The ONS published its latest report on deaths by vaccination status on August 25th 2023. It covers the period from April 1st 2021 to May 1st 2023. I thought you might be interested in the relative all-cause death rate of the unvaccinated and the vaccinated.
The report also covers Covid deaths. However, I’m somewhat sceptical of ‘Covid’ deaths as many Covid deaths were deaths ‘with’ Covid not ‘of’ Covid, so for this analysis I’m only showing the all-cause deaths.
Let’s start with all-cause deaths of all people in England over 18 years of age by month from April 2021 to the end of May 2023, as shown in Figure 1.
There are three obvious points to make. Firstly, there’s a worrying upward trend, which is a bit odd in the years following a supposed deadly pandemic. Secondly, that during 2022 only in September and November were deaths lower than in the corresponding month of 2021. Finally, in April 2023 all-cause deaths were higher than in April 2021. Remember, in April 2021 we still had a largely unvaccinated population doing battle with a ‘raging deadly pathogen’. Why would all-cause deaths be higher this year?
Let’s also just look at the overall situation with regards to vaccination. Bearing in mind that as no one knows how many people live in the U.K., the absolute accuracy of the percentage of the population vaccinated will be an approximation. Our World in Data estimated the level to be about 80% back in September 2022; it hasn’t changed a lot since then. When the ONS data series started in April 2021, the ONS estimates about 46% had had at least one dose. These would nearly all have been elderly and vulnerable people,
What we’re really interested in is whether the unvaccinated look to have died in their droves. Figure 3 answers this question for all ages. And, of course, the answer is a resounding ‘No’. Whilst on these figures the unvaccinated made up 14% of all-cause deaths back in April 2021, when vaccination rates were relatively low, by May 2023 it had come down to just 4%.
Of course, we all know that older age groups tend to have higher vaccination rates than younger ones. So, let’s look at the percentage of unvaccinated among the older age groups.
Figure 4 shows us the percentage of all-cause deaths among the 90+ age cohort, amongst whom, since May 2021, the unvaccinated have never made up more than 5% of deaths, dropping to 2% in September of 2022.
The picture is much the same among the 80-89 year-olds. Since May 2021, deaths of the unvaccinated have never been above 5%, levelling off at 3% since April 2022.
I’ll finish off with the 70-79 cohort. There too you’ll look in vain for a ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’. By February of 2022 the unvaccinated made up just 5% of all-cause deaths.
I could go on, but you get my point. Vaccination status is not a particular determinant as to the outcome of a bout of Covid and it never was. Furthermore, the first real test of the effectiveness of the vaccines was the Delta wave from July 2021. Yet no spike in the proportion of unvaccinated dying can be seen in any of the charts above.
If you do get tempted to visit the ONS report, do remember to be very sceptical of the ‘age-standardised’ data. We’re back with the issue so eloquently examined by Norman Fenton, Martin Neil, David Spiegelhalter, Tim Harford et al. at various times.
For a quick layman’s summary, the issue revolves around not knowing how many people are in any one age group or indeed, how big the population is overall.
Imagine you have an age cohort of 10 million people, but in fact there are 11 million. The NHS knows it’s injected 9,750,000 people in that age cohort. Consequently, assuming there are 10 million in the cohort they say they’ve vaccinated all but 2.5% of them. But, if it turns out there are actually 11 million in the group then there’s 11.4% of the population unvaccinated, nearly 5 times as many.
Now, imagine that 2,500 unvaccinated people are recorded as Covid deaths. If we thought there were 10 million in the cohort and 250,000 hadn’t been vaccinated it would be assumed that 1% of all the unvaccinated had died. However, if there were really 11 million in the cohort then 2,500 deaths would represent just 0.2% of the 1,250,000 unvaccinated population.
For good measure, Figure 7 covers the four other age-cohorts covered by the ONS data. No shocks here either – and no Delta spikes.
The data in the charts above are the raw data, not age-adjusted or weighted, and they tell me that just 4% of all deaths in May 2023 were of unvaccinated people. Do I think the unvaccinated are at any more risk than the vaccinated? No. But I’m not so sure the other way round.
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Unfortunately, a lot of things are correlated with the seasons. It shouldn’t be too hard to test the pollen idea, though. The case for humidity is that humid air, as in summer, causes aerosols to grow and sediment out of the air, along with their viral load, due to gravity.
Or simply the body doing some spring-cleaning?
Occam’s Razor gives the answer.
Covid is spread via aerosols. Aerosol concentration is higher in areas where lots of people congregate – particularly indoors in winter when the windows are closed to keep the heat in.
Our ventilation systems are primitive. Very few of us have MVHR mechanical ventilation in the house enforcing a strict air change, let alone at work or in the shops and public buildings.
In summer vents are opened, as are windows and the air change level increases. And people start getting hay fever…
Late summer days are correlated with high pressure, still air that doesn’t move very much, high humidity and no rain to wash things out of the air.
If you’re a hay fever sufferer or and somebody who suffers badly from respiratory illnesses – get yourself a PassivHaus.
We measure air pollution externally, but amazingly nobody bothers to use those devices internally within buildings over winter. If we measure external and internal air pollution and merge those curves I suspect we’d find a correlation.
‘get yourself a PassivHaus’, for hayfever? A couple of air purifiers might be several hudreds of thousands of pounds cheaper.
This is the reason the hot countries and southern states have had “waves” of deaths, as they usually do in hot periods. In those climates, people tend to congregate indoors and not all air conditioning systems are equal. Ideal conditions for all kinds of diseases to spread, not just Covid. This was known from Sars all those years ago.
Nonsense. People are indoors with windows closed as much in summer as they are in winter.
At what Latitude?
What fascinating hypothesis.
Seasonal as flu and covid clearly are, it is always tempting to look for direct correlations with sunlight, daylight, humidity, and temperature and so on. But I’ve long wondered whether the virus levels, or at least human susceptibility, are not in themselves heavily influenced by some other factor which is itself driven by seasonality, rather than there being a direct link. More likely, it is probably influenced by several such factors, which makes spotting the trends in data difficult.
One obvious question is whether there is any correlation between individuals who suffer from hayfever (and maybe rhinitis, I’ve suffered badly from both at times) and covid susceptibility.
There is also an obvious question to be asked about the influence of air quality. Covid appears to have been worse in areas of poor air quality. Notably, down here in the South West it has never really taken off. I’ve always thought maybe sea air has something to do with it, but why not pollen and other natural factors?
Another hypothesis of mine is that an individual’s immune system varies over time, such that they may be effectively immune to a flu-like/SARS virus at one moment, but susceptible say a few weeks later. Perhaps such temporary immunity may be picked up by repeated contact with small quantities of the virus. If so, then a population may reach effective herd immunity at one point in the virus spread, and the infection rate will be seen to decline, but once those temporary immunity levels decline sufficiently the virus is able to take off again – hence ‘waves’, or multiple peaks.
Just me thinking aloud.
Definitely worth pursuing the idea that there may be an inverse correlation between allergic disorders & susceptibility to respiratory viruses.
Note that asthmatics are UNDER represented in Covid admissions & deaths. If correct, I could come up with several hypothetical reasons for this.
1. Asthmatics often use inhaled corticosteroids, which are anti inflammatory & mimic endogenous cortisone. Prof Peter Barnes & others hypothesised that it was the ICS which was protective vs Covid19 & the trial of inhaled budesonide was a triumph.
2. Those with asthma have an immune system bias favoured Th2 cytokines & this milieux doesn’t favour virus infecting. I don’t find this attractive because it’s full of holes. Some asthmatics are made very ill merely in respond to one of the dozens of viruses which cause the Common Cold.
Its got to be the first. They are regularly using an inhibitor.
I have no medical background, so as soon as we get into technicalities I’m floundering!
The pollen hypothesis outlined in this article seems to be getting a lukewarm response here, but it’s so refreshing just to see these ideas being put forward and discussed. What a great pity such a climate of openness hasn’t been more prevalent during the covid saga.
The asthmatics one is interesting – a bit counter-intuitive possibly, as one might imagine that any respiratory issue might increase risk from SARS/covid. Reminds me of the oft-quoted observation that smokers are at less risk of developing the disease (although I understand that if it develops to the point where they need ICU treatment their outcomes are less favourable). I recall some New York doctor (I think) saying that his covid patients appeared to be exhibiting symptoms analogous with altitude sickness. Now I remember from my trekking days that it was often said that smokers were often good at altitude, in dealing with the thin air. From my observations, it was the wiry individuals, especially women, who did best on the high trails. And of course, wiry fit individuals, especially women, are at lower risk from covid.
A rambling post, by what I’m getting at is that I feel there is an awful lot we could have learnt about SARS2/covid just by observing what has been unfolding around us, commenting, swapping ideas, and stepping forwards – but we haven’t, because the medical establishment (for want of a better phrase) have deliberately closed the debate down, leaving only a few brave individuals (usually retired) to speak out, who collectively lack the critical mass to make swift progress.
Still, like Sisyphus rolling the stone, it’s just a question of keeping going.
Agree, there are a lot of things that could be observed and correlated but they are intent on their models and ignoring everything else.
Purely anecdotally, I had covid or something suspiciously similar in December 2019.
I had a fair case of hay fever during the 2020 tree pollen season, which I don’t normally get. I had a second wave during the (late) grass season which has happened before.
This year not so much, though I had a coughing fit yesterday while surrounded by rape fields – I could smell the flowers. Rape pollen is heavy and tends to drop rather than fly into the air but a lot of the smell comes from the flowers and leaves – think school cabbage. Complex sulphur-containing substances: pollen isn’t the only thing emitted by plants.
They used to have pollen counts on the weather forecasts but I haven’t seen one recently. Then there’s all the other air pollution so aa complex picture.
Interesting academic speculation, which after all might assist the authors cash flow. However, it’s well known that a decent amount of exposure to Ultra Violet B is good for us as it kicks off the production of vitamin D. The other thing that came up last year – can’t remember who it was, but was a proper specialist – was the possibility that pollen related allergies could actually reduce vulnerability to virus attacks, on the basis that there is only so much surface area in our nostrils, and that if a certain number of cells are ‘occupied’ with dealing with the pollen, they would not be accessible to the other enemies. Don’t know if that’s true, but it seemed like a reasonable idea.
Don’t take it too seriously, otherwise they’ll be dishing out large amounts of pollen on the basis that it’s good for you.
I’m lukewarm about the pollen season idea, though there are attractive features about it. There’s a long running concept of populations of T-helper cells, which in mice appear to divide into two major populations. Th1 & Th2. The former revolves around interferon release & the latter around cytokines associated with atopy & allergy, specifically IL-4, IL-5. Furthermore, there is proposed to be mutual inhibition, such that the immune system can be biased to respond to allergens or to non-allergic stimuli. In such a world, allergic events might suppress autoimmunity & perhaps responses to respiratory viruses.
Many will recall the “hygiene hypothesis”, which sought to explain why modern humans appear to suffer from much greater prevalence of asthma, allergic rhinitis & atopic dermatitis, with the notion being that we’re no longer exposed to Th1-biasing organisms in our childhood. Bolstering this idea there were numerous studies in the 1980s & 90s purporting to show that rurally raised kids, especially those living on farms, were less likely in adulthood to suffer from the allergic triad of illnesses.
Against all that was the realisation that the human immune system is not crisply divided into this yin yang Th1/Th2 bias and sometimes both were found to be elevated clinically. I’ve not been a fan of animal models of diseases from which they don’t suffer. Instead, I preferred to use human cells & tissues preferably taken from volunteers with the disease in question. This approach can work well in inflammatory disorders but not so well with Alzheimer’s
I think its true that allergic reactions to say a food product can appear to make an individual more responsive to other allergins like tree pollen. My wife is a good test case for this. Take certain older cheeses out of her diet and she can sit in the garden without problems.
However re virus, I think its more likely that someone suffering a bad dose of tree pollen allergic reaction is far less likely to be bothered by a pesky coronavirus. Quite frankly it doesn’t stand a chance.
Correlation is not causation.
I read an interesting explanation of ‘herd immunity’ over 12 months ago. Its not fixed. It varies with human movement and mixing, especially at certain times of the year. In September for instance there is a peak of house sales, kids starting new schools, people starting new jobs sometimes in new locations. This mixing can reduce a previously stable herd immunity. This hypothesis discounted all the external seasonality factors and explained increases in virus effects simply by looking at the movement and change of make up of human populations.
It also produces good correlations.
Do I believe this is ‘the’ explanation? No , the are holes in all these theories when you look closely enough.
The earth’s lower atmosphere contains trillions of particles , including ‘things’ that virus can hitch a ride on. They move around as weather flows occcur , with the winds. They rise and fall with humidity depending on the weather effects. Its a catastrophic system.
The only thing I think we can say with some certainty is that particles get caught in our buildings and when its colder or wetter we stay in those buildings more often; so any virus hitching a ride on those particles is more likely to find a nice warm host. QED. Which is why of course ‘lockdowns’ were the most stupid policy imaginable.
NB As an aside, anyone thinking ‘long covid’ is bad should suffer with pollen over many years, it can debilitating.
Always worth mentioning the Fred Hoyle hypothesis. https://www.panspermia.org/panfluenza.htm
The lower atmosphere contains quadrillions of virus, without any need for extra-terrestrial input. More indeed than there are stars in the universe. They can fall to the surface due to wather events at any time. The vast majority are not injurious to human health, not so much to do with our immune systems but because of the nature of the virus. But some can be. It takes 2 weeks for a virus to typically circumnavigate the equator depending on weather patterns.
I continue to find the idea that SARS2 having to board an airplane quite ridiculous. How thick do you have to be to get a job on SAGE?
It’s always said that respiratory viruses spread much more easily in winter because we all spend much more time indoors, where we infect each other. Well this may be true in some communities, in rural areas for example. But take a large city. Is there really that much difference in the time city dwellers spend inside and outside in winter and summer? I would guess that they tend to spend a large proportion of their time indoors, irrespective of the season. Thus we might expect to see similar levels of virus infection in winter and summer. But that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Your hypothesis about variable levels of individual immunity is fascinating and surely needs exploration.
As regards lockdown being the most stupid policy imaginable. Well my Cornish grandmother, and I’d wager all her grandmothers before her, knew that fresh air was the best antidote to respiratory illnesses. But apparently our medical establishment know differently. I’d better not write any more or the moderators will be after me.
I suffered badly from rhinitis for many years (after enduring hayfever as a child) – debilitating with a major effect on your life, which other people just don’t understand (‘Just blow your nose!’ ‘You’ve got a cold, stay away from me.’)
I do not believe anyone requires any greater opportunity to catch a respiratory virus than he is granted by commuting on crowded public transport. London, with its famous “underground” railway, must be a haven for infectious disease.
There is precious little seasonality in commuting, barring the tendency to have a couple of weeks’ holiday, during the summer.
Indeed, my point exactly. So why winter peaks in cities?
A very interesting article and although the pollen hypothesis might not be proven the authors first cited article (shown below),clearly spells out the similarity with flu and flu pandemics. The current epidemiological models indicating transmission and herd immunity cannot explain that temporal pattern at all. Why did the first pandemic wave stop at all as there were so many susceptible left indicated by the second wave in most places? Why don’t we have an explosion of cases among the unimmune in the summer? The crux is to show which is the seasonal influence driving the pandemic and perhaps pollen theory is an interesting suggestion but probably other factors too. Could it be that population immunity in general (not specific antibody dependent)against respiratory viruses fluctuates according to season?
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.28.21252625v2
Comparable seasonal pattern for COVID-19 and Flu-Like Illnesses
“Interestingly, all over Europe, the COVID-19 cycles were all more or less in sync with the Dutch COVID-19 cycle and thus ILI seasonality, independent of the start of the first cycle, the severity of lockdown measures taken, and given that herd immunity is not yet reached”
What it tends to suggest is that much of our current difficulty is caused by crass over-simplistic, over reaction to matters that are not well understood. They might sound clever, but they’re not, some might say.
This raises the point, that a lot of viruses are spread in indoor settings. If you have periods where people are seeking shelter from either the cold or the heat, then more will by default become sick during these periods, surely?
If you add mass testing for one of these viruses only, then it’s very easy to have an epidemic.
Well, yes; the more you look, the more you’ll find. Unless they’re suffering from amnesia, many people will have a reasonable idea of what sort of phases of activity, physical environment etc, have resulted in them being infected by one thing or another.
I am surprised how almost everyone, sceptical and otherwise, seems to accept that Covid is seasonal and that the season is winter. It is a new virus and we only have 18 months evidence to go on. Yes – almost all European countries had an outbreak at roughly the same time last winter, but the pattern was different in the USA, with some states peaking in the summer, and the European outbreaks this year have less of a pattern with UK and Spain peaking in January but Italy and France peaking in April. This could equally be explained as simply when the virus and new variants arrived at different places. The main reason for assuming seasonality seems to be that it is similar to flu but that is quite a bold assumption.
I am not saying it isn’t seasonal – just that the evidence is not in yet and some scepticism is in order.
I think the other common cold coronavirus are seasonal so this one likely to be too
They seem to be, but it’s easy to fall into the old trap of assuming what the exact link is due to temporal correlation, or which route to follow in trying to understand why. After all, school terms are seasonal, as an example. Fortunately, we have a degree of automation to deal most of the problems.
Fair enough. That is a good reason for thinking Covid may be seasonal if/when it settles down to a pattern. But I don’t think we can draw firm conclusions at this stage when the data are so limited and not very inconsistent.
That’s meant to be “not very consistent“! I wish there was a way of editing comments.
It is normal for some places to peak in the summer. Ivor Cummins went over this in one of this videos – https://odysee.com/@IvorCummins:f/crucial-viral-update-jan-4th-europe-and:c
The rise of respiratory infections in India starting in April/May is also completely normal. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0124122.g004
We are over a year into this now. We cannot keep saying that we don’t have data or we don’t know enough. We have a whole ton of data and we know more than enough. Sars-cov-2 is really not that new of a virus, but it is completely unremarkable and uninteresting.
When you say it is “normal” I guess you mean normal for flu? We can’t know the normal yearly pattern for Covid given we have only had one complete year. Yes – the data are compatible with the hypothesis that Covid is seasonal like flu. The data are also compatible with the hypothesis that it isn’t seasonal or that the season is something other than winter. I really don’t think a year is a ton of data on seasonality. Seasonality means repeats the same pattern every year. So one year is essentially one data point. To say it is unremarkable is to assume your conclusion. If it proves not to be seasonal then it will be remarkable and interesting.
I did wonder last year if hay fever might have contributed to the spread through those affected coughing and spluttering more, and of course avoiding going outside when pollen is high. Too simple perhaps? My worry with this type of study is that someone somewhere will take it as an excuse to concrete over even more of our ever diminishing natural green spaces, we know how much developers prefer ripping up a forest compared to converting a brownfield site…
Bugs are not seasonal, we are. Vitamin D levels would seem to be the obvious suspect.
Shaman (2010) demonstrated quite clearly that it’s air humidity that drives seasonal pandemics:
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1000316
This was generally accepted up to 2020, when we threw the entirety of public health precedent out the window.
My mask will protect me from hay fever this year. After all if it can protect me from a tiny virus, it’ll work against a pollen grain thousands of time bigger.
What seasonality? How do we know that it is still around? What conformation?
I’m not sure if seasonality really is well known at the moment. Apparently we’d known this before, but we erased our memories at the start of 2020.
The panic mongering currently going on about India’s “variant” is in fact completely in line with its flu season, for the states beginning in April. Yet the media is completely ignorant of this fact. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0124122 If we look at India’s all-cause deaths there also nothing out of the ordinary to see there.