Data relate to England and Wales.
I define excess deaths with respect to the five years immediately before Covid-19, i.e., 2015 to 2019. This differs from the ONS definition of excess deaths since 2022. For year 2023, excess deaths reported by ONS are with respect to the average of years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022. If one wishes to investigate the hypothesis that death rates have increased since before Covid-19, then the ONS definition is useless. Why the ONS adopt that definition I do not know, but their measure of excess deaths is inappropriate for my purpose here.