This graph of billing data from public German insurers, which seems to show a dramatic increase in deaths from unknown causes coinciding exactly with the vaccination campaign of 2021, takes us to the heart of a small, ambiguous drama that unfolded last week in the German media and on Twitter.

To shed light on the frequency of vaccine injuries in Germans, Martin Sichert, a member of the Bundestag, submitted a request for billing data to the Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinung, or KBV, the association of German public insurers. The KBV complied, and what Sichert and his data analyst, Tom Lausen, found, is what you see in the chart above. Sichert’s party, the right-populist Alternativ für Deutschland, then held a press conference on their findings, demanding that Germany’s vaccine regulator, the Paul Ehrlich Institut, conduct a broader investigation into the problem of adverse events.

The KBV responded by pleading that the sudden increase in deaths was down not to the vaccines, but to “pandemic-related excess mortality.” This was implausible for many, many reasons, and so immediately afterwards, the public insurers’ own research institute provided a different, more curious excuse.