Thread by @rubiconcapital_

New Brunswick, 🇨🇦
Latest from @StatsCanada

Excess mortality (all ages) accelerates beginning in summer 2021.📈

Last 25 weeks of 2021:
4,599 actual deaths, minus
3,713 expected deaths...
=886 excess deaths (24% excess)

Only 114 Covid-19 deaths in the same period.
Quick🧵(1/9)

As reported by @CBCNB, the NB Health Minister @ShephardDorothy confirmed the province is investigating, with the support of Premier @premierbhiggs, and with opposition leader, @RogerMelanson pressing them. (2/9) cbc.ca/news/canada/ne…

Some in the science community are already blaming (at least in part) underreported Covid deaths.

CBC New Brunswick quotes Tara Moriarty, @MoriartyLab, an "infectious disease expert" in the UofT crowd, who suggests health authorities may have missed Covid deaths... (3/9)

...she notes the large Covid outbreak in the last five weeks of 2021 and suggests the overlap with excess deaths is almost perfect, and so that's a clue the deaths are Covid related...

...that seems a little intellectually lazy to me! (4/9)

...from this basic chart comparing excess deaths with Covid deaths, we clearly see the waves of excess deaths are in no way correlated with the waves in recorded Covid deaths, with significant excess deaths already occurring before the "significant" fall/winter Covid waves. (5/9)

It is troubling to see infectious disease scientists so quickly jumping to conclusions about the potential causes of these excess deaths, and the media immediately printing these undercounting hypotheses with no evidence supporting the possibly. (6/9)

...the Health Minister @ShephardDorothy even said @MoriartyLAB was fear mongering.

Either way, a very positive step that the NB Health Minister, Premier, and Opposition Leader all want answers. (7/9)

To my knowledge, NB is the only province in Canada that has so openly acknowledged the need to investigate the excess deaths problem occurring countrywide, and I look forward to following the outcome there. Hopefully other provinces, especially Ont, AB, BC follow suit. (8/9)

Lastly, one item that makes NB unique is that it does not have the same degree of opioid/drug related deaths as other provinces that otherwise muddies excess death analyses. Nor did it have the same acceleration in opioid deaths in 2020/2021 as seen in other provinces. (9/9)