In a new op-ed in USA Today, Pierre Kory and Mary Beth Pfeiffer explore a mysterious spike in deaths that has been happening even as deaths from COVID-19 decreased.
Something strange began happening in the autumn of 2021. According to life insurers, excess deaths—the number of people dying beyond what is considered normal—inexplicably shot up. This mysterious spike in deaths happened even as deaths from COVID-19 decreased, and not just among the elderly or infirm, but among younger, working, prime-of-life people.
Writing in USA Today, Dr. Kory and Mary Beth Pfeiffer explore this trend and ask the question: what is killing people?
Among working people 35 to 44 years old, a stunning 34% more died than expected in the last quarter of 2022, with above-average rates in other working-age groups too. "COVID-19 claims do not fully explain the increase," the Society of Actuaries said in a comprehensive new report.
From 2020 through 2022, there were far more excess deaths proportionally among white collar than blue collar workers—19% versus 14% above normal. The disparity nearly doubled among top-echelon workers in the fourth quarter of 2022, U.S. actuaries reported. And there was an extreme and sudden increase in worker mortality in the fall of 2021 even as the nation saw a precipitous drop in COVID-19 deaths from a previous wave. In the third quarter of 2021, deaths among workers 35 to 44 years old reached a pandemic peak of 101% above—or double—the three-year pre-COVID-19 baseline. In two other prime working-age groups, mortality was 79 % above expected.
But it isn't only happening in the United States. The United Kingdomalso saw "more excess deaths in the second half of 2022 than…any year since 2010," according to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. In the first quarter of 2023, deaths among people 20 to 44 years old were akin to "the same period in 2021, the worst pandemic year for that age group," U.K. actuaries reported. Younger-age death rates were "particularly high" when compared to the average mortality for 2013 to 2020.
Week-in, week-out, this unnatural loss of life is on the scale of a war or terrorist event.
In Australia, 12% more people died than expected in 2022, according to that nation's Actuaries Institute. A third of the excess was non-COVID-19 deaths, a figure the institute called "extraordinarily high."
Death rates are lower, of course, than in 2020 and 2021. But they are far from normal.
In the year ending April 30, 2023—14 months after the last of four pandemic waves in the U.S.— over 104,000 more Americans died than expected, according to the data tracker, Our World in Data. In the U.K., 52,427 excess deaths were reported in that period; in Germany, 81,028; France, 17,731; Netherlands, 10,418; and Ireland, 2,640.
Week-in, week-out, this unnatural loss of life is on the scale of a war or terrorist event. The actuarial reports can only speculate on the factors causing these deaths, including oft-cited delayed healthcare, drug overdoses, and even weather patterns. But the question remains: what explains this ongoing wave of excess deaths?
…Governments and regulatory agencies should cooperate with life insurers to investigate this trend at the national and multinational level. Without a thorough and collaborative exploration, we can't know what's killing us – or how to stop it.
You can read the full editorial in USA Today here. We have our suspicions about the cause of these deaths, but we'd also love to hear your thoughts. What do YOU think is behind the spike in excess deaths?
wow, time to get some chickens and a puppy to raise them. . . lol . . perfect ofr urban agriculture
Worldwide, 1 in 8 bird species is at risk of extinction.1 We should be very concerned, since, as BirdLife International notes, “Birds are our early warning system.”2 Declines in bird populations signal that something serious is happening in the environment — habitats are being destroyed, chemical pesticides are taking a toll on wildlife and more.
Already, 223 bird species are critically endangered3 and could disappear from the planet — a loss that would cut deeply. BirdLife explains:4
“Birds have the power to unite people. Many species migrate vast distances, motivating nations to work together to protect them every step of the way. In this way, birds show us the levels of global cooperation needed to tackle the … extinction crises in coming years. More simply than that, a love of birds is something we can all share, regardless of our differences.”
Imagining a world without birds isn’t only about missing their visual beauty and melodic songs. Birds are a crucial element of our ecosystem, controlling pests, spreading seeds and pollinating about 5% of plants that humans use for food and medicine.5 So, a loss of birds should sound alarm bells for every one of us.
“Birds tell us about the health of our natural environment — we ignore their messages at our peril,” says Patricia Zurita, BirdLife’s CEO.6
3 Billion North American Birds Gone in 50 Years
The situation is dire for many bird species, including the black-tailed godwit, a large shorebird with long legs and an equally long bill. Wired interviewed Alice Cerutti, whose 115-hectare (about 284-acre) rice farm in Italy is the country’s last known regular nesting site for the species:7
“During the past decade or so, she and her family have planted thousands of trees, reestablished wetlands, and brought in experts to help study and manage the precious birds that nest in areas Cerutti has set aside for wildlife. It seems to be working. ‘We have this amazing and big responsibility,’ Cerutti says … Local researchers found the bird clinging on there even as it disappeared from other locations.”
It's a story of hope among an otherwise dismal outlook. A net loss of 2.9 billion birds, or 29%, occurred in the U.S. and Canada since 1970,8 including not only rare species but also common birds at backyard feeders, such as sparrows, warblers, finches and blackbirds.9 Writing in the journal Science, researchers and colleagues with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology explained:10
“Integration of range-wide population trajectories and size estimates indicates a net loss approaching 3 billion birds … A continent-wide weather radar network also reveals a similarly steep decline in biomass passage of migrating birds over a recent 10-year period. This loss of bird abundance signals an urgent need to address threats to avert future avifaunal collapse and associated loss of ecosystem integrity, function, and services.”
Nineteen common bird species lost more than 50 million birds during the study period, with lead author and conservation scientist Ken Rosenberg told CBS News, "There's an erosion of the numbers of common birds." "We expected to see continuing declines of threatened species," he said. "But for the first time, the results also showed pervasive losses among common birds across all habitats, including backyard birds."11
Birds Declining Throughout Europe
7 Simple Steps to Help Birds
The light at the end of the tunnel is regenerative agriculture, which is a savior to birds, insects and other species worldwide. The best course of action to reduce the harm of industrial agriculture and habitat loss is having on birds is to support biodynamic, grass fed farms that are conserving diversity and not relying on synthetic chemicals and other intensive agriculture practices that harm birds and other wildlife.
Meanwhile, we can all get involved to help make the world a safer place for birds. 3 Billion Birds, a partnership between Audubon, American Bird Conservancy, Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, Georgetown Environment Initiative, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Smithsonian, suggests everyone take the following seven actions to help birds now, before their populations decline even further:33
1.Make windows safer — Install screens or break up reflections using film, paint or string to prevent birds from hitting your windows.
2.Keep cats indoors — Free-roaming cats kill birds; give your cat environmental enrichment by providing a catio, a secure outdoor enclosure where your cat can enjoy the outdoors without harming birds.
3.Reduce your lawn, plant native plants instead — Lawns do little to support birds, while native plants sustain birds and provide shelter and nesting areas.
4.Avoid pesticides — They’re toxic to birds and reduce insects, which birds rely on for food; avoid using pesticides in your home and garden and choose organic or biodynamic food produced without pesticides.
5.Choose shade-grown coffee — Sun-grown coffee contributes to forest destruction and requires pesticides and fertilizers; shade-grown coffee preserves forests and helps migratory birds survive the winter.
6.Avoid plastic — Plastic is polluting oceans and harming wildlife, including seabirds; avoid all forms of single-use plastics, including bags, bottles, straws, disposable utensils and wraps.
7.Watch birds and share — Monitoring birds is important to protect them. According to 3 Billion Birds, “The world’s most abundant bird, the Passenger Pigeon, went extinct, and people didn’t realize how quickly it was vanishing until it was too late.”34
Researchers need help from citizen scientists to monitor birds in their own communities and report on what they see. A number of projects are underway, including eBird, Project FeederWatch and a Christmas Bird Count, so you can get involved watching birds in your own backyard.
One of the most influential instruments used to suppress the First Amendment right to free speech in the U.S. was the Center for Countering Digital Hate's (CCDH) "Disinformation Dozen" report,1 published March 24, 2021. The CCDH was a tiny, never-before-heard-of U.K.-based group, the funding of which remains largely hidden to this day. Its board members, however, have unambiguous ties to the military-intelligence-industrial complex, which is telling in and of itself.
AntiVaxWatch.org sponsored the report, and this group is even more opaque than the CCDH. It's no more than a simple news aggregator. It's not incorporated or registered in any way, and it lists no employees and no funding sources.
Any respectable reporter or politician would see this as an immediate red flag, yet none has questioned how or why a news aggregator could be considered a respectable source. Much of its "news" is sourced from the CCDH, so it's basically a closed circle.
CCDH — An 'Astroturf Front' Funded by Dark Money
My IT team was eventually able to trace the AntiVaxWatch website back to its creator, Brandon Hill, by scouring its XML page.2 Hill is the cofounder of a media company and self-proclaimed "intelligence agency" called Be the Change Revolutions,3 along with Amanda Hite, which in turn is connected to Eric Kessler of Arabella Advisors, a large, well-known dark money network that supports progressive causes with untraceable funds.4
Incidentally, Kessler also has "direct access to Biden cabinet officials and plays an important role in shaping this administration's agenda," according to Americans for Public Trust (APT) executive director Caitlin Sutherland.5
Considering Anti-Vax Watch has no official funding sources, from where did it get the funds to sponsor the CCDH's "Disinformation Dozen" report? Did the money come through Arabella, which is also linked to the CCDH's board chairman, Simon Clark, who also happens to have an "in" with the global news agency Reuters? (Clark served as the first director of web services for Reuters.)
"It appears that CCDH may be an astroturf front operation for both NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and the U.K. government to directly interfere with and target the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens," Ji told The Defender.8
Disinformation Dozen Report Cited Tens of Thousands of Times
Facebook later called out "The Disinformation Dozen" report as a a fabrication that had no basis in reality, but not before it had been cited tens of thousands of times — by mainstream media, members of Congress, state attorneys general,9 public health officials, the White House and even the president himself.
According to this fabricated report, 12 "anti-vaxxers," starting with yours truly, were "responsible for almost two-thirds of anti-vaccine content circulating on social media platforms," and were therefore "responsible for a tidal wave of disinformation." The answer, according to the CCDH, was to censor and deplatform us, everywhere. And, censored and deplatformed we were.
The Twitter Files now prove the U.S. government used the "Disinformation Dozen" report as justification for pressuring social media company and tech platforms to silence everyone on that list.10
That included Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who testified11 before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, July 20, 2023. Ironically, House Democrats did everything they could to oust Kennedy and prevent him from testifying about the censorship he experienced. It was quite the circus.
Thankfully, in the end, their bafflingly irrational efforts failed. As noted by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., "The hearing that we have this week is about censorship. I don't think censoring somebody is actually the answer here."
Kennedy cited his inclusion on the CCDH's list as part of a "new form of censorship, which is called 'targeted propaganda,' where people apply pejoratives like 'anti-vax' ... to silence me." He also said he's being censored "through smears, through misinterpretations of what I've said, through lies, through association." Indeed, everyone on that list, and many others as well, have by now experienced that.
Kennedy also pointed out that a brand-new category of censorable information was created specifically to target people on the CCDH's list, namely "malinformation." Kennedy defined malinformation as information that is factually true, "but is inconvenient to the government that they don't want people to hear."
On many occasions, social media companies censored Kennedy for "malinformation" at the behest of the White House and other federal agencies, even though they recognized that the information was true, simply because it "challenged official orthodoxies."
Indeed, according to special assistant attorney general for Louisiana, D. John Sauer, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the Missouri v. Biden case, "Federal officials are most eager, most focused, on silencing truthful speech," and if "left unchecked, federal censorship will reach virtually any disputed social and political question over which federal officials want to impose their power."12
Clearly, the targeting of Kennedy, me, and many others originated with the "Disinformation Dozen" list. Without that, attackers would have been "flying blind," not knowing whom to target.
With specific targets, however, the government, illegally working with Big Tech behind the scenes, was able to devise a widely publicized censorship campaign, the real intention of which (I believe) was to scare everyone else into toeing the official line, lest they, too, be canceled, defamed, deplatformed, de-licensed or worse.
In an August 18, 2021, Facebook report,13 Monika Bickert, vice president of Facebook content policy, set the record straight, stating that the 12 individuals identified by the CCDH were, in fact, responsible for just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook — a far cry from the 73% claimed by the CCDH. According to Bickert:
"The report14 upon which the faulty narrative is based analyzed only a narrow set of 483 pieces of content over six weeks from only 30 groups, some of which are as small as 2,500 users. They are in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines in the past months on Facebook.
Further, there is no explanation for how the organization behind the report identified the content they describe as 'anti-vax' or how they chose the 30 groups they included in their analysis. There is no justification for their claim that their data constitute a 'representative sample' of the content shared across our apps."
CCDH Meets Definition of 'Hateful Extremists'
Ironically, while the CCDH claims to "counter hate" online, and its founder and CEO Imran Ahmed sits on the Steering Committee of the U.K. Commission on Countering Extremism, the CCDH itself meets the Commission's definition of hateful extremists.15 In the 2019 Commission document, "Challenging Hateful Extremism," the term is defined as:16
"Behaviors that can incite and amplify hate, or engage in persistent hatred, or equivocate about and make the moral case for violence; And that draw on hateful, hostile or supremacist beliefs directed at an out-group who are perceived as a threat to the wellbeing, survival or success of an in-group; And that cause, or are likely to cause, harm to individuals, communities or wider society."
In addition, in the forward of the report, lead commissioner Sara Khan notes that "Hateful extremists seek to restrict individual liberties and curtail the fundamental freedoms that define our country."
All these definitions and clarifications of what hateful extremism is fit the CCDH to a T. Ahmed manufactured data to create a false narrative that 12 individuals pose a threat to the well-being and survival of the whole world, and then used that narrative to incite hate against us and curtail our freedom of speech.
Since then, the harassment against us — fueled by the false narrative created by the CCDH — has progressed to cyberattacks and debanking, which have further curtailed our fundamental freedoms in ways that would have been unthinkable in the past.
Elon Musk Sues CCDH
July 31, 2023, Twitter, now renamed X Corp, filed a lawsuit against the CCDH,17 arguing the CCDH is "actively working to prevent free expression" and spreading "troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically."
The baseless claims Musk is referring to refers to a June 1, 2023, CCDH report18 about Twitter Blue, which claims Twitter failed to censor 99% of hate posted by Twitter Blue-subscribed accounts. According to Musk, the CCDH's claims are "false, misleading, or both, and they are not supported by anything that could credibly be called research."19
In a July 18, 2023, Twitter/X post, Musk reposted Facebook's dismissal of "The Disinformation Dozen" report, stating, "Who is funding this organization? They spread disinformation and push censorship, while claiming the opposite. Truly evil." Two weeks later, the same day he filed his lawsuit against the CCDH, he tweeted out, "Let's pull the mask off this organization and see who is really behind it."20
According to Musk, the CCDH engaged "in a series of unlawful acts designed to improperly gain access to protected X Corp. data" for the purpose of creating a "scare campaign" to drive advertisers away from his platform. The Defender reports:21
"Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit accused CCDH of 'masquerading' as a research agency and using improperly obtained login credentials to access company data.
According to the complaint, CCDH used the data to 'cherry-pick from the hundreds of millions of posts made each day on X and falsely claim it had statistical support showing the platform is overwhelmed with harmful content.' X Corp. estimated it lost at least tens of millions of dollars in advertising revenue and other costs as a direct result of CCDH's actions."
Commenting on the lawsuit, Sayer Ji, founder of Greenmedinfo.com, told The Defender:22
"Mainstream media outlets are reporting on Musk's move in a negative light, which is to be expected, given how they've worked in lock-step collusion with CCDH during previous campaigns, either attacking or defending on their behalf, without fail ...
This lawsuit stands to put CCDH, their colluders in the U.S. media and government, as well as their dark money funders overseas, on notice that the laws of this land, and the U.S. Constitution which vivifies them, will not be trampled upon so disgracefully without a good fight."
Jim Jordan Launches Investigation Into CCDH
August 3, 2023, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, also opened an investigation into the CCDH. The group has been ordered to hand over records to the Judiciary Committee detailing its interactions with the U.S. government and the executive branch by August 17, 2023.23 As reported by the Washington Examiner:24
"’We know from the Facebook Files that the Center for Countering Digital Hate was working with the White House to censor speech,’ a senior GOP congressional aide with knowledge of the inquiry said. ‘But how far did it go? Republicans want to find out, and of course subpoenas are on the table if we don’t get answers.’
Jordan's letter25 [to the CCDH] ... is the latest escalation of the GOP's efforts to investigate how the federal government has, in some cases, coordinated with the private sector to flag certain speech, including speech related to COVID-19, as ‘disinformation’ or ‘misinformation’ ...
‘We are interested in understanding the interactions between the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and the federal government in particular, as well as between CCDH and social media companies,’ Jordan wrote in his letter to the center's CEO Imran Ahmed ...
In his letter, Jordan asked the center for communications dating back to January 2015 between itself and employees, contractors, or representatives with the executive branch or social media companies ‘referring or relating to the moderation, deletion, suppression, restriction, demonetization, or reduced circulation of content’ as well as ‘the accuracy or truth of content’ and ‘the attribution of content to the source or participant in a foreign malign or state-sponsored influence operation.’
The chairman also requested a list of employees, contractors, or agents for the center who ‘have communicated’ with tech companies or the government on content moderation — and details on contracts or grants received from the U.S. government on this practice."
What's the Real Purpose Behind the CCDH?
In addition to targeting "anti-vaxxers," the CCDH has expanded its areas of advocacy to also include "climate change misinformation." We can probably expect a "top 10 climate change misinformation superspreader" list any day now to silence people who object to the shutting down of farms, the restriction of travel and the banning of gas stoves in the name of climate change.
At the end of the day, it seems the CCDH was created as a propaganda weapon for an information war, which we're in right now.
When the "Disinformation Dozen" report was published, the CCDH was literally a one-man operation, although he did have a board of directors that oversaw his work. Since then, the CCDH has added several team members, including a head of policy and partnerships (Sarah Eagan), a head of research (Callum Hood), a head of campaigns and communications (Tom Lavelle), and a COO (Jemma Levene).
Before, the board members were all listed on the CCDH website, but that list has now been removed, and a search of UK.gov company filings26 reveals the CCDH's board has undergone quite a few changes over the past couple of years.
That said, in 2021, when "The Disinformation Dozen" report was published, the board members who oversaw and approved that work could be linked to a long list of Deep State strongholds and Great Reset pushers, including:
The Trilateral Commission, the Atlantic Council, the European Council of Foreign Relations, Save the Children Fund (funded by the Gates Foundation and a partner of Gates' GAVI Vaccine Alliance), the British Parliament, the CIA, Reuters and Event 201 (the pandemic exercise held in October 2019 that foreshadowed and "played out" the draconian countermeasures implemented when COVID-19 appeared months later).
Considering the unprecedented and undeserved influence of the CCDH, we really need to get to the bottom of who's directing and funding this organization. Time will tell whether Elon Musk's lawsuit can bring some clarity to what's really behind this organization, whose sole mission appears to be the elimination of free speech, without which democracy cannot exist.
I joined the Boy Scouts when I was a teenager, and it was one of the best experiences of my life. One of the most important lessons I learned was to adopt their motto, "Be Prepared." It has served me well throughout my life and I encourage you to adopt it.
We have not won yet, and this is likely the calm before the storm. Everything points to another crisis coming in the not-too-distant future. It could be another lab-created bioweapon, a nuclear war, internet shutdown or even a fabr!cated al!en !nvas!0n.
A Helpful Resource for the Next Crisis
I have spent most of the last 50 years learning ways to optimize health naturally. There were many mistakes along the way, but year after year I would gradually acquire more knowledge and understanding about foundational health principles that will activate your intrinsic healing capacity.
My commitment to this community is to create 50 to 100 hours of highly detailed information on the basics of staying healthy. Will it cover every possible strategy? Hardly, that would take an entire team of health experts to compile. I might do that in the future, but time is short, and you need a resource you can rely on to get you through the coming crisis.
Many of us believe that unrestricted access to the currently heavily censored internet may eventually vanish altogether. It's crucial to prepare by gathering resources that can guide you through potential crises. Without such preparations, obtaining essential information will become increasingly challenging.
Even with the internet functioning today, accessing this information is already quite difficult, and I truly anticipate it will become even more so in the not-too-distant future.
The video series I'm producing must be hidden from Google, so it will be behind the Substack paywall. You will be able to get access to it for $4 or $5 per month, depending on your payment plan. I would encourage you to subscribe to my Substack site now, as not only will you have full access to this course, but also to all my other content that we can't put on our site anymore.
I donate the Substack fees to the nonprofits that we support, such as the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Consumers for Dental Choice.
This project will likely take me a year to produce and will consume most all my limited free time in the next year, but I feel called to do this. I have been given many gifts in this lifetime and with that comes great responsibility.
When the next crisis strikes, you can rely on the information I am now creating for you, as they are timeless principles that will always help you and your family Take Control of Your Health.
In closing, our mission right now is to get justice for what Chase Bank has done to us, so that, hopefully, they cannot do this to anyone else. Debanking is a social credit control scheme that must be stopped in its tracks, and as frustrating as it is, we accept the challenge of being the pilot case for Florida's anti-debanking legislation.
