his is the latest (still ongoing):

> Good morning Dr Schestowitz
>
> Apologies, I didn’t note the screenshot in your first email.
>
> For the week you are referencing, we did not publish the numbers of
> death occurrences (date of death) for that week and these were updated
> the following week.
>
> There would have been no changes in any of the tables that use
> registrations data, but you would see the undercount in the occurrences.
>
> May I ask what table you are looking at?
>
> Kind regards
>
> Anne

Hi,

Thanks for the quick reply.

On December 20th the page looked like this:

That was minutes after the 10AM (ish) update.

Despite what it said in the text, the spreadsheet file was updated that morning and included Week 49. Here is a screenshot:

This screenshot was taken on December 20th.

I was expecting that on January 5th this number should be amended, as the figure for Week 49 was incomplete. But in all subsequent updates that number remained the same, so either the missing deaths were added cumulatively to Weeks 50 (onwards) or something went wrong. No “(i) Notice” has been shown since then, so I’m left wondering what actually happened. I need to be sure this data is accurate.

I expressed these concerns publicly about half a dozen times before I learned that Professor Fenon et al had made a formal complaint to the Statistic Regulator. Their complaints is completely unrelated. But it increased my doubts and scepticism about ONS-provided data.

I’ve used your data for a long time. I need to understand why the Week 49 figure (shown in the screenshot above) remained unchanged.
You said: “For the week you are referencing, we did not publish the numbers of death occurrences (date of death) for that week and these were updated the following week.”

If you mean you did not publish Week 49 figures on December 20th, then that is patently untrue and I took a screenshot to prove it. The spreadsheet file was updated that day. It contained the figure for Week 49.

I have more screenshots from around that time and I can provide them to you.

Are we talking about sheet #2 rather than #11?

Regards,

For some background see this prior episode.

arlier today I noted that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) hadn’t replied within the time frame or ‘window’ specified in their automated reply. I therefore prodded ONS again, politely, and within hours I received the following response:

Good morning Dr Schestowitz

Thank you for your email. Apologies for the delay in responding, we have a large volume of enquiries at the moment.

Deaths in the last week of December and the first week of January are impacted by bank holidays where registry offices are closed. These deaths are then usually registered in the following week.

This isn’t an undercount, rather we see a lower number of death registrations on weeks with a bank holiday followed by a larger number of death registrations the week after a bank holiday. So the numbers will stay the same, we just ask people to use caution when comparing trends as they need to be aware of this short-term displacement effect that happens across weeks with bank holidays and the week after.

Kind regards

Anne

Anne

Customer Services Team

Health Analysis and Pandemic Insight (HAPI)

Office for National Statistics | Swyddfa Ystadegau Gwladol | www.ons.gov.uk | @ONS

I quickly responded:

Hi Anne,

Thank you for the reply.

The reply does not address my question however. I did not ask about the last week of December or bank holidays.

My query was about the week ending 9th of December. I took a screenshot of your site: (PNG file)

In your own words, there was a “processing issue”, resulting in “undercount of death occurrences”. It said the figures for week 49 would be “published in the next weekly mortality publication”, but in all subsequent weeks after that the number was the same and not corrected. In other words, the number you gave while stating “undercount of death occurrences” is still an undercount almost 1.5 months after the week in question. This needs to be corrected or clarified, otherwise it is a contraction that lessens quality in your data.

Please can you explain what happened to week 49?

Kind regards,

Let’s see if this time they will actually answer the question rather than address something I did not ask at all.

As per the latest data, which is alarming:

How does that compare to 2019? Let’s check the official records. The numbers below are the total deaths (not a sub-sample).

Babies:

2019: 50. 2023: 55 (10% increase).

Kids (ages 1-14):

2019: 20. 2023: 24 (20% increase).

Adults (ages 15-44):

2019: 280. 2023: 365 (30.57% increase).

Ages 45-64):

2019: 1419. 2023: 1798 (26.7% increase).

Ages 65-74):

2019: 2179. 2023: 2609 (19.7% increase).

Ages 75-84):

2019: 3590. 2023: 5094 (42% increase).

Age 85+:

2019: 5071. 2023: 7436 (46% increase).

So deaths are off the chart. And young people are not exempted.

MAGINE the media not talking about this….

With over 17.3k deaths last week (in Wales and Eng alone; Scotland and Northern Ireland probably have well over a thousand more), as per the data published 20 minutes ago, the public deserves an explanation. These deaths are off the chart! Here it is compared (pre-pandemic and present time, with media trying to convince us it’s “over” and “back to normal”).

ver a month ago the Office for National Statistics (ONS) had a glaring omission. It never bothered to correct it (more than a month had already passed!), so a week ago I made this polite inquiry.

This is what I received:

Thank you for your email.

Due to the high volume of enquiries we aim to respond to your enquiry within 5 working days.

This inbox will be actively managed Monday to Thursday 0830 – 1630 and Friday 0830 – 1530.

We appreciate your patience.

Kind regards

Health Analysis and Life Event Customer Service Team.

Office for National Statistics

Any further attempts to contact them give me this generic (not personalised) response:

Thank you for your email.

This inbox is actively managed Monday to Thursday 0830 – 1600 and Friday 0830 – 1500.

Due to the high volume of enquiries we aim to respond to your email within 10 working days.

We appreciate your patience.

HAPI Customer Services Team

Health Analysis and Pandemic Insight

Office for National Statistics | Swyddfa Ystadegau Gwladol

Tel. 01329 444 110 | www.ons.gov.uk | @ONS

So now it is 10, not 5? That’s not even consistent. Anyway, maybe by next week?

Sigh.

So when are they actually going to respond to my query? It’s the taxpayers that fund them to do this simple job.

Old: Data Contradiction Means Office for National Statistics (ONS) Began Shamelessly Lying About Number of Dead People

n Tuesday at around 10AM (i.e. 24 hours from now) we’ll get some more mortality numbers from ONS (in proprietary Microsoft formats only), but in the meantime it’s increasingly hard to trust their output. As just noted, I’ve not received any clarification or response from them (they ask people to give them up to 10 days) and some already file formal complaints because ONS is deceiving the public, feeding the media intentionally incomplete or misleading data. Well, the public will need to keep chasing them to avoid being left in the dark.

5 days down the line my query to ONS remains unanswered: Enquiry Sent to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Regarding ‘Missing’ Deaths in the United Kingdom

New:

Description:

In Nov 2022 we (Professor Fenon and team) made a formal complaint to the Statistic Regulator about the multiple anomalies in the ONS mortality by vaccination status reports. On 20 Jan 2023 they final responded and they agreed with our major concern that 1) the ONS data was based on a biased sample that under-represented the proportion of unvaccinated in England; and 2) the ONS data could not be used to make any assertions about vaccine efficacy or safety.