Almost 60 percent disease-related excess mortality among Norwegian children and young adults

Why we can’t rule out COVID-vaccination as a cause

An extended Norwegian translation that also discusses myocarditis is now published.

The table below, based on data from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH), shows that the disease-related excess mortality among children and young adults in 2023 was 59.6 percent and statistically significant (all numbers in the table are calculated by the ratio of observed vs. expected age- and population-adjusted death rates between 1-39 years, p. 59, where stars mark significant deviations with 95 percent confidence intervals).

Juxtaposing this data with research showing that deaths among young people in England increased significantly in the weeks after COVID vaccination should, in my opinion, induce an awareness of a potential cause of the Norwegian excess mortality. I do not know the share that is specifically COVID-vaccine-related, but “All other diseases”, showing an excess mortality of 62.1 percent, includes that category, according to the NIPH.

As research has shown that COVID vaccination can lead to a variety of side effects, I do not rule out that it can further cause mortality related to a variety of causes or classes of diseases. To address the issue, I rule out alternative explanations through the following three questions:    

1.     If excess mortality among children and young adults is not vaccine-induced, what is the explanation? Delayed diagnosing and treatment in the wake of the pandemic. Maybe, but if so, one would also expect high excess mortality in other age groups, which is not the case (p. 21 in the NIPH report).

2.     Long-COVID? Maybe, but if so, how come the condition is less deadly among older people than the young, while the direct mortality from COVID infection was the opposite? Besides, research has shown that long-COVID is most prevalent among those with comorbidities, and here, older people are in the majority. Therefore, we should expect relatively high excess mortality among seniors if it is long-COVID related, while the opposite is true.

3.     Natural variations since the mortality among children and young adults for years has had a downward trend? Maybe, but then it would be reasonable to observe a flattening or moderately increasing trend, not the strongly significant growth of almost 60 percent we have observed.

Lastly, it is worth noting that the 2023 excess mortality in the category “External causes”, including accidents, suicides, and murders, was 37.4 percent. Albeit not statistically significant, the number is high, and one explanation can be suicides as a long-term consequence of the pandemic’s lockdown. Complementary explanations can be post-pandemic fatigue, brain fog, concentration problems, and other issues increasing the probability of accidents, suicides, and perhaps even murders. Whether due to long-COVID or COVID vaccination is unsure, but again, I emphasize that most having long-COVID are comorbid, and where older people are in the majority. A last explanation can be natural variations as the increase was non-significant.