A major Indiana-based insurance company reports unprecedented 40 percent death-rate increases industry-wide among working-age Americans in 2021 compared to pre-pandemic data.
Thank you for these comments. The questions raised and data analysis are first-rate. Please feel free to email me at marybethpf@aol.com. This is an issue that must be addressed by the CDC and other public health authorities.
The presentation was made on December 30th by the Chamber of Commerce and Indiana Hospital Association. I watched the video from minute 21 where the CEO from this report prefaced his mortality data with his own business concern that he needs to get his employees back in the office, but the vaccinated employees don't want to share space with unvaccinated employees.
I've seen some speculation on line that the death increase has some correlation with vaccine rollout and might be a cause. If true, the insurance guy could be making a huge mistake since he suggested they're considering hiking rates for businesses located in low vaccinated counties. He also made it clear that his company is pushing for a fully vaccinated staff and it seemed that the company was jumping to the conclusion that unvaccinated people were the only possible source for this increase - that could end up being a very costly error!
Regarding the data, if you remove all the deaths attributed by the CDC as covid related, you still have a 20% increase in NON-COVID DEATHS for the working age population of their census. It's truly remarkable that we haven't launched an all-out assault on insurance data to either corroborate or contradict what would potentially be the largest mass casualty this country, and possibly the world, has ever seen!
These deaths affect OneAmerica's bottom line directly, so internally they are digging and I suspect they know what's causing them. I also suspect that they know good and well that the vaccines are not protecting anyone. If so, they will never say so publicly. As Dr. Malone said, this is a huge public policy failure. OneAmerica is a large corporation with a whole cadre of lawyers. They're not going to tell us the whole truth.
Jan 5, 2022·edited Jan 5, 2022Liked by Mary Beth Pfeiffer
Keep an eye out maybe on the Australian data. Interesting as very little Covid so that effect is controlled for. Not seeing much of a signal for the moment, and what there is seems to be mostly cancer and dementia. Only consolidated through end October though. You can download a breakdown by age group, from what I can see the excess mortality is largely in the 65+ group. I suppose it may be imputable to missed cancer diagnoses, dementia due to loneliness, and inactivity. Not that that isn't bad enough (and precisely affects the same groups as are vulnerable to Covid). It would be good though to have a couple more months of data.
Mary Beth, but that is not the conclusion if you watch Scott Davison' video. At the point where he started talking about premium load, he was hinting that they are blaming it on the unjabbed. "Most of us in the industry are starting to target and to add a premium loads onto employers that are based in counties that have low vaccination rates. It's just typically what we would do for underwriting when you have a risk factor like that." I think he has his blinders on and drew the wrong conclusion, but until they realize the common denominator, I am afraid they will continue to blame and penalize the wrong party.
"The high death rate from OneAmerica data compared to general population data in Indiana show that heavily vaccinated workers are dying from the vaccines and/or a lack of early COVID treatment....We have a massive failure of public heath policy in the USA." - Dr. Robert W. Malone, MD, 1/3/22
So this 50,600 figure does not even resemble the Q3 deaths for 18 to 64 year olds. I don't have a quick way of determining this, but the figure of 25% of deaths being in this age group sounds reasonable. Guesstimating 12,750 deaths in that age group, than the figures Mary Beth Pfeiffer quoted do look more alarming, and compatible with the video statements of Scott Davison. (BTW, he gave me the impression that he knows what he is talking about.)
(In the top graph at: https://www.usmortality.com, turn off Smooth and turn on Maximize. Using the cursor on the graph, the excess deaths per week peak at 19,419 on week 35 at the end of August to start of September.)
In the figures apparently supplied by OneAmerica, 250,000 18-64 deaths in Q4 exceeds the 2019 figure of 172,000 by 78,000, which is 45.3% higher. So far, this accords with Scott Davison's statements.
My guesstimate of 12,750 COVID-19 deaths is just 16.3% of this 78,000. That accords with his statements too - that the official COVID-19 deaths are a small fraction of the supposed 78,000 excess deaths in this quarter in this age range.
Some of the remaining ~~83% of these 78,000 deaths are surely due to longer-term effects of COVID-19, but it would be surprising if this was more than a small fraction of the ~~12,750 deaths. This leaves a large unexplained gap. Scott Davison was not thinking at all that these might be caused by vaccination. He seems to assume that they are mainly a result of severe COVID-19 - and severe symptoms without death scales in rough proportion to deaths in any population. He and his underwriting colleagues assume, not unreasonably, that deaths and so severity and later deaths are in inverse proportion to vaccination rates. (In the criminally egregious absence of proper 50 ng/mL 25-hydroxvitamin D levels and banning of early treatments, vaccination does very significantly reduce severity and deaths.)
What we really need is age-stratified death information, ideally with individual vaccination and prior COVID-19 illness data. That may not be available, so we might be able to get monthly excess deaths, in some band of ages, and then subtract official COVID-19 deaths, to leave the unexplained deaths we suspect were caused in large part by vaccination. Then we need to get that data, by month, ideally state-by-state, and see how it correlates with 1st, 2nd and subsequent COVID-19 vaccine injections.
Please remember that these so-called vaccines, even if they worked as well and were as safe as claimed, would still be a distant third best way to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, after population wide vitamin D supplementation to attain at least the 50 ng/ml 25-hydroxyvitamin D level the immune system needs to function (most people have 1/2 to 1/10th of this) and, in second place, multiple early treatments. Please see https://nutritionmatters.substack.com and https://vitamindstopscovid.info .
I suppose these excess claims are covered to a large extent by reinsurance. It will be interesting to see what the big global reinsurers have to say in their annual filings because they won't be able to offset losses given that this is a symmetric shock in all relevant jurisdictions.
"During the third quarter of 2021, the CDC reported approximately 50,600 deaths in the 18-64 age group were due to COVID, while they reported 252,000 deaths overall during that same period for the 18-64 age group.
The CDC defines only those individuals where COVID is listed on the death certificate as a cause/contributing factor in death in that total, but does not include other deaths which may be linked to co-morbidities or other COVID-19 influenced factors (delay in seeking medical care, inability to access medical care, etc.)."
If someone has Covid, then dies from a blood clot caused in the aftermath of Covid 2 month later, that is not listed as a Covid death. So in other words, more of the deaths were probably from Covid than counted. I work in a hospital and I see this every day.
"One of our business is we offer group life and disability insurance to employers. We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have ever seen in the history of this business. Not just at OneAmerica - the data is consistent across every player in that business.
"This is primarily working age people, 18 to 64, that are in employers like those employers on the screen here.
"What we saw just in 3rd quarter - and we saw it continue into 4th quarter - is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic.
"Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a 3 sigma [3 standard deviations] or a 1 in 200 year would be a 10% increase over pre-pandemic. So 40% is just unheard of.
"So what the data is showing us is that the deaths which are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge, numbers.
"We are also seeing an uptick in disability claims. At first it was short-term disability claims and now we are seeing long-term disability, whether it is long-COVID, whether people haven't been able to get the healthcare they need because the hospitals were overrun.
"For OneAmercia, we expect the costs of this will be well over 100 million dollars - and this is our smallest business. So it is having a huge impact on that.
"Those costs will trickle towards other employers, because premiums are starting to go up - so it will cost more for employers. Most of us in the industry are starting to target and add premium loads on employers who are based in counties which have low vaccination rates. Its typically what we would in underwriting when we have a risk factor like that.
"There is also going to be higher costs on employers due to greater absences, particularly at a time when there is low unemployment and workers are hard to come by. But they will be out because they are sick, because they have long-term disability or sadly they have passed."
(34:40)
"I am not suggesting that the COVID deaths are under-counted - but the pandemic related deaths indicate much larger death rates among working age people than simply COVID on the death certificate would imply.
"So what we are seeing is that people get COVID, they kinda recover, and then they die from some sort of disease mechanism that was impacted by the fact that they got COVID in the first place.
"So we are seeing this massive number of deaths - and it's across the industry, its not just OneAmerica numbers, this is consistent across every carrier in every state that does business in this industry.
"So we would say that the pandemic-related deaths are much larger than what you are seeing in the news as the official, specific COVID deaths, where COVID was the proximate cause of death on the death certificate.
"So it's a much, much larger number than that.
"We've got 40 to 46% up just in the 3rd quarter alone from the Delta wave."
Thank you for these comments. The questions raised and data analysis are first-rate. Please feel free to email me at marybethpf@aol.com. This is an issue that must be addressed by the CDC and other public health authorities.
So why is no-one giving stats on how many of the deceased are "vaxxed " and "unvaxxed" and why is no-one asking?
The presentation was made on December 30th by the Chamber of Commerce and Indiana Hospital Association. I watched the video from minute 21 where the CEO from this report prefaced his mortality data with his own business concern that he needs to get his employees back in the office, but the vaccinated employees don't want to share space with unvaccinated employees.
I've seen some speculation on line that the death increase has some correlation with vaccine rollout and might be a cause. If true, the insurance guy could be making a huge mistake since he suggested they're considering hiking rates for businesses located in low vaccinated counties. He also made it clear that his company is pushing for a fully vaccinated staff and it seemed that the company was jumping to the conclusion that unvaccinated people were the only possible source for this increase - that could end up being a very costly error!
Regarding the data, if you remove all the deaths attributed by the CDC as covid related, you still have a 20% increase in NON-COVID DEATHS for the working age population of their census. It's truly remarkable that we haven't launched an all-out assault on insurance data to either corroborate or contradict what would potentially be the largest mass casualty this country, and possibly the world, has ever seen!
just FYI -- I have a post addressing the increased working-age mortality (I'm a life actuary):
https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/excess-mortality-for-working-age
Vaccines increasing heart attacks, strokes and cancer. Etc ? That’s my theory…for most of the increase
These deaths affect OneAmerica's bottom line directly, so internally they are digging and I suspect they know what's causing them. I also suspect that they know good and well that the vaccines are not protecting anyone. If so, they will never say so publicly. As Dr. Malone said, this is a huge public policy failure. OneAmerica is a large corporation with a whole cadre of lawyers. They're not going to tell us the whole truth.
Keep an eye out maybe on the Australian data. Interesting as very little Covid so that effect is controlled for. Not seeing much of a signal for the moment, and what there is seems to be mostly cancer and dementia. Only consolidated through end October though. You can download a breakdown by age group, from what I can see the excess mortality is largely in the 65+ group. I suppose it may be imputable to missed cancer diagnoses, dementia due to loneliness, and inactivity. Not that that isn't bad enough (and precisely affects the same groups as are vulnerable to Covid). It would be good though to have a couple more months of data.
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provisional-mortality-statistics/latest-release
For the death rate to go up by 40% in that age group, tells me that it's probably linked to the vaccine !
Mary Beth, but that is not the conclusion if you watch Scott Davison' video. At the point where he started talking about premium load, he was hinting that they are blaming it on the unjabbed. "Most of us in the industry are starting to target and to add a premium loads onto employers that are based in counties that have low vaccination rates. It's just typically what we would do for underwriting when you have a risk factor like that." I think he has his blinders on and drew the wrong conclusion, but until they realize the common denominator, I am afraid they will continue to blame and penalize the wrong party.
"The high death rate from OneAmerica data compared to general population data in Indiana show that heavily vaccinated workers are dying from the vaccines and/or a lack of early COVID treatment....We have a massive failure of public heath policy in the USA." - Dr. Robert W. Malone, MD, 1/3/22
(My 2nd comment.) Does 50,600 sound like the correct number of COVID deaths in the USA in the 18 to 64 age group for Q3? No:
US cumulative COVID-19 deaths at: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/united-states shows 2021-06-01 594,357 and 2021-09-01 642,908 = 51,449 for all ages, Q3.
So this 50,600 figure does not even resemble the Q3 deaths for 18 to 64 year olds. I don't have a quick way of determining this, but the figure of 25% of deaths being in this age group sounds reasonable. Guesstimating 12,750 deaths in that age group, than the figures Mary Beth Pfeiffer quoted do look more alarming, and compatible with the video statements of Scott Davison. (BTW, he gave me the impression that he knows what he is talking about.)
(In the top graph at: https://www.usmortality.com, turn off Smooth and turn on Maximize. Using the cursor on the graph, the excess deaths per week peak at 19,419 on week 35 at the end of August to start of September.)
In the figures apparently supplied by OneAmerica, 250,000 18-64 deaths in Q4 exceeds the 2019 figure of 172,000 by 78,000, which is 45.3% higher. So far, this accords with Scott Davison's statements.
My guesstimate of 12,750 COVID-19 deaths is just 16.3% of this 78,000. That accords with his statements too - that the official COVID-19 deaths are a small fraction of the supposed 78,000 excess deaths in this quarter in this age range.
Some of the remaining ~~83% of these 78,000 deaths are surely due to longer-term effects of COVID-19, but it would be surprising if this was more than a small fraction of the ~~12,750 deaths. This leaves a large unexplained gap. Scott Davison was not thinking at all that these might be caused by vaccination. He seems to assume that they are mainly a result of severe COVID-19 - and severe symptoms without death scales in rough proportion to deaths in any population. He and his underwriting colleagues assume, not unreasonably, that deaths and so severity and later deaths are in inverse proportion to vaccination rates. (In the criminally egregious absence of proper 50 ng/mL 25-hydroxvitamin D levels and banning of early treatments, vaccination does very significantly reduce severity and deaths.)
What we really need is age-stratified death information, ideally with individual vaccination and prior COVID-19 illness data. That may not be available, so we might be able to get monthly excess deaths, in some band of ages, and then subtract official COVID-19 deaths, to leave the unexplained deaths we suspect were caused in large part by vaccination. Then we need to get that data, by month, ideally state-by-state, and see how it correlates with 1st, 2nd and subsequent COVID-19 vaccine injections.
Please remember that these so-called vaccines, even if they worked as well and were as safe as claimed, would still be a distant third best way to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, after population wide vitamin D supplementation to attain at least the 50 ng/ml 25-hydroxyvitamin D level the immune system needs to function (most people have 1/2 to 1/10th of this) and, in second place, multiple early treatments. Please see https://nutritionmatters.substack.com and https://vitamindstopscovid.info .
I suppose these excess claims are covered to a large extent by reinsurance. It will be interesting to see what the big global reinsurers have to say in their annual filings because they won't be able to offset losses given that this is a symmetric shock in all relevant jurisdictions.
"During the third quarter of 2021, the CDC reported approximately 50,600 deaths in the 18-64 age group were due to COVID, while they reported 252,000 deaths overall during that same period for the 18-64 age group.
The CDC defines only those individuals where COVID is listed on the death certificate as a cause/contributing factor in death in that total, but does not include other deaths which may be linked to co-morbidities or other COVID-19 influenced factors (delay in seeking medical care, inability to access medical care, etc.)."
If someone has Covid, then dies from a blood clot caused in the aftermath of Covid 2 month later, that is not listed as a Covid death. So in other words, more of the deaths were probably from Covid than counted. I work in a hospital and I see this every day.
Q4 was a slight decrease from Q3 in my sampling from obituary numbers, so I wonder if that will hold true with the actual numbers.
The video is at https://fox59.com/news/coronavirus/indiana-chamber-of-commerce-and-indiana-hospital-association-to-hold-news-conference-on-covid-19-situations/ (Thanks to Mathew Crawford for linking to it: https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/why-are-non-covid-deaths-at-historic .)
A graph of US excess deaths is at: https://www.usmortality.com/excess-zscore, but there is no breakdown by age group.
Scott Davison (23:10) said:
"One of our business is we offer group life and disability insurance to employers. We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have ever seen in the history of this business. Not just at OneAmerica - the data is consistent across every player in that business.
"This is primarily working age people, 18 to 64, that are in employers like those employers on the screen here.
"What we saw just in 3rd quarter - and we saw it continue into 4th quarter - is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic.
"Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a 3 sigma [3 standard deviations] or a 1 in 200 year would be a 10% increase over pre-pandemic. So 40% is just unheard of.
"So what the data is showing us is that the deaths which are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge, numbers.
"We are also seeing an uptick in disability claims. At first it was short-term disability claims and now we are seeing long-term disability, whether it is long-COVID, whether people haven't been able to get the healthcare they need because the hospitals were overrun.
"For OneAmercia, we expect the costs of this will be well over 100 million dollars - and this is our smallest business. So it is having a huge impact on that.
"Those costs will trickle towards other employers, because premiums are starting to go up - so it will cost more for employers. Most of us in the industry are starting to target and add premium loads on employers who are based in counties which have low vaccination rates. Its typically what we would in underwriting when we have a risk factor like that.
"There is also going to be higher costs on employers due to greater absences, particularly at a time when there is low unemployment and workers are hard to come by. But they will be out because they are sick, because they have long-term disability or sadly they have passed."
(34:40)
"I am not suggesting that the COVID deaths are under-counted - but the pandemic related deaths indicate much larger death rates among working age people than simply COVID on the death certificate would imply.
"So what we are seeing is that people get COVID, they kinda recover, and then they die from some sort of disease mechanism that was impacted by the fact that they got COVID in the first place.
"So we are seeing this massive number of deaths - and it's across the industry, its not just OneAmerica numbers, this is consistent across every carrier in every state that does business in this industry.
"So we would say that the pandemic-related deaths are much larger than what you are seeing in the news as the official, specific COVID deaths, where COVID was the proximate cause of death on the death certificate.
"So it's a much, much larger number than that.
"We've got 40 to 46% up just in the 3rd quarter alone from the Delta wave."
I will write more in a later comment.
Similar data out of Munich Re Life US to the OneAmerica trends:
Examining the Impact of COVID on Group Life Underwriting
https://munichre.com/us-life/en/perspectives/group-and-living-benefits/examining-impact-covid-group-life-underwriting.html