Excess mortality 1975 – 2021 (part 2)

England & Wales monthly excess mortality by quinary age band & sex: males 45+y

Please see part 1 of this series for an explanation of how I arrived at these slides…

It is with 45 - 49y males that we see a clear thumbprint of something pandemic-like happening in Apr 2020 and again in Jan 2021 that breaks records for England & Wales going back to 1975. Take those two months out of the picture and the pandemic vanishes. Also vanishing before our eyes are deaths for the latter part of 2021 and I can only presume the ONS hasn’t caught up with certificate processing for this group.

Now this is curious. Up to now it is Apr 2020 that has taken the first prize for elevated excess mortality but with 50 -54y males the prize flips to Jan 2021. Is this how a ‘novel’ virus is supposed to act or are we looking at other factors? One big factor in particular springs to mind and I think you can guess what this is without me using the v-word. Failure of the ONS to keep up with certificate processing is amply made by the stray point for Dec 2021.

There’s a clustering of points during 2020, aside from the Apr peak, that is starting to look like a pandemic proper, though this ‘wart of death’ is by no means unique.

Now this is darn interesting because the pandemic of 2020 no longer appears unique amongst 75 – 79y males and would appear to be par for the course. Ask a Martian to point out the pandemic of pandemics and you’ll see what I mean.

Ditto the two oldest male groups for which the pandemic, in terms of excess mortality for England & Wales, was merely business as usual. Just what kind of a pandemic was this? How truly ‘novel’ is SARS-COV-2? How come all of 2020 isn’t off the scale in excess mortality for our oldest and most vulnerable male population? Remove Apr 2020 from the analysis and we find ourselves looking at a strange picture depicting nothing of consequence. What else could have happened in Apr 2020 that was coincident with an alleged viral outbreak that would cause excess mortality to rise and fall so quickly? Do I detect the stench of government policy?