Excess Deaths in the Spotlight Once Again

This week, David Davis MP tweeted that “the potential link between Covid vaccines and excess deaths needs to be properly investigated”. Now, David may be looking for last-minute votes, but he’s forgetting that the current Government has already refused to look into the issue.

Due to our frustration with the lack of interest in excess deaths, we launched TTE In August 2022, publishing ‘Why it’s Time to Investigate Excess Deaths in England and Wales‘. The signals in the data suggested something wasn’t quite right: excess deaths were 18% above the five-year average.

By mid-October, deaths were still 17% above the average. Therese Coffey, the new Health Secretary, was in post, but she remained ignorant.

But in January 2023, Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, woke up to the issue. He told Sky News that “it’s extremely complicated as to what the drive of those excess deaths are” and called the year-ending report of the excess deaths “concerning.” Even Owen Jones was aware of the issue: he thought “the excess death rate” was at a “disastrous high”.

The Government’s Chief Medical Officer – remember him – considered excess deaths were due to a lack of access to cardiovascular drugs, blood pressure monitoring and cancer services. As we reported, the first two were evidence-free statements.

In May 2023, we published our most-read post of all time: ‘Breaking news: His Majesty’s Government is not going to investigate excess deaths.’

The Right Hon. Esther McVey MP continued to ask questions, prompting routine escape and evasion answers from HMG. Along with TTE’s favourite friend, Mr. O’Brien MP, HMG announced it has no intention of investigating the causes of excess mortality in England and Wales.

The dial is slowly shifting. Last month, the Australian Senate voted to investigate excess deaths. This week, the Telegraph broke ranks to question whether Covid vaccines could be partly to blame for the rise in excess deaths since the pandemic — reports of more than three million excess deaths across Europe, the U.S. and Australia since 2020. As we have consistently reported, the rollout of lockdowns and vaccines did not halt the trend.

Suddenly, it’s okay to question the vaccine narrative. The Lancet estimated that vaccinations prevented 19·8 million excess deaths. Mathematical modelling should not be used to justify the policy — the latest report shows the numbers don’t add up.

We’ve continued to bang on about excess deaths: the overcrowded TTE office staff count 35 posts in all with the term ‘excess mortality’. We plan to continue, as it’s unclear if the next Government will take up the mantle or whether there will be more escape and evasion at Westminster.

Dr. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.