Why ‘excess deaths' can’t be a story

True, this is a major story on Substack, and was even a huge story in the MSM for a couple of years … but not anymore.

Some stories do not qualify as “news fit to print.”

Last night my Substack buddy Mark Oshinskie and I had a long phone conversation. One topic we discussed was the proposition that “excess deaths” should be a huge story … but is not.

Since I happen to publish a Substack newsletter, I decided to write a piece asking this question: Why isn’t “excess deaths” a major story?

It occurs to me that everyone reading my newsletter already knows the answer. Many, perhaps most, of the excess deaths could, in fact, be explained by the Covid vaccines. 

As it turns out, some stories can’t become “stories” … because the story would debunk a crucially-important authorized narrative. Nobody (who matters) can mention that the giant V-word is the elephant in the room.

When Mark and I say that “excess deaths” isn’t a big story what we’re really saying is this subject isn’t a big story to any of the institutions or organizations that matter.

Excess deaths is actually a huge story in the alternative media and among hundreds of contrarian Substack authors, but (as we all should know by now) stories published in these places apparently don’t matter.

(Here’s one recent example on Substack and another example of a well-known podcaster, both of whom document the continued spike in all-cause deaths.) 

By now, it should be obvious the mainstream news organizations and “truth-seeking” public officials will never acknowledge the number of people dying in the world for the past two years is far greater than the number who were dying before Covid.

Or, if a few people do acknowledge this fact, it isn’t considered a big deal that should qualify as a major story.

‘Excess deaths’ was once THE story …

After all, “excess deaths” was THE story of the world in the last nine months of 2020.

As I pointed out in my recent essay, the only reason “Covid” became the story of our lifetimes is because this novel virus was allegedly killing vast numbers of people. If some new virus was infecting many people but wasn’t killing anyone, news of such an event might generate a few headlines for a week or so.

With Covid, multiple times every day the public saw “Covid” case counts, hospitalization counts and, most importantly, death counts. It was the deaths in excess of normal figures that explained all the panic and justified all the draconian lockdowns and then the necessity of everyone getting a new “vaccine.”

It was death, death, death. The message was, “everyone beware death; it’s out there” … and the mainstream press was definitely not ignoring it. Nor were any of our trusted rulers, who were going to save us all from death.

The vaccines arrived … and the deaths kept occurring

However, skip forward to the last two years and it’s undeniable that all these extra deaths didn’t disappear.

The first inconvenient fact was extra deaths spiked even more dramatically … in November and December 2020, the second year of the epidemic, when every possible extreme mitigation measure and mandate had been rolled out.

These deaths continued into 2021, which shouldn’t have happened because by mid to late 2021, 60 percent of the world had been vaccinated (and the most vulnerable were vaccinated first). If one remembers, the purpose of said vaccinations was to prevent deaths.

The public later learned that the real purpose of the vaccines wasn’t to prevent infections or virus spread (although 99 percent of the world thought this was the purpose of their shots). We now know that the real reason everyone had to get vaccinated was that these shots would prevent “severe cases” .. and the most severe case is one that leads to … death.

But - the scrolls on the bottom of the TV screen don’t lie - the deaths kept piling up.

Better treatment protocols didn’t reduce the deaths; the virus didn’t become less lethal with new mutations; the fact that millions of people with serious co-morbid health conditions (the most vulnerable or “at risk” population) had already died did not result in fewer future deaths.

Nor did huge numbers of people wearing masks; nor did lockdowns and non-stop testing or social distancing or cancelled events. The deaths just kept on coming.

And, in the winter of 2020-2021, all these deaths were still a huge story. A day didn’t go by where every news organization didn’t lead with Covid death stories and every politician and public health expert continued to devote 12 hours a day, telling everyone what they had to do to stop the dang deaths.

And then excess-death fatigue kicked in …

But, at some point, the world must have reached Covid death fatigue because excess deaths quit being “a story.”

Excess deaths clearly became our “New Normal.” Now everyone just accepts the extra deaths as part of our new world. A never-ending spike in excess deaths is such an old story it no longer qualifies as a story.

If excess deaths in 2021, 2022 and now 2023 was a huge story, The New York Times would be assigning reporters to investigate the reasons for this new normal and publishing their stories at the top of Page 1. Every mainstream news organization would be doing the same thing.

TV shows like “Sixty Minutes” would devote 60 minutes to just this topic. 

Politicians would be holding high-level hearings trying to figure out why so many people who, in the past, weren’t dying, were now dying.

Speaking for myself, I haven’t seen these hearings or read any of these Page-1 stories.

This leads me to conclude that “excess deaths” were a story three years ago, but, for some reason, they are not a story today.

The fact “excess deaths” is clearly not a story (to the people and organizations that matter) would seem to confirm my maxim that all “truth-searching” organizations are captured.

One would think that, say, 10 percent of “news” organizations would include editors and journalists who thought that “tons of extra deaths” should be a story the truth-seeking press should investigate and report. But not even 1 percent of these news organizations have deemed continuing excess deaths as “news fit to print.”

So all the important news organizations are captured. They are also overflowing with hypocrites as, not that long ago, everyone agreed that excess deaths was the story of our times.

I’ll take a stab at a few reasons this isn’t a story …

Maybe the thinking in newsrooms is that, yes, we still have all these extra deaths - but this is explained by the fact we still have rampant Covid.

But the reporters can’t write this story without first admitting that the vaccines - which were invented to prevent deaths - clearly didn’t work.

Even if 70 percent of the population hadn’t gotten at least a few vaccines, the deaths should have gone down because, by now, just about everyone has had Covid. 

So the vaccines don’t work and, per the “experts,” natural immunity doesn’t work either. Covid was the first respiratory virus in history that kept killing for many years. Apparently, you can get six vaccines and have had four repeat cases and this virus is still going to keep killing people in huge numbers.

Another possibility honest reporters and officials might have to consider is that maybe many of these extra deaths (that keep showing up) weren’t all caused by Covid after all.

Maybe the continuing spikes in deaths were caused, in part, by suicides, increasing rates of alcohol and drug abuse, domestic and random violence, general stress, or people who stopped getting cancer screenings or quit taking their cholesterol or diabetes medicines.

However, if one endorses these explanations, one would have to admit that many of these “extra” deaths were indirectly caused by … the Covid protocols the press endorsed and our “public health” experts mandated.

They would be tacitly admitting that the virus mitigation measures pretty much ensured voluminous numbers of extra deaths would occur short, medium and long-term in the future. 

Also, these people would be tacitly admitting that no serious or intelligent “risk-benefit” calculation ever occurred. 

Or, if such calculations were performed, it was decided that it was a good-trade off to lock down society. In other words, they signed off on these deaths … as necessary collateral damage.

What editors, journalists and public officials are really saying - via the subjects they choose to not highlight - is that these deaths aren’t that big a deal.

Maybe everyone doesn’t know these extra deaths are occurring?

It’s possible, I guess, that no journalist or no one at the CDC, WHO or NIH … or no prominent politician has even noticed the continued incidence of “extra deaths.”

But, alas, I find this hard to believe. Deaths are deaths. People notice them and actually record them. You can count them and compare the number that are occurring in a certain period of time to the numbers that occurred in previous periods of time.

So my conjecture is that the “public health” officials and the “watchdog press” have noticed these extra deaths. While they might have noticed they are occurring, they have simply chosen to ignore them. 

Ignoring reality - “Don’t investigate that which you don’t want to confirm” - seems to work every time. 

Even if something terrible might be happening, if the establishment press doesn’t report this, most people aren’t going to be that concerned.

Still - theoretically at least - any number of official agencies could “investigate” the possible reasons for these deaths. 

Perhaps one “policy goal” would be that that these leaders would like to prevent many of these deaths so death numbers become similar to those of pre-2020.

Given that we live in a Nanny State (where preventing deaths and injuries is the main reason for government), it’s strange that this is clearly not a policy goal. The new thinking seems to be, “Hey, excess deaths now happen.”

One might also think that journalists would win prestigious prizes for producing a series of articles that helped save lives, but this hasn’t happened either.

And it’s no longer just those 80 and over largely dying …

Like Ed Dowd and many other “science deniers” have noted, the spike in excess deaths is now occurring among all age groups, including the young and middle-aged.

Back when “excess deaths” were okay to report, most of the people dying “from or with” Covid were very old. Now we have big increases in death rates among teenagers and people in their 40s, 50s and 60s. These deaths are occurring among people who probably had decades of life in front of them.

That is, if we now have many more examples of younger people dying, “excess deaths” might be an even bigger story. But this is not the case. 

Enough is enough …

I’m going to quit pretending I don’t know the answer to simple questions. Millions of sane people know exactly why “excess deaths” cannot be a story.

If it was a story - and everyone acknowledged why these extra deaths continue to happen - millions of journalists, corporate leaders, politicians and public health officials wouldn’t be able to look at themselves in the mirror.

They would have to admit that they were complicit in causing the deaths of millions of people who probably would be alive today if they hadn’t spread so much incessant (and fatal or toxic) disinformation.

Nobody wants to admit they enthusiastically signed off on policies that, directly and indirectly, killed and harmed huge numbers of people. 

These people are also selfish and want to keep their jobs, status and incomes. If they admitted they were wrong, they might lose their jobs.

If some of these people had a real conscience, they might have to be placed on suicide watch after confronting truths this stark and traumatic.

But they’ll never have to confront their own complicity if everyone (who matters) simply continues to ignore these deaths. 

I’ll conclude with another tidbit for our Irony Category

What we have is millions of people who are protecting their own lives by ignoring all the evidence that the policies they enthusiastically pushed ended up contributing to or causing massive numbers of unnecessary deaths.

My readers can probably see why I’m certain that continuing spikes in “excess deaths” is NOT going to suddenly become a “story.”