My final stab at 'excess' deaths before we all completely lose our minds

there is no standard number of 'expected' deaths

1. Excess deaths is like a wave going up and down;

Imagine you had a party for each of your 10th, 20th, 30th, 40th and 50th birthdays and 100 people came to each, you’re very popular. The average number of guests is 100.

For your 60th party 200 people came, so there were 100 extra people and a 100% increase in bonus or excess (depending how much you like entertaining) guests. The 5 year average is now 120.

For your 70th birthday there were only 100 guests. Perhaps people stayed away due to a fake pandemic. So no excess guests. The 5 year average is still 120 guests.

For your 80th you again had 200 guests, 80 more guests than the 5 year average and a 66% increase in excess guests.

Although there was a 66% increase in guests above the 5 year average at your 80th there were exactly the same number of friends at this party as were at your 60th birthday party.

The increase in excess guests above the average indicates that there was a dip in friends between your 60th and your 80th. It does not necessarily mean that there is an upward trend in guests. A dip in deaths is exactly what happened between 2008 and 2020/21/22 in England and Wales.

2. The population size the deaths are happening in must be considered;

Say the 5 year average is 100 deaths in a population, the next year there were 50 more deaths, so a 50% rise in excess deaths. This would be very alarming if the population was only 200 people.

However if the population is 100 million it means that 100 deaths gives a death rate of 0.000001%. 50 more deaths is still 50% more deaths, but an actual rise of excess deaths among the population compared to the previous 5 years of 0.0000005%. Not so alarming.

You may have heard of that in Oz deaths have increased by 5162%. However this represents a rise of 22,000 deaths between 2022 and a chosen year, 2020, which itself had low deaths compared to the years before it. The population is 25,978,935 so the absolute increase in deaths between 2020 and 2022 is therefore just 0.08%.

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According to the ONS in England and Wales there were 46,000 more deaths in 2022 (576,896 up to 30th December) than the very low year, in fact the lowest in decades, of 2019 (530,841). This shows a rise in deaths of 8.6% (caused by NHS shortages according to the beeb) relative to the number of previous deaths. However it shows an absolute rise in deaths relative to the population size (of nearly 60 million) of 0.077%. Not so headline grabbing.

There were also less deaths in 2022 (576,896) than in both 2021 (586,334) and 2020 (608,002) when many elderly were murdered by midazolam and loneliness.

When population and age standardised there is no increase in ‘excess’, nor ‘expected’, nor ‘extra’ deaths in 2022 compared to 2008 nor any year before that.

The death rates have been falling in Oz (apart from indigenous people), Japan and England and Wales for years.

The relative calculation of excess deaths goes up and down all the time and doesn't indicate changes in the population size nor its age profile.

A more helpful number is the age and population adjusted death rate which shows that in E and W deaths in 2021,22,23 were lower than in 2020 and even when compared to the beginning of the millenium deaths in 2021, 22 and 23 are lower and the population is longer lived.

True they might have been even lower without the jabs, but they are not remarkable relative to recent years.

We may not be healthy as a population but we are getting very long lived.

🐒

Jo