Canadian child death data misrepresented to spread vaccine misinformation

Social media users claim the child mortality rate in Canada’s Alberta province shot up more than 3,000 percent after the introduction of Covid-19 vaccines. This is false; data do not show such an extreme increase, and there have been very few deaths linked to the shots.

“A staggering 3328% Increase in Child Mortality in Alberta,” says text over a July 31, 2024 Instagram video.

The post — which features Darrell Komick, constituency association president for the United Conservative Party (UCP) in Calgary-Lougheed — claims “The Vax” is behind the trend.

Different versions of the video have spread across X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

The video shows a June 18 press conference after an event hosted by the group An Injection of Truth (archived here) in which Komick and physician William Makis spoke about “the negative impact of the Covid mRNA injections on children.”

AFP previously debunked claims from Makis linking deaths from unknown causes to Covid-19 shots, which researchers estimate have saved millions of lives (archived here). The latest allegations are similarly false.

As of January 2024, Canadian authorities had logged four deaths as causally associated with Covid-19 shots out of more than 105 million doses administered (archived here).

Provincial data updated in September 2023 do not indicate the Covid-19 vaccines caused any deaths in Alberta (archived here). The Ministry of Health did not respond to AFP’s request for comment, but Alberta Health officials told local media in July 2022 that the shots were associated with one death in the province. 

Tara Moriarty, an associate professor and infectious disease researcher at the University of Toronto (archived here), noted excess deaths have continued to climb in Canada while vaccine and booster uptake has dropped (archived here).

“The mortality patterns actually are the opposite,” Moriarty said August 15, 2024. “It’s increasing as our vaccination rates go down.”

She added that mortality trends for children — a group with lower booster rates than the general population — have remained relatively stable since the Covid-19 shots were approved.

“In young age groups — like under 12, for example — we’re not seeing statistically significant increases in excess mortality,” Moriarty said.

AFP contacted the UCP constituency association in Calgary-Lougheed for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.

Ill-defined deaths

The figure cited by An Injection of Truth refers to an increase in the number of deaths from “ill-defined and unknown” in Alberta among 15 to 19-year-olds between 2020 and 2022 (archived here).

Moriarty said the statistical increase for Alberta teenagers is large because ill-defined deaths for that group grew from less than 10 cases per year between 2001 and 2019 to an average of 46.7 during the Covid-19 pandemic.

There is no evidence the rise is attributable to vaccines. 

Statistics Canada told AFP medical examiners assign that category, derived from World Health Organization classifications, when they cannot conclusively determine a cause of death or while an investigation is ongoing.

“The numbers are expected to decrease as the data are updated to reflect final causes of death,” said Nicole Watt-Durant, unit head for the agency’s Centre for Population Health Data, on August 14, 2024.

Alberta Health Services says on its website that an autopsy is required when a death is sudden or unexpected (archived here). That requirement can especially slow the resolution of death data for young people, Moriarty and Watt-Durant said, as they often die in accidents that can require lengthy investigations.

Excess deaths

An Injection of Truth promoted findings about “excessive deaths” — not to be confused with excess deaths, which represent the number of fatalities beyond what was expected based on previous mortality rates (archived here).

Several reports indicate death rates have risen in Canada since the start of the pandemic (archived here and here), but Moriarty said those among children have remained relatively flat.

From 2001 to 2019, the average annual number of deaths among Albertans 19 and younger was 468.4. Between 2020 and 2022, that figure increased by about five percent, according to Alberta government data.

By contrast, average annual deaths for the entire province increased by 43 percent over the same time period.

Among the general population, Moriarty said Covid-19 infection — not vaccination — is one of several factors causing excess deaths, as well as drug overdoses. 

A 2022 study analyzing excess mortality in Alberta during the pandemic found Covid-19 was behind 54.9 percent of all excess deaths, with another 25.4 percent attributable to drug poisoning (archived here).

Statistics Canada listed cancer as the country’s leading cause of death between 2017 and 2022. Covid-19 infection ranked third in 2022 (archived here), and the Public Health Agency of Canada attributed 20.8 out of 100,000 deaths to apparent opioid toxicity in 2023 (archived here). 

Read more of AFP’s reporting on misinformation in Canada here.