Claims of lower Amish death rates in pandemic are misleading

"A major study into the impact of the pandemic on Amish communities has found that Covid death rates among the traditionalist groups of citizens are 90 times lower than for the rest of America," claims the introduction to a June 30, 2023 article from Slay News, circulating on social media.

One July 2 tweet amplifying the article was re-shared more than 2,900 times.

Other posts featuring tech entrepreneur Steve Kirsch -- who has spread misinformation about the pandemic and Covid-19 vaccines -- making similar claims spread on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter.

"The Amish died at 90 times lower rate than America -- than the rest of America," Kirsch says in the video of testimony before the Pennsylvania State Senate (archived here).

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Screenshot of one of the tweets sharing a misleading article, taken July 7, 2023

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Screenshot of a tweet taken July 7, 2023

 

Similar claims of the Amish -- a secluded religious community that refused many pandemic public health guidelines -- experiencing fewer deaths from Covid-19, were shared in other languages, including French, Finnish, Spanish, German and Japanese.

However, there is no definitive research on how the pandemic affected the Amish, who live in a variety of rural settlements across multiple US states.

Experts said medical documents do not record patients' religion, so accessing data on Covid-19 cases or deaths among the Amish is difficult. Obtaining accurate figures is further compounded by the low number of Covid tests taken in the religious community -- leaving infections underreported.

Still, available data suggests the traditionalist community experienced death rates equal to or higher than the overall US population.

Excess deaths

Steven Nolt, a professor of history and Anabaptist studies at Elizabethtown College, told AFP in an email that there is no evidence supporting the claim of fewer Covid-19 deaths among the Amish.

"On the contrary, excess deaths were higher in the Amish population than the US as a whole," he said.

In a 2021 study (archived here), researchers at the University of Western Virginia traced excess deaths in Amish and Mennonite (another Anabaptist religious group) communities in Ohio in 2020, before the vaccine was available. They found similar death rates in these communities compared to the general US population, with a spike of 125 percent among the secluded religious communities in November 2020.

A follow-up study published in June 2023 (archived here), the same group of researchers found excess death rates remained high in Amish and Mennonite communities, while it dropped in the general population -- two-thirds of which are vaccinated against Covid-19.

Braxton Mitchell, an epidemiologist at the University of Maryland who studies Amish communities, particularly in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, also said he had also observed a growth in excess mortality, with a death rate three or four times higher in the summer of 2020 compared to the year before in Amish communities.

"Based on this and other anecdotal information, I do not see any basis for the claim that Amish experienced fewer deaths compared to non-Amish," Mitchell said.

Herd immunity

Many of the posts refer to the figure of 90 percent fewer deaths among the Amish, with Slay News mentioning a "study" from the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation (VSRF), which Kirsch funds and has frequently been found to be spreaders of Covid-19 misinformation. AFP found no such research published on its website.

When Kirsch presented to the Pennsylvania Senate, he claimed the Amish had died at a lower rate than the rest of the country. However, he was only discussing those living in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a statistic that cannot be applied to the experience of communities in other states.

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Screenshot of an Instagram reel, taken July 7, 2023

The article also discussed a story (archived here) published March 29, 2021 on the local news site "Penn Live," reporting 90 percent of America's largest Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania had contracted Covid-19, achieving "herd immunity." The medical experts quoted in the story noted that would be short-lived and local officials underlined a large increase in deaths among the Amish.

Nolt, told AFP that it is difficult to quantify how closely Amish communities followed public health guidelines during the pandemic.

While some communities are very strict about following traditional lifestyles which often ignore public health recommendations, others are more "integrated" into larger American society, he said. He said that some Amish participating in farmer's markets complied with municipal mask mandates rather than forfeit their income.

"Many Amish communities took stay-at-home orders and school closing and church service suspension seriously for several months but then stopped as their non-Amish rural neighbors also stopped," he said. "Broadly speaking, I think we can say, in general and with some exceptions, starting in mid-June 2020 most Amish folks paid little heed to most directives unless forced to."

AFP previously fact-checked misinformation about Covid-19 infection rates among the Amish in February 2021.