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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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The excess deaths are probably caused by the after effects of Corona. Myocarditis and other heart issues are moderately common in people who didn't even have severe cases.

If that was the explanation, shouldn't we see a pretty big difference between current excess deaths in mostly vaxxed vs. mostly unvaxxed countries? Do we see it?

I would bet there is no reliable data in unvaccinated countries. Every country developed enough for a vaccine campaign (except for China) has used the Western mrna vaccines. Also, if there was good data it wouldn't be comparable. Africa's mortality is not comparable to countries where half the country is over 50 (or whatever it is). Especially when you factor in all the excess mortality in Africa from other things (AIDS, untreated diseases that wouldn't matter in the developed world, etc)

You should have a look at Hungary -- their rate is lowish for Europe, and a significant number of those who did get it had Sinovac or Sputnik, due to Hungary opting out of the EUs Pfizer/Moderna supply in order to get quicker access.

Also I think Peru used a lot of Sinovac -- not sure they are devoloped enough for you, but clearly moreso than most places in Africa.

Those sound like the sorts of things that would increase mortality from the baseline? Anyways I'm not particularly fixated on Hungary; the fact that there are such large differences at the moment (and that many places are quite elevated) is profoundly weird.

"The monthly excess mortality indicator is expressed as the percentage rate of additional deaths in a month, compared to a baseline period. The baseline is given by average monthly deaths in the period 2016-2019."

This is a very crude methodology compared to the Euromomo approach.

Well you click on "methods" at the link above, but I'll link it for you:

https://www.euromomo.eu/how-it-works/methods/

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