Excess deaths in New Zealand
Is it really bucking the trend?
The official data shows minimal excess mortality in New Zealand which can all be accounted for by deaths attributed to covid.
Figure 1: Official cumulative excess and covid deaths
The big question is why deaths were so low in 2020 and 2021. Notably, if deaths attributed to covid are subtracted the mortality remains very low currently. It has been argued that missing influenza deaths may have contributed to the decrease and that is possible. It does bring into question the accuracy of the baseline. Were people wrongly expecting more deaths than it is reasonable to expect?
It all depends where you estimate the trendline from. Figure 2 shows age standardised mortality. By taking the mortality rate for each age group and projecting it onto a population with a set number of people in each age group, fairer comparisons can be made. I have presented it as data from June to July which splits the winter months but allows for a clear distinction between pre-vaccine and post-vaccine periods.
Figure 2: ASMR from June to July for New Zealand with two alternative trendlines
The orange trendline is based on the data from June 2011 to July 2016 and projecting that forward. It would suggest there were bad years for mortality in 2017 and 2018, when there was indeed a high influenza mortality, but that 2020/2021 the expected number of deaths.
The green trendline is based on data from June 2015 to July 2020. The extent of the excess since 2020 is markedly different depending which of these measures is used.
The key point is that no-one knows. It is impossible to say how many deaths there should have been. Should ASMR keep declining? Should it plateau? Might it rise? Who knows! Any estimates of excess are by definition subjective and based on assumptions that are not always reasonable ones. Anyone sticking to the official measures needs to explain why the non-covid deaths are so much lower than predicted.
Hi Clare, Thanks so much for speaking to Dr John Campbell and for writing your book. Your real expertise and analysis is much appreciated in these days of smoke and mirrors. I am an artist and have written on various issues, with a particular concern around big pharma and 'the drug connections', to health and social issues. I hope that you will find some time to wander over to my substack to see some of my paintings and photos and to read some of my 'rhyme and reason'.
Much love to you and your family & Happy Christmas! xxx
In case you haven't seen this yet, Excess Death Stats is an interesting site. It's a global campaign to bring public awareness to excess deaths.
So far they have covered Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, and Sweden. They are asking for volunteers from any country to help them collect the data.
Here is their NZ page. https://www.excessdeathstats.com/nz/
From that page:
'Retired engineer, Terry Anderson, who is a volunteer for this project, has signed an affidavit as an expert witness for a NZ court case, in which he examined this issue of cumulative excess deaths over the pandemic.
He believes that the Ministry of Health cherry-picked the approach used.
Furthermore, he says they selected a method that was fundamentally flawed, because it overestimated the number of expected deaths for a variety of reasons, including assuming immigration would continue as normal (despite borders being closed!)
“They have selected a method that gives a flattering result for cumulative excess mortality in New Zealand”, Terry says. When the Ministry of Health compared the actual numbers of deaths over the pandemic with their inflated expectation of normal deaths, it made their pandemic management look good.'
And
'To account for changes in population size, we’ve used the Stats NZ figures for death rates (deaths per thousand population) rather than the simple number of deaths.
Using this approach, the death rate in 2022 is 10.6% higher than the average death rate over the five years immediately preceding the pandemic (2015-2019).'
I've listed the following links for convenience:
For NZ Crude Death Rates: https://infoshare.stats.govt.nz/
NZ Deaths: https://www.stats.govt.nz/topics/births-and-deaths/