Another day doesn’t change the message in this chart of COVID-19 hospital admissions in England. Still rising sharply!
7-day moving average has nearly tripled since its low point on 26 August.
I’ve just published a bulletin for @COVID19actuary exploring this in more detail.
I’ve estimated R based on recent hospital admissions to be around 1.6 at the end of August. If it stays at that level, which is certainly not inevitable, we will continue to see rapid rises is hospitalisations (and case numbers too if testing keeps pace).
I’m also seeing signs that COVID-19 deaths in English hospital MIGHT now also be rising. I’ve applied an actuarial technique to correct for underreporting of recent deaths, producing the picture below. There is a smaller rise apparent even without the adjustment.
If you’re interested in the detail, the bulletin is freely available👇
I promise you don’t need to be a statistician to understand it.
I've reproduced and updated this beautiful chart from @OurWorldInData showing life expectancy in England and Wales at different ages, since 1841.
The data largely speaks for itself but I'll make a few brief observations. 🧵
Most of the life expectancy gain is due to large reductions in infant and child mortality rates.
Progress reducing mortality has been made at all ages, but it's the youngest ages where most progress has been made. There's no longer a big difference between LE at birth vs age 10.
The data source in the chart upthread is the total population of England and Wales, which includes military deaths. So the first downward spike results from deaths during WW1 as well as the Spanish Flu. WW2 deaths are also very visible during the 1940s.
I've drawn some heat from anti-vaxx accounts recently. Some just spit obvious lies and hatred, and are quickly blocked. Perhaps more dangerous though are the ones who share bogus data and analysis, that some might not immediately be able to see though. Let's talk about "Ben".
My re-examination of the BMJ Public Health data showed that countries with higher vaccination rates had lower excess deaths, and vice versa. This doesn't prove cause and effect but it's an obvious issue that the authors failed to address.
"Ben" responded to my post with a link to a chart from his own self-published "study" which he claims shows no such relationship in counties of Montana.
So what might be the differences between the countries shown in my analysis and the counties shown in his?
I’m late to this but I wanted to set out some thoughts on the awful @BMJPublicHealth excess deaths article.
Commentary has focussed on media coverage, linking deaths to vaccines, but I want to discuss the article itself, which should not have been published in its current form.
That is not to let @Telegraph @NewYorkPost and others who misreported this off the hook entirely. Reckless reporting has done considerable harm, going well beyond what was claimed in the paper.
More lives will be lost as misinformation fuels vaccine hesitancy.
But as I said below, when @bmj_company distanced itself from media misreporting, this was always going to happen. It's all very well to say the 'study' doesn't establish a link between excess deaths and vaccines, but it's full of inappropriate insinuation.
The first question to ask about excess deaths (or excess anything!) is 'excess over what?'
The new method gives the excess over mortality expected at the start of the year. So expectations for 2024 reflect the fact that we've seen higher mortality rates since the pandemic. 3/17
Our new commentary published in @LancetRH_Europe discusses the ongoing excess deaths in the UK, and for the first time provides granular analysis by age, place and cause.
Excess deaths arise directly and indirectly from the Covid pandemic. This includes:
- increased pressure on NHS urgent care services, resulting in poorer patient outcomes
- direct effects of Covid-19 infection
- disruption to chronic disease prevention, detection and management.
Newly published data from @OHID shows that, from June 2022 to June 2023, excess deaths were highest for ages 50-64, at 15% above normal.
In comparison, excess deaths were 11% higher than expected for under 25s and 25-49s, and were 9% higher for over 65s.