Annually about 1,500 people are killed on Britain’s roads. Just imagine if that figure increased by 5,000, there’d be the most awful fuss! Yet, it’s likely that across England heart failure deaths could be 5,000 higher in 2024 than in 2020 and still no ‘excess’ deaths would be recorded. How could this be? It’s all to do with inflation. Only this time it’s the level of ‘expected’ deaths that’s being inflated away rather than the pound in your pocket.
Already, in 2023, the expected level of heart failure deaths is 7% higher than it was in 2020. This means that we could see 3,000 more people die from heart failure in 2023 than in 2020 without registering any ‘excess’ heart failure deaths. In 2024 an increase of 5,000 heart attack deaths over the 2020 figure would also be reported as no ‘excess’ deaths.
‘Expected’ deaths are calculated by averaging deaths in prior years. The average will increase as data from prior years are replaced with data from recent years. As heart failure deaths in 2021 and 2022 have been so high the ‘expected’ rate of death goes up accordingly. Heart failure deaths in 2023 look set to continue this trend.
The latest data release from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities incorporates six new weeks of data in 2023, from week ending March 24th 2023 to week ending April 28th 2023. This can be directly compared to the six weeks in 2020 at the start of the pandemic, from week ending the March 27th 2020 to week ending May 1st 2020.
During this six-week period in 2020 it was expected that 7,142 people would die from heart failure. This ‘expected’ death rate from heart failure was calculated using heart failure deaths from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. By contrast, in 2023 it was expected that there would be 7,619 deaths from heart failure in the corresponding six-week period. That’s a 7% increase. So, when we look at excess heart failure deaths in 2023 they appear to be far lower than they would be if we had compared them to the 2020 base level.
In 2024, we’ll have lost 2015, 2016 and 2017 from the average and gained 2021, 2022 and 2023. The average will have increased to something like 7,856, a 10% increase on the 2020 figure.
At this juncture it’s worth just checking whether all-cause deaths and other causes of death, such as cancer, have increased at the same rate as heart failure. You may not surprised to learn that they haven’t. Whilst the level of expected all-cause deaths and cancer have increased by about 3%, the expected rate of heart failure has increased more than twice as fast to almost 7%. What’s so special about heart failure?
Having looked at the ‘expected’ numbers, what about the actual number of deaths?
In the six-week period of weeks 12-17 in 2023 there were 8,804 heart failure deaths. If we compare this to the expected level in weeks 12-17 in 2020 of 7,142 we can see that this amounts to a 23% increase. Of course, the reported ‘excess’ heart failure death rate isn’t reported as being 23% but rather 16% (still a big increase) because the ‘expected’ rate of heart failure deaths has been inflated over the past three years.
The next question to ask is, is an increase of 23% significant? Well, the increase in all-cause deaths in 2020 over the ‘expected’ level of deaths, bearing in mind that this was the year of a ‘once in a century’ pandemic, was about 14%. So, yes, I think a 23% increase is really something that should be looked at. A lot more people are dying from heart failure than was previously the case.
Following previous articles in the Daily Sceptic I’ve been criticised below-the-line for suggesting that the vaccine delivered some societal benefits. Specifically, I contend that they provided a narrative that allowed society to reopen. I stand by that view. In the absence of the vaccines I don’t believe that society would have reopened up as quickly as it did. That said, the only reason it was shut down in the first place was due to the panicked decisions of Government. I’m not a natural anti-vaxxer, I’m just anti-vaccines that don’t work and that people are coerced or tricked into taking.
To date, my objection to the vaccine rollout has been a libertarian one. I think the authorities overplayed their hand scaring people and coercing people who were never at any risk from Covid into getting jabbed with an under-tested treatment. Freedoms were trashed, informed consent was ignored and the door was opened for future Governments to steamroller individual rights. However, this increase in heart failure deaths makes me think that the vaccines were more dangerous than I had thought.
While I’m increasingly persuaded of a very significant link between mRNA vaccines and heart failure, I still don’t see the evidence of increased levels of cancer deaths post-vaccine. Cancer can be a slow burn disease and maybe the jury’s still out, but to date, the data don’t seem to show increased cancer deaths.
In recent months I’ve read a number of articles about an upsurge in cancers (examples include a piece by Karol Sikora from November 2022 in UnHerd and two pieces by Angus Dalgleish that appeared in the Daily Sceptic in November 2022 and January 2023) though not always specifically linked to the vaccine. However, if we look at the excess mortality figures produced by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities we don’t see these concerns being translated into excess deaths. So far, in 2023 cancer deaths are lower than the expected figure.
Cancer deaths appear to be a very different case to deaths from heart failure. Heart failure deaths have consistently been above the expected level since March 2020, as can be seen in Fig 2.
What’s perhaps more illuminating is if we compare the rate of excess cancer deaths to excess heart failure deaths since March 2020. At the end of April 2023 the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities reports 26,580 excess deaths (14% above the inflated ‘expected’ rate of deaths) from heart failure compared to 8,304 (1.7%) excess cancer deaths. Interestingly, the acceleration of heart failure deaths really took off after the vaccine rollout started.
In Fig 3 I have drawn a red line at week ending March 5th 2021, by which time over 90% of the over-70s had been vaccinated. Since then, while there have been 929 excess cancer deaths there have been 17,693 excess deaths from heart failure. That means, since March 2021 excess deaths from heart failure are 19 times higher than excess deaths from cancer.
One might almost think that when Andrew Bridgen, Dr. Peter McCullough or Dr. Aseem Malhotra say that perhaps someone should look into excess heart failure deaths, they have a point.
It’s hard to know what to make of all this. The key takeaways seem to be:
- Deaths from heart failure in a six-week period in 2023 were 23% higher than the expected level for the comparable six-week period in 2020.
- The ‘expected’ number of excess deaths from heart failure is almost 7% higher in 2023 than in 2020. The level in 2024 is likely to be 10% higher than in 2020. Why, when cancer deaths have not similarly increased?
- Excess deaths from heart failure have increased significantly in comparison to the expected level of deaths; this is particularly true since the vaccine rollout.
- If cancer diagnoses are increasing this increase hasn’t shown up in the mortality figures yet.
- Over the last couple of weeks excess deaths in England have been over 18% higher than the expected level (see ONS data) in spite of the expected level of deaths being inflated by inclusion of deaths in 2021 and 2022 into the ‘expected’ death figure.
Surely, the time is long past when someone should be explaining what’s going on.
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