Unsurprising. After dropping already insufficient COVID protections after two years of killing the most vulnerable adults, makes sense that morality is up for babies where new vulnerable hosts continue to be produced.

Also:

• allowing multiple infections of an immune-suppressing virus,
• while placing continuing high-load accute and increasing-load chronic health conditions on a health care system while
• having healthcare staff decrease due to burnout and post-covid conditions
• and having poorer folks with less access to the best protections (work from home, homeschool/daycare, quality mask, quality education on how to stay safe from COVID)

All seems to track.