Israel - COVID and Excess Deaths
I’ve drilled into the data on excess deaths for Alberta for 2020 to see if the mask mandates and lockdown measures did anything and they did, not good, but there was an impact. Over and above an average yearly increase and taking COVID deaths into consideration, it appears as though that there were close to 1000 extra deaths, Not COVID Related. I haven’t drilled into where these extra lives were lost but will be getting to that.
However…
Today, I came across an article from The Times of Israel that stated:
Over 1 million Israelis who haven’t had 3rd dose to lose Green Pass on Sunday
Many won’t be able to access certain public places and gatherings without a negative virus test after policy change requiring booster shot six months after 2nd COVID-19 vaccine
I found this a little odd.
Israel has a population of 8.8 million people and holds an impressive vaccination record including being the first country on the planet to roll-out booster shots:
I follow the data out of Israel because they’ve seemingly stomped a COVID path that we’ve been following in Canada and throughout some of the United States. Wanting to see what we could be expecting by way of stats, mandates and results, I’ve kept on top of their news and COVID Dashboard. At the end of July, the booster program started in Israel and since then, they’ve adopted a 6 Month between doses to maintain their Vaccination Passport - Green Pass. In doing this, they’ve redefined the terminology around what vaccinated actually consists of, dropped some options from the Dashboard and this sent their data and charting into a bit of confusion. Where we could clearly see at the beginning of September that the Fully Vaccinated High Risk Groups were still among the highest risk for Severe COVID illness:
The same chart today looks like:
The only thing that changed was their definition and the charts changed overnight. If you were trying to convince others to get a Booster Shot, showing that the high risks groups who had been vaccinated were, in most situations, more likely to get Severely Sick from COVID, it probably wouldn’t play out that well…so change the charts showing the unvaccinated are the greatest risk, right?
That may not have been the actual intent, but that was the final product.
If you blink, you’d probably miss it.
Having viewed the Israeli Dashboard quite regularly over the last few months, one of the charts actually troubled me. ‘Percentage of vaccinated by age groups’. Of course the rate of vaccinations were increasing on the various levels of dosing, but there was more. Check these 2 snapshots, one from almost exactly one month ago, one from today:
There are a couple notable differences, one of course is the data on Dose 3 - Blue bar increasing on the charts. But the other, a little less obvious. Look at the +90 group on both charts. Dose 2 showed well over 80% in August but seemingly fell back a touch in September, by what I’d guess to be about 15% off the top. Same thing happened in the 70-79 category, a little less obvious but it’s there.
What do you suppose happened to the people who never made it through the last month? (I’d suspect the same, they died)
It seems pretty substantial and especially over the spread of 1 month, but these are the most high risk groups for mortality of all causes, so there is bound to be some flex. How much?
Good Question.
I drilled into it and unfortunately, the data I was able to obtain from the Government of Israel is only complete up to…August 22nd, 2021.
DAMMIT!
I decided to drill into it anyways because I was still interested in why 1 million people in the most vaccinated country on the planet were letting their Green Pass Expire and figured the existing data might help me see any anomalies as to if this was a building skepticism.
And it did. Not completely. But I was still able to see a couple of things that I thought worthy of mention. Going to start off with the overall mortality rate for Israel over the last decade - from all causes. To keep this even, I pulled the same data over the last decade from January 1 to only August 22nd for all years. Wanted to compare the same data in as much as I could:
Check it. There’s really not much significant over the last decade, this year being the largest increase in Mortality over the last decade and you’d be hard pressed to even guess that COVID had made it to Israel by August of 2020, comparing over the last decade. So, I drilled in a little deeper and busted it down by sexes:
And this is a little more interesting. Mortality seems to have favored Men over Women in Israel for 2021 more dramatically than has over the course of this chart. So, given the option, I started drilling into different age groups. Of course, the Highest Risk - 90+ showed that there was a fair sized increase in mortality for this year, but again, this doesn’t show the last 30 days - when the ‘Percentage of vaccinated by age groups’, lost 15(ish)% of this age group. I will have to see what is available throughout the rest of the year for that.
Significant, but because I am drilling ‘All Cause Mortality’, doesn’t say much more than is shown on the Israeli Dashboard for “Passed Away - From the Beginning of Corona”.
But there is a beginning of a story here and some understanding of the AntiTripleVaxxers of Israel - over 1 Million People…
During a seemingly mild increase in mortality for the total population, seeing the 20-29 age group with a fairly substantial increase YoY in 2021 compared to both 2019 & 2020, I began to ponder. Now, it would be interesting to parse a lot more of the data on vaccinations, M:F and have full data sets to compare, but unfortunately, that is not yet available. Sigh.
However, looking at the risks - in Alberta - for this age group and especially by way of Mortality, 20-29 shows almost zero risk.
There is a lot of holes in the data at current, so all I am left with is speculation.
While the government of Israel has changed the definitions of states of vaccinations that paints a less desirable picture of being unvaccinated, there are a million people that are currently about to surrender their freedoms instead of getting a booster. In this, men, particularly in the age group of 20-29 have seen a fairly significant increase in all cause mortality.
If you have links to any additional data that I can drill down into either Israel, Alberta, Canada - or any other place you’d like a bit of a deeper drill, let me know. I will see what I can analyze and maybe go a little bigger picture for at least my own personal understanding.