The ONS announced today that there were 10,045 deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending March 26th. This is 266 fewer than the previous week (which was the lowest since 2014 for that week). In addition, this week’s number is 5% below the five-year average, and marks the third consecutive week of “negative excess deaths”. Here’s the chart from the ONS:
Over the last three weeks of ONS reports, there were 1,800 fewer deaths than you’d expect based on the average of the last five years. (And note that, because the population is ageing, the five-year average slightly understates the expected number of deaths.)
What’s more, the number of deaths registered in the week ending March 26th was below the five-year average in seven out of nine English regions. (Only the East Midlands and West Midlands saw positive excess deaths.) Compared to the five-year average, weekly deaths were 7.5% lower in London, 9.3% lower in the South West, and a remarkable 10.7% lower in the East of England.
As I’ve noted before, there are several possible reasons why the number of deaths is so low at the moment. But whatever the exact reason, or mix of reasons, today’s numbers are surely cause for optimism.
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Yes – it’s good news, but a more representative baseline gives an even more positive picture.
When is the grinding knee-jerk/ritualistic obeisance to the ‘last five years’ going to transform into proper comparisons?
When and If the “experts” say so.
100%.
I have done the arithmetic (correcting for ageing and population growth using population data from the ONS) and it is clear the “last 5 years” approach understates the baseline by around 5% if you stick with 2015-19. Even more if you exclude the anomalous 2019.
I don’t think the effect is “slight” as it shifts excess deaths in 2020 from 75000 to 45000. Which ought to change the narrative and massively undermines the credibility of reported COVID death numbers.
By my arithmetic (happy to get into details if anyone interested – I am good at this stuff and confident in my analysis) we have seen excess deaths over the course of the epidemic of about 74,000, reported COVID deaths of 134,000. I dont how many collateral deaths are in the 74,000 but if there were 20,000 then it implies COVID deaths of 54,000. Of course this ignores statistical variation but statistical variation is not going to explain the gap between 54,000 and 134,000.
The otther thing that is completely obvious if you look at age groups separately that there is considerable catch up & brought forward of the timing of death in the very elderly.
Are you factoring in the ‘died with covid’ and ‘died of covid’ narrative. I’m not a statistician or anything so interested to know what the death numbers mean.
I saw a chart recently that showed deaths per 1000 people in the last 50 years in the UK. 2020 was 38th highest – 2019 was number 50 (lowest death toll in 50 years based on population)
Sorry – that should say 38th lowest – depends how you read it.
And the only reason we are still in lockdown is because of the models
No modelling = no pandemic
Should have stuck to the pre-2020 plan
This is one of the absurdities of the shit-show : those of us who have adhered to studied plans based on cool, experienced assessment of the evidence, both at national and international level, have now been cast as eccentrics!
I think it was the first absurdity and everything flows from it. We had a pandemic plan – we threw it in the bin because of 1 model. Everything else has been arse covering and hysteria. In retrospect that initial plan was fine – Sweden shows that. And now in desperation to fix what they broke, they are coercing people into having vaccines almost straight out of the lab.
Indeed. I’m apparently now an “darling of the anti-Vaxxers”.
Despite 32y & substantial earnings (for both of which I’m grateful) from Pharma, merely because I’ve pointed out a series of mistakes (which of course, aren’t),
No. We’re stuck in lockdown because the criminals who have lied to us for over a year have no intention of letting us out.
Every major point from Govt / SAGE about this man made crisis has been a lie.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/exclusive-former-pfizer-vp-your-government-is-lying-to-you-in-a-way-that-could-lead-to-your-death
Maybe staying out of hospital is the best way to avoid dying????
Without any doubt at all.
No. It’s just that if you get stuck in a Covid ward, you are in a super-spreader situation.
Topping the absurdities of the Covidiots policies isn’t really an intelligent response to the serious malfunction of health in the face of a virus. A major cause of lockdown deaths has been fear of going to hospital.
Looking after yourself is the best way to avoid dying before your time. Eat less shit and sugar, do more exercise, stop using dodgy chemicals and room scents and dodgy deodorants because the advert tells you it will make you a better person. Less cleaning products so you build up immunities to bugs etc etc.
When people stop falling for the marketing and advertising and realise that all this shit we consume is killing us and making us ill – hospitals become a rare thing, reserved for proper accidents rather than avoidable ailments and disease brought about by our own greed.
I’ve always said that. If you want to catch something “go to hospital -or the doctors”. After all where are you likely to contract something nasty but in a surgery amongst ill people.
Yes when I had to take mother to the hospital I would watch her closely for the next few days to see what she had caught this time.
Once she was mortified to find she had wet herself. Closer examination showed the urine was on the outside of her clothes – she had sat in a puddle someone else left on the seat.
We had a choice of hospitals and one was head and shoulders above the others. Presumably their Infection Control Manager was actually doing their job.
I just spent some time ging through the archive of Hector Drummond blog which used to feature frequently in the LS roundup.
I was looking for the ongoing weekly series of graphs that showed the bell curve of the March-April 2020 covid deaths* (the supposedly exponential growth forever one) transposed onto the previous 10 years of annual autumn-winter flu deaths.
It fitted well within the range of normal and continued to do so as the weeks went by. The only difference being the time of year.
*Based on ONS weekly figures.
Sadly I was unable to find them but (going wildly off topic) I did rediscover the attached.
Each of these things confirmed to me that we were being played and by charlatans at that.
Hector’s website was excellent. The guys contributing stats and graphs each week are sadly missed.
I think Hector was taking a break. He was generally fed up and lost the will (who can blame him). I did see a recent article on hos website though.
There’s one way that this “pandemic” would be truly over. A posse of noble humanitarians might consider they’ve had enough and decide they should abduct Gates, Schwab, Fauci et al. and hold them until they promise to disassociate themselves from the WHO, the WEF, the UN and the GVA. Further they must relinquish all ties to, and investments in, pharmaceutical and big tech companies. Finally they must confess in public that they designed the whole scam.
It won’t take long. These mini-tyrants (overgrown children) will be blubbing in a matter of days and pleading to be released.
I recommend handing them over to a group of Italian partisans. They did a great job last time.
I can confirm that France’s all cause death rate 2021 is almost identical to 2019 the lowest in the last 5 years. Evidence again that ‘cases’ and deaths ‘with’ covid19 are replacing other respiratory cases and deaths, not additive. Back to the RT-PCR test scam.
By the way of anyone wants to see what is happening in France in great detail, the website link below is worth looking at, its kept going by non-government sources.
The very last graph shows all causes deaths. The small menu on the LHS of the first page links you into other relevant data.
If you put the URL into googletranslate the whole site is translated to English.
https://covidtracker.fr/covidtracker-france/
Next step: the magic snake oil brings people back from the dead.
I think this needs adding to this discussion. Excess deaths in private homes, continues way above average..
https://twitter.com/DrCharlesL/status/1380130502334676997
Obviously good news, but I find it quite suprising given how many excess deaths have been predicted to result from lockdown. I can only assume that the majority of those deaths are yet to occour, and/or a lot of very old/fragile people who would’ve been expected to die during March (which in some years is the peak month for flu deaths) died from Covid either this year or last spring.
A good point.
I suspect that a significant number of people who died in December/January or Spring 2020 were people were already at the end of life and SARS-C0V-2 and importantly the policy reactions to it brought forward their deaths by months only. These might come into these categories during these periods
Covid as the final straw
For some of these genuine symptoms caused by SARS-C0V-2 may have pushed them over the edge and ended their lives a few months early. This will include nosocomial infections.
Positive for SARS-C0V-2 but incidentally only
They may have incidentally tested positive for SARS-C0V-2 but had next to no symptoms, may have not been able to access treatment for the conditions that they were affected by, hence bringing forward their deaths from these other conditions by months.
Negative for SARS-Cov-2 but deaths brought forward by lack of access to treatment
They may never have tested positive for SARS-C0V-2, but may have not been able to access treatment for the conditions that they were affected by, hence bringing forward their deaths.
Even though all cause deaths are at very low levels now, there are still significant home deaths occurring which is an indication that indirect deaths are occurring. Immediate indirect deaths will be from the response to lockdowns, late cancer diagnoses, suicides, lack of access to immediate treatment for heart attacks/strokes etc etc.
So how de we interpret this weeks ONS figures and the 5% below the 5 year average? First we should acknowledge that the baseline we are using (5 year average) is arbitrary and problematic. But ignoring that to make the point, it could be that
15% less deaths are occurring now because of the deaths brought forward, but 10% more indirect deaths are now occurring. Hence 5% less deaths are occurring than normal (15% less 10%)
Or it may be that
6% less deaths are occurring now because of the deaths brought forward, but 1% more indirect deaths are now occurring. Hence 5% less deaths are occurring than normal (6% less 1%).
The 15% and 1% figures are not an attempt to make a suggestion or ranges for what those indirect deaths might be, but to say we can’t easily know.
My cynical take on this is that over the past twelve months or so the cause of non-covid deaths has shifted, but not significantly altered the total. People are dying because of inability to access treatment soon enough, if at all. But, on the other hand, a not insignificant number of people are surviving precisely because they have not been thrown to the mercy of the health service.
Speaking personally, the NHS were incapable of diagnosing a common ailment which led to my father’s death (jovially assuring us that “well he certainly isn’t dying” two hours before he died, still undiagnosed) and they came very close to killing off my late mother until we insisted, after much resistance on their part, to her coming home to be looked after by the family for another five years. It mustn’t be overlooked that medical negligence/ignorance/mistakes is the third highest cause of death in the US after cancer and heart problems. I have little reason to think this is a phenomenon unique to the US.
I think your comment is spot on. Far too much faith is put in the NHS and it is not deserved. They have been the biggest spreaders of the virus and as you say their diagnosis is often wrong. I have been misdiagnosed 3 times, 2 of which were potentially life threatening, I also believe my father was deliberately left to die as was my sister in law.
An aunt developed an aortic aneurism. The consultant said there was nothing he could do and she was going to die.
She went private and saw EXACTLY THE SAME CONSULTANT who said of course he could operate and booked her in for the following week.
She died the day before her operation was due. Thanks NHS.
Actually her death was not a bad thing, she was 88 and mourning the loss of her husband less than a year ago, and she would NOT have coped with senility or a care home.
Teenagers in Ireland speak out about masks in the classroom UsForThem – 8 April 2021
Anna Brees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpACkfD5jiE
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday 10am meet fellow lock
Very sad, why don’t the parents do more against this ?
It seems its the parents driving this nonsense!
I agree, got my son an exemption from the moment masks were introduced in communal areas, he’s not bothered he’s in the minority – they are guidelines so parents could end this in schools but, then again, if people stopped wearing the masks in shops this whole charade would end sooner.
Medical Passports – Your Full History Soon Available To The Pub Doorman & All!
Godfrey Bloom Official
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDb_GL5Qy_g
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics
It is and it isn’t (a cause for optimism). Everyone still dies at some point, and whilst enough of a circus can be created around covid and testing, variants, asymptomatic spread, rule breakers etc then nothing will change as they will find ways to keep it going
And the next tactic of the Gov will be to use it in a circular argument to justify crap policies. The current report is for week 12, but there have been a few more earlier weeks with deaths less than the 5 year average. Of course, we could equally use it to support our claim to put a stop to ‘lockdown’.
Oh my! 10,000 deaths last week?! We can’t have that. We must double down on lockdowns, double anti-social distance, double mask (which doesn’t work twice as well as they don’t work), double the testing and double the budget (again).
There, that should do it – according to my model.
(Sorry to be flippant amongst all these great and interesting comments)
If I put that comment in DT or Mail people would probably believe it and nod their heads sagely and think I was correct rather than a nutter!
One of the most worrying things about all this nonsense is that children are not building up enough natural immunity having been locked away and been terrified to interact with others for so long. We were heading that way in any event with so many children having allergies because of our obsession with spraying every surface with disinfectant, using hand gel and not letting children just get dirty and build up their natural immunity.
And fake education is even worse, for the long term, unless they’re clever enough to spot the con.
‘They’ will just say that it shows their ‘lockdowns’ work. If the figures had been higher, they’d say ‘we need harsher lockdown’.