Book Review: Cause Unknown – The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022


Craig Soderberg

What could possibly cause the equivalent of the Vietnam War to happen in just 12 months? From February 2021 to March 2022, millennials experienced the equivalent of a Vietnam War, with more than 60,000 excess deaths. The Vietnam War took 12 years to kill the same number of healthy young people that we have seen die in 12 months.

In 2021, Edward Dowd brought international attention to the fact that healthy working-age Americans were dying, and dying suddenly, at an alarming rate not seen before. His book Cause Unknown recounts the evidence. These excess deaths were not anticipated by insurance actuaries and were not attributed to Covid.

The Government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has nearly 1.5 million reports of adverse reactions and deaths associated with the Covid vaccines and typically less than 1% of the vaccine recipients even report to VAERS.

However, even with these reporting deficits, there have been more adverse reactions and deaths reported to VAERS for Covid vaccines than all other vaccines combined, over the past 32 years.

In January 2022, Scott Davison, the CEO of OneAmerica, made comments to a commerce meeting that were picked up by some media outlets: “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica. The data is consistent across every player in that business.”

Josh Stirling found that millennials (ages 25-44) saw an acceleration of excess mortality into the second half of 2021 to new all-time highs, a stunning 84% above the baseline.  The rate in Fall 2021 was striking as it coincided with the corporate mandates – and it wasn’t statistically possible that suicides, overdoses and death from delayed treatments all spiked in that very same 3-month-period. The only thing that changed was mass vaccination forced upon the millennial generation via government and corporate mandates.

CDC data shows that after vaccines were rolled out in year 1 and year 2, there were substantially more excess deaths among the young ages. From year 1 to year 2, the millennials saw an enormous increase from 42,000 excess deaths to 62,000 excess deaths.

The Society of Actuaries (SOA) is another independent source confirming the thesis of the authors. There was an event that occurred in the Third Quarter of 2021, which confirmed excess mortality of 78% and 100% respectively, for two age groups (25-34 and 35-44).

The first analysis was based on the CDC’s All-Cause Mortality Data, whereas the second analysis, the SOA data, is from death claims in the Group Life Divisions of insurance companies that were surveyed. This is important because they are two different databases and two different population sets, which both show the same excess death rates among millennials (ages 25-44).

The Danish government website confirms that excess deaths are on the rise after mass vaccination, for all ages.

The European Statistical Office showed some interesting data in Austria, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, and France. After mass vaccination, death rates of working-age people increased in every one of these countries.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that after mass vaccination, the disability rate has not only increased 6.6% over the historical average disability rate, but it has reached a higher level than any time in at least 15 years. However, even worse is that the healthier employed folks experienced a greater increase in the rate of disability (22.6% increase) than the comparable total US population (6.6% increase).

The obvious question of the day: Why are healthier folks seeing a bigger increase in the rate of their disabilities starting around May of 2021? What else was increasing at a substantial rate in mid-2021? Mass vaccination for Covid.

The author concludes by saying that any reader can confirm that 1) Healthy young people have been dying and becoming disabled with alarming frequency; and 2) The rate of these tragedies is new and unusual, and not sufficiently explained by government officials; and 3) Glaring public health questions are not being asked or answered by those in power.

Published December 16, 2023

About the Author

Craig Soderberg enjoys learning about healthy, sustainable living and has written several book reviews for Townsend Letter over the years. He is a chapter leader with the Weston A. Price Foundation and also active in the 4-H program, helping kids learn more about raising honeybees.