Everyone knows that Colombie-Britannique. ne does not have enough testing capacity for the number of COVID-19 cases.
This has led to the media paying more this year for hospitalizations and deaths from the disease.
But new studies published online in The Lancet raise serious questions about the accuracy of the mortality figures.
This is an article titled “Estimating Excess Mortality Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Investigation of COVID-19 Mortality, 2020-21. “
This echoes considerations expressed earlier this year by Dr. Tara Moriarty, director of the Moriarty Laboratory and associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry.
She has a “fivefold under-detection/under-reporting” option for COVID-19 deaths in B. C.
The new Lancet paper tested all-cause death rates for countries and territories and 266 subnational sites.
All of those jurisdictions reported weekly or monthly deaths for all reasons of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 and up to 11 years earlier.
“Excess mortality over time was calculated as observed mortality, after knowledge of affected periods through expired registration and anomalies such as heat waves, minus expected mortality,” the paper says. “Six models were used to estimate expected mortality; The final estimates of expected mortality were based on a set of those models. “
It turns out that the excess mortality rate in British Columbia is two to less than five times higher than expected, considering the number of COVID-19 deaths.
This puts the percentage of excess deaths above that of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, which were one to two times higher.
This prompted a scathing reaction from UVIC nursing professor Damien Contrandriopoulos.
“Please note that, for The Lancet, #BC is in the same league as Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Namibia, Turkey, Iran, etc. when it comes to assessing Covid-related mortality,” he tweeted.
(Kazakhstan scored 3. 8, Saudi Arabia 3. 7, and British Columbia 2. 17. Quebec’s score was 1. 05, compared to Ontario’s 1. 53, Alberta’s 1. 68, Saskatchewan’s 1. 74 and Manitoba’s 1. 76).
In 2021, Contrandriopoulos co-authored an article criticizing B. C. Gobierno. La government’s delay in acknowledging airborne transmission of COVID-19. Published via Wellcome Open Research
The Bill Foundation
“Although reported COVID-19 deaths between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2021, totaled 5. 94 million worldwide, we estimate that 18. 2 million people (95% uncertainty, period 17. 1–19. 6) died worldwide due to COVID. -19. 19 (measured through excess mortality) this period,” the newspaper said.
The authors call for strengthening death registration systems around the world, which they say will lead to increased surveillance of death and pandemics in the long term.
“In addition, further studies are needed to distinguish the proportion of excess mortality directly caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection and adjustments in causes of death as an indirect result of the pandemic. “
This story has been updated with express figures for certain jurisdictions and the headline has been adjusted after Daniel A. Walker posted the following tweet.
Charlie Smith served as editor-in-chief of Georgia Straight from 2005 until September 2022. Prior to that, he was a news editor.
I look so intense because I am. I don’t have time to lead a superficial life. . . .
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