There are two ‘official’ death tolls on the Government’s COVID-19 dashboard. 138,852 is the number of deaths within 28 days of a positive test. 162,620 is the number of deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate.
The main reason the latter is larger than the former is lack of testing during the first wave. In the spring of last year, about 15,000 people in whose death COVID-19 was a contributing factor died without being tested.
So is 162,620 the pandemic’s true death toll? No. And that’s because it includes a large number of deaths that probably would have happened anyway.
How do we know this? Because if we calculate the excess deaths – the number of deaths in excess of what we’d expect based on previous years – we get a much lower number.
The official death toll for England and Wales, based on death certificates, is 147,031. Yet if we add up all the deaths since the start of March 2020, and subtract the average over the last five years, we get a figure of 117,476 (about 20% lower).
What’s more, due to population ageing, the average over the last five years understates the expected number of deaths. Hence the true number of excess deaths is about 15% lower. Taking this into account, the pandemic’s total death toll in England and Wales is about 100,000.
However, when it comes to events like pandemics, estimating the total death toll isn’t the best way to gauge the impact on mortality. Consider an example.
Japan and Mexico have about the same population, but there are more deaths each year in Japan. How can this be, when everyone knows Japan is a very long-lived country? The reason is simple: there are more elderly people in Japan, so there are more people at high-risk of dying each year.
A better way of comparing the level of mortality in Japan and Mexico is to use the age-standardised mortality rate or life expectancy. Both of these measures take into account the risk of dying at different ages, as well as the age-structure of the population. (In 2019, Japan’s life expectancy was 84, whereas Mexico’s was only 76.)
Last year, the U.K.’s age-standardised mortality rate rose by 12.8%. Although this is the largest one-year change since 1940 (the first year of the Blitz), the level to which mortality rose was lower than in 2008. And even the change should be put into context: 2019 was a year of unusually low mortality.
I previously estimated that the life expectancy in England and Wales last year was 80.4 – down from 81.8 in 2019. (Other researchers have reported similar figures.) So despite tens of thousands of excess deaths, life expectancy was still around 80.
The reason life expectancy didn’t fall further is that the vast majority of excess deaths were to people in their 70s and 80s. If there had been 100,000 excess deaths of people in their 20s and 30s, the drop in life expectancy would have been far greater. (In 1918, Spanish life expectancy fell by a staggering 12 years.)
Using data on life expectancy and population from the World Bank, we can calculate the percentage of the world’s population that lives in countries with a life expectancy lower than 80.4. For 2019, it comes out as 91%. This means that, in 2019, nine out of ten people lived in countries with a higher level of mortality than Britain experienced last year.
In many countries, of course, life expectancy is pulled down by the high level of infant mortality. Yet there are still large cross-country differences in life expectancy at age 10. For example, it’s 46 in Lesotho, compared to 72 in the U.K.
All this means that the level of mortality Britain experienced last year was neither exceptionally high by historical standards, nor by international standards.
As the ONS noted in a report last July: “The highest mortality rate observed during a ‘normal’ winter in Bulgaria has historically been greater than the highest mortality rate observed during the ‘abnormal’ coronavirus pandemic in England.”
For the last few paragraphs, I’ve been talking about 2020. But wasn’t the second wave, which peaked in January of 2021, even more deadly than the first? In short, no.
Although the number of deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate was higher in the second wave, the age-adjusted excess mortality was lower. In fact, the overall level of mortality in the first eight months of 2021 was lower than in 2018.
The reason is that many of those who died with COVID-19 on the death certificate in the winter of 2021 would probably have died anyway. In addition: some deaths that would have occurred a few months later were ‘brought forward’ by the pandemic.
Overall then, the pandemic was a major event, resulting in the largest one-year drop in life expectancy since the Second World War. On the other hand, mortality only rose to the level of 2008, and was still lower than the normal level of mortality in most countries around the world.
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That asteroid can’t come soon enough, can it?
A science fiction story I remember from the past starts with aliens landing on earth who then immediately proceed to butcher and process humans for some mysterious purpose in vast numbers. All attempts to stop or otherwise fight them fail because of their superior technology and the doom of mankind seems a certainty until someone finally manages to communicate with them. At this point, they immediately stop these activities and sincerely apologize for the unintendend massacre. The problem was that they had entirely failed to realize that humans were something other than contaminated water.
Some certainly aren’t.
Me next for the suicide booth, Bender.
Bloody hell, this is getting dark!
Well, I’ll be certainly be AVOIDing them with my charitable donations from now on.
I accidentally blundered into their donation site, not realising it was an echo-chamber blog, and asked a neutral question exactly what they fund, and whether the White Hats were involved, which led to my being set upon by a gang of virtue-signallers with blue-and-white profile filters. I made my excuses and left.
Can charities (or their employees) be held responsible for misappropriation of funds? If so, this would seem be a splendid opportunity to do that: It’s a safe bet that nobody who ever donated money to Oxfam desired to commission an Oxfalish: English Expertly Undone For The Postcolonial Age report.
It’s pretty clear that big charities have been engaged and proactive in furthering political agendas for decades. How individuals view giving money to charities is up to them but the huge amounts given to them via government regulated lottery monies and directly awarded tax payers money is matter of great concern.
But what should we expect from a fake Tory Party?
What language isn’t “The Language of a Colonising Nation”?
Stand in the Park – Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
What utter planks! At least people like this don’t work for the BBC and civil service. Wait a minute…
“The introduction apologises for being in and about the English language.”— Quite so! In future, please submit your work (woke) in Sanskrit or Coptic.
Or Klingon. More people would understand that, and as it’s the language of a fictitious “colonising nation”, presumably it would be OK for the crackpots at OXFAM.
“In future, please submit your work (woke) in Sanskrit or Coptic…”
because none of the rest of us want to firkin read it.
Perzakerly!
How about Esparanto?
The people at Oxfam must get smacked of their tits on crack, then hold a meeting to discussing the best ways to p off their donors!
I stopped supporting Oxfam years ago when they changed their job description to ‘fighting the anthropogenic 0.001% of a gaseous plant food that keeps everything on this planet alive.’
When they are not using charitable donations to pay for prostitutes they are using them to insult their donors. They pay their CEO a six figure sum to come up with this?
That’s just like the former Silicon Valley Bank: Once a single woketard has managed to get into a position where he can influence employment decisions, he’s going to use that to hire more woketards doing ever more woketarding at the expense of the company until all of the productive staff has been replaced with drones issueing language guides and engaging in performance politics celebrating other woketards for also doing this. This continues until the money has run out. Then, the parasites jump ship and find another host company/ organization.
This is Andrew Bridgen’s speech from this afternoon. You Tube have already taken it down because it’s too much truth for them to handle. Can’t be getting that much contradictory information to the masses now…But if you’re quick you will see at the very start somebody taps the guy with the white hair in front, he goes over to the other side and speaks to somebody and they all get up and leave! So Andrew is left speaking to a near empty room once more. Disgusting! They should be obliged to remain out of basic courtesy! And the guy who replies to Bridgen has nothing in the way of come-back and is a right gonk. See what you think;
https://odysee.com/@AwakenWiki:c/Andrew-Bridgen—Efficacy-of-the-mRNA-covid-19-booster,-17-Mar-2023:e
I don’t have the time to watch this completely ATM (it’s about 27 minutes), but thanks for posting it.
Actually I haven’t watched it all either, just skipped it along. My preference went instead with a dose of The Walking Dead.
Government minister does not answer any of Bridgen’s questions. Same old safe and effective. One day this is going to bite them on the arse.
It’s both disgraceful and insulting in equal measure. I listen to these sock puppets and just think they cannot possibly believe what they’re saying, they’re just toeing the party line.
Extraordinary if true. I have never heard before of a Member of Parliament, speaking in Parliament, being censored. I listened to him speaking on BBC Parliament Channel. What he says is based on ONS data. It at least merits a response from government if they have a different interpretation. Otherwise the impression is that they just don’t want to hear dissent.
Well I’m disgusted because it comes off as being blatantly snubbed by your fellow colleagues. It’s both rude and unprofessional. Also, if this is the sort of treatment Bridgen has now come to expect, does it come as any surprise that these same MPs have also zero interest in listening to the public’s concerns, the vax injured or even contemplating starting an investigation into the safety of the products that they bullied, threatened and coerced people to get, all based on lies and fraud? Their behaviour in Parliament just speaks volumes of their attitude and disinterest towards the British public. I’m not even a UK resident anymore and I feel very, very pissed off watching this.
Thanks
Nations are colonising, by definition.
Oh well, language is difficult and should be banned, to avoid offending people who are a bit dense.
So, as I haven’t colonised anything, I shall now write that in my language, as follows:
Erdle flinsbuk shert’bhi grees klus.
Literally, anything colonised have not I myself.
Hope that hasn’t offended anyone.
Does the guide have lots of euphemisms for sexual offences?
Aren’t Oxfam up to their necks in pedophilia and child abuse in those countries that they claim are victims of colonial power. I’m wondering how they square that particular circle. Perhaps they could take a leaf out if the good book which advises “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?” What is it with these hypocritical parasites that makes them think we should do as they say and not as they do.
Watch this 6min video from Truth Be Told posted 2 hours ago, thanking Andrew Bridgen. Very moving.
https://twitter.com/CoviLeaksCVVAM
Thanks
The Newspeak is getting more Orwellian by the day, it seems.
I stopped donating when the prostitute scandal broke. Also our local Oxfam shop has a very peculiar smell which I don’t like and the ‘holier than thou’ attitude of some of the staff adds to my dislike of it.
This latest stuff is ridiculous. So, it’s nevermore for me and I’ll bet they’ll lose donations.
As per Oxfam’s Annual Report and Accounts 2021/2022, the salary of the current CEO Dr. Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah is reportedly well over ₤120,936 and the company’s turnover is ₤400,000,000. After the CEO, the highest salary is of CFO who is paid around ₤108,703. Isn’t the term ” pounds” a left over from Colonial rule? Just saying
A charity that can afford to spend donated funds on producing such guff, clearly has forgotten what it is for, it appears in common with many organisations it believes it is more important to virtue signal, rather than actually perform the job it is supposed to be doing.
I will no longer donate money, clothes, things to Oxfam, neither will I purchase from its shops, clearly it is spending charitable donations on too many staff, with too little to do whilst the poor and diseased suffer for Oxfams vanity.
So the English language didn’t exist before the English set up colonies? Gosh, the standard of history teaching is really impressive.
I know. And Yorkshire folk spoke something quite different from Viking before those colonisers showed up. B*stards.
And don’t get me started on the French
Not even the french like the french.
English colonies had by-and-large ceased to exist by the 1980s, ie, about 30 years ago. Hence, today’s decolonizers are preaching to an echo chamber filled with themselves about a supposed issue which doesn’t exist anymore. Or actually, exists in the exact opposite of what it used to be: Colonization is nothing but immigration of foreigners with the intent to settle permanently in the area they immigrated into. Usually, they don’t care very much about the natives and just themselves up exactly (or as exactly as possible) as things used to be in the place they came from. Considering this, the England of 2023 is a heavily colonized nation, to a degree where large parts are barely recognizable as English at all. There are even – although this is still officially denied – Sharia courts operating here handing out covert death penalities to people they deem religious transgressors and the police is backing them.
Silly buggers.
NEVER allow this absurd wokery to influence your world view. At all times choose your own words and thoughts, for if you let these insidious central planners choose them for you then your freedom is LOST, and as Joni Mitchell would say “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone”.
Oxfam’s owes its existence to the UK’s colonial heritage as do many other charities. Oxfam is known for its high salaries in the sector but I suspect if you look at its diversity record, most of its leaders will be the children and grandchildren of those very same colonalists from whom they derive their privileged positions and continue to benefit from albeit by trashing their legacy.
I suspect those who wrote the guide know very little about history besides what they have been told.
Human history shows that the Western culture has created the most free, richest, equal and diverse civilization in the history of the world.