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Nov. 23, 2022 - Epoch Times
15:13
The Funeral Business Is Booming (and Not Because of COVID): Excess Death Number Spike in 2022
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This right here is a chart from the CDC's own website showing explosive growth in the number of excess deaths.
What appears to be happening is that over the past two years now, the rate of people who die in a given year has been steadily increasing and then exponentially so.
Meaning that the rate of excess mortality, the number of people who weren't forecasted to die in a given year but did, has been spiking.
Now, on our program previously, we've already done a deep dive into some of the CDC's own numbers.
However, just a few days ago, there was another development.
Another, you can say, data point that we can add to the growing body of knowledge surrounding the spike in excess mortality.
And this new data point came from, of all places, a funeral company.
But not just any funeral company.
It came from the quarterly earnings report of Service Corporation International, otherwise known as SCI, the largest for-profit funeral operator in all of North America.
And just like you would imagine, with excess mortality rates going through the roof and the Google search results for the term died suddenly also appearing to spike, well, it's a good time to be in the funeral business.
That's because according to SCI's earnings call, well, they had another great fiscal quarter.
In fact, so far in the year 2022, SCI has made almost $500 million in straight profit with its stock price being up over 15% since they posted their latest earnings report.
Now, being a publicly traded company, SCI's management team is relatively open about their operations to their investors.
And along that line, for years now, during their calls, they've reported that the bulk of the company's growth came from buying out other family-run funeral homes.
Basically, when the owners of smaller funeral homes died themselves, What do I mean by that?
This right here is a man by the name of Mr.
Thomas Ryan.
He's the chairman of the board, the president, as well as the CEO of SCI, which is again the largest for-profit funeral operator in North America.
And he was the one who just earlier this month was presenting the company's earnings report on their quarterly call.
And during that call, Mr.
Ryan made some, you can say, alarming statements when he was describing the factors behind his company's recent success.
For instance, when he was asked a question from an investor about the higher-than-expected funeral sales in the previous quarter, well, Mr.
Ryan responded by saying that typically, they expect to see a 1-2% shift in the number of deaths in a given normal year, meaning that the number of funerals might go up 2% one year, then down 2% another year, then up 1% the year after that, and so on.
That's generally the normal range, 1-2%.
However, he said that in 2020, when COVID hit, they saw their number of funerals spike by 20%.
Here's specifically what he said during the earnings call, again, just earlier in the month.
Quote, 2020 comes along, COVID, game changer, right?
We're having to do, at one point of time, 20% more funerals, which is unheard of in a year versus, let's say, a year or two before.
Now, frankly, that statement isn't really shocking.
It would naturally be expected that a novel virus that reaches the pandemic level would be a boon to the funeral business.
But what the president of SCI said next about his most recent quarter, a quarter I should mention, that saw a significant reduction in the number of COVID-associated deaths, well, it's what really got our attention.
Here's specifically what he said about the previous quarter in the year 2022.
Quote, So, what we would have expected is, why wouldn't we go back towards, let's say, a 2019 level?
Maybe you get a percent or so growth of 2019, I would expect that.
So that would be a reasonable level that we think would stabilize.
And that's kind of what we anticipated.
What we're telling you is, the third quarter of this year, we did 15% more calls than we did in the third quarter of 2019.
That is not what anybody would have anticipated, and that has just a very de minimis, meaning very insignificant, amount of COVID deaths in it.
You heard that right.
The leader of one of the largest funeral home companies in the world said that they've seen a 15% increase in the amount of deaths from July to September of this year compared to the same period in 2019.
And he also mentioned that unlike what people might assume, COVID was actually an insignificant factor in this surge.
And so then, the obvious question becomes, if it's not COVID, then what exactly is fueling this giant uptick in deaths?
Well, in terms of why there are so many deaths occurring, well, Mr.
Ryan followed up his first statement by fathoming a guess.
Mind you, he's not a doctor and he doesn't have access to the deceased's medical records, but he does have a feel for the industry.
And as such, Mr.
Ryan suggested that more cancer deaths, delayed medical care due to the lockdowns, as well as a broad decline in healthy lifestyle choices developed during the pandemic period likely contributed to the increase in deaths.
And then, during that very same call, he added this, quote, However, to be frank, these explanations for the increase in deaths are a little bit of a stretch.
Because, for one, the aging demographic issue that he mentioned, well, that's not a new phenomenon by any stretch of the imagination.
There are 80 million baby boomers in this country who have been slowly entering their golden years for the last decade.
So that wouldn't really explain a sudden 50% spike in year-over-year deaths.
Secondly, in regards to the less healthy pandemic lifestyle choices that he mentioned, well, that ended a while ago.
In most Republican-controlled states, in most red states, these strict lockdowns, they ended around mid-2020.
And they ended in mid-2021 almost everywhere else, like here in New York.
So you'd be hard-pressed to argue that that's what's causing a 15% increase in deaths.
Thirdly, in regards to the delayed medical treatment, well, that is a legitimate issue.
Because of the policy of lockdowns, many people put off trips to the doctor or to the hospital, which could have aggravated their conditions or even led to them getting diagnosed late, meaning they weren't diagnosed early for a condition that they had.
And if they were diagnosed late, maybe they couldn't have treated it as well as they could have if it was diagnosed early.
However, that was the case at the height of the lockdowns.
And for the past 20 months or so, well, hospitals and doctor's offices, they've been back to normal for the most part.
So this also doesn't really account for a 15% spike in deaths.
So what's really going on here?
What changed in the past two years that could have led to this large increase in deaths?
Well, on this program, I don't get into speculation.
And so your guess is as good as mine.
However, what I do know is that Mr.
Ryan expects the funeral business, at least his funeral business, to stay elevated for years to come.
Here's what he said again during that earnings call.
These trends are hard to reverse quickly.
I hope three, four, five years from now it will subside a bit, but I don't think it's anytime soon.
Now, what's ironic here is that while an increase in excess deaths is good for the funeral business, it's not good for the life insurance business.
For instance, here's the stock price for Lincoln National, a large life insurance company here in America.
And due to the rise in excess deaths, they've been having to pay out more and more life insurance benefit claims to their group policies, which then naturally hurts the bottom line.
Now, we've covered Lincoln National on our program before, but just to do a quick recap for you, according to their most recent annual statement, We're good to
go.
And of course, if you do the math, that is a whopping 164% increase over the previous year.
And I should mention that these are group life insurance policies that are offered through a person's job, meaning through the company that they're employed at.
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And I should mention that these are group life insurance policies that are offered through a person's job, meaning through the company that they're employed at.
Meaning, these aren't retired senior citizens sitting at home, but rather these are working-age adults.
And Lincoln National is, of course, not the only life insurance company that's seeing this trend.
For instance, Prudential, which is another one of America's largest life insurance companies, they saw their death benefit payouts jump 3% between 2019 and 2020, and then 17% between 2020 and 2021.
Likewise, in a recent statement...
The president of One America Insurance, likewise, it's a very big insurance company here in the States, said that they've seen a 40% spike in deaths from working-age Americans.
Here was the president's statement just earlier this year.
Just to give you an idea of how bad that is.
A three sigma or a one in a 200-year catastrophe would be a 10% increase over pre-pandemic.
So 40% is just unheard of.
And then, of course, all of this disparate evidence coming from funeral homes and insurance companies, all of it is bellied by the data coming from the CDC itself.
This chart here, for instance, shows the death data that was compiled by the National Vital Statistics System for the U.S.
And it shows that in every age bracket, except for the 85 and older bracket, deaths have risen between 2020 and 2021.
A fact that still holds true even if you remove the deaths that are associated with COVID.
In fact, I color-coded the data for you on this chart here so that it's even more obvious.
As you can see, the largest increase in reported non-COVID deaths occurred among those who are aged 35 to 44, meaning the people in the prime of their lives.
And it's worth mentioning that this phenomenon is not only present here in America, because other Western nations across Europe, across Eastern and Western Europe, in the Nordic countries, in Australia, and even in Asian countries like Taiwan, they're all likewise seeing an increase in excess mortality.
So what's really going on here?
Well again, I do not get into speculation, and so your guess is as good as mine.
I only report to you the facts, and the facts are that more and more people are dying when they weren't forecasted to.
And frankly, I would love to know your guess.
Why do you think...
People are dying.
What do you think is driving this giant spike in excess deaths?
Is it a confluence of different factors, or is it something unmentionable behind the scenes?
I'd love to know your thoughts.
Please leave them in the comments section below.
And then also, I'd like to give a big shout out to Mr.
Eric Schumacher, who helped pull a lot of the research together for today's episode.
I'll in fact throw the links to everything we discussed, like the funeral company report, the reports from the life insurance companies, as well as the data from the CDC itself.
It'll all be down there in the description box below, so you can click on it and dive deeper into the story for yourself.
And since Eric worked so hard to pull all this research together, well, I hope you thank him by smashing that like button so this video can be shared out to ever more people via the YouTube algorithm.
And also, if you haven't already, consider subscribing to this YouTube channel as well, that we can get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed every time we publish it.
Now lastly, there's something I'd like to mention.
Over on EpicTV, which is our awesome no-censorship video platform, we just published a phenomenal documentary called The Final War, detailing how the Chinese Communist Party has a 100-year plan to destroy America.
Here's a trailer.
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very top of the description box.
I hope you check it out.
And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman, from the Epic Times.
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