A 2024 study on excess COVID-era mortality, cited by a witness at a recent U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing in support of claims linking COVID-19 vaccines to deaths, has been retracted by the British Medical Journal Public Health.
The study, published in June 2024, analyzed data from 47 Western countries and found more than 3 million excess deaths between 2020 and 2022. It did not establish a causal link between vaccines and the deaths, but concluded that excess mortality remained high despite the rollout of containment measures and COVID-19 vaccines. According to the journal, that framing contributed to widespread misreporting that the study had directly linked vaccines to the deaths.
BMJ Public Health‘s Aug. 11 retraction notice cited “misinformation in the discussion regarding the possible causes of excess mortality” and said the limited nature of the authors’ original work was not sufficiently described. An investigation by the Netherlands’ Princess Máxima Center, a pediatric hospital where three of the four authors worked, found the paper paid disproportionate attention to the possibility that vaccines and containment measures caused the excess deaths while largely ignoring alternative explanations. The investigation did not find evidence of research misconduct.
Corresponding author Saskia Mostert testified before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, part of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in June. Dr. Mostert said she faced “blind and irrational fury” after the paper’s publication and later resigned from the Princess Máxima Center. She said her proposed revisions to address the journal’s concerns were ignored, though BMJ Public Health said the edits would have been insufficient.
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