Tuesday, October 12, 2021

UPDATED: Death rates rising in the UK

I'm not the only one to notice:

'NHS bosses are apparently puzzled by the fact that there are, in the UK, thousands of excess deaths at the moment. These excess deaths are not caused by covid-19. I cannot imagine why the NHS is puzzled. I forecast nearly 18 months ago that there would be a flurry of extra deaths at this time..'

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Something is going on. The provisional death statistics for England and Wales have just been released, and over the last three month period (weeks 27-39) this is what we see re Covid fatalities:


The 2020 figures are those where Covid was 'mentioned on the death certificate'; this year's are where Covid was named as the 'underlying' i.e. main cause of death. ('Mentions' are slightly higher. Like-for-like for those 13 weeks: 2021=7,506 mentions, 2020 =2,664 mentions.)

But by itself, Covid does not go anywhere near accounting for this year's increase in mortality from all causes over that period. In 2020, total deaths from weeks 27 to 39 were 118,197 which is almost exactly the same as the previous five-year average (118,328); in 2021 the corresponding figure is 132,203 - about 14,000 more than last year.

So for the last three months, we have seen 10,169 deaths per week as compared with 2020's weekly toll of 9,092; up by more than a thousand a week.

In weeks 27-39 of 2020, deaths where Covid was mentioned on the death certificate totalled 2,664; in 2021, 7,506 'mentions' or 6,514 'underlying causes.' That is, Covid-related fatalities account for less than four or five thousand of the 14,000 difference between this year and last, over that period.

What has been happening? How do we account for this recent non-Covid surge?

5 comments:

Timbotoo said...

Death by vaccine?

Paddington said...

Something is wrong here.

From the graph itself, you get on the order of 6,100 deaths

Sackerson said...

@P: I didn't write clearly enough. The graph compares Covid deaths over the period (6,514 for 2021 vs 2,664 last year); I didn't give a graph for deaths from all causes. So, my bad.

Paddington said...

@S - it's your last paragraph which is confusing. Where does the 'less than four or five thousand' come from?

Sackerson said...

@P: the difference between last year's Covid deaths in that period, and this. Like I said, ill-written - but I shall dig further, something is going wrong now.