Corroborated by three different ways of analysing U.K. population statistics (the official version, five-year and 10-year pre-Covid fatality percentage rates by month), two conclusions and one potentially relevant observation, become apparent.
First, the official Covid death toll (230,000) was overestimated by more than a factor of 2x (adjusted for dry tinder effects, the true figure was likely 95-105,000).
Second, Brits have continued to die at the same accelerated rate as during the first two years of Covid. There have been roughly 80,000 cumulative excess deaths in the 18 months since end-February 2022 (‘excess’ depends on the baseline used), but only 15,000 or so can be realistically attributed to Covid, leaving some 65,000 unexplained excess deaths (~7% of total annual fatalities).
The observation is that February 2022 was the date by when virtually the whole U.K. population had already been vaccinated, not once but twice (119 million vaccinations in a population of 67 million).
If multiple (> 2) vaccines have been suppressing, instead of enhancing, the natural T-cell immunity response, as some doctors are now arguing, it is a matter of utmost concern that there have now been 32 million additional ‘booster’ shots administered in the U.K. since this unknown killer first became apparent in the data.
New unknown killer
Former Blackrock executive Ed Dowd has highlighted that cardiovascular deaths in the 15-44 age group in England and Wales in 2021 and 2022 were not only on a steeply rising trend, but that the +40% jump (from eight per 100,000 in 2019 to 11 per 100,00 in 2022) is statistically alarming, to say the least. Yet the U.K. Office of National Statistics (ONS) points out that the U.K. age-standardised mortality rate in July 2023 was below the July five-year average (although the ONS does exclude 2020, 60% of Covid deaths occurred after that date). For the first time since June 2021, the leading cause of death was ischaemic heart disease (as opposed to dementia). However, the rate was 12% lower than the five-year average. So, does the U.K. have a mortality problem here or not?
Data inadequacy
The biggest issue we have is that the data are shockingly inadequate. Following Covid, the five-year averages have become abnormally volatile, even with the 2020 data excluded. After a material spike in mortality due to the pandemic, you would naturally expect deaths to be lower than trend, potentially disguising the sorts of new developments that Dowd claims to have identified. Covid era data was clearly unfit for purpose (unless that purpose was to deceive, discombobulate and control).
Cases & tests
For example, there was no adjustment or acknowledgement that ‘cases’ were not the same as infections (diagnoses) and were anyway clearly a function of the number of tests, which ranged from less than 10,000 per day at the height of the first wave, to 340,000 per day at the peak of Wave Two in January 2021, all the way up to 540,000 per day over Christmas 2022, before having now fallen back below 10,000 per day again since March 2023.
Hospitalisations
Hospitalisations are no better, because the data doesn’t measure patients hospitalised with suspected Covid, but rather patients within a week of hospitalisation that had, either before or since, contracted Covid. Since the main hot beds (excuse the pun) of Covid infection were the hospitals themselves (which also managed to have 10 times the case fatality rate of the wider community), hospitalisation data alone tell us very little.
The official death toll
Meanwhile, deaths data were muddied by being defined as ‘with’ Covid, rather than ‘from’ Covid which, combined with being a notifiable disease running rife through the hospitals, all but guaranteed it nightly headlines on the BBC. To date, the Covid death toll has officially reached 230,000, or 0.34% of the U.K. population. Prior to Covid, the annual U.K. death toll averaged about 0.898% of the population a year, equivalent to ~600,000 of the current population. Yet, since 2020, that annual death rate has risen +9.5% to 0.983%, but how much of this increase is due to Covid?
Disquiet about the reliability of data on tests, ‘cases’ and hospitalisations aside, according to the U.K. Government data on deaths, which are (only a little) harder to fudge, there were two main waves of Covid (see Chart One below), prior to winter 2021, when the disease went endemic. Officially at least, Wave One, which ran from March-June 2020, claimed 56,000 lives. Shockingly, Wave Two (October 2020 to March 2021), which might have been two separate waves overlapping with each other, took closer to 94,000 souls in just six months. Then, after ~150,000 deaths in Year One, the death toll eased back substantially in Year Two (July 2021-June 2022) to ~50,000.
Chart One: Daily U.K. deaths with COVID-19 on the certificate
U.K. Government figures show that since June 2022 (pandemic Year Three) the U.K. annual mortality rate has moderated still further to ~25,000 (see Chart Two below). At least, that is the official story. A terrible pandemic, gradually brought to heel by a fast-acting, determined and brave bureaucracy, albeit one that denied personal freedoms whilst brooking no dissension, nor even dialogue. However, whether you wholly subscribe to this narrative or not, it seems certain a more robust calculation of excess mortality might better illuminate what sometimes comes across as an almost intentionally opaque picture.
Chart Two: U.K. cumulative Covid deaths now equal 230,115 (September 28th, 2023)
Excess deaths
The issue is starkly revealed when we compare Covid deaths, which should all be ‘excess’, with the actual excess deaths data, which should all be Covid. However, after 2020 (Year One), this is not the case at all. Initially (Year Two; March 2021 to February 2022 inclusive), deaths officially tagged as ‘Covid’ by the authorities (see black line on Chart Three below), far outstripped excess deaths. 2021 was the year of ‘Project Fear’ when, although the threat was diminishing, the excessive use of testing, and the very low polymerase chain reaction (PCR) threshold required to determine a positive case, led to a massive overestimation of both the disease’s prevalence and its associated fatalities. From having been in line with each other as late as January 2021, by the end of pandemic Year Two (end-February 2022), cumulative Covid deaths (187,557) were officially ~41,000 higher than cumulative excess deaths (146,886). Furthermore, almost all this overstatement had occurred during Year Two.
Chart Three: Estimated U.K. excess deaths during COVID-19
A new threat
Covid deaths coming in materially above excess deaths in Year Two merely meant we were overestimating Covid fatalities. However, something much more worrying has been taking place since end-Year Two of the pandemic. Instead of excess deaths coming in below Covid deaths, as we would expect, the opposite has been happening; and at considerable scale. Since April 18th 2022 to end-August 2023, there have officially been 34,350 Covid deaths in the U.K. (official Covid deaths are ‘with’ not ‘from’ and have tended to be chronically overestimated by almost a factor of two since testing began in earnest after Year One). Yet officially, excess deaths are almost 100,000.
Something unidentified, but clearly not Covid, seems to have killed upwards of 65,000 Brits over the last 18 months; and at a monthly rate (~4,000) wholly in line with the severity of Covid itself.
A deeper dive
The above figures come from charts available from Our World in Data and demand closer investigation, especially since taking deviations from the rolling five-year average, as the ONS does, is not a good idea after a pandemic; whilst then arbitrarily ignoring 40% of that same pandemic is hardly the most robust strategy either. We can get a more detailed analysis by looking at monthly deaths in England and Wales for the five years pre-Covid (2015-19 inclusive), and dividing these by the estimated total population, to derive a monthly expected percentage death rate. This ranges from a low of 0.067% in August/September to a high of 0.0965% in January, when the elderly are at their most vulnerable to the cold weather, chronic lack of vitamin D and the stressor of annual flu. These monthly expected percentage mortality rates for England and Wales can then be scaled up and compared to the actual U.K. monthly death data from 2020 onwards to estimate excess deaths. This methodology merely confirms the story above, whilst painting a very different picture to the one espoused by the official narrative.
Pandemic Year One, Wave One
The first wave of Covid to hit the U.K., albeit mercifully brief, was shocking in its intensity (the official 34,000 U.K. excess deaths in April 2020 alone were three times higher than any month before or since, though excess deaths were over 48,000). Lasting barely two and a half months, from end-March 2020 to early June, Wave One officially claimed 57,000 lives. This tallies closely with the gross excess deaths number over the same period of 61,000. Sadly, a large number of these Wave One deaths were in the old-aged, hospitalised cohort, who were packed off back to the care homes to free up hospital beds which, ironically, were never needed. Many of those who then died in the care homes were not officially recognized as Covid deaths. Testing too had yet to be rolled out into the wider community, including care homes, so by end-June only six million (2.8%) out of an eventual 213 million tests had been done. Of these, 5%, or 285,000 cases, mainly hospital patients and staff, were positive, of which 21% died. By end-2021 in contrast, rampant testing, set to low positive PCR thresholds, was turning up 180,000 ‘cases’ a day, causing the case fatality rate (CFR) to plummet from 21% to below 0.08%, roughly the same as the flu (see Chart Three below).
Chart Three: U.K. COVID-19 case fatality rate (CFR, %)
Dry tinder
Nevertheless, in the run up to Wave One, there had been substantially fewer deaths (i.e., negative excess deaths) thanks to warmer winters and a benign couple of back-to-back flu seasons, particularly compared to the winters of 2014-15 and 2017-18. There is ample evidence of a significant U.K. ‘dry tinder’ effect built up over these prior two years (2018-20) during which, in the absence of bad flu outbreaks, there were ~21,000 fewer cumulative deaths than might otherwise have been expected. Adjusted for this ‘dry tinder’ effect, net Covid deaths in Wave One (i.e., those we can assume were due specifically to Covid rather than just extreme fragility) were much lower than the headline figure and marginally above 40,000: still awful, but nevertheless 30% less than the official Wave One Covid death figure of 57,000.
Year One, Wave Two/Three
Waves Two and Three, which started in September 2020, when Brits brought the Spanish variant back from their summer vacations before packing their kids back off to school to spread it amongst their friends, subsequently morphed into a secondary ‘Alpha’ winter wave originating from Kent which, between them, lasted until the end of February 2021. Owing to both the reportedly very high transmissibility and virulence of Alpha, Christmas 2020 was cancelled. However, during Wave Two testing topped 450,000 per day and, largely owing to the very low positive settings on the PCR machines, 3.8 million ‘cases’ were identified.
Whilst officially at least, this was the deadliest wave, with 95,000 people dying with Covid, because of so many positives, the ‘case’ fatality rate (CFR) dropped 10-fold to 2.5%. Yet this was also when Project Fear was gathering pace, so it comes as no surprise to learn that there were only 49,400 excess deaths during Wave Two/Three, similar to Wave One and only about half the official 95,000 estimate. This lower figure meant the implied CFR was now 1.3% (already a 16-fold better outcome than Wave One). Not that you’d have been alerted to these improved survival rates from watching the BBC News, of course.
Year Two
By pandemic Year Two (March 2021 to February 2022), Covid had become endemic and, instead of the prior big waves of infections and deaths, the official data show a steady trend of ~150 deaths a day, nevertheless sufficient to not only feed the insatiable appetite of the nightly BBC News, but to rack up a further 36,000 deaths, from 14.8 million ‘cases’, courtesy of 129 million tests (the CFR now being 0.24%, an 86-fold improvement on Wave One). Yet with Project Fear now in full swing and sceptical voices being cancelled, the somewhat inconvenient fact that excess deaths over this period barely totalled 11,000 (an implied CFR of 0.07%, or a 280-fold improvement on Wave One) seems to have escaped the attention of both the authorities and the mainstream media. Winter deaths (December 21st – February 22nd) were, in fact, 670 less than normal.
Year Three+
This was not all that evaded the authorities’ notice, however. Having over-estimated Covid deaths in Year Two by what appears to have been a factor of over 3x, an even bigger miscalculation, but in the opposite direction, seems to have been made with the most recent 18 months’ of data March 2022-August 2023. The Government’s official statistics show 42,150 cumulative deaths ‘with’ Covid, an average daily rate of 75 deaths, or about half the rate of Year Two. Given their tendency to exaggerate Covid mortality by a factor of 2x in 2020 rising to 3x in 2021, the true figure of deaths from Covid is probably below 15,000 and perhaps as low as 10,000. Compare that to a bad flu year pre-Covid, which could account for an additional 25,000 excess deaths.
Yet excess deaths in the eighteen months of Year Three+ were 78,575. If only 10-15,000 of these excess deaths can reasonably be attributed to Covid, then something else must have been responsible for killing 65,000-70,000 Brits over the last 18 months. This corroborates the 65,000+, non-Covid excess deaths figure we derived from the official statistics too. Yet on a topic this vital, it is important to apply more than just belt and braces.
Contrary to the practice of my namesake, Professor Neil Ferguson, it is necessary to consider the sensitivity of any model to its starting assumptions. The five-year period leading up to the outbreak of Covid, despite being the conventional baseline, was notable for not one but two bad flu seasons (2014-15 and 2017-18), which will have lifted the bar for ‘excess’ deaths. However, if we use the 10-year average monthly death data prior to Covid to smooth out this effect, we end up with higher numbers as expected, of course, but nevertheless the same clear message.
10-year average baseline
Wave One – Official death toll: 57,000. Excess deaths: 63,000, adjusted for dry tinder: 47,700.
Year One, Waves Two-Three – Official toll: 95,000. Excess deaths: 58,000 = a +64% overstatement.
Year Two – Official death toll: 35,700. Excess deaths: 19,400 = an +84% overstatement.
Year Three+ – Official death toll: 41,700. Excess deaths: 90,000 = a -54% understatement.
Given that even using the 10-year baseline, Covid deaths have been overstated by about a factor of +75% since 2020, Year Three deaths from, as opposed to with, Covid are unlikely to have been more than 25,000 at most (this is a higher nominal number because the hurdle for ‘excess’ is lower), implying once again that those excess deaths not explained by Covid have been in the region of 65,000, thus corroborating what we found using both the five-year average monthly death rates and the official HM Government statistics.
Conclusion
Therefore, while Covid fatalities may have been all but eradicated, there have nevertheless been 80,000-90,000 excess U.K. deaths in the eighteen months since February 2022 (to August 2023). If only 10,000-15,000 of them can reasonably be blamed on Covid, who or what is killing the remaining 65,000? No matter how you look at it, this new, unseen and unacknowledged threat is now killing ~4,000 Brits a month, roughly the same rate that Covid was killing during 2020-21. Yet, instead of broadcasting nightly death tolls and locking down the economy, along with any and all dissenting voices, this time there has been complete radio silence. Is this because the cause of death is inextricably tied up with taking medical advice from politicians, rather than medics? Worse, because this new killer is unlikely to be a new viral pathogen, it is also not likely to mutate into a more transmissible, but less virulent, variant over time. In short, until and unless identified and then restrained, this new killer could be here to stay.
James Ferguson is the Founding Partner of MacroStrategy, where this analysis was first published.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.