Excess mortality 2018 – 2021

England & Wales monthly excess mortality by quinary age band & sex

There are several different ways to go about calculating excess mortality, the most common being to derive a 5-year baseline based on mean values for the preceding period and subtract this from the current period. This is easy to accomplish but has its disadvantages in that seasonal illness doesn’t always erupt in the same month each year and even a span of 5-years is no guarantee of being ‘representative’. In fact, when we think about it, the issue of a representative span of years in something as dynamic as disease and death is a bit like asking which angle of the swing of a pendulum in a grandfather clock is representative of pendulum motion.

Let us put all that griping aside and opt for the common approach of excess mortality as derived from 5-year mean baselines. In the process of doing so we find a rather large fly buzzing in the ointment and that is excess mortality for the year 2021 will end up being derived using the base period of 2016 - 2020. The Office for National Statisti…