Wave of unexplained deaths in Alberta
Something happened in 2021 that led to thousands of additional unexplained deaths
Over the summer, the province of Alberta updated their mortality data for 2021, and something stood out that a lot of people noticed. Can you catch what it is?
Deaths without a known cause rose 230% from 2020 to 2021. Now, this sort of jump may not be very concerning if the deaths were relatively few, but unexplained deaths were the leading cause of death in Alberta in 2021 by a wide margin.
What happened in 2021 that didn’t happen in 2020?
Even though deaths attributed to the COVID shots are a likely culprit for some of the increase in unexplained deaths, it’s important to point out a few things before we jump to too many conclusions.
First off, the exact description “Other ill-defined and unknown causes of mortality” is first used in 2019. Perhaps there was a change in the reporting system, so it is difficult to ascertain what the long term trend was before 2019 and how significant the increase in 2021 is compared to long-term historical trends.
Secondly, it’s important to remember that even though Canada’s single-payer healthcare system is “free”, it still comes at a cost. People often wait 2-3 years for an operation, and the lockdowns only made the backlogs at hospitals worse. Several people were either too scared to go to the hospital during the COVID period or gave up on seeking treatment. This would make it difficult for doctors to diagnose an illness and for pathologists to perform autopsies upon death. The result is to chalk the deaths up to unknown causes and leave it at that.
I think this is the main reason that unknown deaths increased nearly three-fold between 2019 and 2020, and this effect likely carried over into 2021. In previous years, such as in 2017, there were no recorded deaths from indeterminate causes, even though total deaths did not change much from the previous year. This meant perhaps that there was less of a backlog in those years and pathologists could complete their job.
It is very clear that something went wrong in 2020 and 2021, and it wasn’t just because of COVID. Lockdowns and widespread fear in 2020 hampered the already dysfunctional Canadian healthcare system, the effects of which likely spread to 2021. Mandatory COVID jabs in Canada led to widespread usage of an experimental medical product, the harmful effects of which did not always get accurately recorded.