps the deaths fell mostly for other reasons, like deaths in most pandemics do?
4. Around Jul 31, 2021, about 50% of the entire US population was fully vaccinated (see same graph as in answer 3). Despite this, around the same date, the deaths started rising until they reached a late-September peak. Why did the next two large waves of covid deaths come just after the main push to vaccinate? Wouldn’t this be evidence that the vaccines didn’t work as well as we were told?
5. Heart disease and cancer were the leading causes of death in both years, just as in most years. However, covid surpassed them in some weeks, in a seasonal manner similar to how the flu has often done in the past. In fact, covid caused only about 10% of US deaths in 2020, using the official counting methods.
6. More died with covid in 2021, the year when most Americans were vaccinated for the disease. Doesn’t that seem odd? If the vaccines worked well, you really would expect the opposite.
7. All-cause deaths in the first months of 2022 are higher even than in 2021. See the below graph generated from usmortality.com. The red line represents 2022 deaths, the blue line 2021 deaths, and the lower green line 2020 deaths. What could possibly be making even more people die just recently? Certainly, the waves of covid deaths haven’t been as high this year. You can see updates of this same graph at usmortality.com/excess-absolute.
8. This was part of Biden’s “State of the Union” speech on March 1, 2022. That speech certainly gave people the impression that the pandemic was mostly over, but I couldn’t find anything in the Washington Post death graph (the top graph of this page) to back up his statement, can you? The covid death rate on March 1 of 2022 was about 1900 per day, but in July 2021, deaths were trending much less, at 200 to 300 per day. “Serious cases” couldn’t have been much of a different story. Where was Biden getting his information from? Where were the fact-checkers for his comment?
9. Younger adults and middle-age people have had much higher “excess death” numbers in the past two years. In fact, Americans aged 25-44 experienced 80% above-normal excess overall mortality during September of 2021, represented by the dark blue line in the first graph below, generated at usmortality.com from CDC and Census figures. That’s a huge and unprecedented increase, and yet there is essentially no mainstream news coverage of it. Is this age group–the millennials–dying of covid? We’ll see in the next answer. By the way, the excess death rate in the oldest age groups has been much closer to normal (see the second graph below) and never reached even 40% above normal during the entire pandemic. Early this year, a US insurance executive spoke out about the huge anomalous death increase in working-age Americans but did not point the finger at vaccines. In February, a German insurance executive made similar revelations regarding vaccine injuries. He was fired shortly thereafter.
10. The CDC says that people 85+ years old are 340 times more likely to die of covid than someone 18-29 years old, and 34 times more likely to die of covid than someone age 40-49. In other words, it is essentially impossible that much of the excess deaths in millenials could be due to covid. So just what is mostly causing the huge increase in excess deaths among working-age Americans? The most shocking–and unexplained–developments in mortality in the last two years have been among these medium-aged adults.
11. The age-adjusted death rate in 2003 was 843.5 per 100,000, about the same as in 2020. It was even higher every year before 2003. For real perspective, look at the green line in this graph of age-adjusted death rates from 1900 through 2018, and keep in mind that the 2020 figures are just a small blip up from 2018. Compare recent years to the 1918 pandemic. Have people in recent years really been dying as fast as you thought?
12. According to UK covid death statistics, after some months of the vaccinated having a modest advantage over the unvaccinated, in recent months they have had no advantage, and perhaps even a negative advantage. From week 7 to week 10 of 2022 (during February and March), 90% of covid deaths have occurred in those vaccinated with at least one dose. That’s odd, because the percent of the population that is vaccinated with at least one dose is only 77% (not including kids, the adult population thusly vaccinated is 91%). Clearly, there is no survival benefit for the vaccinated at this point. The real question for the future is this: will the immune systems of the vaccinated continue waning, and become more vulnerable to new variants of the virus, or to other viruses as well? Time will perhaps tell, but, for some unexplained reason, the UK has decided to stop keeping records now on separate vaccinated and unvaccinated covid deaths. Why are they doing that now, just when the statistics are starting to look especially bad for vaccine effectiveness?
13. In the the Pfizer trials, three out of about 22,000 people in the placebo unvaccinated group died with covid, and two in the vaccinated test group of about 22,000 people. That yields a “number needed to vaccinate” of 22,000 to prevent just one covid death. But how many deaths are the vaccines causing? Since the trial, reports in CDC’s official VAERS database of deaths associated with covid vaccines have mounted to nearly 12,000 inside the US as of this writing in late March 2021. Given that about 220 million Americans have been vaccinated, that’s about one vaccine-induced death for every 18,000 vaccinated people. So, even according to the US’s own official records, there is sufficient reason to suspect that the vaccines could be killing people more than saving people. The real kicker here is that there is very good evidence that VAERS is under-reported by a factor of at least forty, and very likely higher. I’ve explained this in past missives on this topic. The CDC knows this full well, because it commissioned the 2010 Harvard Health study that found more than a 100x under-reporting in VAERS.
14. The August 2021 FDA report on the Pfizer trials indicated 24% more death in the vaccinated group after six months. 21 subjects died in the vaccine test group of all causes within six months, compared to 17 in the unvaccinated placebo group. The trial actually showed more overall death in the vaccine group after six months than in the placebo group. So why has this vaccine been approved at so many steps?
15. This question would normally be hard to answer, because, according to the New York Times, the CDC doesn’t make public a lot of its covid numbers and analysis. However, information recently obtained in a FOIA request shows that 70% of the self-reported covid cases among CDC employees, even as early as August 2021, were in fully-vaccinated employees. This means that the CDC has long been directly aware that the vaccines were ineffective at preventing covid cases and the spread of covid. Is it really possible to trust much of what the CDC says?
16. According to a Carnegie-Mellon study published last August, PhDs had the most covid vaccine skepticism, and also had the most persistent skepticism over time. Why would the most educated people be the most likely to question the vaccine?
17. 41% suffered systemic reactions, 10% missed at least some school, and 1% required hospitalization.
18. The CDC estimates that 58% of kids already had natural immunity by that date. The CDC recognizes that natural immunity has been at least three times more effective than vaccine immunity. A study in Israel found an even greater advantage to natural immunity. The majority of kids, those who have prior natural immunity, have zero to gain from the vaccine, and face the chance of serious reactions if they get it.
19. A study published in November 2021 in the flagship cardiology journal Circulation found that “PULS” test heart-disease risk scores essentially doubled in patients receiving the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna). The CDC’s VAERS has so far compiled about 6000 reports of suspected vaccine-induced heart attacks in the US, as well as about 5,000 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis.
20. The FDA was asking for 75 years to deliver all the documents. The court decided that eight months was enough. There have already been a fair number of interesting revelations from the documents that are starting to emerge, like that Pfizer hired about 1800 extra staff to deal with the unexpected high volume of vaccine injury complaints between January and June of 2021 (see page 6 of this Pfizer document).
21. Before mid-April 2021, you can email the following public health decision-makers from the CDC, the FDA, and the ACIP and VRBPAC committees. Politely tell them why you think it’s wrongheaded to grant authorization for giving this vaccine to kids less than five years old. The FDA and Pfizer are really pushing for this, possibly because they are bargaining that it will lead to full non-emergency licensure and approval on the regular CDC pediatric schedule, which is permanently free from liability and would likely lead to continued profit with frequent boosters with even less safety oversight. You can copy the below email string, put it in the “bcc” field of your email, and send the email to yourself. Please be sure to include a polite and succinct subject. More information on this effort is at Toby Roger’s substack.
Aux7@cdc.gov, sean.mccluskie@hhs.gov, DeanofPublicHealth@brown.edu, Alejandra.Gurtman@pfizer.com, ioe8@cdc.gov, igp8@cdc.gov, ayv6@cdc.gov, xdc4@cdc.gov, vnt0@cdc.gov, yxo4@cdc.gov, mew2@cdc.gov, gmlee@stanford.edu, kault2@kumc.edu, lynn.bahta@state.mn.us, bzb8@uw.edu, oliver.brooks@wattshealth.org, wchen@som.umaryland.edu, Sybil_Cineas@brown.edu, matthew.f.daley@kp.org, ckotton@partners.org, staff@cayugafamilymedicine.com, valent29@law.msu.edu, kpoehlin@wakehealth.edu, sanchez.940@osu.edu, keipp.talbot@vumc.org, commissioner@fda.hhs.gov, Peter.Marks@fda.hhs.gov, Hong.Yang@fda.hhs.gov, Richard.Forshee@fda.hhs.gov, Huilee.Wong@fda.hhs.gov, Leslie.Ball@fda.hhs.gov, Doran.Fink@fda.hhs.gov, hanae@bcm.edu, paula.annunziato@merck.com, adam.berger@nih.gov, hbernstein@northwell.edu, acohn@cdc.gov, anc0@cdc.gov, hjanes@fredhutch.org, hgans@stanford.edu, david.kim@hhs.gov, asmonto@umich.edu, offit@chop.edu, spergam@fredhutch.org, Jportnoy@cmh.edu, erubin@hsph.harvard.edu, erubin@nejm.org, ashane@emory.edu, swamy002@mc.duke.edu
