We don't have a Covid crisis - we have a public information crisis.

That's my conclusion, after reviewing the latest mortality data from Ireland.

Here are my updated and extended charts.πŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡

Please retweet to help get the word out.
Firstly, remember that "Covid-19 deaths" includes people who died of other things.

Leo Varadkar:

"We counted all deaths, in all settings, suspected cases even when no lab test was done, and included people with underlying terminal illnesses who died with Covid but not of it."
Secondly, take a look at the unadjusted all-cause mortality data (with thanks to @Thorgwen).

You'll note that April 2020 (based on deaths registered so far) is comparable to flu months in January 2017 and January 2018.

Year-to-date registrations so far, up to June, look normal.
Now I'm going to make two important adjustments, as I've done before.

First, I adjust for expected late registrations. In the interest of transparency, you can see my forecast below.

Second, I adjust for the growing population (it's also ageing, but I don't adjust for this).
We can now say with even more certainty that April 2020 was about as bad as January in a harsh winter.

Competing explanations for the deaths sadly witnessed in April: Covid-19, major disruption to the health service and care homes, and two mild winter seasons preceeding it.
Let's take the mild January this year into account, and look at year-to-date deaths to May.

From this perspective, 2020 mortality is about the same as 2018 and very similar to both 2015 and 2016.

Is the hysterical media coverage of death this year justified by the reality?
And if we include what looks like a very mild June 2020, then we are left with an almost perfectly average year.

Note that 2019 is the outlier year, not 2020. H1 2019 was remarkably mild.

More evidence that there was an unusually large cohort of vulnerable people in early 2020.
Now let's prove that the official Covid-19 death toll is wrong simply by excluding all Covid-19 deaths from the previous charts.

When you do this, you get record low mortality in 2020.

In the context of the severe disruption to the health service, this doesn't make any sense.
CONCLUSIONS:

The official Covid-19 death toll does not make sense.

Mild winters and health service disruption can explain much of the spike in April.

Low mortality in June might reflect the age profile of those who sadly passed in April.

Overall mortality in 2020 is normal.

β€’ β€’ β€’

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
γ€€

Keep Current with Graham Neary

Graham Neary Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @GrahamNeary

20 Oct
It has been requested that I do a simpler version of this thread, explaining why the modellers advising the Irish government are so amazingly wrong in their forecasts and in their understanding of the risk from Covid-19.

Here goes. πŸ‘‡
1. The death count is wrong. We know this because it has been admitted to be wrong by the government (including by Leo Varadkar) and the number itself makes no sense.

All explained here:

2. The modellers think very few people have been infected so far. Wrong.

They say less than 2% of the population had antibodies 10-14 weeks after the epidemic peak.

But research suggests many people already lose their antibodies 8 weeks after infection.

nature.com/articles/s4159…
Read 8 tweets
19 Oct
Why is Ireland locking down again? Look no further than our Covid-19 spreadsheet modellers.

They are unshakeable in the belief that Covid-19 remains a deadly threat to the population. But as I'm about to reveal, they are standing on shaky ground.

Thread. πŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡

#level5 #NPHET
Meet Professor Philip Nolan, Chair of the Epidemiological Modelling Group on Ireland's NPHET. This man is the key provider of Covid-19 statistical analysis and forecasts to the Irish government.

Think of him as the Irish equivalent of Neil Ferguson.

In the thread above, he claims that about 1/3 of all infections were detected by PCR during the epidemic peak in April.

If that's true, and testing continued to find a high % of cases, then total infections so far might only be c. 100k-150k (vs. the official case count of 50k). Image
Read 13 tweets
2 Oct
According to TheJournal, it's a "far-right conspiracy theory" that "Covid-19 death rates are being inflated as a way of justifying continued restrictions on the public."

TheJournal says "Covid-19 was a factor in all of those 1,806 deaths".

Time for a factcheck by Leo Varadkar.
Varadkar:

"In Ireland we counted all deaths, in all settings, suspected cases even when no lab test was done, and included people with underlying terminal illnesses who died with Covid but not of it."

The death count includes people who died with Covid, not of it. Got that?
Varadkar:

"This was right approach but skewed the numbers. Priority is to save lives not look good in league tables."

Is that clear enough? They skewed the numbers to "save lives", by frightening people into accepting restrictions.

Leo is now a right-wing conspiracy theorist.
Read 7 tweets
28 Sep
Today, an RTE article makes a speculative argument that C19 is definitely worse than a bad flu, despite acknowledging fewer death notices from March to May 2020 than "either of the severe flu seasons in December–February in 2017/18 and 2016/17".

rte.ie/brainstorm/202…
Their argument is based on deaths from March to April 2020 being seasonally higher than average.

But then how to take account of Jan and Feb 2020 being lower than average?

Being simple-minded, I simply added up all deaths from January to May.

Result: the 2020 total is normal.
Here's the thread showing how I calculated this:

Read 4 tweets
17 Sep
If you asked your barber whether you needed a haircut, would you expect an unbiased answer?

And what would you expect, if you asked the vaccine industry whether the world needed more vaccines – would they say no?

It’s time to spill the beans, with a thread. Strap yourself in. Image
A few disclaimers.

Firstly, believing things which are in your economic self-interest doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s completely normal.

Like millions of others, I would benefit financially from the scrapping of Covid-19 rules. I have no hesitation in acknowledging that.
But what about the experts who hype the risks from Covid-19? What if they might benefit from the fear they generate?

We should still trust that they act in good faith, and we should recognise their expertise (we recognise our barber’s expertise in cutting hair, after all).
Read 18 tweets
14 Sep
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 πŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡.

If you think this information is important, please give it a retweet!
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.
Read 9 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!