instead, they used the method favoured by the u.s. centers for disease control and prevention, which uses zeros instead of negative figures.
the researchers estimate that, in canada, under this method, excess deaths between the start of the pandemic and nov. 14, 2020, would have between between 19,680 and 24,441. the official covid-19 death figures as of that date (11,009) account for between 56 per cent and 41 per cent of those excess deaths.
what could account for the other 8,671 to 13,432 deaths? one common explanation is toxic drugs. but the researchers say they accounted for this possibility, and subtracted the toxic drug deaths from their estimates.
as a result, the total number of excess deaths among those aged 45 to 84 in canada was estimated to be 9,297 as of nov. 28. the researchers said 3,531 of those can be attributed to covid-19, based on the government’s official numbers, but that still leaves 5,766 excess deaths.
the report gives a number of reasons why they are likely more unaccounted covid-19 deaths.
“we can never be absolutely certain … but what you do is you sort of triangulate, right, into different types of evidence, and you say based on what we know about how many people were infected, and it’s much higher than the number of cases that were actually detected,” explained moriarty. “we know what percentage of those people should have died of covid-19. and so from that we can say what what those numbers look like. and those numbers actually match really closely to what the the excess deaths were in 2020.”