@waltz_tales is cowardly replying behind a block. Why can't he have a real good faith discussion? I'm going to destroy his claims, piece by piece. 1) His citation from the Lancet is a commentary/opinion piece (not original research) covering excess deaths in England from June 2022 to June 2023. It can't tell you anything about 2026. Worse for him, the authors attribute the excess to multiple causes: direct COVID effects, acute pressures on NHS services producing worse outcomes & disruption to chronic disease detection and management during the pandemic years. In the USA we know that excess deaths were driven by COVID in 2020-2022 but historic highs in drug overdose deaths, alcohol deaths, gun violence deaths & deaths from missed medical care were significant contributors! (The USA is NOT a healthy country.) 2) "Excess deaths have increased since 2020" is objectively false as of now. That was true through mid-2023 but it REVERSED afterward. England and Wales were back on pre-pandemic mortality trends already back in 2023! x.com/Jean__Fisch/status/201… In the USA we've had NEGATIVE excess since 2023. Less people died than expected in 2024, 2025 and 2026 is on the same path. mortality.watch/s/b0ee9e5558… In 2024 life expectancy hit a historic record high in the USA. aha.org/news/headline/2026-0… And critically for his "hidden COVID" theory: COVID-19 dropped out of the ten leading causes of death entirely in 2024 in the USA, with underlying-cause COVID deaths falling about 37%, from 49,932 in 2023 to 31,426 in 2024. Excess-death methods exist precisely to catch deaths that certificates miss & they're now showing negative numbers. As I always say: all-cause mortality does not lie but people like @waltz_tales do! 3. "Administratively invisible" is an unfalsifiability move. If COVID deaths can't appear in any official data, then his claim can't be supported by any official data either, including the Lancet paper he just cited, which is built on death registrations. He can't use death statistics when they help him & declare them invisible when they don't. Also, the factual premise is wrong. Death certification doesn't require a positive test. Certifiers can record COVID based on clinical judgment, which is why "deaths involving COVID" (mentioned anywhere on the certificate) is tracked separately from "deaths due to COVID." 4. If nearly everyone has had COVID, then nearly everyone who dies of anything has also had COVID, which means "they had COVID once" carries zero evidentiary weight for any individual death. He'd need to show elevated mortality in the infected vs. expected baselines & the baselines are going the wrong way for him! 5. It's interesting he's quietly abandoned the original claim. He started with "celebrity deaths doubled, this is not normal" and retreated to "COVID is invisible" and they are "hiding deaths." But if total deaths fell in 2024 and are running below expected since, the EW slideshow count can't be reflecting real mortality! It's reflecting editorial coverage & an aging (and growing) celebrity pool, exactly as I said. Now would @waltz_tales like to unblock me and have a good-faith scientific discussion based on substance and evidence or does he want to continue to spam science denial behind a block? The choice is yours. Happy to debate anytime.

Two things that struck me this week: People are losing the ability to remember without prompts. People are increasingly able to lie to themselves.

"We have riders .. who have had to abandon because there is almost a plague of people with influenza A.” Team Movistar in elite cycling has been deeply affected by viral disease in the weeks ahead of the top Tour de France cyclinguptodate.com/cycling/…

Why do most parents not have the animal instinct to protect their children from SarsCov2 - the virus? Or is it that they have repressed that instinct? I think this is the thing about the pandemic that has surprised me the most and that I expected the least.

Where are my respirator mask lovers? #MaskUp #WearAMask #C19isNotOver