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Her Indoors's avatar

Can we rename them please? ONS Office of National Silliness? Monty Python comes to mind 😹

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Sheldon Dumont's avatar

I was initially optimistic about this data release in the UK. Maybe we could finally see some reasonably accurate large population statistics. Canadian stats are worthless and possibly intentionally so. The surge you noted in the population size is a frustrating loss of statistical relevance. Their approach seems to be designed to never produce confident results.

A randomly selected 100k per age strata from census in 2013 - 2023 followed for vax status, hospital visits, mortality, would eliminate some of the fudging artifacts.

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Eli's avatar

Table 5 is indeed fascinating.

The missing <18 cohort is conspicuous...

As for the fabrication of the population numbers, this has been one of the games for a long time now.

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rob's avatar

I have found some more very interesting data ....

The ONS provide relatively raw data for deaths by much smaller age intervals

https://www.ons.gov.uk/datasets/weekly-deaths-age-sex/editions/covid-19/versions/151

Deaths in ages 10-14 and 15-19 year olds are up 45% so far this year (weeks1-32) versus 2020 when there was the covid pandemic:-(

This increases to 51% if you just look at males in the 10-19 age group.

No wonder the ONS removed all under 18s from the deaths by vaccination status data.

AgeGroups 2020 2021 2022 2023 % diff v 2020

0-1 1523 1550 1460 1555 102%

1-4 215 181 223 237 110%

5-9 128 129 159 143 112%

10-14 162 154 202 235 145%

15-19 410 490 525 593 145%

20-24 698 814 811 801 115%

25-29 1008 1141 1120 1103 109%

30-34 1519 1704 1690 1765 116%

35-39 2364 2560 2377 2668 113%

40-44 3329 3659 3323 3776 113%

Weeks 1-32. All cause deaths males and females.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/filter-outputs/78d7ee56-3fd1-455b-a9c8-85c110bb93d4

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Eli's avatar

Very interesting - in the 15-19 there is a clear hike.

In the ages less, there is less, but that isn't surprising because the % of that population vaxxed was much lower.

Good find!

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NatteringNaybob's avatar

Clare - With regard to impure & toxic things, old saying in the water business, dilution is the solution.

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rob's avatar

I have found much more granular data on single year age of death by month. It makes extremely worrying reading. Not only are deaths from all causes up by an average of 71% in the 10-19 year old age group from 2020 to 2023 there is a clear pattern of year on year increase at most ages.

Year20 20 21 22 23 % Increase 2020 to 2023

10 yrs 13 9 18 16 23%

11 yrs 12 14 20 30 150%

12 yrs 20 16 20 18 -10%

13 yrs 18 20 28 27 50%

14 yrs 18 20 27 33 83%

15 yrs 30 35 34 46 53%

16 yrs 18 34 39 41 128%

17 yrs 31 58 41 73 135%

18 yrs 48 55 66 81 69%

19 yrs 58 80 84 91 57%

10-19 266 341 377 456 71%

Based on deaths recorded April - July All causes.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/singleyearofageandaverageageofdeathofpeoplewhosedeathwasduetoorinvolvedcovid19

Release date:23 August 2023. Next release: Discontinued !!!!!!!!

It also highlights why they excluded under 18s from the deaths by vaccination status data and also why they group 0-24 year olds together in the excess deaths data. A 130% increase in ALL cause mortality in 16 and 17 year olds is truly shocking.

I appreciate that during lockdown deaths 2020 were signifcantly lower in youngsters, but the scale and consistency of the increase cannot possibly be explained by lockdown alone. Simply adding vaccination status or simple cause of death would leave no room for doubt.

It surely needs some urgent investigation, not more discontinued data.

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rob's avatar

Even more worrying the latest ONS data appears to be "missing" around 7,000 all cause deaths for 2023. The deaths are missing disproportionately from the younger age group which is where other data shows the higher excess deaths are occurring.

SUM of Count of Deaths Year

Age group 2022 2023 Difference % Difference

18-39 3612 1906 -1706 -47%

40-49 5067 3758 -1309 -26%

50-59 13144. 11110 -2034 -15%

60-69 24674 23710 -964 -4%

70-79 51229 50325 -904 -2%

80-89 76019 76948 929 1%

90+ 49260 50778 1518 3%

Grand Total. 223005 218535 -4470 -2%

Jan-May Deaths All causes

Table 5 ONS Deaths by vaccination status, England

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsbyvaccinationstatusengland

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henjin's avatar

The ONS has published a spreadsheet titled "Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics": https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/impactofregistrationdelaysonmortalitystatistics. In table 10 of the spreadsheet, the percentage of deaths in 2021 that took 6-12 months to register is listed as about 16% in the age group 15-44 but about 0.9% in the age group 75-84. And the percentage of deaths that were registered within a week is listed as about 32% in the age group 15-44 but about 69% in the age group 75-84.

The ONS says that drug-related deaths and suicides have a long registration delay on average, but they are types of deaths which disproportionately occur in younger age groups: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/impactofregistrationdelaysonmortalitystatisticsinenglandandwales/2020.

In a spreadsheet for daily all-cause deaths in England by single-year age groups that was published because of a FOIA request by Joel Smalley, the total number of deaths from January to May in the age group 18-39 was around 3500-4000 before COVID, but it's only about half of that in 2023, so I think it's mostly because of the registration delay (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/adhocs/1343dailydeathsbydateofoccurrence1stjune2014to31stmay2023bysingleyearofageengland):

> t=read.csv("https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1t43VaYmmRmNkOoj6F4L4f28yM9MOZWt_",check.names=F)

> t2=t[t$Month<6,]

> tapply(rowSums(t2[,c(18:39)+4]),t2$Year,sum)

2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023

3509 3766 3759 3938 3846 4132 4036 3625 1836

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henjin's avatar

In the July 2022 version which included data until May 2022, the trend seemed to be that the unvaccinated mortality would soon drop below the ever vaccinated mortality rate, because in May 2022 the unvaccinated ASMR was only about 6% higher than the ever vaccinated ASMR (872.9 compared to 822.6). However in the February 2023 version, they had considerably changed the previously published ASMR numbers, because the unvaccinated ASMR in May 2022 was now about 35% higher than the ever vaccinated ASMR (1293.7 compared to 960.8). In the February 2023 release, the ONS switched to using the 2021 census instead of the 2011 census, but I don't think it would explain such a drastic change in the ASMR numbers.

However now if you compare the new August 2023 version to the previous February 2023 version, the ONS has again drastically changed the previously published data, because now starting from April 2022 the ever-vaccinated ASMR is much lower than previously, and the unvaccinated ASMR is also gradually increased so that the difference to the previous version is particularly high in December 2022. In December 2022, the ratio between unvaccinated and ever-vaccinated ASMR was about 1.09 in the previous version (1026.7/944.9) but it's now about 2.3 in the current version (1651.8/731.9).

Plot: https://i.ibb.co/TYKTdBD/ons-england-ever-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated-asmr-version-comparison.png. R code: https://pastebin.com/raw/Gp78Sbrm.

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henjin's avatar

The reason why the previously published ASMR figures changed in later versions might partially be because of a delay in registering deaths, because in the current version the biggest difference to the previous version is in December 2022 which was the last month included in the previous version, and in the February 2023 version the biggest difference to the July 2022 version was in May 2022 which was the last month of data that was included in the July 2022 version.

However if you look at the ASMR of the ever-vaccinated group in April-December 2022, it's a lot lower in the current version than in the previous version. So if more deaths were registered later, then why would it result in a decrease in the ASMR?

The website of the ONS says (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19byvaccinationstatusengland/latest):

> This publication uses death occurrences registered up to 10 July 2023, rather than death registrations. Because of registration delays, more deaths may be registered at later dates, leading to an increase in the death occurrences. This is especially true for more recent deaths. More information can be found in our Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales: 2020 article. Finalised death data for 2021 are used so no additional death registrations for 2021 will be added but some 2021 death occurrences may yet be registered in 2022. However, provisional death registrations for 2022 are used to enable timely analysis to be completed to monitor mortality change but may be subject to change.

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henjin's avatar

On August 25th, the ONS issued a notice where they said: "We have identified an issue with the way person years are summed when incorporating fourth vaccination doses. Please do not use this data. We are working urgently to correct this issue." On August 29th UTC, the ONS now issued another notice which said: "We have corrected an issue with some of the data in this release which affected the way person years were summed when incorporating fourth vaccination doses."

In the fixed version, the ever-vaccinated ASMR was increased considerably from April to December 2022 so that it's no longer lower than in the February 2023 version. And now in December 2022, the ever-vaccinated group also has a large jump up in ASMR from November 2022 and not just the unvaccinated group.

However the increase in ASMR compared to the February 2023 version still seems to be disproportionately high in the unvaccinated. For example in December 2022, the ratio between unvaccinated to ever-vaccinated ASMR was about 1.09 in the February 2023 version (1026.7/944.9), but it's now about 1.23 in the current corrected version (1651.8/1344.7).

But it could partially be because unvaccinated people are younger on average than vaccinated people, and the average delay in the registration of a death is higher for younger age groups than for older age groups: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/impactofregistrationdelaysonmortalitystatistics (table 10).

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henjin's avatar

If you divide the number of all-cause deaths in December 2022 in the current version with the number of all-cause deaths in December 2022 in the February 2023 version, the ratio is a lot higher in younger age groups than in older age groups:

age_group previous_version_december_2022_deaths current_version_december_2022_deaths ratio

18-39 223 489 2.193

40-49 491 836 1.703

50-59 1576 2553 1.620

60-69 3755 5723 1.524

70-79 8727 12666 1.451

80-89 13716 19149 1.396

90+ 9575 13112 1.369

And the ratio in younger age groups is even higher if you only look at the number of deaths in unvaccinated people:

age_group previous_version_december_2022_deaths current_version_december_2022_deaths ratio

18-39 28 81 2.893

40-49 60 105 1.750

50-59 140 268 1.914

60-69 192 335 1.745

70-79 251 450 1.793

80-89 296 449 1.517

90+ 243 335 1.379

So I guess that partially explains why the registration delay could result in a bigger increase in unvaccinated ASMR than vaccinated ASMR.

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Guilherme's avatar

We must know the real data.

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