Original article (in Croatian) was published on 07/12/2021
On Facebook, Gordan Lauc claims that vaccination could be partly responsible for the excess mortality in Croatia. The Central Bureau of Statistics and the Croatian Institute of Public Health do not have such data.
Former member of the Scientific Council of the Government of the Republic of Croatia, molecular biologist Gordan Lauc, suggested in a Facebook post that vaccination against Covid-19 could cause more deaths, i.e., that there is a link between vaccination and excess mortality in Croatia in spring and summer 2021.
He fenced himself off multiple times. He stated that the vaccines against Covid were “very good”, that they “prevented a large number of severe forms of disease and death”. He wrote again that he had been vaccinated and that he would vaccinate himself and his children against the flu.
However, “mRNA and vector vaccines”, he states, “have certain molecular effects that we must not ignore”. Because of these risks, Covid continues, confirmations as a method of forcing vaccination are questionable. Then he gets to the point.
As soon as the data on mortality in Croatia as a member of the Scientific Council were published, I warned the government that there was a strange coincidence between the excess mortality and the period of intensive vaccination. At some point, I said that publicly. I’m not claiming that the vaccine causes that excess death. I’m just saying that there is a strange coincidence (with two separate peaks being tracked) that needs to be carefully examined to see if vaccination has anything to do with it, especially since we see similar excess deaths in other countries (see my previous post).
First of all, the previous post, to which Lauc refers to his Facebook followers, contains a video of the statements of a British cardiologist who unjustifiably connects vaccination with heart attacks, which Faktograf has already written about.
To his thesis – that the excess mortality coincides with the period of intensive vaccination – Lauc attaches the following graphs:
The CBS and the CIPH do not guarantee the calculation
Before we deal with the correlation itself, it should be noted that such calculations of excess mortality, expressed in weeks, were not created in the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) or the Croatian Institute of Public Health (CIPH).
They somewhat coincide with Eurostat data, but are not identical. The CBS submits data on deaths to Eurostat by week. Eurostat publishes the collected data on its website. It also calculates “excess mortality” on a monthly basis and publishes it on its website.
The CBS publishes its own data on excess mortality on a monthly basis, as does Eurostat, and not on a weekly basis, such as the EuroMOMO website (which does not monitor excess mortality in the Republic of Croatia).
As the CBS assumes that the data were taken from the pages of other institutions that used Eurostat data as a source, they state that they cannot investigate the accuracy of Lauc’s calculations.
Eurostat and Mortality.org
Indeed, Eurostat recorded increased mortality in May (24.4) and June 2021 (15.1%) and slightly lower in July (5.7).
The curve published on Lauc’s profile follows the picture published on Our World in Data on the movement of excess mortality in Croatia. The portal uses data from Mortality.org, a project founded by demographers at the University of Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute.
The CBS tells us that the Max Planck Institute is one of their users. However, as various other institutions and scientists use official statistics in their calculations, whether downloaded from Eurostat or requested directly from the CBS, they cannot guarantee that the excess mortality calculations are accurate.
The data also do not match the data of the Croatian Institute of Public Health, which reports on mortality to the World Health Organization and still processes data for these months.
Furthermore, it is important to note that Lauc regarding the strange congruence of the curves asserts May and June 2021, although the curves of death from Covid and excess mortality in May do not “diverge” much (first graph). That is why we asked about this the head of the CIPH’s Service for the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases, Bernard Kaic.
Apparently, there is a correlation between the number of vaccines distributed and the trend of excess mortality on a weekly basis (second graph), although the total excess mortality in July (5.7%), compared to the five-year Eurostat average, is not as impressive as in May (24,4%).
At the beginning, Kaic emphasizes that he is commenting on the curves shown in Lauc’s publication, and not on official data that the CIPH has not yet processed.
The correlation can be seen a little, and little of it can’t be seen
Namely, we were interested in whether the CIPH sees this congruence between the vaccination curve and the excess mortality and how they interpret it. Apart from the fact that the correlation does not mean a cause-and-effect relationship, Kaic points out that there are certain problems with a pronounced correlation.
“The correlation between the number of vaccinations and the alleged excess mortality shown by Dr. Lauc in the curve can only be seen in June and July – with the excess of deaths in July mainly due to COVID-19 – and then lost… When vaccination would be the cause of increased mortality, the correlation between the number of vaccinations and the excess mortality should be shown in all months, and not just in one or two months”, notes Kaic.
And how strong this correlation is, it is difficult for him to assess because he does not notice that the correlation coefficient has been calculated. Furthermore, he does not know whether the surplus mortality data by the months used by Dr. Lauc are accurate. He also does not know whether the numbers of deaths from Covid in the table are correct because it is not CBS’s data.
Furthermore, he emphasizes the importance of extracting data on deaths from Covid.
“It is not clear what the excess mortality is by weeks / months when Covid deaths are excluded from the total number of deaths. I cannot find that information on the website of the Central Bureau of Statistics. Data on deaths from Covid include only persons who died from Covid in hospitals. They do not include those who died outside the hospital and those who died from late complications of Covid”, notes Kaic.
It should be taken into account that subsequent complications related to Covid-19 recovery can also be the cause of death. A study by researchers at the American University of Florida, recently published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, showed that people who overcame severe Covid-19 in the next 12 months after recovery have a significantly increased risk of death.
A large study in the US found no correlation between vaccination and mortality
The presented data on excess mortality say nothing about the vaccination status of persons who died in the spring and summer months. And this criterion has been studied, as Ivana Sipic Gavrilovic from the Croatian Medicines Agency (HALMED) reminds us.
Namely, a study on 11 million people was recently published on the website of the American Center for Disease Control. They studied 6.4 million vaccinated and 4.6 million unvaccinated and mortality from causes other than Covid. They compared deaths in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations from December 2020 to the end of July 2021 and came to a conclusion contrary to Lauc’s.
… eecipients of Covid-19 vaccine had lower mortality rates than non-Covid-related causes than unvaccinated persons… There is no increased risk of mortality among recipients of Covid-19 vaccine. This finding strengthens the safety profile of currently approved COVID-19 vaccines in the United States.
What period are we observing?
Again, we asked Agency for Medicinal Products and Medical Devices and CIPH to clarify the period for “temporal connection with the vaccination period”. When health workers or citizens report an unwanted consequence of vaccination, even one with a fatal outcome, we were interested in what exactly is considered a time coincidence.
“There is no time limit. However, given the known side effects of vaccines that can possibly lead to death and the known latency periods from vaccination to the development of these side effects, death is not expected to occur as a result of vaccination more than two months after vaccination. Exceptionally, death as a result of Guillain Barre syndrome as a consequence of vaccination could occur more than two months after vaccination. Of course, if a person were known to have developed a side effect of vaccination (thrombosis with thrombocytopenia, embolism or myocarditis) at the expected time of onset – within a few weeks of vaccination – and was treated for a long time and eventually died, this would be attributed to the vaccine”, explains Bernard Kaic.
The Agency for Medicinal Products and Medical Devices further explains why this period is not defined by the number of months or weeks.
“Someone can report a certain side effect after a few months, and someone never. Also, sometimes a certain campaign can trigger a report, and then reports side effects that occurred several months or years earlier. In addition, media coverage can increase the number of reports of suspected side effects, which is one of the ways to raise awareness of the importance of reporting suspected side effects”.
That is why, they continue, they have recorded an increasing number of reports in recent years after, for example, the publication of annual reports of side effects, as well as during the pandemic, especially after reporting on certain safety issues related to Covid-19 vaccines.
Would we notice that so many people die from vaccination?
And this leads us to the last question: could the Agency for Medicinal Products and Medical Devices HALMED and CIPH, through the system for monitoring suspected side effects of vaccines, be able to detect the growth of deaths among those vaccinated so dramatic that it can be seen in the data on excess mortality?The Agency states that the system is not designed as a record of deaths, so they cannot say for sure whether it would detect an increase in deaths among those vaccinated.
But Kaic has no doubt.
“I believe that the system of reporting side effects would record an increase in deaths among vaccinated persons and I do not agree with the statement that this is evident in the overall trend of excess mortality in Croatia”, concludes Kaic.