Troll on X

by Anton Theunissen | 6 apr 2026, 15:04

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Virusvaria readers are not notorious X-visitors, is my impression. I see a few reposts every now and then, but in general it seems to be a different audience. Let me therefore briefly take you through my X-adventure this week.

It started with this post from Wilfred, who has a promising bar graph after his name.

Here he denies the recent excess mortality among relatively young people and shows a declining line graph.

But at the bottom right, in recent years, the graph shows a clear jump with the top in 2021 with an increased level thereafter.

April 1, I thought.

Maar de dag daarna post hij hij een screenshot van diezelfde eigen tweet, aangevuld met de tekst "Toch geweldig dit?" en 'bewijs' van Grok, die wat overheidsstatements samenvat:

"Volgens de CBS-data in de grafiek daalt het sterftecijfer onder 0-65- jarigen al decennia en ligt het nu ruim onder het 2015-2019-gemiddelde (rond 155 per 100.000). Geen extra sterfgevallen bij relatief jonge mensen de laatste jaren. Totale oversterfte (2022-2025) zit vooral bij 65+ door corona-nasleep, uitgestelde zorg en vergrijzing. Bron: CBS StatLine en opendata."

And if AI summarizes that, then great!

Grok conveniently overlooks the jump in 2021.

What to do. I just took a screenshot of the bottom right corner, optically drawn a guide line... Isn't this great...?

That was the end of it - I thought. Not so.

What had he just done? He had extended my helpline. You can't just do that, of course. He also did it wrong because his line descended at a steeper angle than my guide line. (Move over the graph with your mouse)

Even that was wrong. Why such a person puts a bar graph after his name, I have no idea. Something like a cool tattoo on the shoulder of an outcast, but as a virtual marker of intellect for people who want to belong.

Because he previously believed in Grok's assessment, I asked Grok to look at the help line to see if he saw a break in the trend there.

Grok confirmed: "Kortom: ja, er is een duidelijke trendbreuk rond 2020-2022. De blauwe lijn gedraagt zich daarna structureel anders dan de langetermijn dalende lijn."

Then you would expect that someone would be made to think. But no.

And here's where it gets interesting. While it was argued that there was nothing wrong, that there was no excess mortality in the form of more than expected deaths, something shifted.

OK - that was step 1. So there was a trend break in mortality.

In the meantime, a troll militia had already come to his aid. Enjoy for a moment how they accused me of extending the helpline. This is why a lot of you don't have fun with X anymore, I think.

All insignificant texts without a trace of substantive interest. I was surprised to see Maarten Keulemans trolling this, but now that I think about it, this might be a place where he feels right at home.

You have rarely seen such meaningless texts together. I know we live in a democracy and everyone belongs, but still...

Rene Smit (not a troll, he has made many analyses, mainly focused on healthcare factors) also seemed to emphasize that the helpline was wrong. He posted a link to a blog article from 2024 in which he explains that with a quadratic trend line (the yellow curve) you get very different results than with a linear one (the green). This graph (which will come back later):

The curved yellow line is a 'quadratic fit'

What do you do then, leave it alone? Write an article about it? So that initially became an X-thread. See below.¹

The answer

Corona made its appearance in 2020. In the years that followed, we were protected by vaccinations, the Covid mortality dropped too far in 2022 to continue reporting separately in 2023. But in total, more than 6,500 too many deaths of people under the age of 65 (!), calculated from 2021 to 2025.

@mkeulemans with your 'discovery of pandemic years' 😂 Maybe it was new to you; not for me.

Fun game: cover the legend and name the colors in chronological order. (Explanation for those who think that 6,500 premature funerals seems like small beer: that is indeed bad. That does not belong in that age group.) 1/6

If we divide those numbers from above by the size of the age group in that same year, we can identify trends, for example a trend derived from 2000-2019 and a trend from 2010-2019. It's a bit crude but good enough for this group (under 65 only) and for this purpose. Both exponential trends by the way, @rcsmit and @WWesterveld1 - before you start drawing lines again. 2/6

Now the population is growing and that can distort things somewhat. It's not too bad because the image remains the same, but people who are strict think about it differently. So we apply the percentages found to a fixed population size, for example that of 2025. Then we get a better feeling for the numbers. We choose the trend that expects the most mortality and therefore produces the least excess mortality. 3/6

2020 wouldn't even be so shockingly high compared to that trend - if it were a one-off outlier. A nasty virus and no vaccines in 2020 - what a shitty pandemic. But it did not remain a pandemic outlier: it turned out to be a trend break. With the highlight being the year that we were all protected almost at the same time, 2021.

The level remained elevated afterwards, even when the disease disappeared. Do you understand the difference between a temporary increase and a trend break? @mkeulemans? I see Grok mentioned often, so maybe that will help you. He's pretty vaxophilic and consensus-biased, but he did pull the numbers from CBS, crunch them through the Chow test and... he couldn't get away with it.

A clear, significant trend break. 4/6

And please don't bring up the post-WW1 Spanish Flu again. After previous periods of high mortality, such as the Spanish flu [...] life expectancy quickly returned to its previous level. Subsequently, the trend before the period with high mortality continued. (source: CBS http://t.ly/U29Gz)

They don't always tell it like it is, but this was not politically charged and could be confirmed everywhere. Except probably for virologists.

By the way, actuaries also agree: "In 2024 was de oversterfte lager (2,4%) dan in 2025 (3,4%). Hierdoor is er in 2025 sprake van een verdere toename van de oversterfte." Not read? (https://virusvaria.nl/actuarissen-over-de-sterfte-in-2025/) 5/6

And @WWesterveld1 You find drawing lines funny, right? Look here, and now you have to resist @rcsmit say that's HIS line 😇

And on the other @droeftoeters who don't go further than guffawing and posting gifs: you showed your interest in mortality among the 'younger' groups. They are really not doing well, although their number of deaths is easily lost in the total figures. And certainly not with women between 30 and 50 years old. Read something about it, with more precise calculations of some 10-year cohorts and extensive explanations about baselines (I have left that in a separate PDF, you don't necessarily have to read it). https://virusvaria.nl/sterfte-per-leeftijd-en-geslacht-2025/

Have fun. 6/6