Steve, I'm not an insurance company employee. I'm an electrical engineer, like you. I'm copying (below) a post I just made on your Newsletter Substack because I want to increase the odds you see it. I think it is important information that you appear to be missing based upon your statements regarding the news about the 40% increase in ACEM. If I'm wrong, please accept my apology - but I want to make sure your engagement with the insurance related data has the full picture. Below is my post repeated:
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Steve, you are missing some critical pieces of data and therefore your picture on this is not completely accurate. I will try to succinctly explain and provide links to the CDC data.
The website below (USMortality.com) provides a graphing interface to CDC data. On that page, at the top, "All-Cause Excess Mortality", select "FILTER" and filter to shown only age 25-44. This age group reveals the issue I want to raise with you: The All-Cause Excess Mortality (ACEM) in this group started in March 2020 right after the pandemic started. The chart will reveal that ACEM was ~30% over baseline from March 2020 until July 2021 when the vaccines were deployed to that age group. At that point the ACEM jumps to 80% over baseline. The jump to 80% over baseline is a prime candidate to attribute to the vaccines, but I think it is essential to understand the cause behind the 30% ACEM for the 15 prior months. The ACEM CANNOT be explained by COVID, which is only 33% of the total ACEM!
I believe what I'm explaining holds true for all of the age groups, but is most pronounced in the 25-44 group. Even more so in the 35-44 group, so I'll constrain my analysis to that for now. CDC data [links provided below] shows that in this age group, in the 4 years from 2016-2019, the total deaths went from 78k to 83k - an average increase of 1.25k deaths per year. In 2020 it went to 104.5k, an increase of 21.5k in one year. COVID deaths in that age group in 2020 were < 7k. Influenza and pneumonia deaths were 3k. Therefore, non-COVID ACEM was 2X the COVID deaths! We had 7k COVID deaths and 14.5k NON-COVID deaths above baseline.
While the likely vaccine-caused deaths are the most important - and a larger number, proper analysis demands this increase in ACEM be addressed. It probably should be subtracted from the ACEM during the vaccination roll-out period, and we need to make sure that what caused the pre-roll-out ACEM is not causing the post-roll-out ACEM.
These links provide the CDC data in PDF for death by year and by age. Use the third page of the PDF:
On this page, see "Comorbidities and other conditions" (Table 3), where you can see a breakdown of Cause of Death by age group and this can be viewed by month or year. The data can also be downloaded for analysis in your favorite software tools.
Find "What are the death rates for the 10 leading causes of death?"
The CDC claims: "Suicide dropped from the list of 10 leading causes in 2020. Causes of death are ranked according to number of deaths (1). The 10 leading causes accounted for 74.1% of all deaths in the United States in 2020." (So we can rule out suicide as the cause of the excess).
The ACEM seems to be well spread out over the list of diseases - but perhaps deeper analysis will show a particular cause. This might be evidence supporting epidemiologists claiming the lockdowns do more harm than good. We know routine screening & treatment for disease has been impacted and that can be a possible cause. At least, this is likely evidence that the lockdowns & measures forced upon us are not saving lives! More are being lost due to the measures than are being lost to COVID.
can you simply show me a graph by month of the ACM deaths in various age ranges 0-10, 10-20, 20-30, etc from 2019 to today? I'd like to start by looking at that, e.g., google docs chart and you can send me the URL here
I do NOT recommend running the EXCEL file from within GOOGLE. Please download it and run it locally. The formatting on GOOGLE SHEETS is not what I intended or what I see in EXCEL.
A quick explanation:
Tab 1: CDC All-Cause Mortality Data (2015-Present). FYI: Last few weeks of December are incomplete.
Tab 2: An EXCEL generated Query Table that is used to generate the scatter plot in Tab 3. Filter the AGE GROUP column and this will update the chart. The x-axis is formatted to show 2H17 to present. You can see the record Influenza deaths for the 17-18 season as a reference.
Tab 3: Total Deaths plotted by AGE GROUP. The CDC provides data weekly and the WEEK-END date determines the year it gets grouped in. I use the weekly data but show you months on the x-axis.
Let me know what you think. I hope this helps & please advise receipt.
!!8X More NON-COVID EXCESS DEATHS than COVID Deaths in age 0-24!!
!!4.3X More NON-COVID EXCESS DEATHS than COVID Deaths in age 25-34!!
Steve - More information for you. The most important thing is probably the rise in excess deaths after vaccination starts. But analysis is also needed for the excess deaths in 2020, prior to any vaccine deployment. There is a baseline of Excess Deaths that starts in March of 2020 and continues until now. The possible vaccine-caused deaths add to this baseline. We need to understand these baseline excess deaths.
Please look at or download this Excel file from dropbox that I made today using CDC data:
Look at the number of excess deaths that are not C19 deaths. The table below shows the multiples these non-C19 deaths are of the C19 deaths, by age group.
Age Non-C19 Deaths Multiple of C19 Deaths
0-24: 7.9X
25-34: 4.3X
35-44: 2.0X
45-54: 0.9X
55-64: 0.4X
65-74: 0.3X
75-84: 0.1X
85+: 0.1X
So for ages 0-24, there are nearly 8X the number of **excess deaths** from things other than COVID than COVID. For someone under 55, for every COVID death there is at least 1 other excess non-COVID death, up to 8 non-COVID deaths, depending upon age.
If these excess death multiples have been discussed, I have not heard it. I'm surprised that isn't an issue so far. Let me know if you think this is something worth investigating.
I'm not insurance directly but a PEO. When employees die, they have to be "terminated" in the system and final wages and benefits paid. Lots of rules and regulations around this, so data has to be accurate. After reading your article, I just had to see if the data played out. Sure enough, there has been a steady increase in the "termination because of death" count with a dramatic difference between Q1 '19 vs Q1 '21.
Nothing to do with the insurance business but beyond horrified by yesterday's news from the CEO of the OneAmerica insurance company. Sadly, not surprised. Thanks for doing this, Steve.
Hi all, I want to comment after reading William Ward’s astute observations. It is my belief that “Covid-19” as we call it was actually rolled out sometime in early, say Spring of 2019 at the latest, possibly even earlier. I remember being very sick, I had all the Covid-19 symptoms—it was different than a flu, for sure. I could barely breathe and actually got sleep deprived because for a time I was afraid I would not be able to continue breathing if I fell asleep. I literally had to focus on breathing. Taste and smell affected, etc. I very nearly called 911, but I finally felt I was safe and allowed sleep to come. Few months later the same thing happened to my daughter and granddaughter. Her husband and their other daughter were unaffected. They were both very sick, I heard their symptoms and reminded her of my sickness and said I thought it was the same thing. Then in fall 2019–remember the “vaping sickness” hysteria? I find the timing of that odd as well. Lots of people being hospitalized with respiratory and other Covid-19 type symptoms. It was supposedly a specific brand of vape, yet that “outbreak” was all geographically close like a virus. No change to vaping laws? I don’t know how this hypothesis could be proved. Just things that make you go hmmm...
The leaked DARPA memo from Project Veritas backs up your claims of earlier 2019 leak. I was in Japan at the time, which was having a bizarre flu season - so bad medical researchers were swabbing people at our local military hospital - and got it SEP 2019. Exact same symptoms you described. Loss of taste and smell. Fever spike then cough for three weeks. Three chest x-rays to rule out pneumonia.
They aren’t responding because they either know the information you published is taken out of context or they don’t want their information taken out of context, as has been done to Davison.
The actuaries have been on this since the beginning. This is not news to them. The 40% rise in mortality is not among healthy individuals, as was implied by the subhead.
The rise in mortality is closer to 30% for group life across the industry. Some companies have it worse than others. But this isn’t for Q4. This is total increase since before the pandemic.
It’s also not affecting the individual life insurance market, which is conveniently glossed over in all these articles because Narrative™️.
Group life and disability is not medically underwritten like individual policies are. It skews toward folks who otherwise cannot get individual insurance policies (i.e. sick people), which invites adverse risk selection.
It’s easy to see those people freaking out about the kung flu and buying more disability and life coverage, especially when an out-of-control media keeps pushing the fear porn down everyone’s throats.
So the story behind the story is really that unhealthy and sick people are seeing a spike in mortality rates. That’s not good. It will prob kill the group benefits market.
Meanwhile, the rise in mortality in the individual market is low to non-existent. Cost of insurance is flat or declining industrywide. This is born out by the falling one year term rates.
Again, some insurers undoubtedly take more risk than others and perhaps there is a company out there that is seeing a spike in mortality in their individual lines. But those would be outliers. The industry trend is falling COIs, and a small increase in excess mortality, nothing catastrophic. Maybe this changes in the future. But this is how it looks right now.
I guess this does show a data point though, suggesting healthy folks are fairly well protected against death. Sick folks? Not so much.
David, your comments were informative. They were well written, but I found myself with many questions after reading them, perhaps because I don't have a background in insurance. I would love to hear your answers to the following questions:
1) What is your background related to this? (For what you are willing to share about it).
2) At the opening you talked about taking information out of context. Specifically you mentioned the information Steve published and what Davison (CEO of OneAmerica) said in his testimony. Can you specifically point out what was out of context for each?
3) Much of what you wrote was based upon the differences between GROUP LIFE INSURANCE and INDIVIDUAL LIFE INSURANCE. It was easy for me to overlook this distinction, but thanks for illuminating it. Can you provide a few more comments about each to provide perspective. What does OneAmerica sell and what were Davison's comments directed at? Group Life?
4) You seem to be attributing the increasing deaths on unhealthy and sick people. That makes sense. But what is creating the friction on both sides is the vaccine - forced vaccination to be specific. I watched Davison make his comments, and to my mind his agenda became clear at the end. He wants everyone vaccinated. My research leads me to believe the vaccines are not effective at preventing death, have caused many deaths, and may likely cause more disease and death long term. Davison, like every insurance CEO/CFO should have compelling interest to not promote something that would end their business. What does the insurance data you have show us about the vaccines?
5) Beyond vaccines, analysis of the CDC data shows that for every claimed COVID death, there are between 1 and 8 additional EXCESS NON-COVID deaths between the ages of 0-54, with the excess multiple being highest amount the younger cohorts.
Age Non-C19 Deaths Multiple of C19 Deaths
0-24: 7.9X
25-34: 4.3X
35-44: 2.0X
45-54: 0.9X
The absolute number of deaths increases with age, but the multiples for younger age groups is troubling. Do you have data that sheds light on these Excess Non-COVID deaths? Are the deaths actually COVID but not diagnosed, as Davison implied? Are they from reduced disease screening/treatment? Are they from vaccines? Something else?
Thanks for any additional insight you are willing to provide.
As far as the insurance aspect of this, I have been an independent life insurance agent since 2005. Independent agents work on behalf of clients (or at least, they’re supposed to) as opposed to captive agents, who work for insurance companies. The work I do in my agency is almost exclusively custom life insurance policies and life insurance planning. I also act as an advocate for clients if insurance companies make mistakes or otherwise act against the best interest of my policyholders (fortunately, the latter doesn’t happen very often in my line of work).
Aside from having a lot of experience in this field, I also have made some good friends and acquaintances who are independent actuaries and product developers, and also middle and upper management at a few of these insurers.
The non-sales side of the business really helps cut through a lot of the marketing B.S., but also has given me good insight into the business and financial side of the life insurance industry.
2) At the opening you talked about taking information out of context. Specifically you mentioned the information Steve published and what Davison (CEO of OneAmerica) said in his testimony. Can you specifically point out what was out of context for each?
The video clip is part of a longer video, and there is also some non-public stuff I cannot share. But, the gist of it is Davison is talking about total increase in mortality compared to pre-pandemic and group insurance. He is not talking about mortality in the general population, and group insurance is not a proxy for the general population. That said, a 30-40% increase in mortality there is still very serious.
3) Much of what you wrote was based upon the differences between GROUP LIFE INSURANCE and INDIVIDUAL LIFE INSURANCE. It was easy for me to overlook this distinction, but thanks for illuminating it. Can you provide a few more comments about each to provide perspective. What does OneAmerica sell and what were Davison's comments directed at? Group Life?
Davison is specifically referring to group life and disability. Group insurance typically sets pricing for a group of people based on a community rating scheme. It’s not medically underwritten. Individual life insurance is medically underwritten meaning you must be healthy enough to qualify for coverage. One America sells both group and individual insurance.
4) You seem to be attributing the increasing deaths on unhealthy and sick people.
Because group insurance is vulnerable to adverse selection and for the past ~2 years everyone has been bathing in a 24/7 stream of media hysteria about dying from the cold. A very plausible explanation is the people dying are those who had health problems.
There is probably an overlap between vaccination status and people in group life and disability plans due to the mandate, but there’s no clear causation. It could be people dying because of adverse reactions. It could be folks not getting adequate medical care for the past 2 years, or it could be a combination of a lot of factors conspiring against high risk folks in the risk pool.
Davison’s agenda is to preserve the mutuality. One America is a mutual holding company, meaning it does not have outside shareholders and is instead owned by its whole life insurance policyholders. I think technically in the holding company structure policyholders are members of the company and not owners, but the idea is very similar. Davison is probably doing what he thinks is best for policyholders and his legal responsibility is to them. Mutual company managers tend to take that job very seriously.
He could be wrong, but he doesn’t strike me as dishonest.
What does the insurance data you have show us about the vaccines?
I don’t have any insurance data that shows anything about vaccines.
5) Do you have data that sheds light on these Excess Non-COVID deaths? Are the deaths actually COVID but not diagnosed, as Davison implied? Are they from reduced disease screening/treatment? Are they from vaccines? Something else?
Nothing specific to what you reference, no. It wasn’t clear to me that Davison was implying undiagnosed COVID deaths. They might be from non-COVID causes like that. I don’t know what the specific causes of death are. Until or unless insurers compile death certificate information and release the stats to the general public, I’m not sure how one would get that information and I’m not sure insurers would be motivated to do that unless there was a compelling reason that would somehow benefit its policyholders.
David, thank you for your reply. You answered all of my questions. I now think I understand a few of your primary points: 1) The increase in claims in group life insurance pools cannot be used as a proxy to understand the general population. 2) The news from Davison does reinforce what we knew from other sources of data and also common sense: The unhealthy people are most at risk from this virus, and healthy people are not at risk of death from this virus. 3) Even insurance companies don't have good information to help us understand if our pandemic measures/vaccine mandates are having a positive or negative impact on deaths.
Too bad this post doesn't have a lot of viewers. Your insights are very important for people who want to know what is going on but don't want to make the mistake of taking Davison's comments out of context. We can't use Davison's comments directly, but it has stimulated further investigation.
3) Even insurance companies don't have good information to help us understand if our pandemic measures/vaccine mandates are having a positive or negative impact on deaths.
Let me clarify: I don’t have that information. However, insurers might, or they might be gathering that information.
Something that was known early on by actuaries was that the government switched from counting “deaths from covid” to “deaths with covid”. This was brought to my attention a few months into the pandemic by an actuary. He had compiled a lot of the CDC’s numbers prior to the switch in reporting, and we were discussing the death rates and risk from this.
After learning that, and the very low overall mortality risk (and especially low risk for my age), I treated all the numbers as suspect.
Thanks for the clarification, David. Regarding the CDC's directives, I would like to get more information about their switch to "death with COVID."
On March 24, 2020, they issued a new directive that changed the way deaths were counted. The change instructed doctors & medical examiners to count all deaths with a positive PCR test in the prior 28 days as a COVID caused death - regardless of other causes of death. We have heard about the numerous examples of people being shot in the head, falling off of a roof or dying in hospice from cancer and it being labeled as a COVID death.
This link will take you to the CDC issued directive from 3/24/2020:
It violated the Information Quality Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act. Additionally, the new directive amplified COVID deaths by 16.7X over what the count would have been under the previous directive in place for over 17 years.
The Corman-Drosten PCR Test is wholly fraudulent and functionally useless according to the assessment by 23 leading researchers in the field:
The CDC issued an order over the summer that the PCR test would not be allowed starting 1/1/2022, but I think it is still in use. The order opened up the field to a plethora of new tests, none of which are calibrated to any standard or to each other. I suspect it will only pour gasoline on the data shit-show fire. The data is so corrupted as to be almost useless at this point. It must be by design because I can't imagine how so many fundamental errors were made in the response. A cynic would (rightly) assume that the goal was to make sure no one could ever figure out what was really going on.
William, I would Ike to toss this dataset into your sphere: https://www.howbad.info/ All data is sourced from VAERS. I’m a freelance professional researcher, not insurance related. It’s interesting, and partially relevant. The Death by Lottery doc is pretty frightening. Another hmmm...
You should expand your request to all actuaries, not just working at insurance companies, but also pension and health actuaries at consulting firms. They have access to morbidity/mortality experience for employee pension and group health plans for the population you're interested in.
Insurers are required to report their reserves to states’ guarantee associations that they’re licensed in. The guarantee associations function as “insolvency insurance” for insurers, to make sure they have resources to pay claims. More claims = lower reserves.
Compare the guarantee association life insurers reserve reports and claims paid numbers from 2019, 2020 and 2021 (when released) I bet you’re going to find an increase in claims paid/reserves depleted despite the market remaining steady. Probably a bump in 2022 too, as boosters and it takes time for bigger policies to pay.
I’m in PA, but FL reports are pretty clear. It seems like you could compare the years columns on “claims paid” and adjust for covid deaths and population increases to see what the excess death payouts actually are.
We know accidents/injuries (my new dept after leaving healthcare) went way down in 2020, and haven’t bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, so that can be eliminated as a cause of any increase.
My guess is the actuaries, institutional investors and auditors are provided with far more detailed info and data aggregates than peons like me. This seems like a reasonable place to start though.
To add, your answer may be in claims litigation. Insurers look to deny big claims, so large life insurance and disability policies have exclusions.
I bet they have one for experimental treatments. You should expand this forum to the claimant side, might get some input regarding denials and docs produced in claims dispute litigation discovery.
Steve, can you create for your database developer audience here a list of disease categories you think will show the greatest spikes? If you have specific Diagnostic codes to chase for categories, add that. What age brackets make the most sense for the Diagnostic codes. Of the Disease Categories taken from a Powerpoint of the DMED story (from Renz's website), I hear that Pulmonary Embolism is a very worthwhile chase. But based on the firsthand chases I know have been done with health insurance claim data at companies where I know some database analysts, I'm not hearing of anything greater than 25% increase per capita comparing 2021 vs 2018 (Since many think Covid actually arrived in November of 2019 in CA, I'm feeling 2018 is a better comparison year, and as long as you compare per capita per age bracket, it is still good. I don't know of any firsthand health insurance database showing per capita per age bracket disease category spikes above 25% but perhaps we're not looking granular enough or in the wrong direction. I am not saying this spike I noticed occurred at my health insurance company, I have made friends among many programmers who have gone on to work at other health insurance companies, so I'm intimate with those who can look at data at about 5 of the largest insurance companies.
Steve, please use internationally intelligible date format, EG 2022-01-03 (yyyy-mm-dd, the ISO 8601 standard), and, ideally, 24-hour time INCLUDING OFFSET FROM UTC (EG 14:00 UTC-8).
Thanks, from a non-American living outside America.
See if you can get anything from LIMRA . They have a lot of data. Not sure if you will be able to access directly if you are not in the industry, but if you find some who is and has a UI/ PW....
We don't have the information you're requesting. I was just terminated from BCBSM for refusing the vaccine even though I requested a religious exemption.
Steve, I'm not an insurance company employee. I'm an electrical engineer, like you. I'm copying (below) a post I just made on your Newsletter Substack because I want to increase the odds you see it. I think it is important information that you appear to be missing based upon your statements regarding the news about the 40% increase in ACEM. If I'm wrong, please accept my apology - but I want to make sure your engagement with the insurance related data has the full picture. Below is my post repeated:
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Steve, you are missing some critical pieces of data and therefore your picture on this is not completely accurate. I will try to succinctly explain and provide links to the CDC data.
The website below (USMortality.com) provides a graphing interface to CDC data. On that page, at the top, "All-Cause Excess Mortality", select "FILTER" and filter to shown only age 25-44. This age group reveals the issue I want to raise with you: The All-Cause Excess Mortality (ACEM) in this group started in March 2020 right after the pandemic started. The chart will reveal that ACEM was ~30% over baseline from March 2020 until July 2021 when the vaccines were deployed to that age group. At that point the ACEM jumps to 80% over baseline. The jump to 80% over baseline is a prime candidate to attribute to the vaccines, but I think it is essential to understand the cause behind the 30% ACEM for the 15 prior months. The ACEM CANNOT be explained by COVID, which is only 33% of the total ACEM!
https://www.usmortality.com/excess-percent
I believe what I'm explaining holds true for all of the age groups, but is most pronounced in the 25-44 group. Even more so in the 35-44 group, so I'll constrain my analysis to that for now. CDC data [links provided below] shows that in this age group, in the 4 years from 2016-2019, the total deaths went from 78k to 83k - an average increase of 1.25k deaths per year. In 2020 it went to 104.5k, an increase of 21.5k in one year. COVID deaths in that age group in 2020 were < 7k. Influenza and pneumonia deaths were 3k. Therefore, non-COVID ACEM was 2X the COVID deaths! We had 7k COVID deaths and 14.5k NON-COVID deaths above baseline.
While the likely vaccine-caused deaths are the most important - and a larger number, proper analysis demands this increase in ACEM be addressed. It probably should be subtracted from the ACEM during the vaccination roll-out period, and we need to make sure that what caused the pre-roll-out ACEM is not causing the post-roll-out ACEM.
These links provide the CDC data in PDF for death by year and by age. Use the third page of the PDF:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db427-tables.pdf#3
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db395-tables-508.pdf#page=3
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db355_tables-508.pdf#page=3
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db328_tables-508.pdf#3
On this page, see "Comorbidities and other conditions" (Table 3), where you can see a breakdown of Cause of Death by age group and this can be viewed by month or year. The data can also be downloaded for analysis in your favorite software tools.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
For Suicide I found this CDC page:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm
Find "What are the death rates for the 10 leading causes of death?"
The CDC claims: "Suicide dropped from the list of 10 leading causes in 2020. Causes of death are ranked according to number of deaths (1). The 10 leading causes accounted for 74.1% of all deaths in the United States in 2020." (So we can rule out suicide as the cause of the excess).
The ACEM seems to be well spread out over the list of diseases - but perhaps deeper analysis will show a particular cause. This might be evidence supporting epidemiologists claiming the lockdowns do more harm than good. We know routine screening & treatment for disease has been impacted and that can be a possible cause. At least, this is likely evidence that the lockdowns & measures forced upon us are not saving lives! More are being lost due to the measures than are being lost to COVID.
can you simply show me a graph by month of the ACM deaths in various age ranges 0-10, 10-20, 20-30, etc from 2019 to today? I'd like to start by looking at that, e.g., google docs chart and you can send me the URL here
Steve - I just uploaded an EXCEL file to Google Drive. You can access it at this link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mhaH-aW2y-8lPev5kj1RuFYAlBX7ttZX/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110573544407081145236&rtpof=true&sd=true
I also uploaded it to DROPBOX:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/b9viow4sh7v1u0p/US%20ACM%202015-2021%2020220105-6X.xlsx?dl=0
I do NOT recommend running the EXCEL file from within GOOGLE. Please download it and run it locally. The formatting on GOOGLE SHEETS is not what I intended or what I see in EXCEL.
A quick explanation:
Tab 1: CDC All-Cause Mortality Data (2015-Present). FYI: Last few weeks of December are incomplete.
Tab 2: An EXCEL generated Query Table that is used to generate the scatter plot in Tab 3. Filter the AGE GROUP column and this will update the chart. The x-axis is formatted to show 2H17 to present. You can see the record Influenza deaths for the 17-18 season as a reference.
Tab 3: Total Deaths plotted by AGE GROUP. The CDC provides data weekly and the WEEK-END date determines the year it gets grouped in. I use the weekly data but show you months on the x-axis.
Let me know what you think. I hope this helps & please advise receipt.
WW
Steve, does the EXCEL file I supplied provide the ACM data you are looking for in the format you wanted?
Steve, does the EXCEL file I supplied provide the ACM data you are looking for in the format you wanted?
TLDR?
!!8X More NON-COVID EXCESS DEATHS than COVID Deaths in age 0-24!!
!!4.3X More NON-COVID EXCESS DEATHS than COVID Deaths in age 25-34!!
Steve - More information for you. The most important thing is probably the rise in excess deaths after vaccination starts. But analysis is also needed for the excess deaths in 2020, prior to any vaccine deployment. There is a baseline of Excess Deaths that starts in March of 2020 and continues until now. The possible vaccine-caused deaths add to this baseline. We need to understand these baseline excess deaths.
Please look at or download this Excel file from dropbox that I made today using CDC data:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/imudu13fbilgwu1/Non-COVID%20Excess%20Mortality%2020220104-1.xlsx?dl=0
Look at the number of excess deaths that are not C19 deaths. The table below shows the multiples these non-C19 deaths are of the C19 deaths, by age group.
Age Non-C19 Deaths Multiple of C19 Deaths
0-24: 7.9X
25-34: 4.3X
35-44: 2.0X
45-54: 0.9X
55-64: 0.4X
65-74: 0.3X
75-84: 0.1X
85+: 0.1X
So for ages 0-24, there are nearly 8X the number of **excess deaths** from things other than COVID than COVID. For someone under 55, for every COVID death there is at least 1 other excess non-COVID death, up to 8 non-COVID deaths, depending upon age.
If these excess death multiples have been discussed, I have not heard it. I'm surprised that isn't an issue so far. Let me know if you think this is something worth investigating.
see my answer above
I'm not insurance directly but a PEO. When employees die, they have to be "terminated" in the system and final wages and benefits paid. Lots of rules and regulations around this, so data has to be accurate. After reading your article, I just had to see if the data played out. Sure enough, there has been a steady increase in the "termination because of death" count with a dramatic difference between Q1 '19 vs Q1 '21.
do you have actual stats? did you fill out the form?
Yes. I have the stats and filled out the form.
Likely we are all just lurkers.
Nothing to do with the insurance business but beyond horrified by yesterday's news from the CEO of the OneAmerica insurance company. Sadly, not surprised. Thanks for doing this, Steve.
Lurking...
Hi all, I want to comment after reading William Ward’s astute observations. It is my belief that “Covid-19” as we call it was actually rolled out sometime in early, say Spring of 2019 at the latest, possibly even earlier. I remember being very sick, I had all the Covid-19 symptoms—it was different than a flu, for sure. I could barely breathe and actually got sleep deprived because for a time I was afraid I would not be able to continue breathing if I fell asleep. I literally had to focus on breathing. Taste and smell affected, etc. I very nearly called 911, but I finally felt I was safe and allowed sleep to come. Few months later the same thing happened to my daughter and granddaughter. Her husband and their other daughter were unaffected. They were both very sick, I heard their symptoms and reminded her of my sickness and said I thought it was the same thing. Then in fall 2019–remember the “vaping sickness” hysteria? I find the timing of that odd as well. Lots of people being hospitalized with respiratory and other Covid-19 type symptoms. It was supposedly a specific brand of vape, yet that “outbreak” was all geographically close like a virus. No change to vaping laws? I don’t know how this hypothesis could be proved. Just things that make you go hmmm...
The leaked DARPA memo from Project Veritas backs up your claims of earlier 2019 leak. I was in Japan at the time, which was having a bizarre flu season - so bad medical researchers were swabbing people at our local military hospital - and got it SEP 2019. Exact same symptoms you described. Loss of taste and smell. Fever spike then cough for three weeks. Three chest x-rays to rule out pneumonia.
They aren’t responding because they either know the information you published is taken out of context or they don’t want their information taken out of context, as has been done to Davison.
The actuaries have been on this since the beginning. This is not news to them. The 40% rise in mortality is not among healthy individuals, as was implied by the subhead.
The rise in mortality is closer to 30% for group life across the industry. Some companies have it worse than others. But this isn’t for Q4. This is total increase since before the pandemic.
It’s also not affecting the individual life insurance market, which is conveniently glossed over in all these articles because Narrative™️.
Group life and disability is not medically underwritten like individual policies are. It skews toward folks who otherwise cannot get individual insurance policies (i.e. sick people), which invites adverse risk selection.
It’s easy to see those people freaking out about the kung flu and buying more disability and life coverage, especially when an out-of-control media keeps pushing the fear porn down everyone’s throats.
So the story behind the story is really that unhealthy and sick people are seeing a spike in mortality rates. That’s not good. It will prob kill the group benefits market.
Meanwhile, the rise in mortality in the individual market is low to non-existent. Cost of insurance is flat or declining industrywide. This is born out by the falling one year term rates.
Again, some insurers undoubtedly take more risk than others and perhaps there is a company out there that is seeing a spike in mortality in their individual lines. But those would be outliers. The industry trend is falling COIs, and a small increase in excess mortality, nothing catastrophic. Maybe this changes in the future. But this is how it looks right now.
I guess this does show a data point though, suggesting healthy folks are fairly well protected against death. Sick folks? Not so much.
David, your comments were informative. They were well written, but I found myself with many questions after reading them, perhaps because I don't have a background in insurance. I would love to hear your answers to the following questions:
1) What is your background related to this? (For what you are willing to share about it).
2) At the opening you talked about taking information out of context. Specifically you mentioned the information Steve published and what Davison (CEO of OneAmerica) said in his testimony. Can you specifically point out what was out of context for each?
3) Much of what you wrote was based upon the differences between GROUP LIFE INSURANCE and INDIVIDUAL LIFE INSURANCE. It was easy for me to overlook this distinction, but thanks for illuminating it. Can you provide a few more comments about each to provide perspective. What does OneAmerica sell and what were Davison's comments directed at? Group Life?
4) You seem to be attributing the increasing deaths on unhealthy and sick people. That makes sense. But what is creating the friction on both sides is the vaccine - forced vaccination to be specific. I watched Davison make his comments, and to my mind his agenda became clear at the end. He wants everyone vaccinated. My research leads me to believe the vaccines are not effective at preventing death, have caused many deaths, and may likely cause more disease and death long term. Davison, like every insurance CEO/CFO should have compelling interest to not promote something that would end their business. What does the insurance data you have show us about the vaccines?
5) Beyond vaccines, analysis of the CDC data shows that for every claimed COVID death, there are between 1 and 8 additional EXCESS NON-COVID deaths between the ages of 0-54, with the excess multiple being highest amount the younger cohorts.
Age Non-C19 Deaths Multiple of C19 Deaths
0-24: 7.9X
25-34: 4.3X
35-44: 2.0X
45-54: 0.9X
The absolute number of deaths increases with age, but the multiples for younger age groups is troubling. Do you have data that sheds light on these Excess Non-COVID deaths? Are the deaths actually COVID but not diagnosed, as Davison implied? Are they from reduced disease screening/treatment? Are they from vaccines? Something else?
Thanks for any additional insight you are willing to provide.
Sure
1) What is your background related to this?
As far as the insurance aspect of this, I have been an independent life insurance agent since 2005. Independent agents work on behalf of clients (or at least, they’re supposed to) as opposed to captive agents, who work for insurance companies. The work I do in my agency is almost exclusively custom life insurance policies and life insurance planning. I also act as an advocate for clients if insurance companies make mistakes or otherwise act against the best interest of my policyholders (fortunately, the latter doesn’t happen very often in my line of work).
Aside from having a lot of experience in this field, I also have made some good friends and acquaintances who are independent actuaries and product developers, and also middle and upper management at a few of these insurers.
The non-sales side of the business really helps cut through a lot of the marketing B.S., but also has given me good insight into the business and financial side of the life insurance industry.
2) At the opening you talked about taking information out of context. Specifically you mentioned the information Steve published and what Davison (CEO of OneAmerica) said in his testimony. Can you specifically point out what was out of context for each?
The video clip is part of a longer video, and there is also some non-public stuff I cannot share. But, the gist of it is Davison is talking about total increase in mortality compared to pre-pandemic and group insurance. He is not talking about mortality in the general population, and group insurance is not a proxy for the general population. That said, a 30-40% increase in mortality there is still very serious.
3) Much of what you wrote was based upon the differences between GROUP LIFE INSURANCE and INDIVIDUAL LIFE INSURANCE. It was easy for me to overlook this distinction, but thanks for illuminating it. Can you provide a few more comments about each to provide perspective. What does OneAmerica sell and what were Davison's comments directed at? Group Life?
Davison is specifically referring to group life and disability. Group insurance typically sets pricing for a group of people based on a community rating scheme. It’s not medically underwritten. Individual life insurance is medically underwritten meaning you must be healthy enough to qualify for coverage. One America sells both group and individual insurance.
4) You seem to be attributing the increasing deaths on unhealthy and sick people.
Because group insurance is vulnerable to adverse selection and for the past ~2 years everyone has been bathing in a 24/7 stream of media hysteria about dying from the cold. A very plausible explanation is the people dying are those who had health problems.
There is probably an overlap between vaccination status and people in group life and disability plans due to the mandate, but there’s no clear causation. It could be people dying because of adverse reactions. It could be folks not getting adequate medical care for the past 2 years, or it could be a combination of a lot of factors conspiring against high risk folks in the risk pool.
Davison’s agenda is to preserve the mutuality. One America is a mutual holding company, meaning it does not have outside shareholders and is instead owned by its whole life insurance policyholders. I think technically in the holding company structure policyholders are members of the company and not owners, but the idea is very similar. Davison is probably doing what he thinks is best for policyholders and his legal responsibility is to them. Mutual company managers tend to take that job very seriously.
He could be wrong, but he doesn’t strike me as dishonest.
What does the insurance data you have show us about the vaccines?
I don’t have any insurance data that shows anything about vaccines.
5) Do you have data that sheds light on these Excess Non-COVID deaths? Are the deaths actually COVID but not diagnosed, as Davison implied? Are they from reduced disease screening/treatment? Are they from vaccines? Something else?
Nothing specific to what you reference, no. It wasn’t clear to me that Davison was implying undiagnosed COVID deaths. They might be from non-COVID causes like that. I don’t know what the specific causes of death are. Until or unless insurers compile death certificate information and release the stats to the general public, I’m not sure how one would get that information and I’m not sure insurers would be motivated to do that unless there was a compelling reason that would somehow benefit its policyholders.
David, thank you for your reply. You answered all of my questions. I now think I understand a few of your primary points: 1) The increase in claims in group life insurance pools cannot be used as a proxy to understand the general population. 2) The news from Davison does reinforce what we knew from other sources of data and also common sense: The unhealthy people are most at risk from this virus, and healthy people are not at risk of death from this virus. 3) Even insurance companies don't have good information to help us understand if our pandemic measures/vaccine mandates are having a positive or negative impact on deaths.
Too bad this post doesn't have a lot of viewers. Your insights are very important for people who want to know what is going on but don't want to make the mistake of taking Davison's comments out of context. We can't use Davison's comments directly, but it has stimulated further investigation.
3) Even insurance companies don't have good information to help us understand if our pandemic measures/vaccine mandates are having a positive or negative impact on deaths.
Let me clarify: I don’t have that information. However, insurers might, or they might be gathering that information.
Something that was known early on by actuaries was that the government switched from counting “deaths from covid” to “deaths with covid”. This was brought to my attention a few months into the pandemic by an actuary. He had compiled a lot of the CDC’s numbers prior to the switch in reporting, and we were discussing the death rates and risk from this.
After learning that, and the very low overall mortality risk (and especially low risk for my age), I treated all the numbers as suspect.
Very interesting info. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the clarification, David. Regarding the CDC's directives, I would like to get more information about their switch to "death with COVID."
On March 24, 2020, they issued a new directive that changed the way deaths were counted. The change instructed doctors & medical examiners to count all deaths with a positive PCR test in the prior 28 days as a COVID caused death - regardless of other causes of death. We have heard about the numerous examples of people being shot in the head, falling off of a roof or dying in hospice from cancer and it being labeled as a COVID death.
This link will take you to the CDC issued directive from 3/24/2020:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-ICD-code-introduced-for-COVID-19-deaths.pdf
According to the paper below, the CDC violated Federal Law with the issuance of that directive.
https://jdfor2020.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/adf864_165a103206974fdbb14ada6bf8af1541.pdf
It violated the Information Quality Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act. Additionally, the new directive amplified COVID deaths by 16.7X over what the count would have been under the previous directive in place for over 17 years.
The Corman-Drosten PCR Test is wholly fraudulent and functionally useless according to the assessment by 23 leading researchers in the field:
https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/
The PCR test is run at 45 cycles, guaranteeing only a fraction of a percent of positive results are actual infections.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/11/e921/5912603
The CDC issued an order over the summer that the PCR test would not be allowed starting 1/1/2022, but I think it is still in use. The order opened up the field to a plethora of new tests, none of which are calibrated to any standard or to each other. I suspect it will only pour gasoline on the data shit-show fire. The data is so corrupted as to be almost useless at this point. It must be by design because I can't imagine how so many fundamental errors were made in the response. A cynic would (rightly) assume that the goal was to make sure no one could ever figure out what was really going on.
William, I would Ike to toss this dataset into your sphere: https://www.howbad.info/ All data is sourced from VAERS. I’m a freelance professional researcher, not insurance related. It’s interesting, and partially relevant. The Death by Lottery doc is pretty frightening. Another hmmm...
You should expand your request to all actuaries, not just working at insurance companies, but also pension and health actuaries at consulting firms. They have access to morbidity/mortality experience for employee pension and group health plans for the population you're interested in.
Insurers are required to report their reserves to states’ guarantee associations that they’re licensed in. The guarantee associations function as “insolvency insurance” for insurers, to make sure they have resources to pay claims. More claims = lower reserves.
Compare the guarantee association life insurers reserve reports and claims paid numbers from 2019, 2020 and 2021 (when released) I bet you’re going to find an increase in claims paid/reserves depleted despite the market remaining steady. Probably a bump in 2022 too, as boosters and it takes time for bigger policies to pay.
I’m in PA, but FL reports are pretty clear. It seems like you could compare the years columns on “claims paid” and adjust for covid deaths and population increases to see what the excess death payouts actually are.
We know accidents/injuries (my new dept after leaving healthcare) went way down in 2020, and haven’t bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, so that can be eliminated as a cause of any increase.
My guess is the actuaries, institutional investors and auditors are provided with far more detailed info and data aggregates than peons like me. This seems like a reasonable place to start though.
https://figafacts.com/reports/
can you dig for me? i'm time constrained.
Sure!
can you investigate? i have limited time.
To add, your answer may be in claims litigation. Insurers look to deny big claims, so large life insurance and disability policies have exclusions.
I bet they have one for experimental treatments. You should expand this forum to the claimant side, might get some input regarding denials and docs produced in claims dispute litigation discovery.
Where is the RootClaim bet at?
Steve, can you create for your database developer audience here a list of disease categories you think will show the greatest spikes? If you have specific Diagnostic codes to chase for categories, add that. What age brackets make the most sense for the Diagnostic codes. Of the Disease Categories taken from a Powerpoint of the DMED story (from Renz's website), I hear that Pulmonary Embolism is a very worthwhile chase. But based on the firsthand chases I know have been done with health insurance claim data at companies where I know some database analysts, I'm not hearing of anything greater than 25% increase per capita comparing 2021 vs 2018 (Since many think Covid actually arrived in November of 2019 in CA, I'm feeling 2018 is a better comparison year, and as long as you compare per capita per age bracket, it is still good. I don't know of any firsthand health insurance database showing per capita per age bracket disease category spikes above 25% but perhaps we're not looking granular enough or in the wrong direction. I am not saying this spike I noticed occurred at my health insurance company, I have made friends among many programmers who have gone on to work at other health insurance companies, so I'm intimate with those who can look at data at about 5 of the largest insurance companies.
Steve, please use internationally intelligible date format, EG 2022-01-03 (yyyy-mm-dd, the ISO 8601 standard), and, ideally, 24-hour time INCLUDING OFFSET FROM UTC (EG 14:00 UTC-8).
Thanks, from a non-American living outside America.
Check out rga investor presentation. Uk and canada at high end of claim estimates. US largest and no end in sight for q122.
http://reinsurancegroupofamericainc.gcs-web.com/
See if you can get anything from LIMRA . They have a lot of data. Not sure if you will be able to access directly if you are not in the industry, but if you find some who is and has a UI/ PW....
We don't have the information you're requesting. I was just terminated from BCBSM for refusing the vaccine even though I requested a religious exemption.