When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, governments braced for a viral tidal wave sweeping across the globe. Instead, a groundbreaking analysis published June 13, 2025, by Joseph Hickey, Denis G. Rancourt, and Christian Linard reveals that the dramatic spikes in all-cause mortality seen in Europe and the USA during March–May 2020 defy the classic person-to-person spread model of a novel respiratory virus. Their deep-dive into high-resolution, geotemporal mortality data uncovers patterns that simply don’t add up if SARS-CoV-2 were the sole culprit—and points an accusatory finger at interventions like invasive ventilation and lockdowns gone awry. correlation-canada.orgsciety.org
Beyond the “First Wave” Myth
Most accounts of the pandemic’s early horrors describe a virus racing unchecked through communities, leaving bodies piling up in its wake. Hickey and colleagues challenge this narrative. By examining state- and county-level mortality in the USA and NUTS regions in Europe, they identified discrete “first-peak” periods (March–May 2020) and “summer-peak” periods (June–September 2020). Their work shows that the sudden mortality surges were far too synchronous and geographically erratic to be explained by a steadily spreading contagion. Instead of the gradual ripple you’d expect from a person-to-person epidemic, deaths exploded almost in unison across distant locales—never before the WHO announcement, and often peaking in lock-step weeks later. sciety.org
Geographic Fireworks: Borders Didn’t Matter
Imagine two neighboring regions, with highways humming and people mingling daily—yet one records a death peak ten times larger than the other. That’s exactly what happened along the western German border: small “F-peaks” on Germany’s side contrasted sharply with massive spikes just across into the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Similar spot-the-difference puzzles emerge throughout Europe and the USA. If a virus spreads through human contact, porous borders and travel corridors should blur mortality differences. Instead, the data paint a mosaic of hotspots and safe zones, defying simple viral diffusion explanations. sciety.org
Time’s Perfect Crime: Temporal Synchrony of Peaks
In epidemic modeling, timing is everything. A true viral wave would travel in fits and starts: one city peaks, then another weeks later, and so on. But in the Hickey et al. study, almost every large-peak region hit its high-water mark within a three-to-four-week window after the pandemic declaration—no early adopters, no stragglers. Even within countries, subregions rose and fell in chilling unison. This level of temporal synchrony suggests a common trigger—likely a set of medical and policy interventions uniformly rolled out at the national or regional level—rather than the uneven march of a pathogen carried by travelers. sciety.org
The Airport Enigma: Major Hubs, Minimal Mortality?
High-traffic airports would seem like Petri dishes for viral spread, but the study’s comparison of cities tells a different story. Rome versus Milan, Los Angeles versus New York City and San Francisco: despite similar international flight volumes and demographics, some metropolises endured dramatic mortality surges while their counterparts skirted the worst. Why did New York City, with its global connections, log a death plateau that Los Angeles did not? The answer lies less in the virus’s flight plan and more in how patients were treated—particularly the aggressive use of invasive mechanical ventilation and sedatives in overwhelmed hospitals. sciety.org
Inside the Data: Who Paid the Price?
A closer look at death certificates and socioeconomic maps reveals a grim pattern: regions with large “F-peaks” often hosted publicly funded hospitals serving underprivileged communities. In New York’s Bronx borough and London’s Brent and Westminster areas, poor neighborhoods abutted wealthier districts. These vulnerable populations, already burdened by poverty, crowded living, and minority stressors, experienced sky-high excess mortality. The study correlates these spikes with treatments—ventilators, sedatives, and pneumonia induced by medical stress—applied under the banner of pandemic care. sciety.org
The Hidden Culprit: Medical and Government Interventions
Contrary to early assurances that ICU beds and ventilators would be saviors, invasive mechanical ventilation emerged as a double-edged sword. When used liberally on elderly or frail patients, it often precipitated biological stress and secondary pneumonia. Lockdown measures, though aimed at “flattening the curve,” indirectly contributed to iatrogenic deaths—people succumbing to delayed diagnoses, mental health crises, or exhausted caregiving systems. The study’s authors argue that these interventions, rolled out in a frantic bid to manage hospital capacity, were the true drivers of the catastrophic mortality peaks. sciety.org
Ventilator Vortex
Hospitals pledged to “do everything” for COVID patients, but everything sometimes meant everything invasive. Forced ventilation in critical-care wards, administered without adequate contextual guidelines for elderly patients, led to complications far worse than untreated virus. The data link regions with aggressive ventilation protocols to the largest death spikes—suggesting that an overreliance on high-intensity interventions, rather than a lack of oxygen per se, was often fatal. sciety.org
Socioeconomic Stressors Amplified
Lockdowns decimated livelihoods, particularly in neighborhoods lacking economic cushions. Poverty, crowded housing, and limited access to telemedicine created a perfect storm: untreated chronic conditions, missed emergency care, and heightened stress—all factors that elevated all-cause mortality independently of COVID infection rates. In many hotspots, excess deaths in May 2020 outstripped official COVID tallies, hinting at a broader crisis born of public-health good intentions gone sideways. sciety.org
Lessons for the Next Pandemic
The geotemporal anomalies uncovered by this report demand a rethink of pandemic playbooks. Uniform lockdowns and one-size-fits-all medical protocols can trigger synchronous mortality waves—an outcome the Hickey et al. analysis labels “incompatible” with classic viral spread models. Future strategies should emphasize targeted interventions, robust outpatient care, and community-centered support to avoid the iatrogenic hazards of blunt measures. Building adaptive systems that account for socioeconomic variables and medical risk profiles could save countless lives. sciety.org
Moving Forward: A Call for Transparent Data
Transparency in excess-mortality reporting—and clarity on the interplay between policy, treatment, and social factors—will be vital. Governments must balance rapid response with rigorous evaluation, ensuring that the cure isn’t worse than the disease. Only by dissecting past missteps can health authorities craft nimble, humane approaches that genuinely save lives when the next threat emerges. sciety.org
