Experts say possible reasons include weakened immunity, vaccination side effects, stress, and other infectious diseases.
Amid continuing distrust of the Chinese regime’s data on infectious diseases and vaccination deaths, anecdotal reports from residents and health care professionals across China suggest an unusual number of deaths among millennials this winter season.
Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics does not regularly publish data on mortality rates. Because of the regime’s record of publishing unreliable data, including its underreporting of COVID-19 infections in early 2020, analysts and the public often resort to relying on anecdotal evidence.
In February, individuals working in China’s disease prevention and control sector told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times that the regime is likely underreporting the recent COVID-19 and bird flu infections.
Also speaking to the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times in early March, Chinese residents from several provinces, whose full names are not mentioned because of safety concerns, said there have been many deaths among “post-80s” and “post-90s,” or those born in the 1980s and 1990s. Some of them voiced their suspicion that the deaths may be caused by the side effects of COVID-19 vaccination.
Experts told The Epoch Times that reasons younger people may be dying at a higher rate include weakened immunity following the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination side effects, stress, and other infectious diseases such as highly pathogenic avian influenza, which the regime is underreporting.
According to a medical doctor from China’s eastern Jiangsu Province who uses alias Zhang Liang, there have been numerous sudden deaths from heart attacks and cerebral infarctions among people in their 30s and 40s since the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s hard to know the scale of the deaths.
As for what may have caused the deaths, Zhang said: “Some say it’s from COVID-19 infections, but medical personnel are saying it’s from the COVID-19 vaccines. They are all saying that but can’t say it publicly. The collection of these data is not allowed either. It’s possible top-level [doctors] have [the information], but ordinary doctors don’t have access to them,” he told The Epoch Times.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, domestically-made Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines were used in China’s vaccination programs. Some local authorities sought to increase the vaccination rate by banning unvaccinated individuals from certain public places or using force to vaccinate people. Some recipients of the Sinovac vaccine reported side effects, including leukemia, diabetes, pulmonary nodules, cerebral hemorrhage, and cerebral infarction. In 2024, a group of vaccine injury victims told The Epoch Times they were planning to petition the regime during the Chinese Communist Party’s annual Two Sessions in Beijing, but they were being surveilled and intercepted by the police, who regularly use that practice on political dissidents and people with grievances.
According to Zhang, “After the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s hardly anyone in good health. Most people are in sub-health, and their physical indicators are a bit abnormal. Moreover, 70 to 80 percent of people have nodules in their bodies, especially lung nodules, which almost everyone has.”
Mr. Li, a resident of Guangzhou City in south China, said many young and middle-aged people around him had died this year.
“Many people around me suffered from vomiting, diarrhea, fever, cough, and chronic cough. They have been taking injections for 10 days or half a month but still have not recovered,” Li said.
“Many of those who died suddenly were young people in their 20s and 30s, and some were in their 40s and 50s. They have received many doses of vaccines, three or four shots, as well as booster shots,” he told The Epoch Times.
