Thank you for this! It has been interesting to read (some of your earlier posts too) and I appreciate your time and effort.
One of my reasons for considering the “vaccine effect” on births is that the drop starts in January 2022, nine months after the vaccine roll-out started. Even if many mothers didn’t get it before becoming pregnant, (March 2021 - say June/July 2021) they might have gotten it while pregnant and had miscarriages. Others might have gotten it before becoming pregnant and are now unable to become pregnant.
Also, I think it would be useful to test your hypothesis with countries that had lockdowns, but not a high rate of vaccinations (e.g. South Africa). Those populations may also have had wedding disruptions, but should have less of a drop in birth rate if the vaccines have an effect on births.
I like the way that you think and reason and I’m glad that you are honest when new data comes out.
Thank you for this! It has been interesting to read (some of your earlier posts too) and I appreciate your time and effort.
One of my reasons for considering the “vaccine effect” on births is that the drop starts in January 2022, nine months after the vaccine roll-out started. Even if many mothers didn’t get it before becoming pregnant, (March 2021 - say June/July 2021) they might have gotten it while pregnant and had miscarriages. Others might have gotten it before becoming pregnant and are now unable to become pregnant.
Also, I think it would be useful to test your hypothesis with countries that had lockdowns, but not a high rate of vaccinations (e.g. South Africa). Those populations may also have had wedding disruptions, but should have less of a drop in birth rate if the vaccines have an effect on births.
I like the way that you think and reason and I’m glad that you are honest when new data comes out.
I suspect that pre-2016 figures are difficult to compare to post-2016 figures due to the inflow of migrants (mostly younger people).