US News
By Emily Crane
Published June 6, 2024, 7:27 a.m. ET
COVID vaccines could have contributed to excess deaths in the US and other Western countries in the three years since the pandemic took hold, according to a new study that argues that world leaders and policymakers need to thoroughly investigate the aftermath of the contagion.
Analyzing mortality data from 47 Western countries, scientists from the Netherlands Vrije Universiteit found that excess mortality has remained high since 2020 despite the widespread rollout of COVID vaccines and various containment measures.
The researchers said the trend raised serious concerns as they urged government leaders to thoroughly investigate the underlying causes of persistent excess mortality, according to the study published in BMJ Public Health.
Although COVID-19 vaccines were provided to guard civilians from suffering morbidity and mortality by the COVID-19 virus, suspected adverse events have been documented as well, the researchers wrote.
Both medical professionals and citizens have reported serious injuries and deaths following vaccination to various official databases in the Western World, they continued.
The study found there had been more than 3 million excess deaths across the US, Europe and Australia since 2020.
Of those excess deaths, more than 1 million occurred in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, according to the study.
Those figures, however, remained high in the following years, with 1.2 million in 2021 and 800,000 in 2022, researchers added.
The death toll figures include fatalities directly linked to the virus, as well as indirect effects of the health strategies to address the virus spread and infection. The researchers added that serious side effects of the vaccines had been documented, including ischemic strokes, acute coronary syndromes and brain hemorrhages.
While the study does not establish a link between COVID vaccinations and excess mortality, it argues that more research is needed in order to help better dictate future health policy.
Consensus is also lacking in the medical community regarding concerns that mRNA vaccines might cause more harm than initially forecasted Despite these concerns, clinical trial data required to further investigate these associations are not shared with the public. Autopsies to confirm actual death causes are seldom done, it noted.
Governments may be unable to release their death data with detailed stratification by cause, although this information could help indicate whether COVID-19 infection, indirect effects of containment measures, COVID-19 vaccines or other overlooked factors play an underpinning role, it added.
Meanwhile, various studies have shown that COVID-19 vaccinations saved millions of lives throughout the pandemic.
The shots are estimated to have saved 14 million lives worldwide within their first year alone, according to Science Feedback.
There are many possible explanations for the remaining excess deaths that were not directly caused by COVID-19; however, the evidence is clear that the vaccines saved millions of lives and they are not associated with excess deaths, the non-profit organization said of the study, noting that the researchers didnt analyze the impact of vaccination, nor did it examine the relationship between mortality and vaccination status.
Jeffrey S Morris, Professor of Public Health and Preventative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, questioned the study on X.
[T]his study does not accurately represent the existing understanding about sources of excess deaths, downplaying the COVID-19 deaths that are clearly the driving factor throughout 2020-2022, Morris wrote.
I am not sure why this article is classified as original research and not a narrative review or commentary. There is no primary data collection or original data analysis in this paper, he added.
More than 1.1 million Americans have died from COVID since the pandemic broke out, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
During the pandemic, it was emphasized by politicians and the media on a daily basis that every Covid-19 death mattered and every life deserved protection through containment measures and Covid-19 vaccines. In the aftermath of the pandemic, the same moral should apply, the Vrije Universiteit researchers wrote in the study.
Vrije Universiteit ranks 150th out of more than 20,000 universities globally, according to the Center for World University Rankings.
Editors Note: An earlier version of this article did not reflect that the study did not analyze the impact of vaccination nor establish a link between mortality and vaccination status.
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Hallelujah: The compelling evidence that COVID leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology finally made it into The New York Times.
The paper ran molecular biologist Alina Chans essay laying out the damning facts, and her mild comment that, for years, partisan politics have derailed the search for the truth about a catastrophe that has touched us all.
Just whose partisan politics did Chan have in mind? The Times doesnt say, but the omission sticks out like a COVID-inflamed lung.
After all, back in 2021, the Times lead COVID reporter, Apoorva Mandavilli, not only dismissed the possibility the bug escaped from the Wuhan lab but suggested such claims were racist: Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots, she tweeted.
The Gray Lady itself aimed to suppress any suspicion COVID originated in a lab. Even before the pandemic fully erupted, it mocked Sen. Tom Cotton for merely wondering if a lab-leak was possible, calling the a fringe theory.
The Times wasnt the only one practicing partisan politics: CNN and MSNBC called lab-leak a debunked conspiracy theory. NPR (falsely) asserted, Scientists Debunk Lab Accident Theory of Pandemic Emergence.
Social-media companies outright censored lab-leak claims: Facebook banned a Post opinion column by Steven Mosher for speculating on the possibility.
As recently as Monday, an AP story bizarrely claimed many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and theres no new scientific information backing the lab-leak explanation.
Feeding the suppression drive were the very culprits behind the dangerous Wuhan research: Anthony Fauci, his National Institutes of Health boss Francis Collins, Peter Daszak at EcoHealth (which oversaw the research) and other researchers all of whom conspired to falsely claim the bug jumped naturally from an animal to humans.
In congressional testimony Monday, Fauci backtracked and weaseled his way around numerous troubling questions on his actions and assertions during the pandemic.
But for years, left-leaning outlets discredited anyone who dared to question the science or people like Fauci, who once claimed he was science.
Chan is certainly right to fault partisan politics for the long delay in facing these facts a tragic delay: Unraveling that mystery early mightve helped scientists better understand the bug itself, perhaps leading to a faster vaccine.
And early clarity couldve led to stronger efforts to push China to be cooperative and added pressure to end the risky research likely behind the virus creation.
Good on the Times for running Chans piece, but boo on it, along with others on the left, for putting those pernicious politics first.
When Republican lawmakers on May 31 released a transcript from two days of closed-door interviews with the nations best-known infectious diseases expert, a portion of the transcript inspired a splashy headline.
"REVEALED: Dr. Anthony Fauci confesses he 'made up' covid rules including 6 feet social distancing and masking kids," read a June 2 headline in the Daily Mail, a British publication.
"Bombshell testimony from Dr. Anthony Fauci reveals he made up the six foot social distancing rule and other measures to 'protect' Americans from covid," the articles first paragraph read.
Screenshots of the Daily Mail headline soon went viral on social media and were shared by prominent conservatives, such as Charlie Kirk.
But the headline distorted what the transcript shows Fauci, formerly the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director and chief White House medical adviser, told members of the House Oversight Committees Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in the January meeting.
When Republicans on the subcommittee released a memo along with the transcript, they highlighted comments Fauci made about social distancing and masking children, but they did not say Fauci said he "made up" any rules.
What Fauci said about 6-foot social distancing
Starting on Page 183 of a 246-page transcript of Faucis second day of testimony, he said he was not aware of studies that supported the 6-foot social distancing guidelines that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instituted early in the pandemic.
Committee Staff Director Mitch Benzine asked Fauci whether he recalled when discussions about a 6-foot threshold began.
"You know," Fauci replied, "I don't recall. It sort of just appeared. I don't recall, like, a discussion of whether it should be 5 or 6 or whatever. It was just that 6-foot is "
"Did you see any studies that supported 6 feet?" Benzine asked.
"I was not aware of studies that in fact, that would be a very difficult study to do," Fauci said.
After some back and forth, Fauci said the decision was "empiric," which in medical terms means a determination based on experience rather than a precise understanding of the cause of something.
"I think it would fall under the category of empiric," Fauci said. "Just an empiric decision that wasn't based on data or even data that could be accomplished. But I'm thinking hard as I'm talking to you. I don't recall, like, a discussion of, Now, it's going to be it sort of just appeared, that 6 feet is going to be the distance."
What Fauci said about masking
Earlier in the hearing, Benzine and Fauci discussed masking for children. Starting on Page 135, the transcript shows Fauci did not say he "made up" masking rules, but that he didnt recall specific studies supporting masking for children. Fauci emphasized the role of another agency the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in making the masking guidelines. He also noted there were conflicting studies about maskings negative effects on children.
Here are two exchanges on the topic:
Benzine noted that the World Health Organization recommended against masking children and asked Fauci whether there was a "cost-benefit analysis done on the unintended consequences of masking kids versus the protection that it would give them?"
"Not to my knowledge," Fauci said.
Benzine then asked Fauci whether he felt masking children as young as 2 was necessary.
"I think it's context-dependent," Fauci responded. "It really depends on where you are. I think you were having a time like when you're having a tsunami of infections and you're desperately trying to protect people from getting infected and dying to the point where every one of our healthcare facilities are in danger of overrunning, you might want to do something that might seem - what's the right word? excessive, whereas under most other circumstances, you won't. And I believe the CDC felt at that time that that's what was needed given the dire I would say, the dire situation that we were in."
Later in the exchange, Benzine also asked Fauci whether he recalled reviewing any studies or data supporting masking for children.
"You know, I might have, Mitch," Fauci answered, "but I don't recall specifically that I did. I might have."
Benzine asked Fauci whether he followed any studies about masking and negative effects on children, such as on speech and learning loss.
"No," Fauci responded. "But I believe that there are a lot of conflicting studies, too, that there are those that say, Yes, there is an impact, and there are those that say there's not. I still think that's up in the air. I mean, I'm very sensitive to children. I have children and I have grandchildren. So, I don't want to have anything that would do to harm them. But I think that there was a conflicting discussion about the negative impact on speech and formation of the bones of the face and that, I think, was debunked pretty easily."
What Fauci said in his live testimony
Three days after the committee released Faucis transcript, Fauci appeared before the subcommittee and testified publicly, as had been planned before the transcripts release. During the hearing, Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., accused Republicans of sitting on the transcript for months and mischaracterizing some of Faucis statements. She asked whether he wanted to clear anything up publicly.
"One Im sure is going to come up later is the issue of the 6-foot distance," Fauci answered. "And I made the statement that it just appeared and that got taken like I dont know whats going on, it just appeared. It actually came from the CDC. The CDC was responsible for those kinds of guidelines for schools, not me."
He also clarified what he meant when he said he had not seen any studies that support the guideline.
"What I meant by no science behind it, is that there wasnt a controlled trial that said compare 6 foot with 3 feet with 10 feet," he said.
He said he thought the CDC used past studies about the spread of droplets to make that decision, before health officials realized the virus was spread through the air.
Rep. John Joyce, R-Pa., pressed Fauci about why he didnt challenge the CDC on the 6-foot guideline when it was clear the virus was aerosolized (meaning tiny virus particles that can get suspended in the air). Fauci said it was the CDCs decision to make and that it wasnt appropriate to publicly challenge a sister health organization.
At one point in the hearing, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R.-Ga., held up an enlarged copy of the Daily Mail headline and said, "Mr. Fauci, you also represent the type of science where you confessed that you made up the COVID rules, including 6-feet social distancing and masking of children."
"I never said I made anything up," Fauci said.
"You admitted that you made up, that you made it up as you went," Greene said.
"I didn't say I made it up," Fauci said.
"So, are you saying this is fake news, Mr. Fauci?" Greene asked.
"I didn't say I made anything up," Fauci said.
"What did you say?" Greene asked.
"I said that it is not based in science and it just appeared," Fauci said.
A CDC spokesperson told PolitiFact that the 6-foot recommendation was based in part on 1955 research examining how respiratory droplets travel. That research was used because there was no other data for COVID-19, the spokesperson said. The guidance was updated Aug. 11, 2022, to no longer recommend 6-foot distancing because of widespread immunity and effective treatments, the spokesperson said.
The revelation about the 6-foot rule is not new. Dr. Robert Redfield, the CDC director in former President Donald Trumps administration testified before a House panel March 17, 2022, about early mitigation efforts.
"There was no magic around 6 feet. It's just historically that's what was used for other respiratory pathogens," Redfield said. "So, that really became the first piece."
Faucis live hearing also touched on mask mandates for children. Rep. Mike Cloud, R-Texas, asked whether there was scientific evidence supporting that guideline.
"There was no study that did masks on kids before," Fauci said. "You couldnt do the study. You had to respond to an epidemic that was killing 4(,000) to 5,000 Americans per day."
PolitiFact Staff Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
Katarzyna Bialasiewicz / iStock
Despite no evidence that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism, a quarter of US adults still think it does, and the false belief is fueling rising measles cases amid falling vaccination rates, finds a survey by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC).
"The persistent false belief that the MMR vaccine causes autism continues to be problematic, especially in light of the recent increase in measles cases," APPC Director Kathleen Hall Jamieson, PhD, said in a centerpress release. "Our studies on vaccination consistently show that the belief that the MMR vaccine causes autism is associated not simply with reluctance to take the measles vaccine but with vaccine hesitancy in general."
In April 2024, APPC scientists surveyed more than 1,500 adults about measles transmission, symptoms, and vaccination recommendations for pregnant women.
In total, 24% of adults said that they don't believe the MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism, and another 3% weren't sure.
Nearly 6 in 10 participants understood that measles spreads through coughing, sneezing, and touching their face after contact with contaminated surfaces, while more than 1 in 5 (22%) incorrectly said it can be sexually contracted. Only 12% of respondents correctly indicated that an infected person can spread the measles virus for 4 days before a rash appears12% thought it was 1 week, and 55% weren't sure.
Only 1 in 10 knew that pregnant women shouldn't receive the measles vaccine because it contains a weakened live form of the virus and therefore may pose a risk to the fetus.
Fewer than 4 in 10 panelists correctly indicated that measles is a risk factor for premature birth and low birth weight, and only 1 in 10 knew that pregnant women shouldn't receive the measles vaccine because it contains a weakened live form of the virus and therefore may pose a risk to the fetus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends two doses of MMR vaccine for children, with the first dose at 12 to 15 months and the second dose at ages 4 to 6 years. It should also be given to women a month or more before they plan to become pregnant, if they weren't vaccinated as a child.
CLAIM
Covid vaccines may have helped fuel rise in excess deaths
DETAILS
Misleading: The study by Mostert et al. did not include any findings to link vaccination with the trends in excess deaths. The overwhelming cause of excess deaths between 2020 and 2022 was due to COVID-19 itself. There are many possible explanations for the remaining excess deaths that were not directly caused by COVID-19; however, the evidence is clear that the vaccines saved millions of lives and they are not associated with excess deaths.
KEY TAKE AWAY
The COVID-19 vaccines are estimated to have saved 14 million lives worldwide within their first year. While there are extremely rare instances of heart inflammation and blood clots following vaccination, these risks are far outweighed by the lives saved. While excess deaths were observed from 2020 to 2022, the vast majority are due directly or indirectly to COVID-19 itself. The data that we have shows no association with the COVID-19 vaccines.
In June 2024, researchers from the Netherlands published a study in the journal BMJ Public Health looking at excess mortality across 47 countries from January 2020 to December 2022. They identified that excess deaths were high during this period[1].
In its coverage of this study, the Daily Telegraph published an article with the headline Covid vaccines may have helped fuel rise in excess deaths. This article was widely shared online by people with a history of sharing misinformation, claiming that it was mainstream media recognition of the harms of COVID-19 vaccines. As this review will explain, the study provided no evidence that vaccines were responsible for these excess deaths and that the Telegraphs headline runs contrary to findings from previous studies, which showed that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives.
The BMJ, the publisher of the journal, issued a statement in response to what it described as misreporting of the research:
Various news outlets have claimed that this research implies a direct causal link between COVID-19 vaccination and mortality. This study does not establish any such link. The researchers looked only at trends in excess mortality over time, not its causes. While the researchers recognise that side effects are reported after vaccination, the research does not support the claim that vaccines are a major contributory factor to excess deaths since the start of the pandemic. Vaccines have, in fact, been instrumental in reducing the severe illness and death associated with COVID-19 infection.
The message of the research is that understanding overall excess mortality since the COVID-19 pandemic is crucial for future health policy, but that identifying specific causes is complex due to varying national data quality and reporting methods.
The study by Mostert et al. analyzed the excess deaths in 47 countries of the Western world (defined as countries in Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) from 1 January 2020 until 31 December 2022. Science Feedback requested a comment from the lead author of the study in response to the Daily Telegraph article.
The study used figures from the Our World in Data database to show that there were more than three million excess deaths in these countries during this period.
The study didnt analyze the impact of vaccination, nor did it examine the relationship between mortality and vaccination status. There is therefore no evidence from these findings to support the Telegraph headlines claim that vaccines may have contributed to excess deaths. This is known as the ecological fallacy, where observations on the wider population are used to make inferences about smaller groups within that population.
In fact, research has found higher mortality rates in unvaccinated people, even after adjusting for demographic factors[2].
Jeffrey S Morris, Professor of Public Health and Preventative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote on X:
[T]his study does not accurately represent the existing understanding about sources of excess deaths, downplaying the COVID-19 deaths that are clearly the driving factor throughout 2020-2022, as I will show, and implicitly magnifying the potential role of vaccines beyond what is supported by the data.
Also, many popular media articles about this study, including the Telegraph article [] blatantly misrepresent the content of the paper.
They make it sound as if the paper was primarily about vaccines, which it is not, or provides evidence for vaccines being a potential driving factor, which it does not.
Morris also questioned the journals classification of the study as original research, as he said there is no primary data collection or original data analysis in this paper and that the remainder of the paper more closely resembled a commentary.
The Mostert et al. study referred to vaccines several times in its introduction and discussion, but the results did not include data that supported a link to excess deaths.
The authors claimed that Consensus is also lacking in the medical community regarding concerns that mRNA vaccines might cause more harm than initially forecasted. French studies suggest that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are gene therapy products requiring long-term stringent adverse events monitoring.To support these statements, the authors cited an article written by Hlne Banoun, a retired pharmacist-biologist, whose publications were previously used to support misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. Banoun is a member of the Independent Scientific Council, an anti-vaccine campaign group in France.
The study also cites several other research publications that were previously reviewed by fact-checkers for their role in the spread of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.
The impact of the pandemic was felt in different ways at different times worldwide, which makes analyzing the causes of excess deaths complex. A 2023 analysis of excess deaths by Ioannidis et al. compared the characteristics of different countries to better understand the underlying factors[3]. The study found:
Excess deaths during 20202023 were strongly inversely correlated with per capita GDP, strongly correlated with proportion of population living in poverty and modestly correlated with income inequality.
In particular, it highlighted the U.S. as a striking case, with extremely high cumulative excess death rates despite high per capita GDP. This, the authors suggest, could be due to high income inequality and poverty.
The U.S. alone accounted for over 40% of the excess deaths included in the Mostert et al. study, and so dominates the trends in the figures. An analysis of excess deaths in the U.S. found that the vast majority were directly attributed to COVID-19[4]. This study further showed that official figures had undercounted the number of COVID-19 deaths, concluding that many excess deaths reported to non-COVID-19 natural causes during the first 30 mo of the pandemic in the United States were unrecognized COVID-19 deaths.
Figure 1 shows how the reported deaths deviated from the projected number of deaths for the U.S. As the study by Mostert et al. described, there was a large number of excess deaths from 2020 to 2022. These excess deaths appear to have reduced significantly since 2023.
Figure 1 Graph comparing numbers of deaths in the U.S. with projections based on previous years. From Our World in Data. Accessed 6 June 2024.
Figure 2 below shows how these trends in excess deaths in the U.S. closely overlap with confirmed COVID-19 deaths. This data is consistent with the view that COVID-19 was the direct cause of the vast majority of excess deaths.
Even in the periods where the COVID-19 confirmed deaths dont account for nearly all of the excess deaths, the timings of these peaks indicate that the excess deaths were likely linked to waves of disease outbreaks. This could be, for instance, due to unrecognized COVID-19 deaths, overstretched health services, or people avoiding seeking urgent medical care[4,5].
Figure 2 Graph of confirmed COVID-19 deaths and excess deaths in the United States from 2020 to 2023. Taken from Our World in Data, using data from The Economist. Accessed 6 June 2024.
There also may be long-term health implications for patients after having COVID-19. Studies of U.S. veterans and the U.K. population showed a higher risk of cardiovascular problems after COVID-19[6-8]. This included stroke, heart inflammation and blood clotting disorders, as well as an increased risk of death, which may have been an important contributor to excess death figures.
As explained in a previous Science Feedback review, studies have shown that higher vaccination rates correlate with lower excess mortality across countries and U.S. states[9,10]. This relationship can be seen in Figure 3 below.
While these correlations alone arent sufficient to claim that vaccines caused a lower number of excess deaths, this is precisely the opposite trend you would expect to see if vaccines were driving excess deaths, as claimed by the Telegraph.
Figure 3 Correlation of the cumulative excess mortality from January 2021 to October 2023 and the vaccine coverage by country. Excess mortality data was derived from The Economists excess mortality tracker. Vaccine coverage data was obtained from the site Our World in Data, which gathers data from health authorities across the world. Source: Phillipp Schellekens.
More detailed analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that COVID-19 vaccines saved more than 1.4 million lives in Europe alone, according to a preprint study which has not yet been peer-reviewed[11]. This is more than the excess deaths that occurred in Europe in 2021-2022 based on calculations used in the study by Mostert et al. So, contrary to the Telegraphs claim that the COVID-19 vaccines fueled excess deaths, it appears that the vaccines more than halved the potential excess deaths (had the vaccines not been available) during the pandemic.
Another analysis estimated that COVID-19 vaccines prevented over 14 million deaths worldwide from the first rollout on 8 December 2020 until 8 December 2021[12].
As explained in a previous Science Feedback review, rare cases of heart inflammation cannot explain the observed excess deaths. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been linked to an increased risk of heart inflammation, known as myocarditis. This is thought to happen in 2.7 cases per 100,000 people, and most people quickly recover following treatment[13]. Myocarditis predominantly affects young men, a group that has a very low mortality rateaccording to data from England, people aged 0 to 24 account for less than 1% of excess deaths. An extreme increase in the number of deaths among this group would be starkly present had myocarditis driven the observed excess deaths.
The available evidence shows that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives. Although many countries experienced excess deaths up to 2022, this total would have been far higher without the vaccine rollout. The widespread disruptions and long-term health impacts caused by the pandemic are likely to have contributed to the lingering trend of excess deaths even after the risk from COVID-19 receded.
A new group of Covid-19 variants, collectively known as 'FLiRT' is spreading across the US, and has created a significant fear of a new summer wave. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FLiRT strains KP.2, KP.1.1, and KP.3 are the reason for nearly half of the Covid positive cases in the US. Since the early spring, these new strains have begun acting up, after which their cluster was collectively coined FLiRT.
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The new FLiRT variants of COVID-19 are evading preexisting immunity but current strains do not appear to be cause for increased caution or additional safety policies for the time being.
According to a Maryland Matters article, new strains of the COVID-19 virus are causing an increase in cases but not at an alarming rate. There is the potential for greater caution later in 2025 when the cooler months begin to set it, but currently the Maryland Department of Health is maintaining course.
Vaccination is still recommended as the best protection against severe illness, hospitalization or death from COVID-19, said Chase Cook, the departments communications director, in a written statement.
Andrew Pekosz, professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, agrees that while the new strains present challenges, current antivirals will still fight off symptoms and COVID-19 test can still identify the virus.
Read the full Maryland Matters article.
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Even before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern in January 2020, there were debates as to whereand howthe virus originated. Some cited the emergence of the earliest COVID cases in or around Wuhan, in China, as evidence of what came to be known as the lab leak theory of the diseases origin, since scientists had studied coronaviruses similar to the one that caused COVID at an institute in the city. However, most scientistsat least in the initial stages of the pandemicargued that COVID likely emerged in a manner similar to other diseases caused by coronaviruses: as a result of interspecies transmission, specifically at a so-called wet market in Wuhan, where live bats and other animals were sold.
That didnt stop members of the Trump administration from promoting the idea of a lab leak, which conveniently allowed the White House to shift blame for COVID to the Chinese government. As the virus continued to spread, so did various versions of the theory. In February 2021, Facebook finally announced that it would remove any posts suggesting that the COVID virus was man-made or manufactured, and said that it reserved the right to permanently remove any accounts or pages that repeatedly shared such claims. The ban, however, only lasted until May of the same year, when Meta, Facebooks parent company, said that it would no longer remove such claims, citing what it called ongoing investigations into the viruss origins.
Metas ban of the lab-leak theory and subsequent reversal were quickly incorporated into a conservative worldview in which so-called authorities on COVID were inherently untrustworthy. As my colleague Jon Allsop pointed out at the time, a wave of commentators (often, though by no means always, on the right) argued that the media had failed in its duty to report accurately on COVIDs origins, claiming that many journalists had inappropriately discounted the lab-leak argument as a racist conspiracy theory when in fact the science wasnt yet settled. (Matthew Yglesias described it as a genuinely catastrophic media fuckup and a huge fiasco.) As Allsop noted, however, the wave of commentary was not based on any new smoking gun proving that COVID had come from a lab. And so the debate over its origins continued.
Alongside this rational, if often heated, scientific disagreement about accidental emergence, darker theories about malign intentions spread. These included the outlandish idea that China and/or the US had developed COVID as a secret bioweapon. There were also whispers about a conspiracy among high-ranking officials including Anthony Fauci, then a top COVID adviser to President Biden, and the WHO to subjugate the worlds populace by spreading rumors of a pandemic that were unfounded to begin with.
This week, some such theories were in the news againthanks not to online extremists, but to members of Congress (not that those are mutually exclusive categories these days). The Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic called Faucinow retired, but still a boogeyman for right-wingersto testify, and grilled him about various aspects of his performance during the pandemic.
Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican who represents a district covering parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island, asked Fauci how much money he had received in royalties from pharmaceutical companies, implying that his advice about COVID was a quid pro quo; Fauci replied that he never received any money, aside from 122 dollars for a monoclonal antibody that he developed in the nineties. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, refused to address Fauci as doctor, saying that he didnt deserve such respect; she also shouted that he belongs in prison. And a research grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (which Fauci led) to an American nonprofit that partnered with scientists from the Wuhan virology lab (among other researchers) was offered as evidence that COVID not only originated in the lab but that the US was complicit. (In a post on X last year, Greene stated that the virus wasnt created by bats in a wet market, it was manufactured in a lab funded by Fauci. He covered it up.)
When Malliotakis asked about the lab-leak theory, Fauci responded that he remains open to the idea that COVID might have escaped from a lab. What is conspiracy, he said, is the kind of distortions of that particular subject, including the suggestion that I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne and told the CIA they shouldnt be talking about a lab leak. He also told the committee that he and his wife and three children continue to receive death threats, and that conspiracy theories about his involvement in the origins of COVID are part of the reason why.
In addition to this weeks congressional theater, right-wing politicians have claimed that Fauci played a key role in a coordinated campaign by the Biden administration to strong-arm Facebook and other social platforms into removing posts about vaccines, the lab-leak theory, and other controversial matters. These and other allegations were included in a lawsuit that the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana filed against the administration in 2022, in which they accused it of breaching the First Amendment by informally pressuring the platforms to restrict certain kinds of speech, a process known as jawboning. (I wrote about the case for CJR last July and again in March, after it reached the Supreme Court.)
The uncomfortable truth is that, four and a half years after COVID first appeared, there is still no consensus on where it originated, even if the deranged conspiracy theories about Fauci and others can be safely ruled out. Even scientists who specialize in virology cant seem to agree. Writing in the New York Times this week, a molecular biologist who works for an institute backed by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology argued that COVID most likely escaped from a lab, based on a number of points that she articulated. And yet, just hours after that op-ed was published, a virologist went through it point by point on X and argued that the evidence remains unclear. In a recently published survey of more than a hundred and fifty virologists, epidemiologists, and other researchers, a slim majority said they believe that COVID likely emerged naturally from transmission between infected animals.
Writing in Wired in 2021, Adam Rogers described the lab-leak theory as a tale of weaponized uncertainty. As Allsop also noted, Rogers wrote that the evidence either for or against the theory had not, to that point, changed since the spring of 2020. That evidence was always incomplete, and may never be complete. This is the nature of scientific inquiry, as Rogers noteda sometimes halting, two steps forward, one step back process of trying to arrive at the truth. For journalists, Allsop wrote that the path forward on the lab-leak story was the same as it always should have been: cover the context, respect the uncertainty, and report out the underpinning truth. As Rogers pointed out, though, some of those commenting on the theoryand its on-again, off-again status as a conspiracywerent actually interested in the truth. They wanted instead to amplify and in some cases even create doubt, and then leverage that doubt into power. Some of them, clearly, still do.
Part of the problem with stories like COVID is that the weaponization of uncertainty also plays into a horse race style of reporting that some outlets favor, in which both sides are assumed to be equally legitimate regardless of the facts, and every new development is seen as a win or a loss for one side or the other. In that sense, the lab leak is the perfect storm: since even scientists who specialize in viruses and epidemiology cant agree on how COVID originated, anything goes. All thats required is to pick a side, and then accuse those who disagree of being part of some dark cabal whose intentions fit your political narrative. And with each essay and political op-ed, the truth recedes a little furtheruntil, soon, it is completely out of sight.
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The mysterious death of a man in Mexico who had one kind of bird flu is unrelated to outbreaks of a different type at U.S. dairy farms, experts say.
Heres a look at the case and the different types of bird flu.
A 59-year-old man in Mexico who had been bedridden because of chronic health problems developed a fever, shortness of breath and diarrhea in April. He died a week later, and the World Health Organization this week reported it.
The WHO said it was the first time that version of bird flu H5N2 had been seen in a person.
A different version of bird flu H5N1 has been infecting poultry flocks over the last several years, leading to millions of birds being culled. It also has been spreading among all different kinds of animals around the world.
This year, that flu was detected in U.S. dairy farms. Dozens of herd have seen infections, most recently in Iowa and Minnesota.
The cow outbreak has been tied to three reported illnesses in farmworkers, one in Texas and two in Michigan. Each had only mild symptoms.
So-called influenza A viruses are the only viruses tied to human flu pandemics, so their appearance in animals and people is a concern. These viruses are divided into subtypes based on what kinds of proteins they have on their surface hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N).
Scientists say there are 18 different H subtypes and 11 different N subtypes, and they appear in scores of combinations. H1N1 and H3N2 are common causes of seasonal flu among humans. There are many versions seen in animals as well.
H5N1, the version that has worried some U.S. scientists lately, historically has been seen mainly in birds, but has in recent years has spread to a wide variety of mammals.
H5N2 has long been seen in Mexican poultry, and farms vaccinate against it.
It's also no stranger to the United States. An H5N2 outbreak hit a flock of 7,000 chickens in south-central Texas in 2004, the first time in two decades a dangerous-to-poultry avian flu appeared in the U.S.
H5N2 also was mainly responsible for a wave outbreaks at U.S. commercial poultry farms in 2014 and 2015.
Over the years, H5N2 has teetered between being considered a mild threat to birds and a severe threat, but it hasn't been considered much of a human threat at all.
A decade ago, researchers used mice and ferrets to study the strain afflicting U.S. poultry at the time, and concluded it was less likely to spread and less lethal than H5N1. Officials also said there was no evidence it was spreading among people.
Rare cases of animal infections are reported each year, so it's not unexpected that a person was diagnosed with H5N2.
"If youre a glass half full kind of person, youd say, This is the system doing exactly what its supposed to do: detecting and documenting these rare human infections, where years ago we were stumbling in the dark, said Matthew Ferrari, director of Penn State's Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics.
Indeed, Mexico Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer said kidney and respiratory failure not the virus actually caused the man's death.
Some experts said it is noteworthy that it's not known how he caught the man caught H5N2.
The fact there was no reported contact (with an infected bird) does raise the possibility that he was infected by someone else who visited him, but its premature to jump to those conclusions, said Richard Webby, a flu researcher at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis.
At this point, H5N2 is still considered a minor threat compared to some of the other kinds of bird flu out there. Most human illnesses have been attributed to H7N9, H5N6 and H5N1 bird flu viruses.
From early 2013 through October 2017, five outbreaks of H7N9 were blamed for killing more than 600 people in China. And at least 18 people in China died during an outbreak of H5N6 in 2021, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
H5N1 was first identified in 1959, but didn't really began to worry health officials until a Hong Kong outbreak in 1997 that involved severe human illnesses and deaths.
H5N1 cases have continued since then, the vast majority of them involving direct contact between people and infected animals. Globally, more than 460 human deaths have been identified since 2003, according to WHO statistics that suggest it can kill as many as half of the people reported to be infected.
Like other viruses, H5N1 as evolved over time, spawning newer versions of itself. In the last few years, the predominant version of the virus has spread quickly among a wide range of animals, but counts of human fatalities have slowed.
Associated Press writer Mara Verza in Mexico City contributed to this story.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Policymakers are being called on to investigate why data shows that since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of deaths in addition to those expected to occur (or excess deaths) has remained high.
A data analysis of 47 countries found that of the 3,098,456 overall deaths from 2020-2022 in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, excess deaths reported each year were 87% (reported by 41 countries), 89% (reported by 42 countries) and 91% (reported by 43 countries) over the three-year period.
Greenland was the only country out of the 47 reporting no excess deaths during this time.
The findings by Dutch researchers come despite government policies to introduce containment measures and the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, prompting researchers to call on governments to thoroughly investigate the possible underlying causes of these deaths.
The aim of the study was to assess the effectiveness of the public health response to the pandemic by examining the rate of excess deaths.
A statistical method called Karlinsky and Kobaks estimate model was used to run the analysis of historical death data, accounting for seasonal variation and annual trends in deaths due to shifts in population.
The paper by researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Princess Mxima Center for Paediatric Oncology of The Netherlands was published in BMJ Public Health on Tuesday.
In the three years between 2020-2022 the researchers noted particular measures were introduced and could be considered against the rate of excess deaths.
For example, in 2020 when the pandemic started, a range of lock-downs, social distancing, school closures and quarantine measures were put in place. In this year 1,033,122 excess deaths (11.5% higher than expected) were recorded.
In the following year, 2021, the spread and infection of SARS-CoV-2 virus spread and infection was managed with containment measures and vaccines. In this year 1,256,942 excess deaths (just under 14% higher than expected) were reported.
In the third year most containment measures were lifted and vaccines continued to be rolled out. Preliminary data shows that 808,392 excess deaths were recorded.
The researchers noted that while it was unclear what proportion of excess deaths were directly caused by COVID-19, or potentially by the indirect effects of containment measures and vaccination programs.
This was because, for example, it was difficult show evidence of deaths caused by restricted healthcare use or socioeconomic upheaval.
The researchers added there was no doubt that indirect effects of containment measures affected the scale and nature of disease for many people who died.
Other challenges to the findings include incomplete data attributed to the time lags in registering and recording deaths, as well as differentials in how various nations compile their data (including the fact that the results do not break down key characteristics, such as age or sex).
The study was supported by funding from the Foundation World Child Cancer NL.
