Examining a Claim; Why Death Rates Suddenly Increased by 5,000 Cases Simultaneously with November 2019 Protests; Conversation with Mahan Ghafari

Following Iran’s popular protests in November 2019 (Aban 1398), media outlets and human rights organizations, including Reuters and Amnesty International, published multiple reports about the killing of protesters, presenting varying casualty figures. A new study suggests that comparing official Iranian death registration statistics shows that the death rate in November 1398 was approximately five thousand cases higher than normal conditions.

Kaveh Madani and Mahan Ghafari, researchers from Yale and Oxford universities, in their latest research have obtained figures on the mortality rate in November 1398 that differ from previously announced statistics by media outlets and human rights organizations. These two researchers, while comparing death statistics in November 1398 with October and December of the same year, state that these figures were 4,201 people higher than the month before November 1398 and 4,902 people higher than the month after it.

Mahan Ghafari, an epidemiologist and viral evolution researcher at Oxford University, told Voice of America in this regard: “This research is a series of studies on Iran’s official civil registration statistics that reports overall death registration data on a quarterly basis… What we discovered based on quarterly data was that in autumn 1398, before the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic in the country, a notable and significant excess mortality was reported. Something more than 7,000 people that, based on this review of the civil registration organization’s data, we can see that November contributed a larger share to this excess death.”

Continuing, and referring to the fact that as an epidemiologist he cannot definitively attribute these death figures to those killed in the November protests, he added: “What we can say with very high confidence is that this peak we observed in November 2019 – which coincides with November 1398 – cannot be explained primarily by a pathogenic agent or a virus; because previous reviews we had show that the entry of the [coronavirus] virus into the country was from mid-December.”

According to this epidemiologist, claims have been made about seasonal flu deaths in autumn 1398. These researchers, by examining World Health Organization data from the Eastern Mediterranean region and specifically the Middle East, observed that the seasonal flu rate in this region only increased by 20 percent compared to 1397.

Kaveh Madani, an environmental researcher at Yale University, also wrote on his Twitter account that a review of previous statistical findings and comparisons based on available quarterly data had already shown the abnormality of the number of deaths in autumn 1398 in Iran.

Mr. Ghafari further told Voice of America: “The original purpose of this research project was to investigate excess mortality caused by coronavirus. In fact, this was perhaps in a way an accidental finding that we discovered excess deaths in November or autumn.”

Regarding statistics and mortality data in Iran’s civil registration, he added that monthly data, which is much higher quality data, has not been updated since January 2018, and if this data were extracted, a better monthly comparison could be conducted, which would be valuable for these research efforts.

It was in December 1398 that Reuters reported the killing of approximately 1,500 people in the November protests in Iran and, quoting three sources close to the leader of the Islamic Republic, wrote that Ayatollah Khamenei had ordered government and security officials to do “whatever is necessary” to stop the protests.

The November 1398 protests were among the most widespread protests against the Islamic Republic, taking place in dozens of Iranian cities. These protests faced violent and bloody suppression by the government. Despite prohibitions and restrictions imposed by the Islamic Republic, the identities of some of those killed in these protests gradually spread in cyberspace.

Source: Voice of America