What Happened in Lithuania?
Evidence from Europe suggests the vaccines did save lives.
The EU country with the highest excess mortality, Bulgaria, also has the lowest vaccination rate. By the end of 2021, only 36% of Bulgarians over 60 had been doubled vaccinated. Meanwhile, the EU country with the lowest excess mortality, Denmark, is one that managed to keep deaths to a minimum until completing the vaccine rollout. As of January 1st, 99% of Danes over 60 were double vaccinated.
However, this does not mean the vaccines’ effectiveness against death is as high as 90%, or even close to that. Numerous countries around the world have seen large spikes in excess mortality after their vaccine rollouts. These spikes invariably coincided with waves of Covid infections, showing that – despite high levels of vaccination – many people were still dying.
One interesting case study is Lithuania, which has the second highest excess mortality in the EU. You might assume, therefore, that it would have a low vaccination rate. But it doesn’t. By the end of 2021, 78% of Lithuanians over 60 had been double vaccinated – the highest level in Eastern Europe.
Compare Lithuania to another Eastern European country, Romania. As the chart below indicates, the vaccine rollout was proceeding identically in the two countries until the end of April 2021 – when Lithuania jumped ahead.
By the start of September, less than half as many Romanians had been double vaccinated. And as of January 1st, only 46% of Romanians over 60 were double vaccinated. So that’s a disparity an elderly vaccination rates of 32 percentage points!
However, if we track excess mortality since the countries’ vaccine rollouts diverged, we see that it was actually higher, on average, in Lithuania. (Note: although the peak is higher in Romania, the average is slightly higher in Lithuania.)
Zooming out, this can’t be explained by a ‘catch up’ effect: the two countries’ saw similar levels of excess mortality during the first year of the pandemic. Lithuania saw a bigger peak in the winter of 2020, but Romania saw a bigger peak in the spring.
Nor can it be explained by Romania being richer, and having higher quality healthcare. As a matter of fact, Lithuania has a substantially higher GDP per capita – $46,000 versus only $37,000 in Romania.
Two peculiarities of Lithuania’s series are the spikes in June and July of 2021, when the rate of Covid infections was low. These spikes may have been caused by hot weather, though a search for “heat wave” during the relevant time period did not yield any results. If the two spikes were excluded, excess mortality would be somewhat greater in Romania.
Although Lithuania and Romania began their vaccine rollouts at the same time, Lithuania went on to vaccinate a much greater share of the population, including a much greater share of the elderly. Yet in the year afterwards, excess mortality in the two countries was similar – an observation that can’t be explained by wealth or ‘catch up’ effects.
Generally speaking, countries with lower vaccination rates have seen higher levels of mortality. However, even very high vaccination rates have been not been sufficient to prevent mortality from spiking – casting doubt on claims the vaccines are near-perfectly effective against death.
This post has been updated.
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“Generally speaking, Countries with lower vaccination rates have generally seen higher levels of mortality. However, even very high vaccination rates have been not been sufficient to prevent mortality from spiking – casting doubt on claims the vaccines are near-perfectly effective against death.”. I think the analysis is far too simple. As the vax-pushers love to say when talking about jab adverse reactions – correlation does not imply causation. The age and health demographic of the nations are two obvious confounders.
What I am 100% certain of is that the muck either doesn’t work at all, or works very poorly for a very short space of time. But I don’t believe the powers that be gave two hoots whether it worked or not, as it was never about public health (unless we include depopulation as a public health need).
Using percentage excess mortality largely controls for the age and health of the population because it involves dividing deaths in the current year by deaths in previous years – the latter reflecting the age and health of the population. It basically tells you how much higher mortality was than you’d expect based on all the factors that usually affect mortality.
Can we see a correlation globally between vaccine uptake and excess mortality rates?
I’m deeply sceptical the vaccines have saved any lives, frankly. It would have been evident in the clinical studies (fraudulent as they were). But more people died in the active arm than did in the control arm.
Appreciate the reply Noah. I get that, but surely we can’t measure excess deaths during a pandemic like we can excess deaths associated with accidents (for example)? I’d expect excess deaths of a young, healthy population during a pandemic to be less than an aging, unhealthy population, because the latter population is going to be have more people at risk of death from the virus, skewing the figures upwards. Surely?
‘Evidence from Europe suggests the vaccines did save lives.’
You lean ‘claims’.
And how can that alleged evidence be falsified? Because if it cannot, it cannot be proven.
The article above is an agglomeration of confounded, untrustworthy data which proves nothing.
The fact is there can be no evidence of life-saving properties of these experimental so-called vaccines, because the cohort likely to die from CoVid are end of life with comorbidity and likely to die anyway.
By now most of those receiving these mRNA ‘life-savers’ will be dead anyway from not-CoVid.
Since young, fit, healthy people do not die from CoVid, the fact they still live or had CoVid ‘less seriously’ is meaningless.
And in the meantime, they are being encouraged to take part in a pharmaceutical trial, who’s long term effects are not yet known.
After two years of jabbing people with an experimental biological in the USA, there have been over a million adverse events and 28,000 deaths CDC VAERS. Funeral directors (USA) are now reporting their largest ever orders for children’s caskets, life insurers are reporting a 40% increase in life insurance payouts, calling it a tsunami, never seen before. Hospitals in the UK currently overfilled with patients suffering adverse events from a vaxx they probably never needed. Study after study showing the damage these jabs have caused. Many friends and family on their fourth jab and permanently unwell. Dr. John Ioannidis provided data early on in the scamdemic, which showed most people under the age of 70 infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00-0.23% with median of 0.04%. Meanwhile the covid experimental biologicals had minimal safety data, no long term safety data and no meaningful effectiveness data. It now appears, the experimental biologicals have put more people in their graves than covid ever did. But it is a free country and those who believe the experimental biologicals are safe and effective saves lives, well, good luck.
Etana Hecht fda and cdc are on notice/the casket industry is booming.
https://substack.com/redirect/2/eyJlIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly9ldGFuYS5zdWJzdGFjay5jb20vcC9hLXBlYXNhbnRzLXJldm9sdD90b2tlbj1leUoxYzJWeVgybGtJam8xT0RNd01qZ3pOeXdpY0c5emRGOXBaQ0k2TmpJM01ESTNORFlzSW1saGRDSTZNVFkxTnpFeU9EYzFOU3dpYVhOeklqb2ljSFZpTFRVd016VTNOeUlzSW5OMVlpSTZJbkJ2YzNRdGNtVmhZM1JwYjI0aWZRLmpzUzk0a0JhMGZKRGxwY1ctNnI3VUVlaThneGdMVVpOWThndTRYUS1EUG8iLCJwIjo2MjcwMjc0NiwicyI6NTAzNTc3LCJmIjp0cnVlLCJ1Ijo1ODMwMjgzNywiaWF0IjoxNjU3MTI4NzU1LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMCIsInN1YiI6ImxpbmstcmVkaXJlY3QifQ.POATZ_BeNWK9SqKIJYpD2oKrreSGtYgIMbtV2gsJxws?