Mortality Impact 1975 – 2021 (part 1)

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

Ok, so this mouthful of a subtitle may need some explaining! Get the kettle on and grab that biscuit barrel…

In the last bunch of slides we squinted at 36 scatterplots that tracked monthly all cause excess mortality over the period 1975 – 2021 by quinary age band and sex. We saw cycles, trends and outliers these being a pictorial summary of the relative health of the nation when we bring in the notion of a ‘baseline’. Excess mortality enables us to appreciate deviations from a norm, that norm being mean values attained over the previous five years. Whilst the ‘pandemic’ stood out for older age groups it was by no means a unique event for the nations of England & Wales, and we observed many instances of historic excess mortality greater than that witnessed over the last two years. Pandemically-minded protagonists keen to ride the gravy train until it smashes into the buffers may well respond with statements such as, “ah well, yes, but the rapid onset of the outbreak is what was so frigh…