CBS, bij monde van Ruben van Gaalen en Maarten Keulemans (persoonlijk en in de Volkskrant) relativeren de inmiddels niet meer te ontkennen oversterfte. Ze doen dit door te verwijzen naar de Spaanse Griep. Die zou immers hetzelfde patroon vertonen: jaren van oversterfte na de pandemie. Dus de huidige oversterfte behoeft geen verklaring, die is immers 'normaal'. Maar klopt dat wel?
A historical graph from England. The Spanish Flu started in June 1918 and really hit in early winter, with a follow-up wave in March-April 1919.
On maurice.nl we posted some highlights from this article with a brief introduction to the masking of excess mortality by CBS.
Op X wordt herhaaldelijk uitgelegd dat de oversterfte die men nu (kennelijk) niet meer kan ontkennen, normaal is, na een pandemie. Samengevat: "Het is hetzelfde patroon van oversterfte, jarenlang". Normaal dus eigenlijk. Niks "onverklaards" aan.
Maarten Keulemans Xt uiteraard op eigen titel maar dankzij zijn functie als wetenschapsredacteur bij de Volkskrant -en zijn in de coronapropagandachaos verkregen titel 'journalist van het jaar'- beschouwen velen hem als expert. Hij zelf niet het minst.
Same pattern?🤔
The deaths surrounding Corona and the Spanish Flu are listed here. 1918 and 2020 are listed below each other in the same column.
Wie ziet hier in hemelsnaam hetzelfde patroon in...!?
The Spanish Flu peak seems to have all but disappeared after 1918.
View numbers or download them yourself
CBS data (numbers x1000).1Download older CBS data
There are unrounded figures from the last decades2Download recent CBS data
Eigenlijk is dit plaatje al voldoende debunk maar om alle 'ja maars' te voorkomen, toch ook nog even de relatieve sterftekansen, rekening houdend met de bevolkingsgroottes.
The average life expectancy around 1920 was less than 65 years. Now many more people over the age of 80 are participating, which slowly increases the average mortality risk. But still below the level of that time, thanks to improved hygiene, nutrition, care, infrastructure, etc.
We can now eliminate population growth because we are looking at mortality rates. Aging plays an important role, although we can see in Chart 1 of 2015-2019 how slowly this is happening, even at a time when aging is clearly taking place.
In 2020 voltrekt zich een abrupte plateauverhoging van meer dan 10%. De Corona-situatie verklaart 2020. Maar daarna? Vergrijzing kan niet in dat ene epidemiejaar hebben plaatsgevonden. Wat dan? Na-ijlen van Covid? (En dan wel C-support opheffen? - maar dat terzijde)
Agreements?
Admittedly, there is a striking similarity between both pandemics and that is the lack of under-mortality after the pandemic: the compensation for advanced mortality, which you would expect. We know that the Spanish Flu mainly affected young people. They would not die in the months or first years after the pandemic, so you would not see any under-mortality there. With Corona it was different: mainly the elderly died, as always with flu epidemics. And yet no under-mortality. Who died in their place? And to what?
How to lie with baselines
Maarten Keulemans on X:
"The pattern is simple: na pandemie is er ALTUD periode van verhoogde sterfte." "Covid als directe doodsoorzaak vervaagt. Wat je ziet is waarschijnlijk typisch naijleffect pandemie, zoals je ook na Spaanse Griep zag." "Waarschijnlijke oorzaak: naweeën nieuw virus, zelfde patroon als na Spaanse Griep." "Na pandemieën volgen jaren van oversterfte. Zie Spaanse Griep 1918."
Maarten shows this graph as proof, which cannot be reconciled with Graph 1:
So I recreated it with CBS figures, in clearer colors:
With that baseline you can indeed see that the gray line after the Spanish Flu only shows excess mortality (except briefly in 1923 and 1924, but let's go.) That would have been a plausible baseline as a prognosis just before or just after the Spanish Flu: use the figures up to and including 1917.
But we can check that now, because we now have data that they did not have at the time. If we extend the graph with this baseline to 1980 instead of 1940, we see what goes wrong:
The baseline was just a little off.
Nature is more complex than a mathematical function. So let's come up with a baseline that better fits the broad line of the actually observed trend, excluding 1918 and 1919. I choose a polynomial because an exponential line from 1900-1917 becomes less flat at the end (move the mouse over the graph to see the difference). I immediately placed a bandwidth around it as an optical guide, which neatly includes the meandering of the mortality. 1920 already falls in there! No delirium.
"Standaardiseren"
De lijnen in beide grafieken waren nagenoeg identiek. Het grafiekje was van lage resolutie en het gaat om kleine verschillen, dus zonder onderliggende data kunnen we het alleen visueel beoordelen. Deze visuals zijn ge-update na plaatsing. De referentieperiode is uitgebreid tot het correcte 1917. De epidemie begon immers pas in voorjaar 2018. De 'bewijsgrafiek' is ge-upscaled en het dunnere CBS-datalijntje werkt nauwkeuriger. Hieronder dus een gereviseerde analyse.
The yellow reference period only lasted until 1916. The Spanish Flu really only started in 1918. With 1917 added, the baseline clearly increases. Someone wanted to make it very clear with the evidence graph that this lag really did not need to be discussed. Without wanting to stand out.
It's all about subtle data nudging.
Wat moeten we nou denken van het jarenlang naar voren brengen van de Spaanse Griep als voorbeeld van een modelpandemie, als bewijs dat er altijd jaren van oversterfte zijn na een pandemie, dus onze oversterfte is eigenlijk heel normaal...?
And then try to get it right with a graph
- with a very questionable baseline
- too short a reference period so that the last point is slightly lower
- with deviating data points (lower than CBS data) in the reference period
- in which the data points in the first years after the pandemic are slightly higher than those found at CBS?
Normalizing excess mortality since 2021 takes many forms.
The narrative switch: Spanish Flu ended quickly
Ik kom er niet goed uit. Dit is eigenlijk een 'How to lie with Statistics' voor gevorderden. Dat past niet bij Maarten Keulemans. Iemand die opzichtig mispeert door oversterfte aan te willen tonen met een RIVM-baseline3See the explanation at the bottom of this article, zou die echt zelf die grafiek in elkaar hebben geknutseld...? Toch nog eventjes verder gekeken bij de usual suspects... en ja hoor.
CONSENSUS TO APRIL 2023
Ruben van Gaalen: Spanish Flu ended quickly
Ruben van Gaalen is senior wetenschappelijk onderzoeker en woordvoerder van het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS, pay-off: "Voor wat er feitelijk gebeurt"). Hij vertelde een tegengesteld verhaal. Tenminste, toen de oversterfte nog niet zo'n drama was. Dat begon voor hen eigenlijk pas na de motie Omtzigt.
Plottwist in de consensus
In 2023, no one could avoid it anymore: the excess mortality was seriously wrong. The narrative had to be adjusted.
That Spanish Flu story didn't turn out so well after all.
De levensverwachting, de actuarissen - er was geen ontkennen meer aan. Wat te doen? Normaliseren!
You know what: we'll just throw the term out there "gestandaardiseerde sterfte" tegenaan - dan deinzen mensen respectvol terug. (Dit is overigens helemaal niet standardized, this is simply dividing deaths by population sizes, it's called "Crude mortality".) And what do we see to our surprise?
CONSENSUS THAT APRIL 2023
Ruben van Gaalen: Spanish Flu lasted for years!
In this way, independent science supports government policy. Hand in hand with the media.
CBS tried to create a delay: the epidemic that started in 1918 dragged on for years and it was not until 1923 that the mortality trend resumed. That seemed smart.
But for the Covid period that started in 2020, this would mean that the mortality trend would resume in 2025. That didn't work out for him.
The RIVM explicitly states: our mortality monitor is not suitable for identifying structural increases in mortality.
From RIVM's answer to parliamentary questions.4Letter RIVM in response to parliamentary questions
A science journalist knows this. Maarten just does it anyway. As if excess mortality only occurs in the peaks outside the blue. So I wonder: Why does someone play such a fool?
Hello Ruben. Hello Maarten.
More CBS debunking? That's possible. This article from October 2022, for example.
Footnotes
- 1Download older CBS data
- 2Download recent CBS data
- 3
- 4Letter RIVM in response to parliamentary questions
there wasn't even a corona "pandemic" at all!
Very good, on second thought I let Maarten Keulemans throw sand in my eyes.
Moreover, what I hadn't thought about - and what you also don't point out here - is that there is an important difference between the two pandemics. A pandemic that mainly affects young people does not subsequently result in under-mortality - but a pandemic such as Covid, which mainly affects the elderly, does. The fact that this under-mortality did not occur after the Delta wave also says something.
Certainly. That actually has to be included in the context of the comparison. The only similarity that can be found is the absence of under-mortality. Let's see if I can get it in there somewhere.
Added, thanks!
Fine – but didn't go very well in the rush: “older people came afterwards”: “afterwards” has to go, should be a space.
🙏🏻 – It was getting late.
Yes, the Spanish flu... I completely agree with you, Anton. That comparison with Spanish flu is completely flawed.
But I am surprised that a very long term is 'suddenly' used and viewed for the Spanish flu, but not for corona. This is cut off at a 5-year or 9-year trend.
I think you can elaborate a bit further.
For example, if you take 1913-1917 as a baseline (which we often see with corona, 2015-2019), then that 'excess mortality' will be over within a year.
I mean, keep using the same methods when you compare.
Or try the 'average' method. What you saw Ruben do every now and then.
Contrast the average of 1913-1917 with 1918 and 1919.
And compare this with 2015-2019 and compare this to 2020 and 2021.
Comparing apples with apples, and oranges with oranges.
I suspect that will be a laugh.
Yes, I'm sure... 🙂 I haven't come across 2015-2019 for a while. And certainly not with the linear trends we were working on at the time.
But longer is not necessarily better, of course, you will have to look at demarcating periods where an unambiguous development can be seen. If you look at that entire graph up to now, you also see waves or dents that make you think “what happened there?”
But this example certainly illustrates how you can misjudge the future with wrong baseline choices.
Strange that if you look at the dates of Ruben van Gaalen's messages, he has 2 opposing opinions at the same time in 2023. April 2023 a different opinion, but November 2023 back to his original opinion.
I think his twitter account was hacked…..or just lying….
Damn it! I completely overlooked it! I think it was a previously planned tweet, with Hootsuite or something. Or an incorrect copy/paste. Well – they can explain that themselves 😂
Mortality (below or above) is a different measure than period life expectancy.
Van Galen applies double standards.
Sometimes Maarten says useful things, including the fact that there was no flu vaccine in 1918. I looked into it and what Maarten says is (approximately) correct. There was a lot of experimenting with 'flu' vaccines, but vaccination against the flu virus at population level was not possible in those years.
The so-called Rosenau experiment was performed at the same time. The following was done to about 100 American soldiers/volunteers:
The team (from Rosenau) had the volunteers sit directly in front of the faces of infected influenza patients, after which the sick patients breathed directly into the open mouths of the volunteers. The patients then also coughed in the volunteers' faces five times. The researchers also injected the test subjects with blood from flu patients.
“I dare say that the volunteers withstood the technique of these experiments extremely well,” Rosenau wrote. “They were inspired by the thought that they might be able to help others.”
None of the volunteers got sick.
Rosenau concluded: “We approached this outbreak knowing the cause of the disease. If we have learned anything, it is that we don't know exactly what is going on.'
See: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/221687
You can make whatever you want of Rosenau's conclusion, I think it's a fair conclusion: they had no idea at the time what caused the 'flu'. At that time, flu was (correctly) a catch-all term for seasonal respiratory illness of unknown cause, and flu (in fairness) still is. Just read up on Stafan Lanka.
Anyway, this is all besides the point; I am not the Wiki for Maarten and Ruben van Gaalen here, let them respond to the above article themselves.
Do they respond? -Who knows, but I don't think the chances are high.
Still, one more thing: something that has been making me laugh for a while now, all those people who color within the lines who 'in a personal capacity' (usually in the evening after work) sometimes want to say something that is (possibly) outside the lines. You used to have that program Jambers, on RTL5, a bit late in the evening. Such personalities also passed the camera there.
'During the day he is an ordinary man,' the Flemish-speaking Jambers would say with a soft gee, 'but in the evening'... oops oops.
I think back to that program when I hear all those x-ers and tweeters speaking 'in a personal capacity'!
When you think about it, it's a bit stupid what they say about those vaccines, isn't it? Since it should reduce mortality, but it has not done so and it is rapidly decreasing with the Spanish flu. The Spanish flu is special. Normally with flu the old and the weak die. That wasn't necessarily the case. Most deaths were among those in their thirties. So the question is whether this was the flu or a bacteria caused by the experiment.
Here is a very interesting publication about stigma towards unvaccinated people during Covid: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/Stigma-and-Its-Consequences.pdf
Here is an authority for Maarten – “Dr Helmut Sterz, former Chief Toxicologist of Pfizer Europe, speaking at the Corona Investigation in the Bundestag, March 19, 2026.”
https://x.com/RefugeOfSinner5/status/2035725599504044038?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2035940446615261552%7Ctwgr%5E4bdc849523019320e4822ce94aa07ca5a667644e%7Ctwcon%5Es3_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fchildrenshealthdefense.org%2Fdefender%2Felon-musk-covid-vaccine-injury-former-pfizer-official-shots-likely-killed-thousands-germany%2F
This man clearly chooses his conscience and leaves the sinking ship. Who's next? Anyone? Time for a paradigm shift? Or would you rather be the bagman ('the slowest perpetrator to be caught and to pay for it')?
We didn't miss that!
https://virusvaria.nl/helmut-sterz-ex-hoofdtoxicoloog-bij-pfizer-europe-doet-boekje-open-bij-duitse-enquetecommissie/
Haha, I forgot about that 🙂
3309 views right? Perhaps through words such as Spanish flu or through the use of certain names 🤷
Hierbij een keurige uitleg van het puzzelstuk
https://youtu.be/Ac2eOqHc8Ws
Dank Hans! Deze verdient een apart artikel, komt eraan.