Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Rob Kay's avatar

I've just been checking the age-adjusted mortality figures for Scotland, up to Q2, 2022

When compared with (say 1990 - 2007), overall death rates are still down: from about 1700 per 100k to 1350 per 100k.

But note that the second quarter of 2022 shows an unexplained rise in 'Other' heart disease.

The pre-covid years are showing around 400 all-ages deaths a quarter, but suddenly this jumps to 523 in Q2, 2022.

Note, there are also 6 deaths noted as Covid vaccines adverse effects, but all in Q2 , 2021.

There were 64 deaths in the 15-24 age group in Q2, mostly males (n=48) - most male deaths (n=26) appear to have been external causes: murders, accidents, poisoning etc.

Its a handy dataset: easy to interrogate: what do you think?

https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/statistics-by-theme/vital-events/general-publications/births-deaths-and-other-vital-events-quarterly-figures/2nd-quarter-2022

Expand full comment
marlon1492's avatar

Very interesting charts indeed!

I notice that people reading John's substack think the reason for the oddities is that the government is covering up something. From previous comments John has made about FOI requests to the ONS, I gather that they have been helpful to John.

The thing is that there could be all sorts of reason for the oddities in the data that have nothing to do with people trying to cover things up. Why can't it be as simple as this is a government bureaucracy and as such they are not very efficient? Or the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing? Or the systems are antiquated and it is not easy to organize the data? Or they never had to analyze data with this precision before and they are still scratching their heads on how to organize it, how to analyze it, etc?

It is crises like covid that clearly illustrate that government organizations are not nimble and effective at responding to changing circumstances.

Expand full comment
20 more comments...

No posts