As new mortality data come in, it’s increasingly clear that something abnormal happened in the spring of 2021 when it comes to people dying of causes other than flu, Covid and other respiratory diseases.
I have updated the non-respiratory data to the end of 2023, so there are now four years of Covid-era data included in it. The progression can however be traced back all the way to 2010, as shown below (the red line is the running 52-week average), and the sharp rise from early 2021 is now clear as day. Whatever is behind this has caused a rising trend in non-respiratory mortality (NRM) that has now stabilised, but at a much higher level than before the whole Covid imbroglio began. In fact, 2023 showed the worst total non-respiratory mortality figures than in any of the three preceding years, at 9.5% above the pre-Covid 2015-2019 average. In recognition of this sorry reality, the ONS this week said that life expectancy has gone backwards by 12 years to 2010 levels.
Take a look at the chart below, which shows the NRM pattern during the period 2015-2019 as well as the corollary for respiratory disease mortality (RD). Averages for each week are shown. The deaths from respiratory illness are by definition from acute disease, at least those that were properly registered as ‘died from’ rather than ‘died with’. The two lines match very closely in shape at least, the only real difference being the total numbers involved in each case (note the different range for respiratory disease on the secondary Y axis on the right hand side).
To emphasise this similarity further we can compare the ratio of non-respiratory mortality to respiratory disease mortality for each year from 2010 to 2019. They run like this:
- 2010 6.33
- 2011 6.16
- 2012 6.08
- 2013 5.82
- 2014 6.58
- 2015 5.98
- 2016 6.28
- 2017 6.26
- 2018 6.07
- 2019 6.36
Average for the whole period is 6.18.
The maximum variation in each year from the average proportion of NRM deaths to total deaths (average of 86.1%) is only 0.75% (up or down). This all goes to show that there is a strong consistency to the overall yearly figures, despite the large variation in weekly death numbers for both non-respiratory mortality and respiratory mortality over the course of each year.
NRM is clearly highly seasonal, so even though the bulk of these deaths arise from chronic morbidity, whatever it is that tips an individual over the edge to his or her demise varies over the course of the year.
My working assumption is that whatever factors drive normal seasonal variation in acute respiratory disease mortality are also responsible for a similar variation in the proportion of people dying from chronic disease during any given week of the year. The importance of studying seasonal variation as the main driver of disease variability was emphasised in a recent paper in the peer-reviewed Journal of Clinical Medicine, which strikingly found no noticeable effect on Covid incidence patterns from vaccines and non-pharmaceutical interventions but a clear link with the seasonality of coronaviruses.
The most likely common factor to search for is whatever causes a variation in the vulnerability of people to any form of external shock, e.g. a reduction in their immune defences. In the normal course of events this may for example be something climate related (e.g. cold weather) or perhaps depends on some other natural variables like sunlight intensity.
Could a man-made event that may have had a large influence on the immune status of large sectors of the population have changed the overall picture in a very different way? It may be a worthwhile exercise to look for such a signal in the mortality figures.
Turning to the Covid years, the chart below shows the excess mortality for both NRM and RD for the period 2020-2023, as well as the number of vaccine doses administered. Here we can see that the usual mortality patterns are at first completely disrupted, and this is consistent with the argument that a new pathogen which had never been encountered before had arrived and consequently had an outsize influence on acute mortality. However, by 2023 we can see that the ratio between NRM and RD has once again settled back to normal:
- 2020 3.27
- 2021 3.88
- 2022 5.86
- 2023 6.16
Average for the whole period is 4.49.
Already with this chart it is possible to see that, by comparing the different way the NRM and RD excess mortality responded to the initial Covid waves, the component of non-respiratory mortality derived from the after-effects of Covid itself (i.e., Long Covid) is probably relatively small. This is because NRM excess (blue line) was falling significantly – as expected due to mortality displacement – after the initial spike of deaths in the spring of 2020, even while the second RD spike (red line) was in full flood. This suggests that the after-effects of the first wave did not markedly increase non-respiratory mortality during the rest of the year.
This is not the case with regard to the vaccination campaigns. To illustrate this one can look at the percentage changes from the 2015-2019 pre-Covid baseline for both non-respiratory and respiratory excess deaths (see charts below). NRM excess percentage (bottom chart, red line, right-hand axis) has been increasing year-on-year since the vaccine campaigns, whereas RD excess percentage (top chart, green line, right-hand axis) has been diminishing. The respiratory disease mortality has been falling despite the number of vaccine doses also falling each year. Note the different values on the secondary Y axis (right hand side) in each chart.
Vaccines delivered:
- 2020 75 million (doses one and two)
- 2021 40 million (dose three)
- 2022 25 million (doses four and five)
- 2023 17 million (doses six and seven)
Respiratory disease excess over 2015-2019 baseline (RD):
- 2020 91.3%
- 2021 62.6%
- 2022 13.9%
- 2023 9.9%
Non-respiratory mortality excess over 2015-2019 baseline (NRM):
- 2020 1.0%
- 2021 2.0%
- 2022 7.9%
- 2023 9.5%
The fall in respiratory mortality can perhaps best be explained by the attenuation expected from a gradual increase in population immunity to the new pathogen, and also by a declining virulence of the pathogen itself (e.g. the less deadly Omicron variant). But how does one explain the non-respiratory mortality changes, other than through a general long-term decline of the overall health of a population?
Unfortunately, it is still not possible to state with any certainty which component of the public health measures employed (vaccines or NPIs) can give the most plausible explanation for the bulk of the non-respiratory excess death phenomenon (assuming, as noted above, that the contribution from the virus by itself is relatively small). Many who have commented on these developments believe that the vaccination campaigns primarily caused the uptick. This can only be confirmed once the authorities release full mortality data including the vaccination status of all individuals at the time of their death.
The recent whistleblower data release in New Zealand provided in my view the strongest evidence to date of a temporal association between vaccination status and increased excess mortality. It is now all but impossible for the authorities to deny the link. If they want the public to feel safe about Covid vaccinations again, it is now up to them to disprove that vaccinations were causative in the excess mortality experienced over the last three years.
The key insight to be gleaned from separating overall mortality data into the two components of respiratory and non-respiratory disease is in recognising that both are subject to the same seasonal variability in population health vulnerabilities. They are coupled together such that as one rises, the other falls. This is presumably because they depend on the same pool of vulnerable people who are at risk of dying at any particular time.
Covid was a novel pathogen that in 2020 disproportionately increased respiratory mortality and thus, due to their synergy, pushed non-respiratory mortality downwards (part of the mortality displacement effect). Something then happened in 2021 that increased the size of the pool of vulnerable people over the following two years. The normal relationship between the two mortality types has re-established itself in 2023 (e.g. the proportion between them was restored), but at a level around 10% above pre-Covid mortality.
Total excess deaths for the four years (compared to 2015-2019) have now reached around 225,000, which should under normal circumstances lead to a fall of around 9% (i.e., 20,000) in annual deaths in subsequent years due to mortality displacement as deaths of the old and vulnerable are brought forward by some unusual event. Instead, what we see is excess mortality in 2023 reaching a new peak of 10.6% with currently no signs of slowing up. Once you take into account that instead of 9% fewer deaths we have 10.6% more, this adds up to a huge nearly 20% rise above expected levels. Welcome to the new normal.
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I do.
Lots of them, all the time.
Physical books can’t be hacked, broaden your mind, take you places and meet people you’d never have met.
My library is ever expanding, fiction and non fiction.
Physical books can’t be retrospectively ‘edited’ of non-woke content, given ‘trigger warnings’ or taken away without warning.
How can readers decide that certain ideas are reprehensible if they can never encounter them?
Same here, but mostly non fiction, to broaden my knowledge. Mostly Kindle, but plenty of physical as well.
Normally on Kindle I have about 10 on the go at any one time and flit between them.
My family believe I just read conspiracy theories, I actually read conspiracy facts. Consciously try to avoid the confirmation bias trap. Ones I’m reading now:
The Accountability Deficit
Is that TRUE, or did you hear it on the BBC (Rereading)
NOT Zero
Green Breakdown
Empire of Chaos
Idiots (might not continue)
Gods of Money
Anyone who tells you vaccines are safe and effective is lying
Plandemic
Diary of a Psychosis (read)
Technocracy Rising
Our Enemy the Government
There is no Climate Crisis (read)
The Mythology of Global Warming
A state of fear (read)
etc., etc.
Bit heavy on the climate truth stuff.
“… mostly non fiction…”
Thank goodness someone does. So must Truss, as she knows the importance of cheap Energy to a 21st century prosperous industrial country. And that was a step too far for the Establishment.
I’m coming to the conclusion that too many politicians have read too many History books, and then, when in government, act out their fantasies.
Well, here’s about 2/3 of mine. I think nearly all have been read at least once, apart from reference works. Four of our grand-daughters, aged 6-9, are gratifyingly avid readers – admittedly more Harry Potter than Dostoevsky so far. The oldest (a teenager) prefers hockey, so is going to be very vulnerable to indoctrination at college, sadly.
I once posted this picture to a well-published atheist writer on evolution, who replied something like “Bloody Hell” – his shelf had about a dozen books on it, and presumably everything else he read was online.
This pretty much looks like my library except I have an Apple Mac and a keyboard rather than a guitar. ——-Because I run out of room some time ago though I now get most of my books on Kindle, where I find it easier to bookmark important bits and pieces. ——Cheers.
Way back when I was 10 reading The Famous Five and the Secret Seven by Enid Blyton I have always read books. I think the first book that really caught my imagination and stirred my emotions to realise the power of the written word was when I was about 13 and it was “White Fang” by Jack London. Even today when friends ask about a good book I recommend “White Fang”. ——Today though I tend not to read novels and am more concerned with text books, factual books, on issues regarding politics, science etc and have taken a big interest in the climate issue, in particular how the science has been hijacked for political purposes, and how those politics link in with other issues, regarding eg social justice, equality, diversity, race and gender politics. Issues around population growth, resources, energy politics and how Sustainable Development politics seeks to remove affordable reliable energy and replace it with unaffordable unreliable energy once again all for political purposes and using fear of a climate emergency as the excuse. ——–So from Enid Blyton to “Watermelons” by James Delingpole, and from Jack London to Bjorn Lomberg etc etc.——–All information is good . It is no information that is bad, and if you do not read books you will easily be manipulated by people with an agenda, whether that agenda be social justice, Net Zero, Race Card Politics or whatever. ——Books are Power.
Hear hear.
Kept all my Enid Blyton stuff. Apart from one Famous Five story, which fell apart.
She was banned, y’ know. A good indication if ever there was one.
I’ve got a book called “The shorter Oxford English dictionary”, third edition. It doesn’t have an entry for “anymore”.
People’s memories are getting shorter.
You need another book!
I’m English, dammit!
My Windows computer tells me that “updates are underway.”
What is “underway”?
If it’s Windows it’s probably a worse version of “underhand”.
Underway: A distinction from becalmed?
It’s really a naval term. A vessel is said to be underway (or under way) if it’s moving through the open water with sufficient speed that the rudder can be used for steering it. This a Germanic word with onderweg(en) and unterwegs being the Dutch and German equivalents. In figurative usage, it means on the way.
I think ‘underway’ is a close relative of the odious North American interloper ‘footway.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underway
This applies mostly to sailing ships. Immediately after weighing anchor or unmooring, the ship sits in water without directed motion and it first has to catch enough wind to get underway before the rudder can be used. This means the sails have to be tuned carefully to the existing wind in order to get the vessel to move in some safe direction where it won’t run aground or collide with anything until it has picked up enough speed thay it can be steered.
This makes this a very British term.
Who had the link to the Piglet podcast, can’t remember what article it was under?
I read Blyton to my 5-year-old grandson … a bit advanced but he’s sticking with it, and so much better than the silly and pointless Julia Donaldson books that seem to be everywhere. C.S.Lewis’s Narnia series is lined up for when he’s slightly older.
I would be interested in age-appropriate recommended book lists by year of age…
Well, Julia Donaldson was anti-mask for a while, albeit not otherwise a sceptic.
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/01/07/forcing-children-to-wear-masks-is-dystopian-says-gruffalo-author-julia-donaldson/
For when your grandson is a bit older, maybe 10, I’d recommend the Susan Cooper books (“dark is rising”), and the Chronicles of Prydain.
I used to love the ‘alfred hitchcock and the three investigators’ books as a young boy, but sadly they appear to be out of print.
I still read – mainly old stuff I inherited from my parents.
My kids read tons when younger but nothing now they are grown up sadly.
I know a few people that still read books but plenty that don’t
About eight years ago I began reading books again after a long hiatus just reading articles. I now read and/or listen to about three books a week. About 95% non-fiction.
I’ve read the Peloponnesian War twice, although in an English translation from the 1880s. At present, I’m working my way through the German official history of WWI. And I also read all kinds of more entertaining books on the side. But I’m not only not paying the BBC license fee, I actually don’t watch TV and not even movies anymore.
I’m reading more now my free Disney+ and Apple TV subscriptions have run out, not as though I actually found much worth watching on either.
A second comment on the Peloponnesian War: I’d judge this a very good read for someone who’s generally interested in history but perhaps not entirely happy with postmodern history anymore, especially with the large parts of that which are really contemporary political preaching (eg, Keegan’s History of War, one of the few books I’ve thrown after reading it as it wasn’t worth the shell-space it was taking up). It’s a well written and lively account of an important era in European history which is really still very much relevant to our times, eg, can someone think of a present-day naval power with a habit of spreading ‘democracies’ everywhere in states it subjugated in order to get tributes from them?
It’s also an amazing feat of our culture: Someone wrote this by hand in Greek in the 5th century BC, ie, more than 2400 years ago. And we’ve kept it ever since. That’s something to remember when History of some illiterate black house servants-month comes up again.
True confession – I don’t. I was once an avid reader, now I barely read books at all. Now and then I buy one, then don’t get through it. My attention has become very fragmented. I don’t think I’m better off for that.
I prefer paper copies and almost always buy them second hand online.
I increasingly struggle with mustering the enthusiasm for fiction – maybe non-fiction is too interesting nowadays!
I’m a very slow reader so the books build up by no more than a foot per year.
Sitting in a coffee shop in Cambridge, I took down a James Hadley Chase from the shelf to read with my Americano. Within the opening dozen pages, we have a man wearing a “n** brown hat” and a “fat Wop at the end of the corridor.” I was pretty certain that none of the hipster undergraduates hunched over their laptops have ever taken down any of the decorative books to vet them.
In the ‘fifties, items such as cotton reels and coats were unselfconsciously described as ‘n****r brown, just as items of a different colour could be named ‘pillarbox red’ When I was a baby, my mother named the black family cat ‘N****r. She was using a word in common use, so there was no vilification.
It wasn’t ‘racism’ (then an unknown word) in the UK because we hadn’t kept African slaves and mistreated them as they did in America.
It was the advent of cultural Americanisation and mass immigration that made it a sensitive no-no word.
I’m working my way through my libraries popular science books at the moment, just borrowed Rationality by Steven Pinker in which he bangs on about the exponential growth fallacy then gives examples of things that don’t grow exponentially then mentions that they don’t grow exponentially after all…
I’m also reading the excellent Critical Mass by Philip Ball that I managed to buy second hand for £3.
I have a few shelves of books. Mostly art, economics or some eclectic historical works, ancient Roman recipes is a new one. Though I am admittedly not the biggest reader anymore.
But I work through audio books in the hundreds every year! The Sharpe series is keeping me going currently!
Once you finish Sharpe, I can recommend The Last Kingdom series also by Cornwell.
It’s on the list! I’ve seen the first series of the TV show. Have some sci fi next, James S A Corey’s ‘Expanse’ series.
The Last Kingdom books are better than the TV show. They rushed the end and spoiled it.
Speaking of rushed endings, I’m waiting for the next Game of Thrones book, and have been for many years.
The entire country should require a ‘Bunter Passport’, obtainable only once each individual has read the complete William George (Billy) Bunter series written by Charles Hamilton.
‘Bunter’s defining characteristics are his naive greed, self-indulgence, and overweight appearance. He is in many respects an obnoxious anti-hero. Besides his gluttony, he is obtuse, lazy, racist, nosy, deceitful, pompous, and conceited, but he is blissfully unaware of his defects. In his own mind, he is a handsome, talented, and naturally aristocratic young man….’
Once everyone has obtained their Bunter passport, it should be well nigh impossible (Hooray!) for another Bunter to reach No 10 Downing Street and impose silly lockdowns (Yarooh!) on us, all the while stuffing their face with cake.
I’ve just finished Trollope’s Barchester Towers. Actually it was read to me by Timothy West, just brilliant & laugh out loud funny.
Am now reading The Real Anthony Fauci, also brilliant…. but no very funny.
Ah Yes – the real Anthony Fauci – I read this on my kindle and managed to buy a hard-back version. Also a book by Sen Rand Paul is another very enlightening one.
Books are prohibitively expensive here(Thailand) hence I use a kindle. I have a mix of fact and fiction – all genres.
Don’t have a tv and prefer to ‘get lost’ in a book – or go to the bar to talk to my friends.
I’m none too sure that reading Trollope et al is exactly compulsory for the intelligent mind. Nor am I convinced of the idea purveyed that reading books is the only pure form of reading; surely reading anything is better than reading nothing.
I’ve read books all my life but now my reading is split between online, Kindle and physical. Once upon a time in a land far far away where Blair hadn’t murdered people I read a newspaper every day. Now I read numerous digital equivalents. Does none of this count? Indeed, would we be best served by not keeping up with the present and reading what Cicero had to say about his present?
The major factor is to understand, and extrapolate, what you have read. Animal Farm for example is completely applicable to today and 1984 lacked imagination. The descent into the second Middle Age (not a reference to Tolkien but actually, today and tomorrow, fact) will be written about, lied about and turned into something it never actually was. Will the future learn from it?
I mentioned this article to my wife and she just said “Well, people who think that kind of stuff just disappear up their own …”.
I think I read somewhere reasonably authoritative that reading from a screen is deleterious to one’s concentration. I have certainly found this to be true of myself.
Me. Borrow on average one a week form our local library. Can’t read off screens nor do I want to.
Lockdown saw me read
The Iliad
The Odyssey (both the Fitzgerald translations)
The Divine Comedy (Clive James wonderful translation)
Paradise Lost
The Bible, cover to cover with accompanying critical works. So good I am now rereading it.
Ulysses. At last. Loved it. Made me laugh out loud.
I read daily, always have from a small child , but I do understand what is being said, sad really, but even schools opt for the easy way out these days.
I read every evening. I try not to do any screen time in the evenings (and that includes the telly as we don’t have one). I have to admit that I’m often re-reading my old detective books (Michael Innes, Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie et al) – for pure escape from our dystopian world (which can get rather depressing!) there’s nothing better than a good detective story! However, I’m also reading Katherine Rundell’s book on John Donne and I plan to start re-reading my biographies and autobiographies. I try to read the Bible every day – it is my mainstay.
However I agree that our grandchildren’s generation appears not to read nearly so much and I am appalled (but not surprised) by what Joanna Grey relates.
I generally have 3 – 4 books on the go. One in the bathroom, one at the breakfast bar and a couple near the couch. None of them are novels and are either biographies or factual books. I am currently reading Mao by Halliday; Factfulness by Rosling; and There is No Climate Crisis by Craig. Additionally, I read the Daily Sceptic, Spectator, Conservative Woman, Conservative Home and Unherd; in that order daily.
I tell you this because until I stopped dairy farming at 50, I had no time to read any books but two separate careeers since, in planning and politics, have changed that. I am not of a view that reading is dying. My daughter and grandchildren all read avidly and one grand-daughter -18- collects First Edition books, but much of it is on Kindle type books.
Reading books often lead to conversation and book clubs abound around here in NE Scotland, so there is hope.
Yes, more than ever.
I certainly read books. I believe many other people do, too. When I was a teenager, I used to love reading science fiction. People like Joanna used to ask why I was reading such rubbish and tell me I should read some “real books”.
At school, they made us read interminable and boring “good books” that taught us nothing except that reading was a chore. (Luckily, I was sceptical enough to ignore that and read what I wanted to read.)
Areopagitica by John Milton? The Consolations of Philosophy by Boethius? If Joanna finds them interesting, good luck to her. If she is telling the children she mentors to read such things, she is part of the problem!
The Dark Ages (Part 2) haven’t dawned yet but they may be in the process of dawning.
Having read two books by Paul Strathern recently – ‘The Medici’ and ‘Death in Florence’ – I have come to an understanding of how the Renaissance began and spread throughout Europe. Previously, I knew the Renaissance happened but not how.
The emergence from the mediaeval world of superstition and suppression of learning imposed by dogmatic Roman Catholicism was a long time coming, but the wisdom/philosophy of the ancient Greeks (and some Romans) was eventually rediscovered. A new age of developing arts and sciences dawned, followed by the Reformation, the Enlightenment and so on.
We’re in an awful retrograde phase now, unfortunately, brought on by a combination of technology and the replacement of formal and self-education (via books) with poisonous ideologies promoted by poisonous people.
It may take a while for normality and sanity to be restored, but our prior emergence from the Dark Ages (Part 1) offers hope.
I should add that my interest in the Medici & Florence was inspired by watching a Netflix series. It was somewhat soapy but sparked enough curiosity for me to order books that could teach the history in detail. That is the result of a grammar school education 1959-1964 with teachers who extolled the value of lifelong reading.