Non-COVID Weekly Excess Death

From The Office for Nobbled Statistics...

If we continue exploring data provided by the Office for Nobbled Statistics (ONS) we end up with this slide that plots out non-COVID weekly excess all cause death for England & Wales; admittedly a bit of a mouthful! Take away SARS-COV-2 and this is what we get. My first question is what caused that big spike that is sitting at 2020.16/17 if it is not COVID related? Did somebody say Midazolam?

My guess is that it is not that simple because a similar spike sits at 2015.02 and I’m thinking along the lines of registration delays causing a pile-up in processing. In this regard the negative excess just prior to 2020.16/17 is noteworthy – either people were not dying or somebody wasn’t bothering to process registrations thus causing an inflated count for 2020.16/17.

The recent big dip around 2021.07 is worthy of our attention since this corresponds with the last national lockdown. This makes sense. What does not make sense is the peak of 2020.16/17 that also occurred during national lockdown. It would make sense if we are talking a SARS-COV-2 deadly first wave but we are not!