My findings on the link between Covid-vaccination and excess mortality cannot be debunked

One has tried to debunk my previously reported findings on the link between Covid-vaccination and excess mortality as they have been claimed not to account for different trends in the elderly population between Western- and Eastern Europe. Once excess deaths are calculated relative to the pre-Covid all-cause mortality trend, the correlation reverses, indicating vaccine efficacy, the argument goes (the discussion can be followed about midway in this web page).

However, firstly, the excess mortality data used in the aim to debunk my findings are from 2022. In that year, I showed that the association was negative in the first three months, but it turned positive in April. I.e., a negative association at the beginning of the year deflates the positive association observed later when data is applied for the whole year. Also, I controlled for accumulated excess mortality before 2022, i.e., mortality in 2020-2021 relative to the 2016-2019 pre-Covid mortality.

But more importantly, using Our World in Data, I have recently updated my analyses by studying a time window of about three years, i.e., about 150 weekly observations. Also, I include a larger pool of 39 countries with a population of about one billion (high-income countries, according to the UN, providing consistent, high-quality data that enable analyses over time). Concerning the all-cause excess mortality measure, Our World in Data used regression estimates on pre-COVID-19 calculations between 2015 and 2019, capturing linear and weekly trends as a baseline for the analyses. The approach accounts for “seasonal variation in mortality and a yearly trend over recent years due to changing population structure or socio-economic factors” (all references can be found here). In addition, I have controlled for countries’ median age, accumulated excess mortality, plus other issues (Table 1).

Thus, I conclude that my findings on the link between Covid-vaccination and excess mortality cannot be debunked.