Philippines All Cause Mortality Patterns Show That Pediatric Deaths Dropped During Lockdowns, Rose When Covid-19 Vaccination Started, and Rose Further following 2022 Catchup Vaccination Campaigns?

Population data shows concerning trending in pediatric mortality patterns. Was the drop due to avoidance of well child visits? Is the rise due to catch up vaccination? These questions need answers!

As I have been analyzing population data, I have noted a particular and unexpected rise in pediatric deaths right around when the Chikiting Bakuna campaign, a mass pediatric catchup vaccination, was being pushed from April to June 2022 (last week of each month) to try to get all the children who had missed well child visits due to Covid-19 lockdowns vaccinated against polio, measles, hepatitis B, pneumonia, and other vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs).

The figure below shows trending in pediatric mortality in the Philippines from 2015 to 2022. Just over 20,000 babies in the Philippines do not make their first birthday! Around 50,000 children aged 19 and younger die each year! Pediatric deaths in the Philippines are an incredible tragedy and may mostly reflect malnutrition, poverty, maybe access to preventative medical care, and lack of adequate access to emergency medical care.

During the first year of the pandemic when most children didn’t have access to medical care there was a big drop in pediatric deaths. 10,579 fewer pediatric deaths, to be exact! Could health care access be detrimental to children? Could more children be harmed by medical interventions than are helped?

Covid-19 vaccination of 12-17 year old children started in 4th quarter of 2021. Covid-19 vaccination of 5-11 year old children started in February 2022. Children younger than 5 were not supposed to be given Covid-19 vaccination. However, I have now heard of local accounts of younger children being injected anyway, in the context of very young children currently hospitalized with apparent rare and turbo cancers, whose parents report they did receive Covid-19 vaccines.

Here are the deaths broken down by month over the pandemic years. Please note the 2023 data shown is still preliminary and will rise with late registrations.

Clearly something started going on with babies and children’s health when the Covid-19 vaccine rollouts started to their parents (marked with a v and an arrow in the figure below), even when they were not being vaccinated.

The children started dying in greater numbers in 2021 when their parents were injected with Covid-19 vaccines. This inflection is particularly marked from July to September 2021 when there was mass rollout of Covid-19 vaccines to the general population.

Please also note that I still believe, with strong basis, that the end of 2021 mortality data is incomplete, and the apparent drop in deaths in the 4th quarter of 2021 may represent missing data rather than any real drop in deaths. I believe that deaths at the end of 2021 should still rise even above the September levels when vaccination uptake stood only at about 24% of the population rather than the ultimate 71.6% of the population.

Back to the children. Why would they start dying at higher rates when their parents and caregivers were jabbed? Was the parents’ / carers’ health affected and they were unable to care or provide for their children as well as previously? Shedding? Increase in other infections within the community secondary to vaccine induced immune suppression? Other?

In 2022 there is another very big inflection in pediatric deaths. This happens to coincide with the rollout out of catch up routine vaccination! The inflection is particularly marked for children aged 0 - 4, the target age for this catchup and when many children were possibly given a full set of all of the missing vaccines in one lot. Is there any possible causal link? Well-child vaccination are the main medical intervention that most children receive. They are the main intervention that was not (or was only minimally) delivered during lockdowns.

These patterns of mortality raise a lot of questions that should be thoroughly investigated and addressed, but are very unlikely to be given the government’s and DOH’s very strong commitment to mass vaccination of all types and as their main form of preventative health care.

Malnutrition is a very big issue in the Philippines, particularly for young children. Tuberculosis (despite widespread BGC administration, typically given in early infancy) and parasitic infections are endemic. Vaccination of children with marginal health status and with limited access to medical care for treatment in case of adverse reactions may result in poorer outcomes. Further, in poor and remote communities, high fever where the child is not taking sufficient fluids, or gastric illnesses with diarrhea and vomiting can rapidly result in death if the child cannot receive supportive rehydration in time.

Following is my personal opinion: though educated and researched, I am not a doctor so take this as opinion only!

While emergency trauma care (care for the unlucky or the foolish), emergency surgical care (think appendicitis, acute gall bladder, surgical treatment of wounds, lumps and bumps, blockages, etc), emergency obstetric care, rehydration and supportive care protocols for various illnesses, and antibiotics judiciously used for infections are lifesaving, preventative medicine and interventions may be detrimental to health! Particularly as these are now focused on earning money for service providers, far more than the health of the individuals who have been convinced that they need to access these services.

Detrimental aspects include invasive screening (I believe that a good medical history, physical hands on examination, blood pressure checking, and basic testing of blood sugar, CBC, urinalyses, fecalysis should be sufficient screening for most things and together indicate if there really is a need for further investigations), medications for conditions that don’t need medication (statins for cholesterol are a biggie, many psychiatric and behavior modification medications are the top of my list.)

The balance of evidence points to vaccination causing more harm than benefit! There is already abundant evidence of this, despite attempts to quash it. For anyone wanting to look further into this, I recommend the book “Turtles All The Way Down”.

Medicine needs to go back to its basics, its roots of care. Its roots based in true whole body wellness and maintenance of that wellness. That wellness comes from community, nutrition, lifestyle, spirituality. Is based on the premise that humans were made perfect. Humans do not need to intervene in that perfect! They just need to support it! First do no harm!