In the spring of 2020 the world was shaken by a new impending threat, or so we were informed. …

The pandemic is over. Omicron has joined other endemic coronaviruses and is flu-like at most. So how severe was the pandemic in Europe? Do you care to know the truth? Let’s go back by a time machine. Suppose someone told you back in February 2020 that Europe is about to…

Excess deaths — the difference between all deaths and expected (“normal”) deaths — don’t lie, assuming “normal” is estimated reasonably well. Not so for Covid deaths, which may be under-counted (missed Covid deaths) or over-counted (misattributed as a cause of death). It is difficult to get direct evidence for the…

In a recent post, I provided evidence of misclassification bias in those first studies from Israel about COVID vaccine effectiveness. As mentioned at the end of that post, I offered the British Medical Journal (BMJ) a short piece for their Analysis Section. They declined. I tried again. This time I…

Remember those first studies from Israel about a year ago, reporting excellent vaccine effectiveness against death from COVID? They were published in high-profile journals and made the headlines. Suppose I showed you — using official Israeli statistics — that the mortality endpoint in those studied was misclassified at a rate…

COVID vaccine research in Israel: no troubling questions please Imagine you were reading a scientific article on an important topic in a prestigious journal. …

“[T]he lockdowns and panic were unsubstantiated, prevented nothing, and caused indescribable damage to society. Sweden’s statistics tell us, unequivocally, that in much of the world lives have been lost and livelihoods have been destroyed — in vain.” Not a shred of doubt: Sweden was right (Medium article) Fear is a…

Counting the dead used to be the work of epidemiologists, statisticians and demographers. So was analyzing the numbers and drawing conclusions. In the past year many are counting deaths, but the numbers have no meaning without the context of a relevant time period, population and history. That is, epidemiology. The…