It’s been widely reported that England is in the throes of an ‘excess deaths crisis’. We’ve covered it here at the Daily Sceptic, and so have many other outlets.
According to figures published by the ONS, England and Wales has seen over 17,000 excess deaths since the start of May – which is 12% higher than the five-year average. What’s more, only 7,600 of these can be attributed to Covid. And that’s if you generously assume that every “death involving Covid” qualifies as such.
Lockdown sceptics (such as my colleagues Toby and Will) have suggested the excess deaths we’re seeing might be due to the delayed effects of lockdown. For example, perhaps more people are dying now because of missed cancer screenings back in 2020. They’ve also suggested that adverse reactions to the vaccines might be playing a role.
However, I’m not sure there’s really anything to explain. The chart below shows age-adjusted excess mortality in England since January of 2020. It is based on data published by the ONS.
As you can see, there was a big spike corresponding to the first wave and a small hump corresponding to the second wave. Since the start of 2021, however, we haven’t really had any excess mortality – at least on average. Zooming in on the last three months (data for August are not yet available) there’s nothing to report.
Age-adjusted mortality was 4.9% higher than the five-year average in May, was 1.2% lower in June, and was 2.2% higher in July. Averaging across the three months, it was only 2% higher than the five-year average. To put this figure into perspective, age-adjusted mortality was *92%* higher than the five-year average in April of 2020.
So what explains the difference between my chart and the one above? Two things: choice of baseline, and age-standardisation (plus the chart above includes Wales).
My chart uses ‘2015–2019’ as the five-year average. By contrast, the ONS recently switched to using ‘2016–2019 plus 2021’ as the five-year average. The latter time period omits the year 2015, which had unusually high mortality. As a result, the average of ‘2016–2019 plus 2021’ yields a lower baseline than the average of ‘2015–2019’, which has the effect of exaggerating excess morality.
A more important difference is age-standardisation. My chart plots the age-standardised mortality rate as a percentage of the five-year average, whereas the chart above compares the absolute number of deaths to the five-year average.
Because England’s population is ageing, the absolute number of deaths is increasing each year – or has been since 2011. This means that the five-year average underestimates the expected number of deaths in the year of interest. (Earlier in the pandemic, lack of age-adjustment led pro-lockdown commentators to overestimate the number of deaths caused by Covid.)
Incidentally, John-Burn Murdoch at the Financial Times correctly notes that excess mortality is much lower once you adjust for age, though for some reason he still finds an elevated level in July. (This may be because he used ‘2016–2019 plus 2021’ as the five-year average, rather than ‘2015–2019’ like me.)
Two caveats are in order. First, age-adjusted mortality data for August are not yet available, and they may show a greater uptick. Second, it’s possible that people are dying from the delayed effects of lockdown, but this isn’t showing up as age-adjusted excess mortality because the five-year average is the wrong counterfactual.
In other words, it’s possible we’d now be seeing negative excess mortality (i.e., ‘mortality displacement’) if not for the delayed effects of lockdown. This is by no means implausible, as there has been considerable mortality displacement in Sweden – which didn’t lock down.
However, going by the conventional way of doing things, there’s currently no ‘excess deaths crisis’ in England.
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Funded by B&M Gates & best friends with Chelsea Clinton.
Sridhar is the living embodiment of an establishment puppet.
I asked you this already, but regardless – have you played the Dane yet?
As a youth I used to weep in butcher’s shops.
The COVID science was always an interdisciplinary effort: Whoever had some well-sounding academic or at least medical title and was willing to have the right oponions in public could – no matter what his field of expertise, if any, actually was – become part of The Very Wise Sages®
‘Science’? No $cientism. Follow the money.
Real science has been dead since maths and models usurped physical reality (mid 19th century).
Einstein is a famous example (there are few things as stupid as relativity).
This non-Scot whatever she/zhe is has no idea about the immune system.
No one can prove to me that flying viruses exist.
Bacteria can’t exist outside a host.
“Devi Sridhar’s Knowledge of the Epidemiology of Respiratory Viruses Could be Written on the Back of a Postage Stamp”Wasn’t it blindingly obvious?
I always remember the great Ian Brown’s Twitter post in response to comments on his Twitter feed, which contained some “vaccine sceptical” views from smart-alecs along the lines of “Stick to singing mate, you don’t know anything about medicine”. His answer “OK, but you’re taking medical advice from a computer salesman” (Billy, in case you were wondering).
It must be harder for the authors to stomach than for the rest of us – their profession has disgraced itself despite their best efforts to do the right thing. A lifetime of work betrayed by the wicked, the stupird, the selfish and the lazy.
“A lifetime of work” is the issue here – all that study, all those exams, the belief that they were doing the right thing because the process drove them in that direction. To suggest or to ask them now to double check they did the right thing, they thought they knew the right thing, “the science” and were they in the wrong after all? It doesn’t bear thinking about. What a loss of face and of status. Better to double down and see no evil, hear no evil…
”If other countries can do it, there is no reason why we can’t, too.”
As Sir Desmond Swayne put it in a question in the Commons: “Herd stupidity”.
Quite, I still want to check out his voting record on all matters relating to CV NPIs etc ….
I think he voted against most/all of it – when they had votes. Lots of stuff was passed without a vote early on.
Credit where it is due. Clearly the estimed Doctors Heneghan and Jeffries have had enough of pussy-footing politeness and have opened an “who dares wins assault” and frankly I don’t blame them.
The time has come to get rid of the whole lot of them and this waste of space oxygen thief Sridhar deserves to be amongst the first.
A horrible blot on humanity.
When four days ago, I pointed out that Sridhar’s expertise lay in the field of anthropology and that perhaps an epidemiology/medicine/virology qualification might be better suited to her post as chair of Global Public Health (aka ‘the pandemic professor), three folk gave down votes. Prof’ Heneghan would seem to agree with my comment. Thank heaven I took his and Mike Yeadon’s advice and remain unstabbed.
As for the Olympically dim Richard Burgon, it doesn’t surprise me that he pinned his colours to Sridhar’s mast and is likely to be a front bencher in Starmer’s upcoming clown show. Sheesh!
All lockdowns do is kick the can down the road. Simply explainable with two packs of cards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4kWbYlopN4
I’m a subscriber to TTE. Neil (perhaps the Neil who comments here – hope he doesn’t mind me quoting him) said this:
“First time I saw Devi on TV and heard she is a professor in the dept of public health at Edinburgh I had to find her background and was comforted to read she’s an anthropologist who wrote a book with the young Clinton. I thought that explained why her knowledge of virology and medicine differed from my 50 year old knowledge.
She was reported to be one of crankies favourites.
This last week has been a great relief to realise my understanding is ok!”