England and Wales Summertime Deaths in 2020 versus 2022 (Spoiler: About 1,500 More Deaths Registered Per Week in 2022)
Filed under: 2020
June 5 onwards (deaths per week):
10,709
9,976
9,339
8,979
9,140
8,690
8,823
8,891
8,946
8,945
9,392
9,631
9,032
7,739
9,811
9,523 (September 18, 2020)
2022
June 10 onwards (deaths per week):
11,742
10,844
10,836
10,357
10,232
10,515
10,978
11,013
10,698
10,355
10,982
10,942
8,868
10,753
10,673 (September 16, 2022)
Possible explanations:
- People’s health deteriorated after 2020 (whether due to infection or treatment)
- The first wave of COVID-19 killed a lot of elderly and vulnerable people, leaving a lot fewer for summer (or fewer left to die later in the year)
- The first lock-down (March 2020) isolated vulnerable people from the flu and other diseases
To deal with the 3 possibilities above, let’s compare to summer of 2019 (before the breakout in Wuhan):
June 7 onwards: (2019)
10,140
9,445
9,458
9,511
9,062
9,179
9,080
9,112
9,271
9,122
9,093
8,994
8,242
9,695
9,513
9,440 (September 20, 2019)
These numbers seem a lot like 2020, not 2022. This strengthens the theory of people being more prone to die after 2021.
More inquiry and research are needed here. With the datasets below, comparison by age groups is possible too. There may be other factors at play, but surely some universities would be discouraged from exploring some strands of thought.
Reference: ONS
Files as ODF (Open Document Format):
This still-updated page says “Next release: 11 October 2022″ (that’s tomorrow), so let’s see how many died in September 2022 compared to prior Septembers (we’ll soon have all the figures for September 2022).
Folks would struggle give us the “but the lockdowns put people down” canard; in 2020 we had lockdowns and in 2022 no lockdowns. Deaths are far higher this year, if one removes the impact of the first COVID wave. We’re talking about ~6,000 more people dying each month.
