Two years later, no errors have been found in the Mostert paper published in BMJ showing excess deaths increased in 47 countries after COVID vaccine rollouts

The BMJ opened an investigation into the Mostert paper over 2 years ago. There is no update after 2 years. Nothing. Why is this investigation taking so long? We are left in the dark.

Executive summary

For more than 2 years now, both the integrity team and editors at BMJ public health have been investigating “issues” raised regarding the quality and messaging in the Mostert paper which showed excess deaths rose in 47 countries after the COVID vaccines rolled out.

After more than two years, the “issues” with the paper have not been revealed, nor has the outcome of the investigation.

The scientific community has literally been left in the dark on this important paper waiting to hear the result of the investigation.

Two years is a long time. For example, it took only about one year to develop a vaccine against a novel pathogen (COVID). This is now twice as long as that and there is no progress reported.

The Princess Maxima Centre isn’t even able to serve the web page on their investigation correctly. It now returns a broken link.

But thanks to the WayBack Machine, you can read what they actually wrote.

Neither the teams of integrity expert and editors BMJ nor the Princess Maxima Center have explained to the public what is incorrect in the paper and what caused the excess deaths which peaked worldwide right rollout of the so-called “safe and effective vaccine.”

The paper concluded that excess mortality remained high despite the rollout of mitigation measures. That’s not contestable.

“Government leaders and policymakers need to thoroughly investigate underlying causes of persistent excess mortality.”

That sounds like sound advice as well.

Is the Princess Maxima Centre saying that the paper is incorrect and that “government leaders should look the other way when excess deaths are occurring”?

Sadly, government leaders are avoiding the investigation for some reason.

BMJ's policy is generally to wait for the home institution's formal finding before retracting, so the journal effectively handed the decisive step to the Princess Máxima Center.

The Princess Maxima Centre owes the public an explanation, but no such explanation is forthcoming. All they did is remove the web page complaining about the paper.

The public deserves better. If the paper is wrong, the Princess Maxima Centre needs to tell us what they found, not keep it hidden from public view. Lives are at stake.

Mostert paper conclusions

Here’s the key graph for 47 countries in the Western World. It went above the trendline only after the COVID vaccines were introduced (both primary shots and booster shots).

Results The total number of excess deaths in 47 countries of the Western World was 3 098 456 from 1 January 2020 until 31 December 2022. Excess mortality was documented in 41 countries (87%) in 2020, 42 countries (89%) in 2021 and 43 countries (91%) in 2022. In 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic onset and implementation of containment measures, records present 1 033 122 excess deaths (P-score 11.4%). In 2021, the year in which both containment measures and COVID-19 vaccines were used to address virus spread and infection, the highest number of excess deaths was reported: 1 256 942 excess deaths (P-score 13.8%). In 2022, when most containment measures were lifted and COVID-19 vaccines were continued, preliminary data present 808 392 excess deaths (P-score 8.8%).

About the P-score

A P-score is a way of expressing excess mortality in relative (percentage) terms rather than raw counts. It’s the metric Karlinsky and Kobak introduced in their World Mortality Dataset work, which is the baseline model Mostert et al. used.

The formula is straightforward:

P-score = (observed deaths − expected deaths) / expected deaths × 100%

So it’s the percentage by which actual deaths exceeded (or fell short of) the number you’d expect under normal pre-pandemic conditions. A P-score of 0% means deaths landed exactly at the expected baseline. A P-score of 11.4% (the figure Mostert reported for 2020) means about 11.4% more people died than the model predicted would have died absent the pandemic. A negative P-score means fewer deaths than expected.

The “expected” number is the key modeling choice. It’s a projection of how many deaths there should have been in a given week or month, built from historical mortality in prior years and typically adjusted for trends like population aging and seasonality. Karlinsky and Kobak fit a regression on pre-2020 data to generate that counterfactual baseline.

Why use a P-score instead of raw excess death counts: it normalizes across populations of very different sizes. Saying “Country A had 50,000 excess deaths and Country B had 5,000” tells you little if A is ten times larger. The P-score puts everyone on a common percentage scale, so a 10% P-score in a small country is directly comparable to a 10% P-score in a large one. That’s what makes it useful for the kind of cross-country comparison Mostert was doing across 47 countries.

A P-score of 13.8% is a substantively large excess

When you roll out mitigation measures such as vaccines and lock downs, excess deaths are supposed to go down after the roll out, not up.

The fact that after the mitigation measures, things got worse is what the paper is pointing out.

Summary

The Princess Maxima Centre is silent on what is wrong with the paper and the correct way to analyze the data.

It’s been two years.

They owe us an update, not removal of their webpage.

I have reached out to their press contact and will update you on their response.

Don’t hold your breath.