Weekly Deaths Update (part 10)

Excess all cause deaths in England & Wales 1970 – 2022

Calculating excess deaths by subtracting a baseline figure (usually the prior 5-year mean count) from observed counts on a week-by-week basis is an easy thing to do and the method favoured by the Office for National Statistics who provide 5-year means for this very purpose. The problem with this method is that pathogens don’t wear watches and don’t heed our neatly constructed 52 week years (53 weeks on occasion). If seasonal influenza comes 6 weeks early one year compared to the mean historic trend then our excess becomes a debatable figure. The same happens if seasonal influenza decides to arrive later than usual. Then we’ve got the perpetual headache of administrative delays skewing the figures (deaths are by registration date and not date of death). We may feel double the pain when we realise a regime change during any one year may scupper the delicate synchronisation if processing is delayed or advanced when compared to previous years. Into this pot of troubles we have to throw ch…