Denying the Obvious

“Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false …”

That the end times will be associated with mass deception is not generally disputed. Both the Lord and his apostles warned of it. I used to wonder how the whole world might be taken in so successfully. Are most people really that gullible?

Well, yes, apparently.

Of course, there’s nothing terribly remarkable about a deception sent by God being inordinately effective. If the mass blinding of the population is miraculous, then surely the most bizarre assertions may become generally accepted. Most agree the “strong delusion” associated with the man of lawlessness described in 2 Thessalonians 2 has yet to occur, though it’s possible the seeds of the deception are planted already. What exactly the Big Lie will entail is the subject of much speculation to minimal profit: scripture simply does not say.

Believing What Is False

While the world still awaits the strong delusion of 2 Thessalonians 2, plenty of less spectacular falsehoods continue to enjoy widespread acceptance. One of my current favorites is the absolute refusal of the media and medical authorities to accept the obvious where the ongoing worldwide spate of excess deaths is concerned. Their feigned perplexity on the subject is as authentic as a new Beatles single in 2024.

A recent column in The Lancet, one of the oldest and most prestigious medical journals in the world, reflects on the UK excess death statistics for 2022 and 2023, long after the peaks associated with the COVID pandemic. Excess deaths are deaths in numbers beyond normal over a specific period, and the UK stats serve as a decent proxy for the entire Western world. The US, Canada, Australia and Europe are all experiencing the same thing at comparable rates. COVID is no longer taking lives at the level it did two and three years ago, and yet people are still dying in unprecedented numbers, numbers that require some kind of explanation, usually between 8-10% above average for any given period. This is occurring across all age groups except the most elderly, the group hit hardest by COVID. The immediate causes of death are primarily heart related, and the largest numbers of excess deaths are occurring in private homes, suggesting sudden onset symptoms of fatal distress that provide little or no opportunity for medical intervention.

When obliged to speculate about the cause behind the cause, five British “experts” then offer the lamest of lame conjectures:

“The causes of these excess deaths are likely to be multiple and could include the direct effects of Covid-19 infection, acute pressures on NHS acute services resulting in poorer outcomes from episodes of acute illness, and disruption to chronic disease detection and management. Further analysis by cause and by age- and sex-group may help quantify the relative contributions of these causes.”

While the immediate causes of death are surely multiple, because the excess mortality stats have been inflated going on two years at approximately the same rate with no sign of tailing off, it’s far more likely there is a single common factor lurking behind the scenes.

Dissecting Lame Explanations

A few observations on the speculative causes of excess mortality posited by the authors:

1/ The Effects of COVID-19

While the effects of COVID-19 infection were definitely relevant to the excess death numbers in 2020 and 2021, they are insignificant today. This is most evident from the bespoke analyses linked to by the authors at the bottom of the article in the “References” section. One of these breaks down excess deaths in England by ethnic group.

During the three month period beginning March 21, 2020, for example, there were 404 excess deaths among whites aged 25 to 49. Within that same group in the same period, COVID-19 accounted for 576 deaths. There is no doubt any excess mortality during this period early in the pandemic was almost entirely the result of the virus.

Fast forward now to a comparable three month period beginning April 1, 2023, again for whites aged 25 to 49. During this period, England saw 432 excess deaths of which COVID was the cause of only 45. The total excess mortality for that group for a comparable period three years after the onset of the pandemic is actually slightly higher than the earlier data set, but the contribution of COVID-19 to the mix today is only 12% of what it was in 2020, making it almost entirely a non-factor.

So then, the direct effects of COVID-19 infection have almost no bearing at all on the excess mortality currently going on in England, and yet the authors list it first among their speculative culprits, which tells you what follows will be equally unconvincing.

2/ Pressure on Acute Healthcare Services

The second most likely cause of excess mortality listed is “acute pressures on NHS acute services resulting in poorer outcomes from episodes of acute illness”. There is no doubt the COVID crisis caused severe pressure on the acute services of healthcare systems in almost every nation in the world, and few healthcare services have completely recovered, especially those in Canada that fired significant numbers of healthcare employees for refusing the COVID vaccine. Large numbers of the excess deaths that occurred at the height of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 are surely attributable to the failure of healthcare systems.

But is this the case with today’s excess deaths? Not at all. Only four paragraphs later, we read this:

“Looking at place of death, from 3rd June 2022 to 30th June 2023 there were 22% more deaths in private homes than expected compared with 10% more in hospitals, but there was no excess in deaths in care homes and 12% fewer deaths than expected in hospices. For deaths involving cardiovascular diseases the relative excess in private homes was higher than all causes at 27%.”

Translation: the majority of recent excess deaths are from some form of heart disease and the majority occurred suddenly in private homes. Dead people don’t strain acute healthcare services. When somebody dies in a private home, the only conceivable stress on the healthcare system is freeing up a medical examiner to determine cause of death. After a few thousand unexpected cardiac events in young people, even that must become a perfunctory exercise.

So then, acute pressures on England’s healthcare system have next to no bearing on the excess deaths there. The claim is self-refuting.

3/ Disruption to Chronic Disease Detection/Management

The third speculative cause is a little more interesting, and that is “disruption to chronic disease detection and management”. This is more than a little likely to be a contributing factor in excess mortality. I didn’t see a doctor once during the pandemic or since, but friends in Canada who did report much longer waiting periods for diagnosis and treatment. This is almost surely the case in England as well. And yet, we are two years out from the height of the pandemic, from exceptionally crowded emergency rooms and strained equipment resources. It is impossible that poor management of chronic medical conditions is the primary cause of so many excess deaths, especially since so many of these critical events are cardiac related, and so many are happening without prior warning signs in homes, cars and stadiums to otherwise healthy, younger people. You can’t manage a condition you don’t know exists. It also begs the question of what created all these brand new chronic disease cases that need managing in the first place.

While chronic disease detection and management is definitely not what it should be, it is surely not responsible for 8,453 excess deaths among white English people of all ages in the three month period commencing April of this year. All the timely annual checkups in the world would not have diminished those numbers significantly.

A National Curiosity Deficit Disorder

So then, the authors of a carefully documented analysis of excess mortality in England over the last four years can offer no remotely convincing explanation for the unprecedented levels of unexpected deaths in England or anywhere else. Dr. John Campbell asks, “Have we got a national curiosity deficit disorder?” This would certainly appear to be the case in England.

Our observant readers have surely noted the complete lack of interest in the medical community about the effects of COVID-19 vaccine uptake on the excess mortality statistics. Nobody is even slightly interested in the possibility that a vaccine that has to date caused a documented 36,726 deaths, 212,294 hospitalizations and almost 100,000 life threatening medical events mostly involving the heart might be making some small contribution to the ongoing excess mortality in the UK and around the world. This despite the fact that the VAERS database tracking adverse events related to COVID vaccination from which the above statistics are taken is demonstrably underreported by as much as a factor of forty times. Even the UK government acknowledges the vaccine has injured or killed many, and is already compensating victims and families.

And yet adverse reactions to the COVID vaccine show up precisely nowhere on any list of speculative causes of excess mortality. What could possibly account for such widespread, calculated myopia?

Chronic Myopia

Two things at least, I think:

First, a falsehood is most eagerly believed by those who helped spread it, however inadvertently. This is why Nebuchadnezzar insisted all his people declare him a god on pain of a gruesome death, why Winston Smith was forced to repeat that 2 + 2 = 5, why woke ideology demands we confess a man can become a woman and vice versa, and why Greta Thunberg teaches school children to repeat the mantra that all the polar bears are dying when the population is actually perfectly stable. People who are obliged to repeat a lie eventually believe it. In England, a reported 92% of over-12s have had at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, and somebody had to make every one of those decisions independently ... and then find a way to rationalize, live with or explain away any adverse effects of those decisions. The lie that the COVID vaccines are safe, and that they save lives, has been repeated ad infinitum at every level of society on the basis of no reliable scientific evidence at all. The obvious concern that, in a non-trivial number of cases and at consistent, ongoing levels, the vaccines have done the precise opposite of what was advertized incites no significant interest in the general population because the overwhelming majority of Brits have been successfully coerced or indoctrinated into participating in the possible compromise of their own immune systems and those of their children, and/or damaging their own organs. Who wants to self-flagellate over that?

Second, a falsehood is easier to believe when acknowledging its possibility would force you to reevaluate a basic article of faith. Despite all evidence, most people, including many Christians, are desperate to believe in the basic goodness and honesty of the people in charge, the rule of law and the system in which we live. For many, it is more comforting to believe in the trustworthiness of the medical community and the goodwill of our country’s leaders than to acknowledge growing evidence that, whether in incompetence or bad faith, Western governments are almost uniformly acting against the best interests of their populations and that our children may grow up in a world actively hostile to them.

The “strong delusion” of the end times will come from God, at it will be unbelievably effective and pervasive. But sometimes I think the Lord need not bother. If our governments didn’t lie to us, most of us would lie to ourselves.