I always love the choice of stock images they use in popular social science articles. As in this case, you can clearly see the guy is up to something very dark.

Had to look it up myself.

132K excess deaths. That's 127 excess deaths per 100K.

I'm not sure how reliable the data is. While coming from a reliable source, https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(21)02796-3/fulltext, they themselves will have received it from the government of each country. I'm no expert, but I have been told that such data - like GDP - can't really be considered reliable.

While this is true, there was still a considerable number of other people who were affected. Most countries in Africa have lower obesity rates and life expectancy than, for example, the US. But the access to good medical care is lower. You can't just take the official numbers at face value. Take Tanzania: President Magufuli has done everything in his power to cover up outbreaks or even the mere existence of the virus. There was no vaccination program, no testing, no safety regulation, and the hospitals were not prepared. This led to a lot of people just dying on the streets. Cases that could easily have been prevented.

"Fun" fact: President Magufuli himself died of a mysterious lung disease. The government denied it was covid...

Could someone help me with the following question?

Assuming artificial sweeteners are correlated to an increased risk of heart disease (apparently it is, although not that strongly), did they put in other factors to control for eating behaviours etc.?

It seems obvious that people who consume more diet coke also have a less healthy over-all diet than people who stick to water and tea.

(I'm too lazy too read it all... apologies, if it's in there)

Yeah, look at the guy in the stock photo. Looks like someone who has very weird eating habits!