Flu Deaths Down, Heart Failure Up (UK 2022 Excess Deaths)

We take a look at excess mortality data from the UK Government’s website, www.gov.uk. It should be noted that excess deaths are estimated using five years of data from 2015 to 2019. Also of note, in the Interpretation section, the authors note that “mortality rates do vary considerably from year to year and we have no way of knowing what would have happened, had the pandemic not occurred”. So just keep that in mind. These statistics that I’ll be showing you are all just estimates.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/excess-mortality-in-england-and-english-regions

First of all, let’s look at all excess deaths in the year 2022. We can see that at the start of the year, there were considerably less deaths that expected, but from about April onwards, there were considerably more than expected, and have been consistently higher throughout the year. I spoke about that in a previous video, so I won’t go into that again.

If we go back to the main menu and click on Cause of Death, specifically Heart failure, we can see that there have been significant increases in heart failure throughout most of the year. The jury is still out as to why, but nobody can argue that heart failure is significantly higher than historical averages.

Here’s a graph of excess deaths from other respiratory diseases, such as influenza, and as you can see, there have been significantly less deaths than expected. Presumably, instead of people dying from the flu, they’ve been officially dying from COVID instead. That’s why I’ve always been hesitant to state that all COVID deaths should be counted as excess deaths. No, they shouldn’t, because fewer people are dying from other respiratory illnesses. COVID deaths have just displaced some of those deaths.

This graph shows deaths from heart disease. Again, there have been significant increases throughout the year. People may not be dying very much from the flu, but they certainly are dying from heart disease in great numbers.

Another cause of death that has been severely over-represented in 2022 is deaths from cirrhosis and other liver diseases. According to the British NHS, the main causes of cirrhosis are excess alcohol consumption, hepatitis, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease caused by a build-up of excess fat, usually seen in people who are overweight or obese. I presume these are all hangovers of the pandemic lockdowns where people were stuck at home all day, without work, and unable to socialise and exercise as normal. This certainly warrants further investigation I think.

Similarly, diabetes numbers are significantly higher than normal throughout almost the entire year. Again, according to the NHS, diabetes is often linked to people being overweight or inactive.

Perhaps surprisingly, deaths from dementia and Alzheimer's has been mostly lower than expected throughout the year, as has deaths from Parkinson’s disease, or at least, it’s stayed fairly average.

Some viewers have been asking about ethnicity in relation to excess deaths. White people have pretty much followed the overall trend. Asian people have seen consistent excess deaths throughout the entire year, even in the earlier months. Somewhat similarly, black people have shown mostly increases in deaths through most weeks of the year, as have people of self-described ‘mixed’ ethnicity. The only group that don’t follow a similar pattern are people who identify as “other”, meaning they don’t identify as white, black, Asian, or mixed. Throughout the year, they’ve had ups and downs that pretty much average out in terms of excess deaths.

Place of death is somewhat informative. Deaths in hospitals have pretty much followed the overarching trend. Deaths in care homes has kind of followed the same trend, except that there are significantly less excess deaths. Deaths in hospices have completely plummeted. I guess people are just not going to hospices as often anymore? But the standout in excess deaths is at home. Significantly more people have been dying at home throughout the entire year than historical averages.

Older people have pretty much been following the overarching excess death trend, but perhaps surprisingly, 50 to 64 year-olds have had consistent excess deaths almost every week of the year. 25-49 year-olds have sort of had a similar pattern with some significant excess deaths early on in the year as well. Whereas the youngest age category, 0 to 24 year-olds have had ups and downs, but mainly highly-than­-expected deaths in recent months.

So what can we conclude from all of this data? Well, people are dying more often from heart failure, heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver, diabetes, they’re of mixed ethnicity, 50 to 64 years old, with significantly increased deaths at home. And nobody seems to know why.

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