ONS Revised Method For Excess Deaths (UK): A Critique – Part 3

'The ONS have not addressed the hypothesis of interest, namely whether there might be excess deaths post-covid, not attributable directly to covid but with some other origin since 2020. The failure to address this hypothesis is due to the use of baselines which are inappropriate for that purpose. The ONS also fail to make this explicit, leading to a likelihood of public misinterpretation of their use of the term “excess deaths”.'

By William Collins aka MRA-UK: This should be read in conjunction with Part 1 and Part 2.

Here I give the results for annual excess deaths in the UK for the following cases.

Models based on the log of the dependent variable

A = ONS results: old method

B = ONS results: new method

C = my approximation of the ONS new method

D = based on the baseline 2015 to 2019 for all predicted years from 2020 onwards

E = based on the baseline 2005 to 2019 for all predicted years from 2020 onwards

Models using death rate as the dependent variable

CL = my approximation of the ONS new method (other than dropping the logarithm)

DL = based on the baseline 2015 to 2019 for all predicted years from 2020 onwards

EL = based on the baseline 2005 to 2019 for all predicted years from 2020 onwards

Note that all results use the ONS monthly regression model, and all results include the changes of age profile over time. They differ only in the definition of the baseline (and, in cases, CL, DL, EL, the use of the death rate as the fitted variable, rather than its logarithm).

The baselines have been defined in the earlier Parts. One exception is for cases C and CL when predicting year 2022. For these cases I used both a baseline terminating in June 2021 and a baseline terminating in December 2021, and then used the average od the two excess deaths predicted for 2022.

Results are given in Table 1 below. These are best estimates for each model/case. Confidence limits will be considered in a subsequent post.

Table 1: Annual excess deaths, 2020 – 2023. The shaded results, below, cannot be considered to include correctly any post-2020 effects on health, other than deaths from covid itself, due to inappropriate baselines. The unshaded results are my best estimates including any post-2020 effects on health. These are total excess deaths, including deaths due to covid.

Case	2020	2021	2022	2023
A	84,064	61,907	38,960	31,442
B	76,412	55,079	43,456	10,994
C	77,869	52,104	38,276	10,210
D	73,515	53,257	41,393	41,291
E	82,303	61,883	50,184	50,528
CL	65,889	49,512	46,115	16,225
DL	65,899	50,101	43,576	45,615
EL	84,380	70,473	66,016	69,706

Conclusions

I reiterate the conclusion from the previous Parts: the ONS have not addressed the hypothesis of interest, namely whether there might be excess deaths post-covid, not attributable directly to covid but with some other origin since 2020. The failure to address this hypothesis is due to the use of baselines which are inappropriate for that purpose. The ONS also fail to make this explicit, leading to a likelihood of public misinterpretation of their use of the term “excess deaths”.

Using baselines which terminate on 31 December 2019, i.e., pre-covid, all the models/cases show that excess deaths remain high.

Total excess deaths in 2023 have not reduced from those in 2022.

In as far as deaths attributable to covid reduced from 2022 to 2023, this implies that non-covid excess deaths increased in 2023.

Central estimates for annual excess deaths in 2022 or 2023 are in the range 41,000 to 70,000.

Note that all results use the ONS monthly regression model, and all results include the changes of age profile over time.