What's With April 2020?
Exploring age & sex standardised non-COVID mortality a wee bit more...
In my newsletter of 10th June we saw something go bump in the night, being an inexplicable spike in non-COVID mortality in Mar and Apr 2020 across England & Wales. In my newsletter of 11th June we asked who killed granny after discovering an inexplicable rise in non-COVID mortality for females aged 80 years and over during Apr 2020.
This morning the farmyard cockerel decided to wake us all up at 4:23am and, as I waited for the kettle to boil, I tugged on my beard and wondered what the time series for the month of April looked like all the way back to 1970 - was April 2020 unique in some way or just another April doing its thing.
Here’s the answer in the first slide of the day…
What I am showing here is the non-COVID annual mortality rate for England & Wales for the period 1970 - 2021 alongside the annualised mortality rate for every April since 1970. We observe an April spike for 2020 that has not seen its like since 1977! A search among all other months of the pandemic year revealed the April 2020 spike to be unique in this regard. Something very different and non-COVID happened to the population during this month, and make no mistake!
ARIMA time series analysis was employed to ensure the April 2020 spike was as statistically significant as we may surmise and I can report a p-value of p=0.000004 for an ARIMA(0,1,1) model structure. In plain English the odds of a surge in death this large happening entirely by chance are 250,000 to 1 against.
If we lived in a normal world the medical authorities and the media would be all over this but we don’t live in a normal world, which is why we must find succour in toast and marmalade.
I'm wondering if these are the real numbers created by the euthenasia - or should I say genocide? - that took place in the nursing homes at that time. I mean, those poor old folks certainly didn't die of Covid as such, although their numbers were used in the modelling to create the "curve" that the lockdown was meant to flatten.
Joking about cereal killers aside, could it be fear itself?
In my experience , old ladies tend to be quite frightened: and I've nursed them. They fall like autumn leaves.