Leading medical journal the BMJ published a peer-reviewed article last week by John Appleby, Director of Research at the Nuffield Trust, that draws on ONS data to look at the 2020 England and Wales death toll in a historical context.
In terms of absolute number of deaths, 2020 was the worst year since 1838 except for the Spanish Flu year of 1918 (note that overseas deaths including war casualties are not included).
However, as a proportion of population, it was only the worst year since 2003.
Furthermore, once you take into account the fact that the population is getting older and standardise the figures by age, 2020 was less deadly than 2008 and every year prior to it.
Appleby for his part makes no attempt to downplay the pandemic death toll, pointing out that only in four previous years had there been a sharper increase in percentage terms on the previous year and they were all prior to 1941. It was definitely counter to the decreasing trend.
A point he doesn’t make, however, is that the historically low levels of the previous 11 years would have left an unusually large amount of ‘dry tinder’ for any novel virus to burn through. Plus, 2019 had the lowest age-standardised mortality ever, to the extent that if you took an average of 2019 and 2020 then that average was lower than 2015, 2013, 2012 and every year prior to 2011. While it’s fair to note (as Appleby does) that the coronavirus epidemic continued into 2021, with high excess deaths in January and February, it is hard to regard this as an earth-shattering death toll. It also includes lockdown deaths from lack of access to medical care and other support and the psychological impact of isolation and loss of livelihood, estimated by the ONS to be up two fifths of the overall death toll.
The graphs also make clear that previous similar pandemics, such as in 1957 and 1968, made only a modest impact on mortality and only for a year or two, notwithstanding the lack of vaccines or social interventions. There is nothing about this disease to think the long-term pattern should be any different that would justify some kind of radical, permanent change to the way we interact or organise our lives. It’s important to remember that our immune systems develop and maintain resistance to a host of pathogens through being frequently exposed to them and that social isolation, where it is not merely ineffective, can deprive us of the opportunity to keep our immunity topped up.
The BMJ article is worth reading in full.
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Good work and now with vaccines on or side 2021 will be even less bad, if only we can work around the crackpots like Boris, but they are very stubborn and insist on less vaccine hence longer harder lockdown, the cretins think they are being clever.
Agreed. It’s time to bang the drum for freedom.
There is nothing more we can reasonably do. If you’re still scared get vaccinated. If you’re still scared after that then stay home and stand the consequences of that.
The rest of us want to get on with life.
And, if you are not scared of Long Vaccine, you are a complete idiot. Oh well, should be good for the gene pool!
… and don’t involve us in any of the various witchcraft rituals.
Most witchcraft rituals work with nature , not against it..
All witchcraft works against the Creator.
Interesting that the BMJ has caught up a year late. It was pretty obvious if you analysed successive winter/spring ‘flu seasons in previous years – by about May 2020.
See : https://hectordrummond.com/2020/07/10/rick-hayward-winter-spring-mortality-all-cause-1993-94-2019-2020-in-relation-to-covid-19
[Posted in July last year]
Conclusion – Bin useless NPIs and useless vaccines. Could have been done last year. It was just another moderate infection year that few would notice without the political manipulation.
You are with Boris, rejecting the vaccines’ effect, wanting lockdown going on and on.. while vaccine drives infections lower and lower.. you’re a mug, a dangerous dimbo:
Oh, ‘cmon fonzi – surely you can come up with some less desperate and repetitive 77th Brigade shite to give us a laugh (well – more a pitying smile).
You’ve just been faced with incontrovertible evidence about what a fraud this has been and you’re stuck in a groove. The puppet masters won’t be pleased with you.
P.S. Where did you get that rubbish line about lockdowns? You really don’t want to look even more dense – you’re doing OK as it is. I mean – only a total bozo would consider the only alternatives on offer for a non-event to be “Hands up! Lockdowns or vaccines?”
Did you even read the article above? Even without mass vaccination it was a bad flu year. Awful comments.
Along with the Australian PM:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IUd_jRTRtRY
“Sky News host James Morrow says the zero-COVID numbers “that seemed like liberation when the pandemic was raging” elsewhere in the world, “will soon start to look like a prison”.
“We’ve lost any ability to talk about risk, acting as if the only danger in our lives is COVID-19. We live in a very comfy and very expensive bubble,” he said.
“Now, I don’t need to tell you this pandemic has dragged on forever. And for all the talk of the light at the end of the tunnel, let’s be realistic; for Australia, there is no end in sight.
“This week we saw Health Minister Greg Hunt pretty much blow out of the water any hope that the vaccine, which Scott Morrison a year ago promised would be our ticket out of this thing, would allow us to use our passports for anything more than drink coasters.
“The Prime Minister, speaking in Perth, said that maybe, just maybe, they would consider people who’ve had the jab being allowed to travel certain places if they had a good excuse … and they would still have to quarantine at home when he got back.
“But he also said that even with vaccinations, we couldn’t open the borders because people might still get COVID-19. But, if the most vulnerable were protected, then why would we need to have shutdowns – yes, COVID-19 might circulate, but it wouldn’t be the existential danger it was.” ”
Frankly, I don’t know what point you’re trying to make. We’re not in favour of continued lockdowns any more than we’re in favour of mandatory experimental vaccines for everyone.
You want the vaccine, go ahead. The rest of us here are waiting until the information about serious and widespread adverse side effects become more widely known. The current official numbers are the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
It is good that the BMJ published this. But it is late! We all knew the figures were like this. In the 2020 ‘pandemic’ between 20 March and 19 June, deaths of 80+ in England and Wales was just over 28,000 above the population-adjusted maximum of 2010-2019. However, there was an excess (above the normal yearly increase) of the same number living beyond their normal lifespan remaining from 2019. And 58% of all deaths during the pandemic period were 80+. See https://forums.lockdownsceptics.org/viewtopic.php?p=16458#p16458
The ‘pandemic’ has been gone for 10 months now. We continue to languish under the ridiculous non-pharmaceutical interventions. And to that will be added the results of the untested and unnecessary pharmaceutical interventions, erroneously called ‘vaccines’.
Agreed = Yes squared.
That is all my maths for this morning. Sorry I have changed my mind.
Agreed = Yes to the power of x (real exponential growth)
Yes, worst year for deaths, adjusted for age and population, since 2008 – as reported previously. Can anyone tell me about the panic in 2008 over high deaths without looking it up? Actually probably not as previous year were higher. And as for vaccines – have we got 100% agreement yet among the scientific community about the 6 or 7 weeks after 8th December in the UK; Or what happened in Gibraltar; Or Israel; Or Czech Republic? Or the long term effects? Among other things. Just wondering…
Also, I seem to remember that the increase in life expectancy has levelled out in recent years,- which is what I expected anyway as the healthy wartime and rationing years population starts to be balanced out by the rather unhealthy lifestyles of the past half century or so – And if life expectancy is increasing little or even decreasing, that suggests a population getting less healthy, so I would suggest that extra deaths some years is to be expected. I have been convinced for some time that life expectancy increases would soon cease, and probably at some point go through a spell of decreasing. An interesting consideration – people in the United States have not been increasing in prosperity since about 1999 (as I remember) – and, coupled with a more elderly population, that represents less money to deal with people’s health needs – unless money is taken from elsewhere.
You’re probably right, but it might be worth noting that the Treasury is concerned about increasing life expectancy, with the minimum age for state pension increasing. I don’t expect they’ll reduce it back to 65!
The reason I shy away from ‘age standardized mortality’ figures is that it makes assumptions about the relationship between age and mortality, when this relationship has changed and is changing. It’s dynamic and muti-variate. Simple population corrections give you a clearer, factual, base.
‘It’s Not Science Fiction, It’s Right Now’: Dr. Wolf Warns Vaccine Passports Are End of the West
https://rumble.com/vfoctn-its-not-science-fiction-its-right-now-dr.-wolf-warns-vaccine-passports-are-.html
Anti Lockdown Newspaper: https://thelightpaper.co.uk/
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics
Still seems like Event 201 brought the idea into reality and the Davos talk of Zero Emissions, Sustainable Planet came about through Covid, not the other way around. The ‘window of opportunity’, as different governments saw it for their own country, ID for the UK, an agenda pursued for many years by some.
Added to which, there is a strand of opinion, which will be tested in court, not necessarily to this government’s advantage, that certain government interventions themselves added greatly to what would otherwise have been simply a bad year for ILI (Influenza Like Illnesses)
‘Via its Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), the government in mid-March adopted a policy, executed by NHS England and NHS Improvement, that led to 25,000 patients, including those infected or possibly infected with COVID-19 who had not been tested, being discharged from hospital into care homes between 17 March and 15 April—exponentially increasing the risk of transmission to the very population most at risk of severe illness and death from the disease. With no access to testing, severe shortages of PPE, insufficient staff, and limited guidance, care homes were overwhelmed. Although care home deaths were not even being counted in daily official figures of COVID-19 deaths until 29 April, some 4,300 care home deaths were reported in a single fortnight during this period.’
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/2020-10/Care%20Homes%20Report.pdf?kd5Z8eWzj8Q6ryzHkcaUnxfCtqe5Ddg6=
US is always a step before us.UK used the Cuomo solution and he is now in grave trouble also possible litigations etc for this tactic.
It was deliberate manslaughter and needs to be addressed.
Of course these exact same age standardised mortality charts were being posted below the line here almost exactly 3 months ago. But interesting that there is an article in the BMJ now.
The ONS monthly March 2021 mortality analysis for England and Wales is due out on 22nd April so that may provide some further interesting data to show how age standardised mortality has plummeted in March. Attached is the monthly chart for England up to and including February.
Again this shows that what we have experienced is a harsh Winter season but much less severe than the 2001/2002 Winter.
And the ONS publication Comparisons of all-cause mortality between European countries and regions: 2020 has this striking chart, based on age standardised mortality. The UK is the black line and for the UK it goes up to 12th February 2021.
From that chart you can see that in the UK there has been a secondary ripple following the Spring 2020 wave, but most of the covid mortality this Winter has simply been normal Winter respiratory deaths labelled up as covid.
Thanks for this stunning graph. Pandemics should always have excess mortality and indeed 1918 is only defined by that as virus was not even discovered then.
This almost shows the pandemic was over this winter and the eastern european countries got the pandemic wave this year. The argument of opening up everything cannot be stronger.We have herdimmunity enough not to repeat April 2020. The second C-19 was within a seasonal flu surge.
And here was a discussion from months ago of essentially the same chart as in the BMJ article
https://dailysceptic.org/2021/01/29/latest-news-269/#comment-385990
Tyneside Tigress made this important point there about ‘dry tinder’ that is being made above
If you average 2019 (sudden dip down after three flat years) and 2020 (sharp increase due to April covid deaths – actually many were likely deferred 2019 deaths), then you are more or less at the 2015 figure.
There’s also the good link from Rick H in that discussion to the Hector Drummond article and extended chart
And worth looking at the September to August chart in that discussion as it shows a different picture with ups and downs from one seasonal year to the next (albeit the trend is downwards).
I think we all know this and have done so for months. So good to see the BMJ noticing it.
Let’s see what tomorrow’s weekly data shows too. If it continues to show all cause death numbers at record lows (particularly when age/population adjusted) it should be clear that mortality displacement is the big feature of the crisis. Why?
Because if vaccines and NPI work they can only be responsible for reducing death numbers to expected levels at best (+/- normal statistical variation). The statistically improbable low levels seen in last week’s ONS death data can only occur if these interventions are prophylactic against heart attacks, strokes and cancer. Does anyone believe that?
What we have seen is a nasty virus that has preyed heavily on the elderly and vulnerable – culling “dry tinder” and shortening lives by a few months. This has caused short lived peaks that have exposed the UK health services’ woeful preparedness and lack of funding, panicked the media and politicians, and given 15 minutes of fame to a self selected myopic group of experts who have had the time of their lives. What we have not seen is mortality rates at historically abnormal levels.
Your last paragraph perfectly sums up this entire shitshow.
The last sentence is the crucial one.
Note, that in the consultation paper on emergency rules for the ‘vaccines’, the first sentence starts :
“COVID-19 is the biggest threat this country has faced in peacetime history …”
Quite simply – this is a blatant lie. And one that is indelible.
Judge the government and its supporters of the vaccines by it – it’s one of many falsehoods. But, crucially, note that the vaccination programme is based on misrepresentation at its very root. Hardly surprising, therefore, that the real world efficacy of the snake oil is incredibly lower than claimed.
I remember reading this analysis almost word for word on Hector Drummonds blog in April last year.
It made no impact then that we knew it was nothing to lockdown about, and the same will happen here.
This is not about a virus.
Absolutely and it’s certainly not about saving the lives of anyone especially not the elderly. Until that truth is acknowledged and while people still cling to the thought that it was a well-intentioned cockupcracy, we will never move forward.
It was always about the Big Reset and the Green Agenda with the Billionaires controlling the political class. However, we should never lose sight of the fact we are the many and together we have the real Power!
Being the culprit for that analysis, I’ve been painfully aware from before that point last year how little impact plain facts have generally made (I was particularly keen to keep to mainly simple descriptive statistics, rather than wander into the more disputable area of inference). That’s why the BMJ article is very welcome. I have no illusions, but it is a crack in the wall of silence over the bleedin’ obvious.
Will is of course right that the low mortality in the elderly last years just give more susceptible 2020 and 2021.C-19 is a geriatric pandemic contrary to all earlier pandemics. This is obvious from European countries.See below from Italy and I’ll post from Germany,and same data from Sweden. The whole madness of LD can just be seen in the age statistics, LD younger people to protect the elderly.
In Italy. Average C-19 death 81 year
1,1% of all C-19 deaths < 50
3% without preconditions
Average 3.6 preconditions in a C-19 death
Germany
I seem to recall the Institute of Actuaries published this exact same analysis in the first week of January. Nice to hear the BMJ are catching up.
Bless them. The Institute of Actuaries have been conspiciously missing in action here. On the 12th January they published a sensationalist article comparing 2020 directly to 2019 (which was the lowest mortality year ever).
They had the opportunity to correct the narrative and instead chose to reinforce it – shame on them.
see
https://www.actuaries.org.uk/news-and-insights/media-centre/media-releases-and-statements/cmi-says-2020-s-13-rise-death-rates-worst-1929
Bravo @Will Jones.
A very good, sceptic article, full of facts, data and critical analysis. Thank you.
Add to this the fact we have no firm indication as to how many deaths were due to the draconian lockdown measures themselves rather than the actual “virus”, .so perhaps we don’t have such a remarkable pandemic after all. But that will come as no surprise to the readers of this publication.
“perhaps we don’t have such a remarkable pandemic after all.”
The only inaccuracy is the ‘perhaps’.
The evil that has been perpetrated has been on the back of clear lies that simple analysis has shown up for the best part of a year. That’s why ‘lie’ and not ‘mistake’.
Agreed – The use of “perhaps” was irony.
So since this has been a ‘geriatric pandemic’ the government should have admitted that the greatest problem, and the easiest to remedy, for the elderly was their age-related immunodeficiency caused by the progressive decline in their D status.
That was always the most obvious response, not just this past year to combat Covid19 but in previous years too to help reduce influenza and related respiratory virus deaths. This D-deficiency pandemic predates Covid19 by decades, and has been warned of by WHO, but is still ignored.
Almost all of the frenzied activity to develop new vaccines has been of very little actual benefit, as notable experts (not those we see daily of TV) have said all along. This panic has been manufactured by so-called ‘behavioral scientists’ in an attempt to oust the real scientists from political relevance in responding to public health emergencies. This trend must be prevented – its outcome will be far worse than the overall effect of the pandemic itself, and would if sucessful be of far greater long term threat to society than Covid19 or any other successor to it.
“This D-deficiency pandemic …”
Vitamin D is just one possible factor involved. Don’t simplify or you end up with just a mirror image of the bad science of the Covid fakers.
The issues around this (whatever) are multi-variate – like most things.
Possibly true but vitamin D deficiency is proven to be the cause of many diseases.
Spot On! That is the real truth! The political class across the globe needs to be rounded up and dealing with, and by dealing with I don’t mean a slap on the wrist!
I look around me and cannot see a half decent politically party I can vote for! That is a tragedy in itself!
me too!
How about an honest, transparent election producing results one can trust? Not happening, as they say.
Few notes, not just for UK but several other countries since these 3 charts are similar also for them and they had an unusually low mortality in 2019 (the 2019. was a fluctuation, not a part of the trend).
-Lockdown deaths also contribute to increase in 2020-21. How much? Detailed investigation is needed.
One possibility is that all excess was due to built up of ‘dried timber’ and lockdowns. Many studies have found the virus circulating in Europe since autumn 2019, and winter 2019/20 was very mild in term of excess deaths, which means covid19 does not cause excess in deaths.
-But in any case, when you look at age-adjusted mortality, even tough it stands out a bit, it was still not worse than 2008. and people accepted mortality of 2008. as normal.
2020. changes the trend, but just for a year and a half, and after that the trend should continue down (from 2015-2018 base) as if pandemic never happened (if the trend was real). On the other hand, economic damage wont just get back to normal, it will take time and effort to get back to pre-2020 levels. Also public health in general wont get back to normal since it was damaged a lot and this will be shown in next several years.
-The downward trend before 2020. Well, it was downward up until ~5 years ago when it leveled off, and then there was an unusual year of 2019 with low mortality (a fluctuation, not part of previous downward trend that stopped 5 years ago). Something had to give, and 2020/21 winter would probably see a lot of excess deaths even without pandemic and lockdowns. But regardless of 2019. the trend stopped going down. You cannot extend life indefinitely. It gets harder and harder to keep people alive as they get older and older. All it took in winter 2017/18 was a mismatched vaccine for flu for a lot of people to die in UK (same for a lot of countries in Europe and US).
“This follows some other recent winters when seasonal deaths have been high,” said Dr Veena Raleigh, senior fellow at the King’s Fund. “With an ageing population, the worry is that this could be the start of a trend of periodically high winter deaths.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/flu-vaccine-deaths-nhs-ineffective-crisis-bad-weather-illness-2017-a8660496.html
Even if you manage somehow to shield everyone from ILI in their old age, the quality of life will still be low since a lot of people will be suffering from old-age chronic problems. Then it will get to a point where common cold can kill them. Indeed this is happening already in many nursing homes around west, but no one is crazy to attribute them to common colds (yet! covid19 crazy way of thinking might change that).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095096/
Just an interesting pattern I came across in analysing all-cause mortality almost a year ago :
It kicked off with the observation that the previous year had been one of exceptionally low mortality (this was before the ‘dry tinder’ thesis was in wide circulation).
I thought that it would be interesting to group a quarter of a century of mortality into two year periods – a two-year averaging rather than a moving average.
The result was interesting, in that :
Thank you for the information.
As Goldzie mentioned mortality displacement, when you look at Sweden you can see it more clearly I think. Since week 5 of 2021, it has a deficit (from 5y average) and since week 8 it came to lowest levels since 20 years (‘show other years option’).
You can find it here:
https://mpidr.shinyapps.io/stmortality/
(I don’t think it is due to lag since it has been like this for a month now and the last week is w12, which is sometime at the end of March).
I’ve just noticed a tip of the hat to the Scary Fairy in the BMJ article – it’s in the last graph that shows annual changes to the ‘age adjusted’ mortality figures.
This shows a massive change from 2019 to 2020.
But put that in the context of my remarks on a two-year analysis base, and you can see that it’s an artifact caused by the transition from a year of unusually low respiratory infections to the introduction of a new pathogen – not as scary as it looks.
Looking back over the past 50 years, it’s interesting to note that 1976 saw the highest number of deaths per capita. It was of course the year of the long hot summer but I can’t recall the BBC giving us a daily roll-call of deaths or the government enforcing the wearing of sun hats.
No rolling 24 hour news back then.
Just a couple of daily bulletins.
You could argue we were all much better informed back then, since the news programmes contained only actual news, rather than endless speculation, gossip, journalists talking to each other, newspaper reviews, outside broadcasts of journalists waiting for something to happen, etc. etc.
The pub landlord heckling Kier Starmer had this graph with him; the best Starmer could do was prattle on about how members of his family were on the “front line”:
https://youtu.be/VXjLVHKaKLE
Just got a 30 day Facebook ban for sharing this article. “spamming”
Nevertheless the chart shows that 2020 was a significant uptick against the trend of declining age standardised mortality and this was a year in which there was virtually no flu. More to the point is what would the chart have looked like had there been no intervention – really hard to tell but the rate of increase in the early stages of the outbreaks before intervention gives a guide.