Can we find signals of vaccine injury deaths in U.K. mortality data? Will Jones isn’t sure, but I think we can.
A recent study by the Health Foundation at first glance suggests there is very little to cause concern. Indeed, the headline number of 34,000 fewer non-Covid deaths during the pandemic, together with the fact that non-Covid deaths have been lower than average during 80% of the period, should be a cause for some celebratory relief. However, this is not the end of the story, and there are some important caveats to this rather rosy outlook. A major one is the possibility that Covid deaths have been overcounted by Covid being ascribed to deaths from other causes, and non-Covid deaths correspondingly undercounted.
There has been some discussion of this in the media recently, and it is indeed a distinct possibility as the UKHSA definition of a Covid death is one that has occurred within 28 days of a positive Covid diagnosis, whether or not that person died for another reason. In the analysis below I am using ONS data, where the definition is that COVID-19 appears somewhere on the death certificate. This means it includes deaths where COVID-19 was not the underlying cause. There is also evidence that COVID-19 was put as underlying cause more often than it should have been. Insofar as Covid deaths have indeed been overcounted and non-Covid deaths undercounted the trends presented here will be underestimates and the true trends will be larger.
This is what a chart of the non-Covid mortality in England and Wales looks like for the period in question using the raw mortality data from the ONS, without any adjustments being applied. It might best be characterised as inconclusive.