Thread by @GrahamNeary

BREAKING NEWS - I have received the very latest Irish death registration data, as of the end of August.

Here's a thread, with lots of charts 👇👇👇.

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I'm going to focus on the months from January to May.

There were allegedly 1,646 "Covid-19-related" deaths in this period (mostly in April).

Here's the raw data, added up for each year. Does 2020 stand out to you?

Now let's adjust March, April and May 2020 for future registrations, based on how many late registrations usually show up in the data.

I forecast another c. 450 deaths will be registered for these three months.

This still leaves total deaths below the same period in 2018.

The green line in this chart illustrates a mild start to 2020, followed by a bad April.

Three competing explanations for April:

1) closure of the healthcare system
2) seasonal patterns (mild recent winters, 2019 & 2020, unusually large numbers of vulnerable people)
3) Covid-19

Now let's make the analysis more meaningful by accounting for Ireland's growing population.

The data suggests that the death rate in Ireland from January to May 2020 was very possibly below average, compared to the prior five years.

2015, 2016, 2018 all appear more dangerous.

Indeed, 2019 is the most unusual year in the series, not 2020. 2019 was exceptionally mild.

This backs up the idea there may have been unusually large numbers of vulnerable people in early 2020.

If we exclude 2019 when calculating the average, 2020 is further below average:

To help you see why the official Covid-19 death toll is so questionable, here's the same chart if we deduct the 1,646 "Covid-19-related" deaths from January to May 2020.

If we do that, then 2020 becomes the outlier, with far fewer deaths even than the outlier 2019. Implausible!

I can also put the April 2020 result in context.

Despite the shutdown of the health service in April 2020, its death rate appears lower than both Jan 2017 and Jan 2018.

They were considered to be normal times - the media said almost nothing about death statistics back then!

CONCLUSION:

Despite the shutdown of the healthcare system, mild recent winters leaving more vulnerable people in the population, and the alleged presence of a virus that threatens a societal catastrophe, overall mortality in Ireland in 2020 has been normal.

END