Abortion as birth control

 Throughout the abortion argument there has been a fairly consistent statement that abortion is not being used as birth control. Yet the reaction to reversing Roe v Wade shows this appears to not be the case.

With the decision there are reports of an upswing in men seeking vasectomies -- apparently some proportion of men assumed that their partner would get an abortion if they got pregnant. And there are women saying they'll only sleep with men who've had a vasectomy.

This also explains the prevalence of STDs, appears these people never heard of using a condom both for contraception and disease prevention.

OSHA COVID lives saved?

 The Supreme Court decision striking down the OSHA vaccine mandate was struck down. Reading about the decision I came across an interesting factor in the government's justification for the mandate.

The government argued (and OSHA's summary) that the mandate would conservatively save over 6,500 lives. This when over 800,000 have died in the pandemic. 6,500 lives is less than the one week death count from COVID for about the last 5 months. If that's all the lives they expect the mandate to save then it really doesn't seem that significant.

Of course, 6,500 is labeled a conservative minimum, still I would have expected a nationwide mandate of large employers to be able to save more than a week's worth (or 3 days worth lately) of deaths.

Playing with numbers

 I was scanning blogs I follow and found one which quoted an insurance company employee as saying "the death rate is up a stunning 40% from pre-pandemic levels among working-age people." This blog is very anti-vaccine and argues (without detailed numbers of analysis) that the cause of this increase is the COVID vaccine.

So I decided to look at the numbers and see what I could deduce. I did this using the CDC Wonder database, which provides number of deaths by age, date, race, cause of death, etc. So I chose by year and age in 5 year groups. Complete data is available for 2018-2020, provisional data for 2021 through November 20 (41 days short of the full year).

To analyze I took the average for 2018-2019 as a baseline and compared them against 2020 and against the partial 2021 data. I compared death rates (number per 100,000). I also compared absolute deaths (raw numbers) because population data is not available for those 85 and over, so death rates aren't available.

2021 data is fairly error prone since 1) population data is not present, 2020 numbers are used and 2) incomplete partial year data must be extrapolated to a full year. To estimate full year 2021 data I took the 41 missing days, added 3 more days (to estimate late reported deaths, a number I picked without any real basis), so added 44 days more to 2021 numbers.

The basic results were interesting:

• Death rates for children under 10 went down about 5% in 2020 and 2021. I can't say why but would guess a reduction in accidents (kids kept indoors? parents at home more?) and poorer medical care (non-emergency care shut down part of the year).
• Death rates for those 15-29 are up about 20% in 2020 vs 2018-19. It's likely most of this is COVID, part may be differences in accident rates, the primary cause of death at this age. In 2021 the increase might be 25% from 2018-19 (but the numbers are much more uncertain).
• For those 30-49 the death rate is up about 25% in 2020 and extrapolated 2021 numbers do show a 40% increase. So the blog insurance employee comment may very well be true.
• Over age 50 the increase in the death rate declines to 15-20% for older adults. This lower increase is even though the vast majority (around 3/4) of COVID deaths are those over 50. I'd guess two reasons for this. One is the absolute number of deaths in these age ranges is higher (so excess COVID deaths aren't as high a percentage) but the primary reason is likely that COVID affects those already sick more than those who are healthy. So a significant percentage of older adults who died of COVID would have died in the year anyway (though not as soon). Obviously this is a guess, it would take a much more detailed analysis of deaths and cause of death to make an absolute statement. And this is an area where statistics can easily be manipulated to generate a pre-determined result.
• For 2021 the extrapolated increased death rate for those 50-74 appears to be a bit higher than 2020, but not significantly so. For age 80 and up death rates appear to be going down from 2020. Without population data part of this could be an effect of a significant number of deaths in this age range having reduced the population. But part of it is likely due to a lower rate of COVID deaths. That lower rate could be people taking better precautions or it could be vaccines since vaccination rates are very high in older adults.

So are vaccines causing huge increases in deaths among adults? I don't think so for the following reasons:

• For those over 80 death rates are going down if anything. With higher vaccination rates it implies vaccines don't cause excess deaths in this age group.
• For those 30-49 (where excess rates appear to be 40%) most of the increase was in 2020 (up 25%). As there was no vaccine in 2020 and subtracting off the first 2-3 months of 2020 (pre-COVID) the excess death rate in 2020 and 2021 is probably comparable. This could be shown using monthly data but I don't have the time or inclination to pursue it.
• As vaccination rates are lower for the 30-49 age group and vaccines were not available until later in the year it isn't clear if the vaccines have reduced the absolute death rate in this age group. But there is a good argument vaccines have not caused the huge number of deaths anti-vaxxers claim (note my analysis doesn't look at cause of death, so is not biased by conspiracy claims that officials are misclassifying vaccine deaths).

So no, it doesn't appear COVID vaccines are dangerous, while COVID itself is clearly dangerous.