Something seems amiss. Dose 4 looks to have a higher cumulative count than dose 3. Should be lower, no? Perhaps you plotted dose 4 and 5 as cumulative curves on accident? Or maybe at some date someone decided to just start counting new doses as dose 4, declaring dose 3 to be "over"?
Are you gonna recrunch the ARIMA excess-death method for all 5 doses and compare to the new method?
Do you have a series of 'expected deaths' in the UK?
Here in Sweden, 2019 was a huge outlier in terms of expected deaths. Hardly anybody died. The magnitude was greater than anything we ever saw, including covid, by which I mean that the number of people who were expected to die in 2019 but were still around early 2020 is much larger than the number of people who were expected to be alive in 2021 but died in 2020.
It seems to be more reasonable to break your years in the middle of low season for respiratory infections than in January, the middle of high season for Northern Europe. The deadliness of a respiratory infection that killed half of the people in December and the other half in January should be compared on even ground with an infection that killed everbody in November and December. The idea that the first one is 'half as deadly' is a measuring artifact of binning by calendar year, and not season for diseases that are seasonal.
The thing is, Tommy's latest chart of Swedish excess mortality, https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2022/09/08/sweden-alarming-raise-in-covid-deaths-past-6-weeks/ (which is making fun of the newspapers who think the raise is alarming even though the sheer numbers of sick people remain low) isn't showing us all falling over dead with vaccine caused problems that show up later. And this needs some explaining, if you believe that the deaths are due to the vax, given that this is a well-vaccinated place. Of course, we didn't vaccinate kids, and we quickly stopped using the AZ vaccine, and then the Moderna one, and we aren't recommending it for young adults now.
Yes we do have a series for expected deaths in the UK, this being derived from prior 5-year means that are matched on a week-by-week basis. This baseline is subtracted from observations to produce an estimate of excess deaths. There are several problems with this, starting with the fact that the previous 5 years is not necessarily typical, and in this regard we too experienced a very mild 2019 in terms of deaths. One GP I know calls this the 'tinderbox effect' whereby deaths will automatically increase the year after an unusually low period. Then there's the issue of disease not being in perfect sync each year - pathogens don't carry diaries! You may find it useful to read older articles where I discuss these issues.
Yes I have noticed from Euromomo that Scandinavian countries have done very well during the panic. If I look at Denmark where my son and family live you would not know there had been a problem in 2020,21 or 22 based on XS mortality. Similarly for Norway,Finland and Sweden except in the initial phase which hit their care homes. You said Sweden is well vaccinated but it might be good to know what percentage of population vaccinated versus UK. Also was it mandatory for business purposes? I think stopping AZ and Moderna early might have had an effect and of course it begs the question why were they banned in the first place. Maybe because your authorities noticed the problems early. The other issue is that much of the vaccine damage does not lead to early death eg strokes, MIs, cancers, Alzheimers, etc. Of my extended family and circle of friends there have been the following since vaccination: brain tumour leading to death in 6mo, Guillane Barre, vasculitis, re-emergence of latent Lyme disease, acute reactive arthritis, early Alzheimers, 2 cases breast cancers presenting in stage 4, pancreatic cancer, sudden death (40y old), and Parkinson's disease. Could of course be coincidence most were aged over 60 but all of these fall into the immunological or thrombotic categories. However it might be that there will need to be another lag period of years before these hit the mortality figs.
Sweden never had mandatory vaccination for business purposes. There were a few months where the large venue nightclubs and concerts -- which had been outright banned before -- only let in vaccinated people but that was the extent of the vaccinated pass. Vaccinated with 2 doses -- the J&J 1 dose vaccine was not used here -- over 12 years old was 85% and with 3 66%. To be vaccinated 4 times you needed to be in a very rare situation. Under 12 didn't get vaccinated.
And yes. The question is why aren't we seeing lots of death and illness of the sort you are reporting? Because it most assuredly is not because we aren't tracking such things or are hiding the results. The very first thing we did here, as part of the 'how to deal with covid' was to make certain that the cancer cases did not suffer a decline in the quality of their care. Since we didn't want to have our hospitals kill people with nosocomial covid infections, we needed to sterilise the operating theatres more and do other things that meant that elective surgery was essentially cancelled for several months. Private hospitals were set up to do some of the cancer surgeries, rather than what they normally did and that must have made a difference, but I think that some of what is being measured in the difference is the difference between 'life largely went on as normal in the hospitals' vs 'we shut down and when we came back we got the backlog from before plus the usual normal load from now and we cannot handle this.' But I have no way to measure that.
Thanks very much. Very interesting and very different to UK. The NHS is under severe pressure every winter. Also General Practice is in crisis with staff problems.
Oh yes indeed, my city hospital was under pressure every Friday and Saturday night let alone over winter. I'm looking at bed availability and occupancy data and may well turn this into a future newsletter because it's quite clear they've been running the service down for at least two decades.
But all the anecdotes I mentioned above came after dosing. The symptoms and signs came long after lockdown so these were not delayed diagnoses. One of the cases could not get to see GP and was brushed off by various so called "clinicians" by phone. Eventually went private got diagnosis and consultant asked why not seen via NHS because his clinics were not full presumably because GPs not referring... you get the picture of viscious circle.
By the way there is one database that nobody looks at (except me!) Its the Royal College of GPs seasonal surveillance for flu and other infections. It surveys about 500 practices in England/Wales and gives weekly updates. It's been doing this for 20 years or more. During 20/21 of those with Covid symptoms less than 40% had confirmed PCRs. These are done at PHE not local car park so much more reliable. So what caused the other 60? Only since end of 21 has this changed to nearly 80%. I can point you towards this site if interested as difficult to find. Its the only one I think that looks at stats at GP level so worth having a look.
Something seems amiss. Dose 4 looks to have a higher cumulative count than dose 3. Should be lower, no? Perhaps you plotted dose 4 and 5 as cumulative curves on accident? Or maybe at some date someone decided to just start counting new doses as dose 4, declaring dose 3 to be "over"?
Are you gonna recrunch the ARIMA excess-death method for all 5 doses and compare to the new method?
It sure should be lower! I better check over the raw data. I am indeed going to re-crunch.
Raw data fine - I mixed up cumulative and weekly totals on the graph (muffled screaming) - now corrected. Thanks for keeping an eye out!
Do you have a series of 'expected deaths' in the UK?
Here in Sweden, 2019 was a huge outlier in terms of expected deaths. Hardly anybody died. The magnitude was greater than anything we ever saw, including covid, by which I mean that the number of people who were expected to die in 2019 but were still around early 2020 is much larger than the number of people who were expected to be alive in 2021 but died in 2020.
Tommy Lennhamn who has been tracking such things here has this article from a year ago about why how you calculate the baseline matters. https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/08/09/sweden-all-cause-deaths-a-trendy-topic-expected-observed-excess/
It seems to be more reasonable to break your years in the middle of low season for respiratory infections than in January, the middle of high season for Northern Europe. The deadliness of a respiratory infection that killed half of the people in December and the other half in January should be compared on even ground with an infection that killed everbody in November and December. The idea that the first one is 'half as deadly' is a measuring artifact of binning by calendar year, and not season for diseases that are seasonal.
The thing is, Tommy's latest chart of Swedish excess mortality, https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2022/09/08/sweden-alarming-raise-in-covid-deaths-past-6-weeks/ (which is making fun of the newspapers who think the raise is alarming even though the sheer numbers of sick people remain low) isn't showing us all falling over dead with vaccine caused problems that show up later. And this needs some explaining, if you believe that the deaths are due to the vax, given that this is a well-vaccinated place. Of course, we didn't vaccinate kids, and we quickly stopped using the AZ vaccine, and then the Moderna one, and we aren't recommending it for young adults now.
Yes we do have a series for expected deaths in the UK, this being derived from prior 5-year means that are matched on a week-by-week basis. This baseline is subtracted from observations to produce an estimate of excess deaths. There are several problems with this, starting with the fact that the previous 5 years is not necessarily typical, and in this regard we too experienced a very mild 2019 in terms of deaths. One GP I know calls this the 'tinderbox effect' whereby deaths will automatically increase the year after an unusually low period. Then there's the issue of disease not being in perfect sync each year - pathogens don't carry diaries! You may find it useful to read older articles where I discuss these issues.
Yes I have noticed from Euromomo that Scandinavian countries have done very well during the panic. If I look at Denmark where my son and family live you would not know there had been a problem in 2020,21 or 22 based on XS mortality. Similarly for Norway,Finland and Sweden except in the initial phase which hit their care homes. You said Sweden is well vaccinated but it might be good to know what percentage of population vaccinated versus UK. Also was it mandatory for business purposes? I think stopping AZ and Moderna early might have had an effect and of course it begs the question why were they banned in the first place. Maybe because your authorities noticed the problems early. The other issue is that much of the vaccine damage does not lead to early death eg strokes, MIs, cancers, Alzheimers, etc. Of my extended family and circle of friends there have been the following since vaccination: brain tumour leading to death in 6mo, Guillane Barre, vasculitis, re-emergence of latent Lyme disease, acute reactive arthritis, early Alzheimers, 2 cases breast cancers presenting in stage 4, pancreatic cancer, sudden death (40y old), and Parkinson's disease. Could of course be coincidence most were aged over 60 but all of these fall into the immunological or thrombotic categories. However it might be that there will need to be another lag period of years before these hit the mortality figs.
Sweden never had mandatory vaccination for business purposes. There were a few months where the large venue nightclubs and concerts -- which had been outright banned before -- only let in vaccinated people but that was the extent of the vaccinated pass. Vaccinated with 2 doses -- the J&J 1 dose vaccine was not used here -- over 12 years old was 85% and with 3 66%. To be vaccinated 4 times you needed to be in a very rare situation. Under 12 didn't get vaccinated.
https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utbrott/aktuella-utbrott/covid-19/statistik-och-analyser/statistik-over-registrerade-vaccinationer-covid-19/
And yes. The question is why aren't we seeing lots of death and illness of the sort you are reporting? Because it most assuredly is not because we aren't tracking such things or are hiding the results. The very first thing we did here, as part of the 'how to deal with covid' was to make certain that the cancer cases did not suffer a decline in the quality of their care. Since we didn't want to have our hospitals kill people with nosocomial covid infections, we needed to sterilise the operating theatres more and do other things that meant that elective surgery was essentially cancelled for several months. Private hospitals were set up to do some of the cancer surgeries, rather than what they normally did and that must have made a difference, but I think that some of what is being measured in the difference is the difference between 'life largely went on as normal in the hospitals' vs 'we shut down and when we came back we got the backlog from before plus the usual normal load from now and we cannot handle this.' But I have no way to measure that.
Thanks very much. Very interesting and very different to UK. The NHS is under severe pressure every winter. Also General Practice is in crisis with staff problems.
Oh yes indeed, my city hospital was under pressure every Friday and Saturday night let alone over winter. I'm looking at bed availability and occupancy data and may well turn this into a future newsletter because it's quite clear they've been running the service down for at least two decades.
But all the anecdotes I mentioned above came after dosing. The symptoms and signs came long after lockdown so these were not delayed diagnoses. One of the cases could not get to see GP and was brushed off by various so called "clinicians" by phone. Eventually went private got diagnosis and consultant asked why not seen via NHS because his clinics were not full presumably because GPs not referring... you get the picture of viscious circle.
By the way there is one database that nobody looks at (except me!) Its the Royal College of GPs seasonal surveillance for flu and other infections. It surveys about 500 practices in England/Wales and gives weekly updates. It's been doing this for 20 years or more. During 20/21 of those with Covid symptoms less than 40% had confirmed PCRs. These are done at PHE not local car park so much more reliable. So what caused the other 60? Only since end of 21 has this changed to nearly 80%. I can point you towards this site if interested as difficult to find. Its the only one I think that looks at stats at GP level so worth having a look.