Interesting thread from @mike_honey_, comparing different covid variants with what the death stats were doing at the time.
Mike Honey (@[email protected])
When you look at the weekly mortality and resulting excess deaths, the JN.1 "Pirola" wave of late-2022 – early-2023 stands out as a dramatic departure from the trend. Weekly excess deaths peaked at around +8,000 or +65%, and there were around 30,000 excess deaths in a 10-week wave . Then for the rest of 2023 and 2024, there were other anomalies driven by waves of COVID, sparked by new variants. But as the new variants were all derived from Pirola, their impact was mostly lower. However the XEC COVID wave in early 2025 combined with waning immunity and vaccination coverage to drive another significant spike in excess deaths, bucking the trend. 🧵

