Jordan Peterson Asks A Taboo Question: How Many People Have Died "From" (Not "With") Covid?

Myself, Alex Berenson, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya respond.

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Yesterday on Twitter, Jordan Peterson posed an important question:

Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson

Does anyone (for example @DrJBhattacharya or John Ionnadis) have valid data on the Covid death toll in the US? And I mean "died from Covid" not the delusional "died with Covid."

This question has to be asked, in part, since the CDC has still not distinguished deaths “from” vs “with” Covid. We still have no concrete statistics on how many people have actually died solely due to Covid.

Why is this important? Because knowing such statistics would tell us the true Covid risk for the vast majority of us who aren’t suffering from serious illnesses.

I briefly responded to Jordan via email and he posted my response online:

Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson

One answer from @Ravarora1: any critics (with a better answer? Not just random criticism?)

The link in the email is my previous article on “Who’s Actually Dying From Covid?”:

Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson

Covid risk evaluated:

open.substack.comWho’s Actually Dying From Covid?If public health authorities were distributing this information, there would be no interest for this article. Alas, here we are.

It’s incredible how public health authorities have not adequately clarified the seismic disparities in risk between the old and the young and the healthy and severely ill.

If they did, coercively pushing experimental biotechnology on millions of healthy people would have never made sense.

Here are highlights from that article which answer Jordan’s question as best as possible with imperfect data:

The official 1.1 million Covid death toll figure (U.S) everyone relies on to emphasize Covid risk is most certainly inflated. Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg recently shared data from Denmark, showing 60-70% of deaths in 2022 where the patient tested positive for Covid were “with Covid” rather than “due to Covid”:

Moreover, the CDC’s own “Covid death” classification is incredibly loose: "any death from (any) illness occurring within 30 days of a positive test result automatically be classified as due to COVID-19." As a result, thousands of accidents, homicides, and suicides were officially logged in as “Covid deaths.”

Here are a handful of examples included in the “1.1 million Covid death toll” (courtesy of Justin Hart):

In November, a 39-year-old Black female died of homicide. The cause of death was a combination of acute respiratory failure related to injury to her spinal cord from an assault 5/

In August, a 36-year-old White male died as a result of homicide. The cause of death was an assault with a sharp object, which resulted in an open wound to the abdomen and other unspecified parts of the body. Additionally, the decedent had liver cirrhosis. 6/

In December, a 32-year-old Black man died in a homicide. The cause of death was assault by bodily force, which resulted in an unspecified injury to his head. Further contributing to his death were COVID-19, pneumonia, and other unspecified causes. 7/

As a result, the true U.S Covid death toll is likely in the range of 600,000 to 800,000.

After Jordan posted my email, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya posted a 2021 study which highlighted the same problem with the Covid mortality figures:

Jay Bhattacharya @DrJBhattacharya

@jordanbpeterson Jordan, John Ioannidis published a nice peer-reviewed piece on the topic in the Eur. J. of Epi. in 2021. There are nuances, but hIs conclusion is that rich countries like the US very likely overcounted covid deaths, and his best estimate is by about 25%.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.govOver- and under-estimation of COVID-19 deaths - PubMedThe ratio of COVID-19-attributable deaths versus “true” COVID-19 deaths depends on the synchronicity of the epidemic wave with population mortality; duration of test positivity, diagnostic time window, and testing practices close to and at death; infection prevalence; the extent of diagnosing withou…

I was then glad to see CNN’s top “fact-checker” Alex Berenson (

Unreported Truths

) confirm my general outline was correct:

Alex Berenson @AlexBerenson

@jordanbpeterson @Ravarora1 That’s correct. Best estimate is 60-70% of Covid deaths are “from,” not with, probably somewhat fewer in the Omicron era. But even the “from” deaths are nearly all in the very old or very obese/ill. Here’s the breakdown by age in Quebec: 1/3 over 90, another 1/3 over 80.

He continued, making important points about low mortality in Africa and the obesity epidemic in the U.S:

Alex Berenson @AlexBerenson

@jordanbpeterson @Ravarora1 The US has a slightly younger age distribution because it has really terrible obesity and some very sick people whose life expectancies are marginally extended at great expense by a for-profit health care system. Those are the people at high risk from Covid…

Alex Berenson @AlexBerenson

@jordanbpeterson @Ravarora1 This is why Africa had essentially zero Covid deaths. Non-obese, non-highly-medicalized societies basically only have deaths in the very old.

Twitter always gets a bad rap — first from the Right (validly), now from the Left — but free, public discourse is crucial in understanding the highly politicized “science” of Covid.

This is why it’s so nauseating when public intellectual commentators like Sam Harris rail against the dangers of “do your own research” without conceding just how abominably both government officials and mainstream scientists have mislead, lied, and corrupted the enterprise of scientific research.

When the most powerful scientific entities are saying “Covid a grave danger, go get vaccinated and boosted!” rather than “Covid is a grave danger if you’re over 80, morbidly obese, or suffering from 2 or more comorbidities - decide for yourself whether mRNA vaccination is right for you,” “do your own research” — within reasonable parameters (excluding Alex Jones) — makes far more sense.

And people like Jordan Peterson, Alex Berenson, Jay Bhattacharya, and myself — public thinkers with completely different backgrounds — have been rightly questioning the dominant Covid dogma and analyzing the data with far more integrity, honesty, and reason.

Happy Wednesday.

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