A Feb. 2 article (direct link, archive link) asserts the number of excess deaths in New Zealand rose astronomically over the last few years.
"Jacinda Ardern’s COVID Dictatorship caused a 3203% increase in Excess Deaths following her Mandatory COVID Vaccination Laws," reads the article's headline.
The article was shared more than 400 times on Facebook, according to CrowdTangle, a social media analytics tool.
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New Zealand did not have a 3,203% increase in excess deaths between 2020 and 2022. It is unclear how the article's author arrived at that number, but it appears to be based on a calculation error. While deaths did increase between 2020 and 2022, experts say it's a result of a growing and aging population, as well as COVID-19 itself.
The article is from The Expose, a website that has previously published misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines.
The term "excess deaths" refers to the difference between the number of expected deaths and the actual number of deaths in the dataset cited in the article from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an economic group to which 38 countries belong.
The number of expected deaths is based on the average number of deaths between 2015 and 2019, Louise Fietz, a spokesperson for the...
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