Flip Flop Flu, WHO Rule 3 & The Blip Of COVID (part 2)
A festive frolic involving a bit of time series modelling of deaths from influenza and pneumonia so that we may see what we once saw
In part 1 of this series we homed-in on estimates of the impact of WHO Rule 3 on the annual count of pneumonia & influenza death across England & Wales. In doing so we discovered a hole in the tally for 2020 and beyond that may well arise from coding errors, with pneumonia & influenza death being erroneously ascribed to COVID. I also strutted around a bit after dishing out what I considered to be a cracking time series model1!
What I want to do today is take my modelling/cake making at face value and make some simple corrections to the database so we may see what reality may have looked like before the ONS bowed down to the global code mangle wielded by WHO. Before that is done I ought to use the same baking method to check for missing pneumonia & influenza deaths in 2021 and 2022 as well as 2020. Here’s the nubbins: