Philippines running inquiry into 2021 death spike

A committee of the nation's House of Representatives is asking difficult questions

Filipinos who want to understand what happened in 2021, when the nation had a 43.2% increase in deaths, can now watch the ongoing proceedings of a parliamentary committee investigating the topic.

Congressman, the Honourable Dan Fernadez (between the flags above), chairs the House of Representatives’ Committee on Public Order and Safety.

That committee decided to set up an inquiry into “the 213,984 ‘excess deaths’ in the Philippines in 2021”, saying that the possible causes of these deaths put into question the overall safety and effectiveness of the response of the country’s healthcare system during the pandemic. This could be a threat to public order, they added.

There have been two hearings so far, on the 14th and 21st November. They can be watched on Facebook here and here. The next hearing is likely to be in early December.

The committee has the power to require government officials and others from bodies such as the Department of Heath, the Philippines Food and Drug Administration, the Philippines Statistical Authority (PSA), the police, military and emergency services to appear to answer its questions.

Transcripts of the meetings have been requested by ‘Super Sally’ of the Supersally Substack, who is a member of Lunas Pilipinas, a group of concerned Philippines citizens and residents from all walks of life.

The Philippines is different - why?

The PSA reported the spike in deaths on February 24th 2023 in a Vital Statistics report, saying deaths were up by 43.2% from the previous year.

The data makes the Philippines an outlier among countries analysed so far for the Excess Death Stats project - a collaboration between Clarity on Health and Monica Smit founder of Reignite Democracy Australia.

In the project the same approach is used for each country, aiming to put the nation’s excess deaths into perspective, by comparing the largest increase in death rate during the covid era with past data from that country’s statistical office.

The Philippines spike in 2021 is far more dramatic than the largest annual excess death rate rises during the covid period seen in Australia, New Zealand, Denmark or Sweden (the latter two are yet to be reported on the Excess Death Stats site). These have been calculated by the project’s teams of volunteers to range from 4.7% in Sweden in 2020 to 15.3% in Australia in 2022.

The project’s latest Philippines graph (below), uses data from the PSA back to 2000.

Although we do a slightly different sum¹ from the PSA (but using their data), we find an excess death rate of 42.9% for 2021, which is very similar to the 43.2% spike in deaths that the PSA announced. The 2021 spike dwarfs the largest annual change in the death rate over the previous 20 years, which was just 5.7% in 2005. It’s clearly highly abnormal.

Note, the data for 2022 is still not complete, being based on the PSA’s July 31st 2023 provisional vital statistics release.

The increased death rate in 2022 compared with pre-pandemic levels may look trivial at 8.8% compared with the huge rate in 2021, but it remains a high level of excess deaths. Furthermore, after such a huge die-off in 2021, the fact that the death rate remains above pre-covid levels is concerning. One would expect a large deficit of deaths in 2022, due to a pull-forward effect.

If you would like to know more, including whether the large number of excess deaths in 2021 can be explained by covid deaths, please go to www.excessdeathstats.com/philippines.

The people of the Philippines deserve to know what caused the huge number of excess deaths in 2021, and hopefully this inquiry will start that process.

The hypothesis that one or more of the covid vaccinations contributed to the excess deaths must be objectively examined, not simply dismissed. There is no reason why the vaccines should not be put under scrutiny, along with other possible causes such as: health effects from lockdowns; economic hardship from the Government’s covid response; inadequate healthcare provision; inappropriate treatments for covid; effects from long covid; and deaths from covid itself.

If you have other suggestions for factors that should be investigated please put them in the comments.

To keep up with developments on the Inquiry, follow Super Sally’s Substack.

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1. At Excess Death Stats we compare death rates with the average death rate in the five preceding years, and for deaths during the covid era we compare with the average for the five most recent ‘normal’ years (2015-2019). We use death rates (deaths per population) rather than simple numbers of deaths, as this takes population growth or decline into account.