I suspected that today’s ONS life expectancy release would not be met with the usual fanfare, but I guess I hadn’t anticipated complete media radio silence.
Still, it’s not the most “pandemic appropriate” news. UK life expectancy is at a new high!
What’s the story? 1/7
UK life expectancy at birth is up by six weeks for males and seven weeks for females. Here’s the numbers direct from Ed at the ONS 👇
Crucially though, this is just updating National Life Tables to include 2019, which had record low death rates. 2/7
Life expectancy at age 65 has also increased, by around 6 weeks each for males and females.
Life expectancy at 65 is now: 83.8 years for males 86.1 years for females
Note that life expectancy at 65 is 3-4 years higher than life expectancy at birth. 3/7
No account is taken in these particular measures of life expectancy of observed death rates in 2020, or expert views on what death rates will look like in 2021 and beyond. It’s a mathematical calculation based on death rates in the three-year period 2017 to 2019. 4/7
Life expectancy on this measure continues to increase, as it has for decades and is expected to do in the long term.
The rate of increase has been much slower in the last decade though, as shown below. 5/7
The next few years will be highly unusual as the impact of the pandemic works through the data. Exceptionally high death rates in 2020 (and 2021?) will visibility distort life expectancy in the years ahead, as similar pandemics have done. 6/7
There‘s another measure (“cohort life expectancy”) which incorporates views on future changes to death rates. ONS do a projection every 2 years (and CMI do a separate one annually). Incorporating short and long term impacts of COVID into these will be especially challenging! 7/7
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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.
On @BBCMoreOrLess this morning I was delighted to have the opportunity to debunk the most ludicrous claim I’ve yet been asked to address!
John Campbell shared a video with his 2.9 million followers with claims of over 150,000 excess deaths compared to if no-one was vaccinated.
In the video John repeated and endorsed incorrect claims made in an anonymous blog by “the nobody who knows everybody” that there have been over 150,000 excess deaths as a result of people getting vaccinated.
Here is how and why we can be certain this is completely false. 🧵
The claims in the blog: 1. Death rates lower for unvaccinated than vaccinated ❌ 2. If no-one vaccinated there’d have been under 340,000 deaths in a year in England ❌ 3. There were actually 490,000 deaths that year ❌ 4. So over 150,000 excess deaths due to vaccines. ❌
Another day, another viral post sharing vaccine misinformation.
Has @tniwef really discovered “proof of a mRNA Disaster!”
Unsurprisingly, that’s a firm “No!”
Can you see what they did wrong? 🧵
Let’s zoom in on that graph.
It shows that the % of all cause deaths from vaccinated people aged 18plus is: 1. Higher than the % of all cause deaths from unvaccinated people 2. Higher than the % of people aged 18 plus who have been vaccinated.
Should this concern us? No! 2/n
The first point can be easily dismissed. More than 9 out of 10 UK adults has been vaccinated. So of course more of the deaths are from vaccinated people!
So far so obvious, but to be fair this one wasn’t the focus of the claim. 3/n
ONS deaths data has been released for week ending 31 Mar.
2,004 more deaths were recorded in-week compared to 5-year avg. That’s 21% more, a large excess but partly due to Easter distorting 5yr avg.
Year-to-date there have been 171,600 deaths recorded, 8% above the 5-year avg.
There were 634 deaths registered in England and Wales this week where COVID was mentioned on the death certificate. That’s higher than last week (624).
68% of deaths with COVID mentioned on the death certificate had it listed as underlying cause.
That’s another concerning excess.
On the face of it, it’s the largest excess this year, but as noted above it is inflated a bit by because some years in the 5yr avg had a Bank Hol this reported week.
Looking past this though it’s clear that deaths are high for the time of year.