2020 overall mortality rate

[Gardentiger]

www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathsintheukfrom1990to2020

I heard someone mention the actual death rate of 2020 on the radio today, and looked it up and was surprised that it wasn't higher. The age standardised mortality rate is higher than the past 9 years, but once you get back past 2008 it seems to be consistently around the same level as 2020.

I know that this is with lock down, but a lot of people seem to think we should have locked down harder and for longer.

Some people also seem to think we should be heading back into lock down now, which doesn't make any sense. Surely looking at these figures it would only make sense to lock down again if deaths were heading in the sane direction as before we locked down the first time?

Just want to add, I am not a particularly mathsy or statisticky person, so am happy to be told if I'm totally misunderstanding!

@Gardentiger

www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathsintheukfrom1990to2020

I heard someone mention the actual death rate of 2020 on the radio today, and looked it up and was surprised that it wasn't higher. The age standardised mortality rate is higher than the past 9 years, but once you get back past 2008 it seems to be consistently around the same level as 2020.

I know that this is with lock down, but a lot of people seem to think we should have locked down harder and for longer.

Some people also seem to think we should be heading back into lock down now, which doesn't make any sense. Surely looking at these figures it would only make sense to lock down again if deaths were heading in the sane direction as before we locked down the first time?

This is a good analysis of the trends in death rates in the UK in the BMJ, a simple comparison of figures tends to overlook what's going on.

www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n896

How does 2020 compare with previous years? Provisional figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show 608 002 registered deaths in England and Wales in 2020.4 This was the second highest number of deaths in a year since 1838. The most deaths in the past 183 years occurred in 1918—a year also notable for a pandemic (fig 1). These figures exclude deaths not registered in England and Wales, which means the huge loss of military lives in the two world wars (about 888 000 over the four years of the first world war and 384 000 over the six years of the second world war5) are largely excluded.

Since 1838 the population of England and Wales has grown nearly fourfold, from 15.2 million to 59.8 million. We would expect more deaths in a larger population. But even taking into account population changes, deaths per 100 000 population were higher in 2020 than in any year since 2003 (fig 2).

"...These show huge improvements in death rates since the second world war, with age standardised mortality rates more than halving between 1942 and 2019 (fig 4). But last year bucked the almost straight downward trend to record the highest death rate since 2008 and the highest year-on-year increase since 1943."

It would be interesting to know what happened after 2003 to improve mortality rates

Flu deaths much lower.
Car accident deaths lower.
I'm sure there are others that are lower because of all the things we haven't been doing.
So the overall figure may not show much of a rise, but adjusted figures will show how much excess death due to covid. In a nutshell. stats are complex, never simple, especially for something like this where so much is going on and we're talking about a whole population.

As has already happened on this thread, you can use these stats to tell any story you want by choosing carefully what you compare them against.

@hamstersarse

As has already happened on this thread, you can use these stats to tell any story you want by choosing carefully what you compare them against.

what part of John Appleby's overview and statistical analysis do you disagree with @hamstersarse?

Do you have another source that gives a substantially different interpretation?

This is one of those figures that can be manipulated to back up a lot of arguments. It’s going to depend on which factors you’re interested on taking into account.

Thank-you for the link and explanations!

I hadn't thought about decreases in other causes of death, car accident deaths must be a lot lot lower due to lockdowns.

@Gardentiger

Thank-you for the link and explanations!

I hadn't thought about decreases in other causes of death, car accident deaths must be a lot lot lower due to lockdowns.

Pretty much all crime (with the exception of DA which remained stable), also dropped in 2020 which would impact on death rates

But also some of the people who died of Covid in a normal year will have been among those who died in RTAs, flu etc. Another example is that in a normal year around 6,000 elderly people die as a direct resort a fall

Traffic accident deaths decreased by 16% in 2020 compared to 2019

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-provisional-results-2020